While we sat in the motor home in the rain the last two days, we had time to plot our strategy for getting to float the Illinois River. We missed out on the float we planned two days ago using our motor home as a shuttle vehicle. But we found a great company that only charged us $10 to shuttle the two of us and our kayak up the river. We've talked to float companies all over North America, and we can tell you that the All-American Float company near Tahlequah made us a great deal. They drove us north to a private put-in site and even let us use their equipment to inflate our boat. At All-American we also purchased our $1 permit needed to float this river. Thanks!
We had to wait for a band of showers to pass the area before we got on the water on this cloudy morning. We're heading south and east through the Sparrowhawk Wildlife Management Area of this section of the Illinois River.
We have floated on the Illinois River several times in our life. The first was when we were freshmen in college and had been dating for less than a year. We went with the college church group, and the two of us shared a boat for the first time. That was forty years and several hundred shared boat rides ago! So this river brings back some sweet memories to us.
We also remember a float trip with our little sons between us in our canoe. It was a church trip again, with our Sunday school class and our young families floating on the Illinois River together.
The last time we floated on the Illinois River was in 2009. We were class parents for our youngest son's class, and we rafted with the seniors that spring. That year we floated in rafts and we had a big group in our boat. We have to say that today was a much calmer float experience without the company of a whole class of 18-year-olds accompanying us. In fact, on this cloudy week day in May, we didn't see even one other boat on the river with us. On a sunny weekend a little later in the summer, this would be a completely different experience.
About half-way through our nine-mile float, we passed by "elephant rock." It takes a little imagination, but we could see the long elephant trunk half-buried in the water, and the squinty eye of the side view of this elephant head.
While the first part of the float was completely cloudy, we saw little patches of blue sky as the scenery flattened during the second half.
The only other humans we saw today were two guys on the bank fishing with their bows and arrows. We watched one unsuccessful shot, and they hadn't caught any when we floated by. They yelled a greeting as we went by, and pointed out that they also brought fishing poles if the arrows weren't successful. This tall and skinny great white heron was also hoping for a good fishing day.
With no other kayakers on the river to scare them off the limbs, the turtles were dry as they tried to catch some warming rays today.
This part of Oklahoma is so green and lush, and all that green made a good background for this blue heron.
He let us get quite close before he took to the air. Denisa always tries for the in-flight picture, but seldom gets a good one.
The black vultures were having a convention on the banks of the Illinois River. They welcomed other birds with open wings.
If you can get past their ugly old wrinkly heads, these are quite majestic birds with their 5-foot wingspan.
When we talked to the ranger on the phone, we found that the floods of 2019 had changed the course of the Illinois River considerably. He said that they had 20 different "high-water events" last year, causing shore erosion and losing some big trees.
At times it took some fancy steering to get through the maze of downed trees in clogged sections.
The ranger also told us that presently the river was one foot above normal. The current was flowing at a comfortable 3 miles per hour. That's a nice floating speed, and we only had to row to steer around occasional debris.
We know the precise flow of the river because it took us exactly three hours to make our nine-mile trip back to where our car was waiting at All-American Floats. We had a great time wandering God's wonders as we floated down the Illinois River!
We took plenty of pictures of the Illinois River for the blog today. We wish we could include pictures of each of the past float trips that showed our life progression and this river. Those pictures would take us from two single college students in love, to a young married family of four, to a couple in a crowded raft readying to be empty-nesters. But the pictures are still vivid in our minds. Today we add this new set of river picture memories. We're back to just the two of us in the boat, 40 years older but still young-at-heart and still in love!
After arriving at Cherokee Landing state park in record breaking cold weather, we "enjoyed" another day of rain and record breaking cold the next day. We're still camping under the beautiful tall pine trees at our campground, but the view out our front window looked much like this all day.
These are days to catch up on projects, cook, write blogs. . . and also make a trip to the nearby town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Since we are in Cherokee county, we learned that this strange town name came from the Cherokee phrase "Tah-Ah-Le-Quah" meaning "two are enough." It seems that there were supposed to be three agents present to select the Cherokee capitol site. When only two showed up, they picked this site and declared "two are enough" to give Tahlequah a special place in Cherokee history. We kept our rain jackets on as we started a two-mile walk down the Tahlequah History Trail.
We followed an on-line map to help us find all the points of interest in this interesting little city. We were disappointed that the sign boards found on the trail were blank, but we found out that this is the Franklin Castle.
Northeastern State University's campus is on the history trail, including this plaza that featured a larger-than-life statue of Sequoyah. He is best known for developing the alphabet for the Cherokee language. If you think keeping up with 26 letters is tough, try learning Cherokee with its 85 different symbols.
The Cherokees had to relocate from their lands in the southeastern United States, in a 1,000-mile forced march that is now called the Trail of Tears. The trail ended here in Tahlequah, where we know that two guys determined this would be the Cherokee capitol. It was here that they built their capitol building . . .
and their jail house . . .
and their girls' seminary. We walked through history as we found all three structures on the trail that runs through town. They were all built in the 1800's and all were closed because of the Covid-19 shut downs. So we could only take pictures from the outside.
While many of the focal points of the historic trail were very old, some were very new. We took a picture of Mark standing beside the larger-than-life statue, "The Monument to Forgiveness." It was gifted to NSU in 2016 to honor Tahlequah as the end of the Trail of Tears.
We finished our tour of Tahlequah with a splurge of take-out pizza from a local cafe. Specializing in pizza rather than chicken, Sam & Ella's Chicken Palace got great reviews. Try saying "Sam & Ella" fast a couple times and you'll figure out the Chicken Palace owners have a good sense of humor.
While we were walking trails in the rain, some of our camping neighbors were busy fishing. We walked by their camp site to see their catch of the day. They had already cleaned at least half of the fish they caught that morning. Denisa was impressed with the size and quantity of half of their harvest, so she asked to take a picture. She put her ultra-stylish croc shoes in the picture just to show the size of the fish that were pulled out of Lake Tenkiller.
Besides the usual geese that hang out on the shore of Lake Tenkiller, we saw this unusual duck several times during our visit at Cherokee Landing State Park.
With his red mask and his striped red-white-and-black beak, he looks like some character out of a marvel comic book.
But he seems to be a bit of a pet at this state park. We're guessing that he is used to getting hand-outs since he usually walks toward us instead of away from us. We're wondering if he would just walk right up our motor home steps if given the chance.
The rain and chilly weather didn't seem to dampen the spirit of the duck, and we think we can take a lesson from him. We seem to be able to find something to do even if the weather doesn't always cooperate with our original agenda. The rain gave us a chance to pause and learn a little as we walked the history of Tahlequah.
We left our one-night camping spot at Natural Falls State Park, and headed south once again. But its unusually cool this morning. In fact, the forecast says that we should break the record for having the lowest high temperature for this date. Brrrrr! We had a one-hour drive, that took us along Scenic Highway 10. Through that big motor home windshield we could see landmarks like Hanging Rock, and we could get an occasional glimpse of the Illinois River.
This highway isn't the ideal motor home route. You know it is a narrow winding road when you see arrows on the right telling you to stay left, and arrows on the left instructing you to stay right.
We are taking this highway because we made plans to float the Illinois River. To float a river, you need two vehicles--one parked at the put-in spot, and another parked at the take-out spot. We have two vehicles, even though you might say that the motor home is a rather bulky shuttle vehicle. To use it, we need a large and level parking lot that isn't too crowded, and that's often hard to find along winding rivers. But we had done our research and figured out a way to set up that shuttle so we could float down the Illinois River today. We had called the Grand River Dam Authority office to find out that we could drop off the car at the Peavine Public Access area.
We would have room to drop off the car, then turn the motor home around at Peavine and head back up-river to the campground at Round Hollow Public Access Area. There is one camping spot with electricity at Round Hollow, or plenty of other places to park the motor home and spend the night without electricity as well. We had already planned to just boondock camp here since we need to exercise our generator anyway.
It took a while to figure out this plan for a free 9-mile float trip on the Illinois River. We include all the details in our blog because we hope to get to use that plan one day. But it's not going to work today. Today we have rain and temperatures in the 40s. Even if it's free, it's just not worth it to float nine miles down a river in the rain when it's that cold. So we ditched the free river float idea, and went to plan B. That's exploring another Oklahoma state park. Welcome to our camp site at Cherokee Landing State Park!
Instead of camping along the Illinois River, we are on the north side of Lake Tenkiller. This lake is famous in Oklahoma for its clear water. In fact, scuba divers from all over the state come here to train and dive in this clear water--but probably not today. With a high temperature in the low 50s, we did break the record for the lowest high temperature for this day in northeast Oklahoma. That is a record that was set over 100 years ago!
With those cool temperatures, we wore jackets to explore more of our new state park. When we made our reservation, we were surprised to see that two of the larger campgrounds were closed. We could still see the logs and debris that was the result of the flooding from last summer that closed many of the camp sites here at Cherokee Landing state park.
In the middle of that closed campground we found a lone swing set with nice views of the lake. After months of seeing playgrounds roped off with caution tape, Denisa is enjoying a good swing and a nice view. Bonus!
On a chilly evening in an almost empty campground, we noticed smoke coming up in the fire ring next to us. It looks like our neighbors didn't know that the embers were still glowing when they left their camp site. We found that by adding a little firewood we could quickly have a nice camp fire.
There's a widely-known camping rule that stipulates that a nice camp fire means that we must roast marshmallows! We didn't have any graham crackers and chocolate, so we invented a new campfire dessert--a bakery chocolate chip cookie, smeared with a toasted marshmallow and topped with freshly shelled pecans. That's a good way to end a record-breaking-lowest-high-temperature kind of day.
After three days with a full-hook-up site so we could do all our laundry, we're once again on our quest of camping at some Oklahoma state parks that are new-to-us. We headed an hour down the road to our reserved site at Natural Falls State Park. We were glad to find an opening for a Sunday night at this popular park. We were not glad to find that spot was already reserved for the next night. So this will be an unusual one-day stop for us. That means we had to be in a hurry to get on the trails!
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.
