Hiking Lake Jacksboro

I recently had my annual visit to the doctor.  Now I don't relish that visit at all.  For one, the closest thing I have to a phobia involves being stuck with needles.  Second, every year the news from the doc seems to be just a little bit worse than the year before.  This year, as usual, I found out that I'm apparently not nearly the perfect specimen of health that I think I am in my  head.  In fact, the doctor told me that I need to change the way I eat and become more active, and the way that she was talking, it didn't really sound like a suggestion.  In fact, I think her exact words were, "you can change the way you're eating and work at becoming more active now or next year we're going to be having a far different conversation."

Being active takes a lot of work, and there's not a lot of active things that I really enjoy doing (as an old, fat guy) enough to do them all the time.  So I decided that, as much as I enjoy hiking, it was time to start finding some trails and seeing some of nature on a regular basis.  Truth is, it would also kill two birds with one stone.  Apparently, one of the least concerning things to come out of this year's physical was that I am vitamin D deficient.  So, hiking outside to be active and hiking outside to be in the sun.

​Today Mrs Snarf and I headed out to Fort Richardson State Park to spend part of the day.  She is really into digging for fossils, and she knows a location there where she can dig.  (Her location is on private property.  Here in Texas, you're not supposed to dig for fossils on state property, and you're definitely not supposed to take any kind of artifact away from the state park either (rocks included).  Worked out well.  She got to dig, and I got to hike.

It was a pretty good hike.  Got in just under 6 miles.  The trail actually goes from the state park up around the lake to a different part of the park.  I've heard it's about 10 miles one way.  Mrs Snarf's digging location is on the backside about a third of the way down the trail, so we went in a back way and entered the trail in the middle.  Then I hiked 3 miles out and 3 miles back.

I had never hiked there before.  It was a crushed gravel trail for the most part.  Crossed the dam.  It's a mixed use trail, so it's shared by everything but things with motors.  Consequently there was LOTS of horse manure on it.  It rained earlier this week, and you could tell that, since that day, several horses had been down the trail.  Lots of shoed hoof prints.  Lots of them.  There were also some tracks that I think were from a dog walking with someone, some other prints that I think may've belonged to a coyote instead of a dog, and some tracks that, against my handy track guide, came from a skunk.  At one point, there was an abandoned homestead.  I call it a homestead because it was a house with a couple of little outbuildings like a shop and something else.  They didn't look that old in the overall scheme of things.  Had I been guessing, the house looked like a generic brick house built in the 80s.  Got close to the airport, and there was a stretch with several houses, including one that looked like a castle...turrets and everything.

Nice, big, wide trail the whole way, and didn't see anyone else on the trail the entire time.  That really surprised me on a Saturday morning.  The trails that are here around town always have other folks on them.  Depending on the time that you go, it may not be real frequent, but you still see other people.  I really enjoyed feeling like it was my own, personal trail.

Next weekend, I'll be out of town, so won't be able to hit any place else, but today's walk made me look forward to hitting some of the other state parks within about an hour of the casa and see what they have to offer.