Something old, something new highlight road trip home
Being away from family and friends too long might mean a reunion emphasizes time passage more than we want. And when the visit means one’s old bones must deal with the arduous process of wrestling a 3,000-pound machine down the highway, a reward or two is usually necessary for all involved.
Fortunately, a spring-break road trip to Texas for the kids and me provided those opportunities.
Because my wife couldn’t get away from work and we wanted to return in time to enjoy Easter with her, the trek required a quick turnaround. It meant almost as much time on the road as there was being with relatives and friends: 2,900 miles, including short hops between the four communities in East-Central Texas where all our folks are.
We left on a Friday and had a quick stopover with Illinois friends before a nearly 900-mile Saturday haul. We vowed to take it easier on our return, and a park in Oklahoma and a Nature Conservancy site in Kansas gave us just what we needed to keep future road trips attractive.
Talking about both in a single column won’t do either justice, so I’ll finish the account of our trip next week with a look at the Konza Prairie near Manhattan, Kansas.
Spooky camp, ominous beginning
I’ve driven up and down Interstate 35 more times than I can count, about 85 percent of its 1,568 miles. One place that has tempted me to stop for years is Turner Falls Park in southern Oklahoma, just north of Ardmore in the Arbuckle Mountains.
This was the year. My brother Loren had often mentioned a great fondness for the park from his Air Force days in Oklahoma City. I’ve always found the quick rise and fall of the Arbuckles an attractive topographical change along the relative flatness of I-35 through the Sooner State.
On the Wednesday of our trip, Loren was with us in College Station, Texas, as we had a fine lunch with my wife’s sister Rosie, her husband Rich, and our mutual friend Lou.
Lou, incidentally, had set up the blind date that ultimately resulted in our family trip being a family trip. She also had shorn most of her hair that day in preparation for the chemotherapy she’d be starting soon.
Our visit had been fun but a tad bittersweet for obvious reasons, as we increasingly are unsure of when we’ll be able to make it back to Texas, and some events just reinforce the notion that you don’t know when you’ll see your loved ones again.
We lingered until 2 p.m. Our plan had been to dawdle on the blue highways west of I-35 to avoid traffic, but our late departure meant the interstate most of the way and battling Fort Worth’s late rush hour.
That put us across the Red River just as the massive front of clouds we eyed on the northern horizon for a couple of hours belched out a blinding downpour, including small pebbles of hail.
We were fortunate, as we heard when we arrived at the park at dusk that there had been baseball-sized hail near the Red.
As we drove into the park, whose arcade-like entrance and billboards weren’t what we are used to at most state parks, it registered with me that Turner Falls might not be state property. It’s a city park, which became evident when I saw the three Davis municipal police pickups parked empty in one of the lots near the main entrance.
To be honest, I was unimpressed at the outset. A large number of commercially oriented buildings – eating places, a store and others – surrounded a large parking area, with all of it tucked between the steep mountainsides generally surrounding the environs.
I was already a bit drained both from driving, the emotions of the trip and plenty of work waiting at home, so the prospect of finding a campsite in the dark and setting up was already coloring my view of the park.
Still, I generally like isolated sites, so we struck out to find one.
It didn’t help that the multi-pronged road winding around on the other side of Honey Creek from the entrance, surrounded by cabins and shelters and more concessions, was easy to get lost on. This was especially true because the map on our brochure didn’t match up visually with overnight areas, and signage was minimal and unhelpful.
We drove through lots of scrub oak and cedar and a couple of camping areas, eventually to the final spots far uphill, and saw that we’d have our choice of many rocky and uneven sites – we were apparently one of only three parties camping in the park.
Where most state parks we’ve visited have well-ordered loops with clear driveways and camping pads, Turner Falls had an extensive series of unruly car trails winding among trees. It was unclear, especially in the dark, where folks were supposed to pitch tents and park, but what was obvious was that our Subaru Forester and its four-wheel drive were our salvation for getting through the camping areas.
Turner Falls is seriously bumpy. The kids were hungry, it was now fully night, and I was beginning to despair that our experience would be unpleasant.
Frankly, all sites looked downright spooky with their gnarly trees and emptiness. The kids were sensing that but keeping quiet.
Fortunately, a ranger or police officer – it was too dark to tell – bouncing by in a pickup said there were nice sites back toward the entrance.
We thanked him and headed 10 miles into town to eat. By then, our 7-year-old, Lorena, was acting like her stomach was in enough pain that I took to the phone seeking the nearest hospital. Our Oklahoma jaunt was starting to look like a disaster.
Long story short: she settled down, Pizza Hut rescued our bellies, and we eventually found a site in the main camping area that seemed less hilly and rocky than anything else. It was by no means flat, but would do, and it was just upslope from the broad and cheerfully noisy creek.
The night didn’t bring enough sleep for any of us, but the morning was a new day.
Turner Falls looks great for cooling off
Thursday was partly cloudy and slightly chilly, so I let the kids explore while I packed the sleeping gear and tent. We ate leftover donuts from Shipley’s, one of our favorite Texas haunts, and then set off to play.
Daylight revealed that camping areas were, indeed, no great shakes for those used to well-constructed and maintained state or national parks. They seemed haphazardly laid out and demarcated, and the height of camping season would challenge those who like privacy and space.
But with nobody there, it was much easier to see the charm of the wooded and rocky canyon above the main falls, which I knew were somewhere back toward the entrance.
The park has a series of cascades. Those nearest to us were no more than about three feet in height, but there’s another that looks to be about 16-18 feet high (we saw it from an overlook on the gorge above the main falls). The highlight is the 77-foot drop below our overlook and above the main swimming pool.
We only took an hour or so after breaking camp to look around, but found a number of reasons we might want to come back. First was the main attraction: the pools, which looked inviting even in the chill. In the heat of a Southwestern summer, there’s probably no place better.
There’s a “castle” on the property – an old stone structure built in the 1930s that is accessible to visitors, but apparently decrepit. We didn’t see it, but we did get inside a small limestone cave on the gorge overlooking the main falls, which was, of course, a blast.
The mountain setting was very attractive. I wouldn’t enjoy the natural scenery as much with huge crowds, but I could see renting a cabin for a night’s stay in the fall or spring (and the summer if it’s possible, though I kind of doubt it).
The kids were impressed with the lower pool and its slides, and they liked poking around in the store. But they decided against a hike to the main pool below the falls, which was fine by me.
A number of online reviews of Turner Falls bemoan the state of its facilities. I haven’t checked its housing prices – our offseason camping totaled $27 for the site and entrance for three of us – but I wouldn’t rule it out for another overnight stop.
It’s a beautiful place. Still, we were ready to head to one of my favorite sites in the world. We piled in the Forester and turned north for the Konza.