Cross Timbers Trail at Lake Texoma

This past weekend my brother, my dad, Chris and I went to the Cross Timbers Trail at Lake Texoma to do a short backpacking weekend. My brother and dad have gone here many times with the Boy Scouts and my first trip here was in October 2008. I’ve wanted to go back ever since and funnily enough my brother had been wanting to go as well and mentioned it when we returned from the Florida Trail. We had to do some convincing for my dad since he wasn’t feel as in shape as he should be but my brother managed to twist his arm enough.

We set off on Friday night, it’s about an hour and a half from Fort Worth, and did what my dad calls meadow crash which is the same as stealthing. It was dark when we arrived but set up easily.

The morning was beautiful, not too cold and not too warm. Good hiking weather. Dad walked over this small rough green snake but luckily I spotted it before stepping on it. Chris was able to easily pick it up.

Chris and I were excited for a different kind of backpacking trip, going light and slow. No push for a 20 mile day, only did 6.5, stopped a lot and Chris got some fishing in. This is at the end of the Eagle’s Roost campsite down by the lake where he was catching catfish. He managed to catch some at 5-mile camp, a small one, for dinner.

My brother disappeared for a hours to replace some geocaches a couple of miles away. He finally appeared walking the edge of the lake.

Filtering some lake water; that is one nice thing about this short hike, that you don’t need to carry much water. There is a potable water source at the Cedar Bayou marina and of course access to water from the lake.

The wind kicked up later in the day and a chill came about the air. Chris and I only brought our Marmot Pounder’s, 40* bags. Turned out we should’ve brought our 15* bags! It got cold the second night!

Dad and Curt had trail food, Knorr noodles and a can of chicken. I’ve eaten enough of that in the last year that Chris and I nixed that and went for something else.

Instead we went for chicken sausages that we could cook on the fire. Mmmmm, nothing like eating real food on the trail!

We tried to reenact this photo which made my dad appear much taller than the rest of us, but we switched it up a bit.

I’m pretty sure this is Baptisia bracteata. Not too many flowers are blooming as this has been a very dry spring.

This trail was packed over the weekend; Boy Scouts galore, and lots of other weekend hikers were out not to mention a few mountain bikers. Couldn’t believe it!

There’s a two mile loop that you can do but most people seem to skip it. I think I want to hit it the next time we go, though.

We did find two coral root orchids next to the trail and Chris had gone ahead of us at one point on the way in and taken the Lost Loop by accident and found a few there as well. I’d love to get some good photos of them but I think they will be peaking this week so I’ll need to scout somewhere else soon.

The hike out was pretty chilly with the wind whipping up off the lake and once out of the trees we could feel quite a bit of mist.

We decided that we should do this at least three times a year, too hot in the summer here. Love getting out and doing some exploring! This is a great trail to come out to if you are in the north Texas/southern OK area.