ab5cc

I took my 8 year-old grandson for an overnight hiking trip on Cross Timbers trail in North Grayson County March 11th. For those of you not familiar, this trail is along the south edge of Lake Texoma. This trail was featured in the back of my new Backpacker magazine and was also featured there last year. These are the little cardboard cutouts in the back of the magazine. These also have GPS coordinates for all the campsites and trailhead and end.

We chose to hike the 2.6 miles from the gates of Cedar Bayou Resort to 5 mile camp. It rained on us all the way to the trailhead. It stopped just as we arrived. There was another man there with his 5 year-old son. They were waiting for 2 more hikers to arrive. Parking is kinda strange there. The area you park in is a picnic spot with concrete picnic tables. You can park anywhere in there and no one will bother your car. I wasn't sure about parking in the middle of a picnic area, so I asked the fellow there if it was OK and he said yes. (When we returned, there were about 10 cars and trucks parked there.) I was concerned because the Corps of Engineers is touchy about things like that.

The area of the trail is pretty sandy, so most of it is not muddy. There were muddy areas where the trail has erroded down into the subsoil (4 feet in some places). This area sees heavy use from Boy Scouts. A mountain bike club cut new trails around the heavily erroded and very steep trails. These trail bypasses are very nice to walk on, but I can't help but think about what the area will look like when these become erroded too. Kinda puts LNT out of the question.

It took us 1 1/2 hours to get to 5 mile camp. We had a very nice campsite above a sandstone embankment above the lake. The ground was pretty dry by that time. We did some side trips and explored around. A man and 2 older boys from Highland Park Village camped about 100 feet away from us, they were very nice. My grandson insisted that we go over and introduce ourselves. When we left, he said "that was pleasant". I think he will be a good hiker. After we got the camp setup, I noticed that I had failed to fill my 1 liter Nagalene bottle. We only had 3 500ml bottles that my grandson was carrying. Not to worry, I carry iodine tablets and a Katadyn Hiker filter. So, we went down to a calm area and I waded out abit and filled the 1lt bottle. We came back and I put the iodine tablets in (to kill viruses), waited 30 minutes, then filtered it into the now empty 500ml bottles. I have never filtered lake water with the Katadyn. I have only used it on mountain stream water, well.....it was horrid. It had a salty, slightly fishy and oily taste. We drank it anyway, if we were really thirsty and I knew it wouldn't hurt us even if I hadn't filtered it. Lesson learned.

Saturday afternoon, we begain to hear rapid-fire semi automatic rifles just over the hill to the south. It was a big hill, so I wasn't worried. I counted 28 shots in one salvo, so I am sure it was an SKS or AK-47 with a 30 round clip. I bet they shot 600 rounds. Later in the evening, a large boat, a cruiser with a radar antenna going around pulled up 2 coves over. It had a loud stereo playing pretty good music. By bedtime, my grandson said that we could lay in the tent and listen to music. He thought that was cool. They settled down around 9pm and we didn't hear them until 4AM. At 4AM, they started the music back up and I could hear women laughing wildly. I was just about to take a hike over there and see just what could be that funny when I heard a blast of fully automatic rifle fire coming from there. I think I counted 13 shots in one blast and then no more firing. About 6am, they left. That's the bad thing about hiking along a popular lake compared to a remote mountain.

All-in-all it was a great trip. Jacob got to fish all he wanted to for 2 days. 2.6 miles each way is the longest he has hiked. I think he was carrying about 20 pounds. He is big for being barely 8. While we were walking I had to keep reminding him that you don't have to have fun to be having fun. I read that in my last Backpacker magazine and I think it is pretty true. I don't imagine that climbing Everest is a whole lot of fun, but those who have accomplished it wouldn't take anything for the experience.

Kenneth

Unregistered

If you camp on Lake Texoma on the weekends you are going to be out there with lots of people doing lots of drugs. The meth-monkeys can be really loud at 4 a.m. and most of them are carrying guns. Even the non-criminals on the lake play annoyingly loud music. I've seen more of this during spring time than the rest of the year.

But I've had three of my best camping trips ever on Lake Texoma, where I camped out of a kayak and hiked on the Cross Timbers Trail.

toejam

If you visit Lake Texoma on weekends (especially in spring time) you are going to see lots of people on lots of drugs. The meth monkeys can be really loud at 4 a.m. and most of them are carrying guns. Gunfire should be answered with 911 calls. The non-criminal lake users are likely to pull a boat up to your camp and blast obnoxiously loud music. There was a previous post about someone having their tent trampled by a dog belonging to a person illegally operating an ATV. And I don't think I've been to a lake with more trash on the shores.

That said, I've had four of the best camping trips ever to that lake. Try it during the week.

PupDog

Alas.. I can remember hiking Coss Timbers on Thanksgiving in the 80's and none of that madness. That sounds like a lousy kind of situation for taking kids out on. The gun thing really bothers me, especially the comments about Meth with it. It bad enought that substance abouse contributes a lions share of injuries in the wilderness setting without gun play being involved.