Saturday, August 20, 2016

Blazing A Trail Around Lake Wichita While Exhausted

I am exhausted. A storm stormed into Wichita Falls around three this morning. I have been awake ever since.

The storm dropped a lot of water along with delivering some lightning strikes.

Around noon I took off to Lake Wichita for some water based scenery, along with a good dose of humidity.

In the picture you are looking west from the east side of Lake Wichita. Mount Wichita, looking like a volcano, is in the distance on the west side of the lake.

The picture does not picture what looks like much wave action. However, when I got on the floating dock it surprised me by how much rock and rolling it was doing.

A surprisingly large number of people were enjoying the cooler temperature and respite from rain. Lots of bikers and joggers.    

After I had myself enough lake time I decided to see if I could drive all the way around Lake Wichita. I'd looked at maps previously and saw no obvious road choice that went around the lake. Which I found to be the case when I tried to drive around the lake.

On the south side of Lake Wichita one finds the small town of Lakeside City. I thought maybe a road out of that town would take me back to the Mount Wichita side of the lake. I thought wrong.

Eventually I came to a freshly blacktopped new looking road heading west. Eventually that road came to a road heading north. On that road heading north I came to a sign which said "Trail Crossing Ahead".

Trail Crossing Ahead?

What could that mean? A Cattle Trail? A spur of the old Chisholm Trail? What?

Turns out the trail ahead was the Wichita Valley Rail Trail. When I got back to a Google enabled device I learned this was a converted old railroad track, now a hiking biking trail, running from Wichita Falls to the town of Holliday.

Soon after crossing the trail ahead I was back in familiar territory, heading east towards home on Southwest Boulevard.

So, fact of the matter is I did manage to drive all the way around Lake Wichita. But the route turned out not to stay too close to the lake shoreline.

I think I need to try to take a nap. That rarely works out. But, like I said, I am exhausted.....

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