Ozark Highlands Trail, Section 2

Last weekend we hiked the second section of the Ozark Highlands Trail, from White Rock Mountain to Cherry Bend, with our good friends Britt and Debbie. 

The timing was perfect to celebrate Britt's retirement.   After a long career caring for elephants in several states, and one last sad and frustrating year at the Little Rock zoo, he said good-bye to the animals on Thursday.  We hiked a few miles together on Friday, and then set up camp near a pretty stream. We made cherry cheesecakes and hung a makeshift "Happy Retirement" banner near the campfire and drank wine together in the dark.

Congratulations, friend.  You chose a career in something you loved, something that allowed you to work hard and keep learning.   You chose family over money and you chose moving forward over standing still.  You made animals' lives better and you made people smile.  We're looking forward to your next adventures, and we hope you'll share some of them with us.

Backpacking with Hayduke and Isabel

Our friend Isabel just turned five, but she's been outside a lot.  Her parents are both active, outdoor people - they both cave, and Amy runs and backpacks, and Spike hunts a lot - so Isi's quite accustomed to sleeping in a tent, to eating noodles while sitting on rocks, to peeing in the woods.  No problem.  Isabel is comfortable in the big wide world. 



So it was no surprise that Isi's first backpacking trip was a resounding success.  We'd been planning it for months.  We met up at Fairview campground on Friday night and did a quick car-shuttle before dropping into the Ozark Highlands Trail near Ben Hur.



Isabel carried her own snacks and jacket.  She borrowed one of Mandy's hiking poles.  And Woofie came along to, clipped to Isi's backpack.  We poked along the trail looking at stuff, and the creek crossing wouldn't have bothered her at all, except that it's still early in the spring and the water's still really, really cold.  So she hitched a ride.



Since we'd planned low hiking mileages and lots of playing-around time, we thought this would be a good first backpacking trip for Hayduke too.  He doesn't like water a lot, but he was a good sport about the crossings.  Once in the water, I think he figures he might as well just swim to the other side.



Later we realized that this was very likely the first time he'd ever been in water so deep.  How many of us have a photograph of the very first time we went swimming?



We had lots of time in camp for naps and talking.  There were ticks everywhere, but the weather was pleasant and the company was good.  Isabel has a great memory for places, and the next morning when we left camp, she's the one who found the double-blazed trail intersection she'd seen the day before, and led us back toward our car, counting blazes as she went.



On Sunday, we finished our hike in plenty of time to visit some waterfalls in the neighborhood.  First we went to Falling Water Falls and splashed around for awhile.  When the creek is up, this is a popular spot for kayak people to practice (going over the falls), but in lower water conditions, it's fun to walk along the rocks above the little falls, or sit at the edge of the pool below.  This trip, we found a really neat spot where the bottom of a tree trunk has made something like a little playhouse, all open to the sky.  It even has windows.



We also visited Six Finger Falls, though due to road construction we had to walk along the road for a mile or so to get there.  Hiking and playing are hard work for a puppy, and Hayduke had to take lots of naps in the sunshine.  All in all, it was a great weekend.  We loved spending time with Amy and getting to know Isabel.  Both our 'preschoolers' did a great job on their very first backpacking trips. 

Ozark Highlands Trail: Trip 1

Last winter, we hatched a plan to backpack the whole Ozark Highlands Trail with our friends Britt and Debbie. While we've all hiked a ton, none of us has spent much time on the OHT.  One weekend trip each spring and one each fall should be enough to finish the 225-mile trail by the time Mandy graduates from high school.

We want to do the trail sections in order, from west to east.  We started walking at Lake Fort Smith State Park.

Britt is super-active and very strong - he hikes a lot, and runs half marathons.  But a stroke six years ago left him more or less unable to feel what the right side of his body is doing, so everything he does requires a lot of concentration.  This is the first backpacking Britt has done since the stroke, and he had to adjust to the additional weight of a pack.  One little moment of inattention resulted in a nasty spill that nearly knocked me down, too, and he cut his hand badly where he landed on a rock.

It's really too early in the spring for creek crossings to be pleasant, but we swapped to water shoes and got across.  On the other side of the stream, we had lunch while we waited for our feet to dry out enough to put socks and boots back on.

There were lots of little silly moments too.  Mandy's new trail name is 'seventeen' because of the shape of the scratches on her left leg from a serious altercation with a bramble bush.  Debbie injured herself while pooping - actually, the injury was incurred by some complicated problem with her folding shovel, but this is an unimportant detail.  Someone got lost outside their tent semi-naked in the dark.  We won't tell you who.  (Here's a hint:  it wasn't me.)

Mandy did a great job of being independent this weekend.  Even just a year ago, she had to be prompted to do nearly everything when we camped with her.  When her tent was set up, we had to tell her to put in her pad, and then her sleeping bag.  She had to be reminded and helped, a lot.  But this weekend, suddenly, she was almost completely autonomous.  We'd look up from setting up our own tent to find that hers was already standing.  I'd finish changing into my warmer evening clothes, and realize that she'd already changed, too.  It's nice to watch her being capable and independent.

We had a good weekend, doing good things with good people.  Sometimes I wish I could take a snapshot of a feeling, the way we capture pictures of trees and waterfalls.  I wish I could save those memories in a scrapbook, to remember feeling cheerful and content and loved and at peace.