Our Philmont Experience: March 2009

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hiking the Ozarks

For our spring break we visited my Aunt and friend in Cabool, Mo. They live on a farm where they raise lambs and cattle. They have a number of other assorted animals - cats, dogs, chickens, guinea hens, etc. It is always nice and relaxing to visit them. It is a nice environment with good food and company.

During our time on the farm we decided to get in another 10 mile hike. There are plenty of country roads around to check out. My Aunt drew us a map of a set of roads to follow that should get us our 10 miles. It seemed easy enough to follow.

On this trail Ingemar joined us, as did Kato one of the Great Pyrenees. The hike started off with a bang when Kato decided to play chicken with the car coming up the road. The folks around here know Kato, so no harm done. We hiked passed a road off to the left, but didn't see a roadsign at the cross, so continued on. The weather was very nice. It was sunny and in the 70's. It was actually hot in the direct son, and we enjoyed the spots of shade along the way.

We hiked about 3 miles when we came to a paved road. This didn't seem right, but we headed along it for a bit until we met traffic. Kato stood out in the middle of the road and wouldn't budge. The two cars had to go around. We thought uh, oh, these cars don't know his anctics. Then two motorcycles rode by (we held onto him). We called the house and asked if they could come pick him up. He was breathing very hard, and would not drink any water. During our wait for Kato's ride we took the time to look around. We were on top of a nice hill and had a great view.

Kato's ride arrived. After a bit of doing, we got Kato into the back of the truck. We discovered that we were on highway U. Oops. The road we passed is the one that we should have taken. We decided to hike back since hiking on a 2 lane highway did not seem fun.

We hiked back to the correct road, and took it. Of course we found the street sign, it was on the opposite side of the road. We hear they like to hide their signs here. "If you don't know where you are going, you shouldn't be here." We found the other roads as well, and made it back to the farm. The total milage was 9.7 miles, and with the mile that the boys hiked around the farm before we started, we called it 10.

I had a great time on this hike with the whole family. I got to sepend time with each member talking about things. Nothing in particular, just talking. It took us about 3.5 hours total, and there was some "hurting" felt, but I think that everyone had a nice time.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Urban Hiking at its finest

I needed to get in some more miles for the walking competition at work. Also, it doesn't hurt any for my Philmont training. I couldn't get the boys interested so I didn't want to go far. However, the neighborhood is getting a bit boring, so I decided to check out some of the Plano biking and hiking trails.

After a bit of hunting on the Internet, I found a set of trails that intersected and could provide me enough distance to get in 10 miles. These were the Bluebonnet trail, Chisholm and Preston Ridge trails. A map of these trails can be found at - http://pdf.plano.gov/parks/Bluebonnet_Chisholm_PrestonRidge_Legacy.pdf

I drove to the Plano Dog Park off of Spring Creek Parkway west of Custer. Here I found the Chisholm and Bluebonnet trails intersect, and there is parking.

I decided to do the Chisholm trail both directions (one way is 5.5 miles). I started going southeast. The trail was a wide cement pathway that was on both sides of a creek. I selected the east side. The trail goes past parks, lakes and ends on 15th, East of Alma. It actually comes out right behind On the Border restaurant. It was a nice walk, and I felt safe the entire way. There were families playing at the parks, and there were several bicyclists on the trail. The neatest thing about the trail is that it goes under each of the major streets (Spring Creek Parkway, Parker, Park, Alma) so that you don't have to stop to cross them.

I headed back northwest and rested at Big Lake Park. It was neat to see all of the seagulls at the lake. I passed through the dog park and continued on the north part of the trail. There sure were alot of dogs outside the dog park. I don't know exactly what they were doing. It sort of looked like they were socializing. I don't think the actual park was open. There must have been about 50 dogs in different groups. But no fights :-)

The north part of the trail ends at Legacy just west of Independence. There were more parks and very nice homes that I passed. When I hit Legacy, I turned around and headed back to the car.

The total trip was 11 miles, and I finished in just under 3 hours walking time. Not a bad day.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Cross Timbers Trail

Today we got a real taste of what it would be like at Philmont. Several scouts from our Philmont Crew and 3 scouts working on 2nd class and the hiking merit badge took a hike at Cross Timbers Trail under the direction of Mr. Mullins. This is the first time that the boys and I got to try out our backpacks. We had them loaded at 20-25 lbs. The weather was in the high 30's low 40's and it was windy. The nice thing is that the sun was shining.

This was a tough trail. It had alot of ups and downs, but the most difficult part is that the trails were washed out in places so there were alot of tree roots and rocks exposed on the trail.

The good news was that we all made it. Though, there was complaining by some of being hungry and wanting lunch about 1 hour after we started the hike. The designated crew leader (Mike L) kept them on the path. He did a great job at leading us, and only had a couple of times of having no idea where we were on the trail.

At lunch Mr. Mullins had the boys play two team building games. The boys had a good time with it, though would not admit it.

I personally strained the muscle in my lef knee so going down the hills was painful for me on the last 5 miles of the trip. I discovered I do need to wear my knee braces for hiking as I do for skiing. Also my GPS died in the middle of the trip, so I need to monitor it better to see if I just had bad batteries, or there is an issue with the unit.

We ended up doing 11+ miles, had no major injuries, had no lost scouts, began the team building process so it was a successful day.

Some pictures at lunch are included below.