Arkansas Vacation

We recently planned a vacation trip into the Ozark Mountains in Northwest Arkansas.  We left home on Saturday evening when Tom got off work and drove to Broken Bow, Ok. where we had made a hotel reservation for the night.  We wanted to spend the first day of our vacation checking out our newly adopted section of the Ouachita Trail in Oklahoma.

Day 1
Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015
Following breakfast at the hotel, we drove north about an hour to the Big Cedar Trailhead on the Ouachita Trail.  Our "newly adopted" section of the Ouachita Trail begins at MM28.3 (just west of Red Spring) and ends at MM30.5 at the Big Cedar Trailhead.  We are here to walk/check our section of trail while pruning, lopping, weed-whacking, clearing the pathway of any debris or obstruction.

Off to our right, this is the sunrise as we head north.......

....and this is spectacular vapor trail left behind by a couple of airplanes as the sun comes up over the horizon.

We are astonished when we reach the Big Cedar Trailhead and see so much litter strewn about.  We immediately fill a Wal*Mart grocery bag with litter left behind by trashy people.....marring the tranquil beauty of this surrounding forest setting.

Thank you Tom for your conscientious detail litter clean-up!

Sunshine abounds and the temperature starts out cool as we head west on the trail with me using loppers and Tom using a sling-blade weed whacker plus a hand pruner.  The trail is in pretty good shape, just needs a little finessing.  This is such a picturesque section of trail.  We love it!

As we are chopping and whacking our way along, Tom suddenly does an about face!  Snake!  A rather large (4-5 feet long) snake is slithering down the steep embankment on our left.  Tom begins to throw sticks at the snake to encourage it to move on along.

The snake stays frozen in place....not flinching or moving at all....still as a statue.....so after sticks and stones fail to make the snake go away, we decide to go around it by scrambling through the brush up the steep embankment, giving that snake a wide berth, regaining the trail a little further along!

 

That encounter woke me right up, made me very aware of my surroundings the rest of the way!

 

The only problem on our adopted section of trail that we could not resolve today, is a washed out area where the trail is crumbling down the steep hill.   Preceding the wash-out, the trail remains wet (due to a trickle from an up hill Spring) even in this very dry time of year.  

 You can see by Tom's stance while holding onto his sling-blade how far the drop-off is, definitely requiring some major trail repair soon.

 Thankfully our Oklahoma Trail Captain,  Bill Sears, will assist us with this repair.

It was a joy to see some color in the woods provided by these Fall wildflowers. 

 The pine trees always add a nice fragrance to the trail!

The sun is shining so brightly on these small purple flowers lining the trail, they don't show up very good in my photo. 

I love this awesome view point on the trail!

 

Gotta love this rock glacier!

 What an incredible pile of rocks and boulders cascading down the mountainside!

This broken tree creates an "arch" across the trail that we walked under but our Trail Captain says it must go.  At some point it will fall completely, don't want anyone to get hurt. 

Astonishing growth of ferns along the path......

                           .........and mushrooms!

 

We managed to complete our trail maintenance in under five hours, so we once again headed north on U.S Hwy. 259 to begin our vacation in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas.

 

Tomorrow we will explore Bentonville, Arkansas!