We decided to spend the weekend doing all the wonderful tasks that come with owning a house figuring we can burn a weekend doing that stuff and not piecemeal it over the rest of the summer.
2009 Tour de Meers
On Memorial Day weekend, we headed west to the Wichita Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. We arrived at Camp Doris much too late to stake out a camping spot, so we went on to the pasture doubling as registration area for the annual Tour De Meers bike ride. The next morning, cars parked all around us as we staggered around our campsite, changing our clothes and cooking our breakfast. We set out to ride the longest loop, 67 miles, which would have taken us through the wildlife refuge and up through the country north and east of the park; we were turned around at about fifteen miles, though, by a bad thunderstorm. We were disappointed that our ride was only thirty miles long, but happy that this change meant we got to ride through the refuge twice.
It was a warm day, but we had plenty to drink. We have to remind Mandy to drink enough; it helps to keep powdered drink mix to make the water taste better.
Whose idea was it to give the little kid the number 69? It wasn’t ours; we each got a bag full of goodies with tshirts, water bottles, ink pens, tourist junk, and our race numbers. The bag that said “Mandy” included a tag with her number on it.
One of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge’s big attractions is the buffalo that range across big portions of the park. The entrances are protected by cattle guards, which means that the huge animals roam freely up to and across the roads within the refuge. We rode up about fifteen feet from this fellow and another male buffalo; later in the day, we counted nearly sixty females with their calves on a hillside as we passed. Every time we visit we have a buffalo encounter; last time it was a big male heading toward us on a trail in the parallel forest. (We stepped politely aside to let him pass.) This time, the night after our ride, we finally found a place to camp at Doris but unwittingly set up our tent in a favorite buffalo supper spot; Mandy and I ended up stuck inside the tent as we watched a big male buffalo crunching his way slowly toward us. We sat stock still in the tent door and listened to his breath against the grass; he came within about five feet of us before calmly moving on.
There’s a long-abandoned rock bungalow along one of the roads in the refuge, complete with a cellar, this outbuilding, and what appears to be the remain of a roadside stand of some kind. The shade of the porch made a good picnic spot on Sunday morning, and the hill behind the house proved excellent for kite-flying and lizard-watching.
Just a we tucked the green kite under our arms to return to the car, a rangers’ truck pulled up into the driveway. Two very serious people came across the yard toward us. “Is everything all right?” I asked. “Is this a non-kite-flying area?” They weren’t sure how to respond to that; apparently not, they supposed we could fly a kite here, but most people don’t, and they thought we might be digging up cactus or something. Apparently we just looked suspicious. I’ve never been almost arrested for flying a kite before.
On Monday morning, before leaving for home, we left our camp set up and climbed up Little Baldy, a short hike with a very impressive view of the Wichitas including a lake or two and the visitors’ center. We always leave before we want to.
Here’s a little guy we met on Monday morning. The warm pink granite boulders in the Wichitas shelter lots of lizards, and they tantalize Mandy; they’re friendly enough to be interesting and ALMOST slow enough to catch. Also on Monday, I frightened a snake sunning itself in my path; he slithered quickly up a nearby tree and almost lost himself in its branches. Another favorite of Mandy’s is the prairie dogs in the “town” near one of the roads; she could sit, stock still, and watch them for an hour or two if we’d let her.
Butterfield Trail
Mandy and I hadn’t been backpacking together, just the two of us, in quite awhile, so I planned a trip for the weekend after Mother’s Day. Mandy had been wanting a “real” pack of her own, and Bryan and I agreed that it would be nice for us to give her more of her own gear to carry, so this trip gave us a good excuse to get her one. Here’s a photo of a very happy Mandy the night she got her new Osprey Ace 48 pack. (Note the purple print fuzzy footy pajamas.)
I settled on the Butterfield Trail, a 15-mile loop starting in Devil’s Den State Park in northwest Arkansas and extending into the National Forest. On Thursday night, the weather forecast called for 100% chance of rain on Saturday, so I packed rain gear and extra clothes in case of a downpour. I wasn’t able to get a campsite at the state park for Friday night, but I called a friend near Devil’s Den and asked to pitch a tent in his yard.
Mandy and I left town at six o’clock on Friday night and headed to John’s house. When we arrived, I saw lightning in the distance and opted to leave the tent packed and sleep in the back of the car. About eleven, Bryan saved this radar image. I was glad for the solid roof during the night storm.
Saturday’s weather was a little damp but not unpleasant. We shared the trail with about thirty boyscouts and several interesting bugs. Here’s a photo of one of the weirder woolly worms we saw.
And here’s a short video of the world’s smallest inchworm.
[insert inchworm video here]
The tiny inchworm was pleasant company during a forced stop beside the trail. We’d passed all the boy scout groups and were enjoying having the woods to ourselves when Mandy got a nosebleed. We had to sit eating jellybeans and watching them troop by. “Do you need anything?” “No, we’re fine.” “Well, it’s a pretty place to have a nosebleed, I guess.”
This spring’s excessive rain has made everything muddy and gross. Since foot traffic shares a lot of this trail with horses, anyplace that’s the least bit damp becomes a deep, goopy mess. We had to bypass lots of fallen trees and big mudholes. All the drainages were running with water.
We passed the turnout for the boy scout camp about three in the afternoon. (We’d spent the day with thirty boys and wanted to spend the night away from them.) We somehow turned onto a high horse trail and away from the Butterfield, but the excellent map we’d bought for a buck at the visitors center indicated that if we continued on, we’d meet up with our loop again. The accidental bypass was one of the more pleasant stretches of the trail!
All the rain has caused some slumping between miles 11 and 12. There were cracks in the trail, some big enough to put a basketball in. At one point part of the trail has fallen two or three feet.
We hiked about nine miles on Saturday and decided to call it quits about 6 pm. We set up the tent while waiting for our supper to cook, and were in bed by dark. It had been overcast and damp all day but had never rained at all.
Sunday morning we slept in a bit, then cooked breakfast before packing up. As usual, we didn’t leave camp until about ten, and just as we got down to the trail, we met up with the first group of boy scouts. It was the same small group we’d started with the day before, and we’d hike near them for the rest of the trip. At the end, as we were putting our poles on our packs, they left the woods too.
We hiked to the visitor center to meet Harry Harnish, the “Bat Man of Devil’s Den.” He’s been an interpreter at the park for twenty-some years and has done eleventy hundred bat education programs for school kids and adults. Since he’ll be retiring this summer, we wanted to go on his guided hike of the crevice area in the park. We enjoyed it thoroughly and even got to see a pair of baby black vultures from just a few feet away, since he showed us their nest in the bottom of a crevice.
[insert Harry photo here if possible]
We ate excellent Mexican food in Alma and were home before bedtime. It was a good weekend for both of us.
White Nose Style
Recently, Little Rock Grotto decided it wanted some new shirts and several things fell into place nicely.
* White Nose Syndrome was in the news
* Brian Gould promised to hook LRG up with a great price on the shirts
* And Aly came up with a clever design
We took a couple of photos of the shirt tonight. The front features the LRG logo while the back promotes White Nose Syndrome awareness (and a strategy to aid the decontamination procedure).
Commute to Work
Well… I’ve ridden my bike home from work before but today Aly is riding her bike to a work related training session at the 4H Center ~17 miles north of here. Yay her! This is why she’s leading her office team in the Walk Across Arkansas challenge and she’ll do this today and tomorrow.
Did I mention there was a chance of rain today? Hopefully she makes it up there sweaty and not rainy.
A quick ride before dinner
Today, Mandy and I took the GTT out for a ten mile ride around town. This ride pushed me over 100 miles for March 🙂 We’ve been trying to ride every day and we’re hit and miss. We’ll get the whole weather + cooking + chores + homework + riding thing down though.
Our new clipless shoes work really well… I didn’t realize how much effort it took to keep your feet on the pedals without them.
Where have we been?
We were talking the other day about what states we have and haven’t been to and I found the little map widgets shown below that can demonstrate better than words how much more Aly has traveled than Mandy or I.
But don’t worry… we’ll definitely work on getting Mandy and I caught up (c:
Aly
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.comBryan
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.comMandy
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com
Ho dam! I gots to get me one of dem!
Well… we did it
A few days ago we noticed a Greenspeed GTT for sale on ‘BentRider Online and we decided to go test ride it because, ya know, we’d never get a chance to do so again and it looks like a really fun bike.
So we went and tried it out. And that was our biggest mistake since we REALLY liked the bike. We asked more questions, did additional research online and decided we wanted it. We haggled a bit and got the seller to show us how to adjust a few parts and pieces and then paid for the bike and loaded it into our truck and headed home.
And we’ve been grinning ever since.
Below you’ll find a few of the photos of the bike that the seller had posted online. The last photo shows the handlebar, brakes and shifters and how they relate to the seat.
Holiday Backpack
Over the weekend Mandy and I manged to help Aly build a compost bin (Happy Valentines Day honey!) and then go backpacking on the Ouachita Trail.
The three of us hiked from Flatside Pinnacle to Crystal Prong Creek and back again. We crossed several tributary’s to the main stream and they were all flowing pretty good due to the recent rains.
After returning to Flatside, we said goodbye to Aly and headed for Brown’s Creek Shelter. We hiked 7.3 miles today and were glad to see the shelter when we got there. We hoped no one else was around (and they weren’t) but one never knows on a holiday weekend.
That evening, after our freeze dried dinners, our applesauce and candy dessert and our roasted marshmallow dessert (roasted on the skewers the Lopez’s gave us two Christmases ago) we killed some time by drawing space aliens with an LED light and a long exposure time. BTW… Mountain House freeze dried dinners have proven to be pretty yummy. Tonight, I had Spaghetti and Meatsauce while Mandy had Beef Stroganoff; both were yummy.
We got up the next morning, moved slow because we had no where to be… no school & no work. We had some freeze dried scrambled eggs with ham and bell peppers, instant oatmeal and some hot chocolate. Afterwards we packed up and headed for our vehicle which we had parked 4.9 miles from here.
When we stopped to pump some water from Brown’s Creek, I heard some rustling in the leaves nearby. Upon inspection, it turns out the rustling was a lizard! The lizard actually ran on to the trail and up Mandy’s leg 🙂 When she tried to catch him he managed to run away and we thought he was gone but when we started hiking again, he showed up on top of her head!
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3263314&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
While hiking today, we noticed that many of the aluminum Forest Service mile markers had been supplemented with newer looking markers on a nearby tree. While these new markers were pretty, I don’t know how useful they are since they are above eye height (I tend to look down when hiking) and they are on the side of the tree facing the trail which makes them hard to spot from a distance.
We had a good hike… 12.2 miles over two days. Mandy carried a crappy schoolbag style backpack which hurt her shoulders a bit. We are looking for a decent backpack for her but we’re having trouble finding one that will last a couple of years and doesn’t cost more than our packs!
At the end of the day we were tired and ready to head home for a bath and to meet Mom for a Chinese Buffet dinner.
Happy New Year!
Once again our family spent the New Year holiday at Hamilton Valley with CRF/Mammoth and good times were had by all. Mandy got to run through the compass course before heading over to Adwell Cave to survey Roger & Lynn Bruckers new surveying course. Aly and I helped in varying degrees and our closure wound up being 1.2 feet horizontal and 0.5 feet vertical over the course of a 511 foot loop.
