Our Scout Troop 15 usually does a short winter camp each year. This year it was to Beavers Bend State Park.
I’ve posted the pictures to my Google+ site here.
I’ve done a lot of hiking in the eastern part of Oklahoma, but none south of Talihina. So I was looking forward to this trip. It’s a longish drive from OKC; we left about 0930 and arrived at the Park at 1430, after an hours stop in Ada for an early lunch. Camp went up pretty quickly, as usual.
The first full day was a hike on part of the David Boren Trail. We put in just over 5.5 miles, in beautiful conditions. Decent altitude gain as well, given that we went from a river bottom to the top of ridge, then down to a ravine, repeat several times!
The second day was a trip to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, which is a diamond-producing extinct volcano in SW Arkansas. We had a blast digging and sifting the dirt in the crater for diamonds. There was a nice little hiking trail there also.
The weather was very nice for the camp. It got into the low 20s one night, high 20s the others, and the highs were the low 50s, with beautiful clear skies. We saw the ISS on high, bright passes all three nights.
So two hikes, great food, no griping, make for a wonderful Winter Camp.
Leave a Reply