On Friday morning, I sent Joey an email that contained something to the effect of:
“What do you think of going backpacking over Labor Day, because if I don’t get out of Dodge and see some nature, I THINK I WILL SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST.”
The response to said email was quite positive. In fact, Joey said that not only should we do it, but I should be in charge of finding the location for us to do a mini backpacking trip. I was all over it, ya’ll. I was on the website for Texas state parks looking for ones nearby with walk-in primitive sites, I was looking for spots in Arkansas, and I was checking out Oklahoma.
What we’re looking for is not easy to find, nor probably normal. We’re looking for Boundary Waters-type seclusion that’s close to Texas and backpack friendly.
It’s like looking for jeans for The Kid at Kohls – it just ain’t gonna happen (because they carry all the wrong sizes and The Kid is really picky).
And so, as we were driving home from church today, Joey said, “Well, what about Ouachita…how far away is that?”
“Four hours,” I told him.
I’d been looking for places that were about 2 hours away, so we’d get to maximize our outdoor exposure while minimizing our carbon footprint.
We had a route all planned out for Ouachita for our cancelled Memorial Day trip, and we’ve both been itching to do it. It was so awful; back in May we had our packs all loaded and ready to go because we had been taking walks with them to get used to the way they felt. One afternoon, the week following my surgery, I heard Joey unzipping everything and putting it away…just when we should have been gearing up to go. But, as I recall, on Memorial Day weekend I was doing good to stand up straight for one minute together, so backpacking was most definitely out of the question.
As we whizzed down 75, our collective blood pressure shot up at the thought of potentially getting to go to the Ouachita after all. (And after all we’ve been through this summer!) So, the minute we walked in the front door, Joey pulled out the backpacking route file (yes, we have one) and whipped out the trail we had selected. ”If we go here, there’s lots of reliable water and we could easily go in a day and then come out a day, too,” he said.
I stared at the map and the sites we had marked along the Kiamichi River. He had sold me, but I couldn’t let him know it that quickly.
“Look it up on Google Maps,” I said.
Sure enough, 4 hours.
“If we went to be super early on Friday night, and got up at 4 on Saturday, we could probably be there in decent time and have a good day’s hike,” Joey suggested.
“Sold,” I said. ”Let’s go to REI to restock the trail bars and Clif Rope we ate in Mexico.”
I really hope nothing happens to me to force us to cancel this trip.
And I absolutely CANNOT WAIT to get on the trail and splash through a few river crossings and get wet-footed in my Tevas. There is nothing like hiking with freshly wet feet from crossing a creek, or portaging a canoe. I’d rather be portaging, but when we live this far from the Boundary Waters, I’ll take the Ouachita Trail, thank you very much.
