One of our favorite long-term projects is the goal of hiking the whole Ozark Highlands Trail with our friends Britt and Debbie. We figure that if we do one section each spring and one section each autumn, we’ll be finished by the time Mandy graduates from high school. We missed last spring, so we’re one chunk behind, but we’ll try to make it up soon. This fall, we hiked Section 3, from Cherry Bend (on the Pig Trail) over Hare Mountain through Indian Creek, to Lick Branch.
It had been a busy week, so we decided to stay home on Friday night and just leave bright and early Saturday morning for the trail. We picked up the apparently obligatory giant sandwiches at the Turner Bend store before dropping Mandy, Debbie, Hayduke and I off at the trailhead so that Bryan and Britt could run shuttle. We picked up trash and cut up old yucky orange vests to pin to our packs. (It’s the first week of gun season here in Arkansas, a fact that we somehow overlooked when choosing this particular weekend to hike.)