We headed straight down the hill from our campground to start our first hike on the Fox Den Trail. It features some interesting rock formations and caves. It's a rugged trail, so it wasn't hard to keep our social distance from other hikers even on a beautiful weekend afternoon. The majority of park visitors won't get this far on a trail that is rated as difficult.
Signs at the park requested that hikers stay on the trail, and you can see that Denisa is doing that.
If a hiker needed any incentive to follow that rule, you could just look down at Denisa's feet to get it. We saw a bumper crop of poison ivy throughout this park. Those "leaves of three" in that characteristic mitten-shape make it easy to spot.
This Fox Den trail loops around to join with some of the trails on the other side of the park. But it takes a water crossing to get there. Mark is looking over the slippery possibilities to try to make the best plan to get his wife across that water without getting her feet wet.
He found a sturdy post, and used it as a hand rail to help Denisa across the water. He has such good balance that he could stand on the slippery rocks, move and stabilize the post, and take a selfie at the same time. Denisa--not so much.
Showcasing that agile balance, he shimmied up a tree branch in front of the man-made dam on the stream. We're calling this view "the unnatural falls" here at Natural Falls State Park.
Now we are on the most popular side of the park, and the number of hikers picked up dramatically on the Dripping Springs Trail. When we looked down at the line to get to the park's namesake--the Natural Falls--we saw a long line of people meeting another long line of hikers coming out from the falls viewing platform area. That's when we headed the opposite direction and out of the park.
It's not possible to social distance in this environment. Those signs at the front of the state park were obviously worthless on this beautiful weekend when everyone wanted a look at the natural falls.
We saw the long line of cars still waiting to enter the park, and noticed that all the parking lots were now full. This is one of the few Oklahoma state parks that charges an admission fee. All these cars in line are willing to pay $5 to visit the Natural Falls.
Even though we planned to spend the entire day at Natural Falls, we made a change of plans to exit from all these crazy crowds. So we drove the car a few miles east across the Arkansas border for lunch. We picked up take-out food at the Thai Kitchen in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, and looked for a good social-distancing place to eat it. Thanks to the local State Farm office for placing that nice picnic table under the trees close to their office.
We read about a new kayak park a few miles outside of town, and decided that might be interesting. It was very interesting to see that three police cars, two fire trucks, and an ambulance arrived right behind us.
We soon found out that three people had just been pulled out of the water. The swirling water right behind Mark is the focal point of this kayak park, but it can trap people underwater. Mark spoke to the guy wearing wet dress pants and long sleeve shirt that had jumped into the water to help with the rescue--without thinking about his wardrobe.
We waited around the kayak park for a while until we actually got to see some kayaks coming down the rapids.
Now it's time to head back to Natural Falls, hoping that the crowds have gone home. With the sun now low in the sky, it was a great time for a social distancing walk to the falls. We got our first glance from the upper view point.
It was great to have the natural falls all to ourselves! By some standards this 77-foot waterfall isn't an impressive spectacle. But in a plains state without mountains, people will even line up during a pandemic to see this. We were glad that we had the luxury of camping here so we could see it after the day visitors had gone home.
We still had enough daylight to hike the 1.3-mile Ghost Coon trail all by ourselves. With a trail name like that, we were struggling to find a white raccoon while we were hiking. But we came to find that the Ghost Coon was a character in the book, "Where the Red Fern Grows." We remember that book from our childhood, and found it interesting to learn that key scenes of the 1974 movie were filmed in this park. On this trail we didn't find the Ghost Coon, but we did find a field of wild irises in bloom.
This state park also has a formal garden, that featured other yellow irises. It wasn't the most manicured of gardens, but we're guessing that man-power has been reduced in parks during the last couple months.
On our tour of Oklahoma state parks, we have discovered that some parks use on-demand pricing. So we were charged $33 on this popular evening at this popular site for a water and 30-amp electric site. At that price, we probably wouldn't have stayed a second night even if it was available. That price is over our usual camping budget. We were glad to have one night in the campground, and we felt we had seen it all by the time we watched the sun set from the now-empty Natural Falls State Park.
It was another good day of wandering God's wonders here in another Oklahoma state park. Naturally, we feel blessed by nature at Natural Falls State Park.
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