Back to San Antonio

Sunday, Nov. 10, 2013--Wilburton, OK, to San Antonio

It was sunny with fresh air.  After checking out of the motel, I headed eastward.  I took a different route back to Talihina with plans to explore Talihina State Park.  As I drove into the park entrance, I was surprised.  There were no park roads really.  There was just a turn to the right to a camping area and the entrance road going about a block to the cabins.  Unlike the other parks I had visited, there were no scenic drives.  There wasn't even really a parking lot.  Signs were up saying that a $5 parking permit was needed, apparently because the number of parking spaces was so limited they were reserved mostly for the use of people staying overnight.

I left the park and turned at the nearby junction to retrace my route on Oklahoma Hwy. 1 that I had covered yesterday.  In the sunshine, the color of the trees was much brighter.  The most frustrating aspect of this drive is that there are no shoulders.  There were beautiful scenes that I would have liked to have photographed, but there was no place to stop.  Where they have pull-off areas for scenic views, the photos were all the same--views of the mixture of colorful trees in the valley rather than close-up photos.  Therefore, I skipped most of the pull-offs this time hoping to see some interesting sights in Arkansas.

I passed the spot where I entered Hwy. 1 yesterday, and a short distance away pulled into the parking lot of a National Forest office and hiking trail.  The office was closed, but many people were stopping for the rest rooms.  Only a few took the hike which was a nice loop trail back through the trees.  For the most part, it seemed that the trees here were past their prime.  With nothing special to see, the fact it was November and a crispy cool morning made me think of picking up pecans.  This is the time of the year when people in Texas head out to pecan orchards to gather pecans that have fallen from the trees.

The mountaintop ridge climbed as I entered Arkansas and led to a great disappointment.  Although color could be observed in the forests in the valleys below, the trees along the ridge were far past their prime.  Most had no leaves at all.  It was just an ugly, dull brown, wintry look.  I had planned to stop, and maybe even camp out, at Magazine Mountain, the highest point in Arkansas, for the evening.  It was obvious that if the trees were already ugly at this atmosphere they would be the same on top of the highest point in the state.  I made a quick decision based on the following thoughts:  I had enjoyed the trees the past couple of days.  It seemed that I wouldn't see any better fall foliage on this trip.  I had intended to eventually be in Hot Springs only because the scenic byway in Arkansas would lead me there.  I really had no interest to drive through a wintry forest to get there.  I had planned to visit Bob and Judy Maroney again on Tuesday evening, but there really was nothing I wanted to do between now and then.  They were in Dallas where they were attending the opera.  It was Sunday, and the traffic would be better than it would be on a weekday.

I made a right turn and started heading back to San Antonio.  After driving straight through except for quick stops for something to eat, I got home at 10:30 p.m.