Twenty Leaps on Trail Between the Lakes

We're on our way home!  After enjoying the Great American Eclipse in Uvalde, Texas, and joining our friends Kim and Jane in San Antonio, we took another step north to Sam Rayburn Lake in Brookeland, Texas.  We had one day - Saturday, April 13, 2024 - to explore and decided to hike the Trail Between the Lakes:

 

 

The Trail Between the Lakes winds through the Sabine National Forest, connecting Lake Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend Reservoir. The well-marked, 28-mile trail, which runs from US Hwy 96 in sight of Sam Rayburn to the Lakeview Recreation Area on Toledo Bend, wanders through pine and hardwood forests, up and down East Texas’ gentle hills, across lovely stream corridors, and along Lake Toledo Bend. The trail crosses roads at a number of locations, providing access to shorter hikes. 

 

Sabine National Forest covers a total of 160,873 acres in five counties of Texas. It includes the officially designated Indian Mounds Wilderness, which is a part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Sabine National Forest is notable for extensive forests of American beech and other hardwood trees. Other important tree species include loblolly pine, longleaf pine, shortleaf pine, white oak, southern red oak, sweetgum, and Florida maple.  The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) helped the Texas Forest Service develop the forest between 1933 and 1940. CCC Company 893 established camp near Pineland, Texas on June 14, 1933, and planted pine seedlings in the southern part of the forest. These men also built roads and fire lookout towers and completed the Red Hills Lake Recreation Area near Toledo Bend Reservoir. CCC Company 880 established camp near Center, Texas on October 26, 1933, and planted thousands of pine trees in an area that became the northern part of Sabine National Forest. The CCC built the Boles Field Campground, including a pavilion and amphitheater, in the forest near Shelbyville, Texas. 

We started at the western end of the trail, near Sam Rayburn Lake, and decided to walk three miles into the trail, and then three miles back to our point of beginning.  It was a small sample of the whole trail, but it gave us a great introduction to the ecology of Sabine National Forest.

That ecology includes fungi as well as more traditional plants:

About a mile into the hike, we crossed a railroad track as we followed a forest road from one section of foot trail to another:

Our route along the forest road was perhaps half a mile.  It led us downhill from the upland section where we started, into a lower area laced by drainages.  We began to realize that this would be a hike of leaps across small streams and drainages as much as it was a hike across dry terrain.

As we worked our way down the road section, we saw that the forest crew was busy clearing drainages along the road, renewing culverts, and installing concrete portals for the streams crossing under the road:

At this stream crossing, the culverts looked newly installed, but -- still -- the stream seemed to be almost too much for them:

It is early spring, and we spotted a few wildflowers along the path:

The leaves are out, and, in some places, they create a bower-like effect, which offered shade that we both enjoyed:

Recent storms that had marched across the U.S. left wet sections on the trail.  They were easy to navigate, but they added needed moisture to the forest floor and gave us an unusual view of the woods:

In addition to mushrooms and other more common fungi, we spotted these unusual little red ball-like fungus growths on the trunk of one of the pine trees:

This hole with sculpted mud around it offered us a mystery.  Who was the resident?  It turned out that the ground was so damp that CRAWFISH have found the opportunity to make little tiny houses.  Who would have thought?

It was indeed damp enough that moss was growing on the shady side of trees and stumps, and we were lucky enough to see some rich samples:

 Indeed, this area, being laced with streams and drainages, offered us TEN stream crossings!  They were each small enough to leap with an easy hop, so we were not hampered.  But this may have been the most stream crossings we've had in a single day hike:  Twenty!

As we were finishing our hike, Kathy spotted this tree.  It is marked as a "bearing tree," in addition to having a blaze and other markings on it.  As a bearing tree, it is used in the survey description for boundaries of various tracts in the Sabine National Forest.  Based on this and the work along the forest road, we concluded that this forest is very well managed.

We only had one day in northwest Texas before heading on to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, but we made the most of it.  The next time you hear from us, we will have something to say about diamonds!