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| Pigeon Roost Trailhead |
My next trip was a shorter fun trip on which I took my oldest son with me again. I decided to tackle a shorter trail this time with him in an attempt to give him a more positive backpacking experience (better than the 15 mile long Butterfield Trail).
We got started at about 2:00 PM to make our 4 mile hike back to the primitive campsites. It was a really hot day (like in the mid-to-high 90's) and I was glad that I had went ahead and purchased water bladders for us to use for this hike.
The really cool thing about the Hobbs State Park area is that there is evidence of Native Americans all over the place. The picture here is a tree where the Native Americans had tied it when it started growing in such a manner to mark the trail head down to a water source.
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| Indian Trail Marker |
The trail is well maintained and easy to follow. There are several access points to Beaver Lake throughout this trail. One of them is a beautiful vista area where they have actually installed park benches to allow everyone to sit and enjoy the view.
There were a few sinkholes alongside the trail to the campsites. I'm not sure why, but from this point onward to the campsites, the horseflies were terrible! They kept bugging us regardless of bug spray or other remedies.
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| Large Sinkhole Alongside the Trail |
The primitive campsites are about 4 miles in on the loop -- regardless of which direction you go. The campsites all have established pads to setup tents on. We stayed at campsite 3 which had two different pads and an established fire pit. The new two man Kelty Grand Mesa 2 tent that I bought for this trip was slightly too large for the pad, but we made it work.
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| Campsite #3 |
When we first got into our campsite, we heard a lot of rustling in the brush just beyond the campsite. After a little investigation, we found that it was two opossums digging for food. Since I'm not too fond of opossums, we threw rocks towards them and "herded" them off. We had fun playing some games at camp, and then made dinner. After dinner, we went down to the lake to wash up and to refill out water containers with filtered water. We came back to camp, made a fire in hopes that the smoke would help with the mosquitoes that were sucking blood like vampires! :) After the fire burned down, we went to bed even though it was incredibly hot! I considered several times throughout the night about taking down the rainfly, however, we could see thunderstorms on the horizon and I didn't want to risk getting rained on. After awhile, it cooled down enough where we could sleep comfortably for the night.
The next morning, we got up, had some oatmeal, and then tore down camp. We then hit the trail and made pretty good time. My son had a lot of fun and even found a box turtle crossing the trail. This trip was a short one (8 miles in total), but it was good trip for my son to get his feet wet with backpacking.
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