Indentured servitude - er - at-will employment took me past Lawton, Oklahoma last week, and as I was burning rubber heading south on I-44 I nearly jumped out of my seat belt when a huge, looming mountain was suddenly on top of me.
Mountains? In Oklahoma? and right smack dab in the middle of the freeway?
Well, the mountains weren't an optical illusion, if their placement was. Some trick of the eye made it appear that the Wichita Mountains were about to land on me. But sure enough, there they were, off to the west, inviting me out for a looksee.
I stopped for a visit on my way home. I started at the Post Oak Lake trailhead, hiked 2.5 miles north to Sunset Pool, then up to the summit of Elk Mountain another 1.2 miles. I scouted for a possible route down the west side of Elk Mt., but turned back after realizing I was out of my bouldering league. With wandering, scrambling, bouldering, and getting lost all combined, I probably walked about 8 miles.
I neglected to bring my standard daypack kit on my business trip, and thus had to make due with supplies and equipment on hand. I did go to Walmart for a cheap backpack (which, incidentally, broke a zipper at the trailhead and will be returned for a refund post haste). The midday high was seasonably on the warm side, but the morning was chilly and breezy. I improvised a windbreaker by cutting some holes in a black trash bag. Worked like a charm. Nobody breaks wind like your humble bloggist.
The scenery was spectacular. What looked like nondescript (if huge) hills from I-44 was actually meticulously sculpted granite, strewn about with convenience-store-sized boulders and cut with small streams and pools. Midwestern winter brown was the dominating color, punched with prickly pear green and a deep blue cloudless sky.
The trails were busy, especially Elk Mountain, traffic for which I was glad: I believe I spent more time off-trail than on. The trails are completely unblazed and unsigned, and at times cross bald rock, making them very difficult to follow. I don't know why the trails weren't blazed, though I suspect a radical wilderness ethic is at work. But blazes do not mar the scenery unduly. Anyway, I was glad for trail company, for as I stumbled my way through the Charon Gardens Wilderness, I was glad to hear distant conversations, reassuring me that I must not be too far off course. This ends my only gripe. Blaze the trails, WMNWR.
I saw longhorns and bison on my drive to the trailhead, but was pleased to encounter them on the trail, too. Just nifty.
Here's the pictures to prove I was there (and that I wore a trash bag as a jacket):
12/9/11
Laugh at your sister
An extended quote from my latest read:
For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural [worldview] has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. [But Christianity holds] that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity.... Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural [worldview] has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. [But Christianity holds] that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity.... Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
12/2/11
10/7/11
Copan
I was down in the Copan Lake area, in northern Oklahoma, this past week and got some pictures from a hilltop overlooking the lake and Caney River area. Here are the best of the lot:
There aren't a ton of great trails there, but even the drive on Highways 75, 99, 11, and 20 (to name just a few) is a nice trip.
There aren't a ton of great trails there, but even the drive on Highways 75, 99, 11, and 20 (to name just a few) is a nice trip.
10/5/11
Hazel Hill Lake
Sticking with the quick jaunts as I motor up and down the crude pipeline, here's a few quick photos I took with my phone at Hazel Hill Lake, east of KC, just north of Warrensburg.
There weren't "official" trails, but there was a service road and some short fishermen's trails to chase. Maybe someday I'll organize a volunteer crew to build a trail around the west half of the lake. Then again, I've heard that volunteers don't even get paid, so...
1.8 miles, out-n-back, from the dock to the north area access point.
There weren't "official" trails, but there was a service road and some short fishermen's trails to chase. Maybe someday I'll organize a volunteer crew to build a trail around the west half of the lake. Then again, I've heard that volunteers don't even get paid, so...
1.8 miles, out-n-back, from the dock to the north area access point.
10/4/11
Elk City Lake (reprise)
Back in southeast Kansas again, I again did a short walk on the Table Mound Trail. Rather than follow the bluffline section, however, I struck south and followed the trail down near the lake, then walked the shoreline to the end of a point. One and a half miles out, and that much back (3 miles total).
I'd been to Walmart and picked up some tasty Italian summer sausage and a roll of gouda. I wished I had more time to sit in the breeze and shade of the point, watching the fishermen trolling.
I retain my general distaste for USACE reservoirs: although it can be interesting to walk on exposed, formerly subterranean geology, it doesn't seem like it's a healthy thing. Shale-stone beaches and hot, stagnant lakewater aren't lovely.
I suppose the damage is done, though. There's no way that, after permanently flooding these Mid-southern and Mid-western drainage basins, they could ever recover, leastwise not in many generations.
Ecological opinions aside, Elk City Lake is a great place to spend an afternoon walking.
I'd been to Walmart and picked up some tasty Italian summer sausage and a roll of gouda. I wished I had more time to sit in the breeze and shade of the point, watching the fishermen trolling.
I retain my general distaste for USACE reservoirs: although it can be interesting to walk on exposed, formerly subterranean geology, it doesn't seem like it's a healthy thing. Shale-stone beaches and hot, stagnant lakewater aren't lovely.
I suppose the damage is done, though. There's no way that, after permanently flooding these Mid-southern and Mid-western drainage basins, they could ever recover, leastwise not in many generations.
Ecological opinions aside, Elk City Lake is a great place to spend an afternoon walking.
8/10/11
Elk City Lake - Table Mound Trail
Providence is the word Christians use to refer to God's sovereign working of all things according to his will. It's the opposite of the popular notion of "luck," although the two words are virtually synonymously used. It is a matter of your point of reference.
Your point of reference makes all the difference!
As Providence had it, I was in southeast Kansas for work on Wednesday, enjoying the break down of that nasty high pressure weather system that kept the lower Midwest in triple digits for weeks on end. Rather than 108, the day's high was in the 80's, with persistent cloud cover and thunderstorms. Very rare August climes, and especially refreshing after the troublesome heat we've had.
As if that weren't happy enough, Providence also led me to discover a hiking trail that had heretofore escaped my notice: Table Mound trail at Elk City Lake. And I agree with those who say this is the finest hiking trail in Kansas (or in a tie with Kanopolis' Red Rock Canyon!).
I only had an hour after the day's work, but this was a free hour well lived. I stopped by the State Park office to inquire about the trail, but didn't find anyone in the office. So I kept motoring up the road, and found the free access point at the Monument Overlook. This is the north trailhead for Table Mound trail. I hope someday to bag the whole Elk River Trail, a 15 mile stretch along the lake.
The views of the lake are sweeping and beautiful, but more striking are the limestone and other rock formations along the base of the bluff. Scramblers, start your engines. A climber could have a good afternoon pulling himself up the crags, cracks, and boulders. There are a few narrow trail passages that make a chunker like me think twice before squeezing through.
Hope the photos whet your appetite to visit this Midwest gem (click on photos to view at Picasa). I'm really stoked to return someday and spend some time. Elk City Lake is just outside Independence, Kansas, about 3.5 hours south and east of Kansas City. Also near Independence is a Laura Ingalls Wilder historic site and museum (www.littlehouseontheprairiemuseum.com) that I'll be taking the Wife to someday. And since you're not far, the restaurant at the Copan Truck Stop makes perfect hashbrowns and very good biscuits (HT: Josh S.). It's right on US-75, about 5 miles south of the KS/OK state line.
Your point of reference makes all the difference!
As Providence had it, I was in southeast Kansas for work on Wednesday, enjoying the break down of that nasty high pressure weather system that kept the lower Midwest in triple digits for weeks on end. Rather than 108, the day's high was in the 80's, with persistent cloud cover and thunderstorms. Very rare August climes, and especially refreshing after the troublesome heat we've had.
As if that weren't happy enough, Providence also led me to discover a hiking trail that had heretofore escaped my notice: Table Mound trail at Elk City Lake. And I agree with those who say this is the finest hiking trail in Kansas (or in a tie with Kanopolis' Red Rock Canyon!).
I only had an hour after the day's work, but this was a free hour well lived. I stopped by the State Park office to inquire about the trail, but didn't find anyone in the office. So I kept motoring up the road, and found the free access point at the Monument Overlook. This is the north trailhead for Table Mound trail. I hope someday to bag the whole Elk River Trail, a 15 mile stretch along the lake.
The views of the lake are sweeping and beautiful, but more striking are the limestone and other rock formations along the base of the bluff. Scramblers, start your engines. A climber could have a good afternoon pulling himself up the crags, cracks, and boulders. There are a few narrow trail passages that make a chunker like me think twice before squeezing through.
Hope the photos whet your appetite to visit this Midwest gem (click on photos to view at Picasa). I'm really stoked to return someday and spend some time. Elk City Lake is just outside Independence, Kansas, about 3.5 hours south and east of Kansas City. Also near Independence is a Laura Ingalls Wilder historic site and museum (www.littlehouseontheprairiemuseum.com) that I'll be taking the Wife to someday. And since you're not far, the restaurant at the Copan Truck Stop makes perfect hashbrowns and very good biscuits (HT: Josh S.). It's right on US-75, about 5 miles south of the KS/OK state line.
6/30/11
Indiana: Turkey Run State Park
Well I haven't been walking, or blogging, as much as is good for a man, but I did want to report on a jaunt I took last month, passing through Indiana.
I got good advice from the Midwest forum at http://www.backpacker.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi . After a few very helpful post exchanges, and reviewing the time I had available, I settled on a quick walk at Turkey Run State Park.
I only had a couple hours, so I poked around trails 3, 5, and 9. I didn't have a camera (self-limiting factor, as I often spend too much time shutterbugging), but what a wonderful series of gorges, canyons, waterfalls, and hollows! At one location, the Park has constructed ladders, anchored to the rock walls, to allow hikers passage up and down the steep rock canyons.
The weather was warm and humid. I was very glad for the cool caverns and canyons. I was totally floored to find such a dramatic, and simultaneously intimate, place, seemingly plopped randomly in Indiana's corn fields.
The trail map provided at the office was sufficient, but I wished it was topographic, and bigger. The big, fat icons made it somewhat difficult to read with precision.
The park was swarming with kids, I guess a local school field day? I didn't see anybody past the ladders trail, and had the best back-trail scenery all to myself. I wished I had more time, and my hammock.
I asked nice at the campground up the highway, and they let me use their shower after the walk.
Saw a few little brown lizards (skinks?). I heard a few slithers in the grass. Plenty of chipmunks and sparrows.
Stats:
2.84 miles
Total time: 2:11:44
Moving time: 0:52:01
Thanks again, Hoosiers!
I got good advice from the Midwest forum at http://www.backpacker.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi . After a few very helpful post exchanges, and reviewing the time I had available, I settled on a quick walk at Turkey Run State Park.
I only had a couple hours, so I poked around trails 3, 5, and 9. I didn't have a camera (self-limiting factor, as I often spend too much time shutterbugging), but what a wonderful series of gorges, canyons, waterfalls, and hollows! At one location, the Park has constructed ladders, anchored to the rock walls, to allow hikers passage up and down the steep rock canyons.
The weather was warm and humid. I was very glad for the cool caverns and canyons. I was totally floored to find such a dramatic, and simultaneously intimate, place, seemingly plopped randomly in Indiana's corn fields.
The trail map provided at the office was sufficient, but I wished it was topographic, and bigger. The big, fat icons made it somewhat difficult to read with precision.
The park was swarming with kids, I guess a local school field day? I didn't see anybody past the ladders trail, and had the best back-trail scenery all to myself. I wished I had more time, and my hammock.
I asked nice at the campground up the highway, and they let me use their shower after the walk.
Saw a few little brown lizards (skinks?). I heard a few slithers in the grass. Plenty of chipmunks and sparrows.
Stats:
2.84 miles
Total time: 2:11:44
Moving time: 0:52:01
Thanks again, Hoosiers!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)