Prairie dogs? We saw none. Disc golf? We played some.
June turned to July and the Texas heat was relentless. My birthday had come and gone; we were back in Flower Mound. We spent the 4th of July weekend out on Lake Hawkins with Kaylee’s family and their old college pals from Ol’ Army days at Texas A&M. It was a fun time out on the lake and made me really want a lake house when I grow up.
Flash forward to the following Tuesday, July 7. Kaylee and I had one more state park planned to go to before we split and went our separate ways once more. A 2 hour drive northwest of Fort Worth, Lake Arrowhead State Park is just on the outskirts of Wichita Falls, TX which is just on the outskirts of Oklahoma. We had a plan, we were packed and loaded to have one last state park visited before I made the drive back down to the Austin area.
We arrived at the lake around 12:30 and instantly looked for a picnic table to eat our sack lunch. We settled for a spot close to the lake surrounded by the biggest flock of geese I had ever seen. We ate quickly then went to the closest ‘Point of Interest’ to us, a prairie dog village. Now we didn’t actually get to see any prairie dogs (much to our dismay), but we saw where they burrowed and read up on their purpose. Along the road were two more ‘Points of Interest’ indicated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife, an old pumpjack oil rig and a small overlook. The pumpjack was set in place in 1952 in the era where the Texas economy turned quickly from agriculture to oil and natural gas. A short walk away was the Mesquite Trail overlook. It had a nice rock staircase leading up to it and when you reached the crest the view was mainly of mesquite trees. Pretty cool, but not that much.
We wanted to walk some trails, so we set off on the north side of the park which started with a drainage-culvert-turned-tunnel that crossed underneath a farm-to-market road. The rest of the trail was uneventful. More mesquite trees and rising amounts of sun, humidity, and sweat. Towards the end of the trail we did get to see the massive spillway where water flows out of Lake Arrowhead, that was a pleasant surprise in this park.
On the south side of the park, however, things didn’t get any better. The trail was overrun and unmanicured. The lake was at capacity and the water level crept out over onto the trail. We had to walk through stagnant water and shin-high grasses for nearly a mile until we made it all the way around.
There was a unique feature to this park that we wanted to save for last: a disc golf course! Over the spring and summer, Kaylee and I have started to make disc golf a regular hobby, so we were excited to find out a state park had a disc golf course. Our excitement slowly started to fade as we played. The course itself is a good course, well taken care of and well marked. Where we didn’t like it was that it was a very narrow alley to most of the holes, so you needed to be a very accurate thrower to do any good at this course (which we are not). We cut the course down from 18 holes to 9 holes; in the end we had a good time with it. Some friendly competition and crawling through the brush never hurt anybody.
The 9 hole disc golf session was the last thing we did before we left Lake Arrowhead State Park. We wanted to make another round to the prairie dog town, but we forgot so that was a bust. We made our way back to Flower Mound wondering when the next time we would be going back to a state park would be. We didn’t have an answer for you then, but you can bet we will try our best to not make the break long!
P.S. Don’t forget about the photo albums! They weren’t getting very many views, and they are probably the coolest thing about this blog. Kaylee takes some great pictures. I would hate for them not to get any recognition.
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