Piedmont Ridge

Piedmont Ridge

2300 Jim Miller Road

Southern entrance: 1700 Eastcliff

After a few weeks of being busy, the spirit of adventure once again stirred inside me. I took the first opportunity I could to go out, and after spending so long away from adventures, I felt like I needed to go big with this one. So I chose Piedmont Ridge as my destination, having heard about its overgrown trails and sometimes difficult terrain. After gathering a few experienced adventurers, we hit the trails.

For this trip, we had 3 main destinations in mind: the Scyene Overlook, the Piedmont Ridge Overlook, and the Comanche Storytelling Place. We decided to start north at the Scyene Overlook and make our way south hitting the Piedmont Ridge Overlook and the Comanche Storytelling Place on our way.

Scyene Overlook (Gateway Park Trails)

The trail head at the baseball field

We parked at the baseball field on Jim Miller Road, and got in through the trail head past right field. The trail was white rock for a stretch, until it opened up into a large field of tall grass. From there, there was a trail of flattened tall grass that lead around the field. We followed this trail to the south around the field, then entered the woods again. The entrance was slightly obscured by overgrowth, so we missed it the first time and had to double back. This entrance is at about 32.760420 N 96.706723 W.

Stumbling through overgrowth

Once we got into the woods, it was pretty easy for this section. We followed a well defined path to the creek, now dried up. After jumping across the creek, we came across the markers pointing to the JJ Beeman Trail and the Scyene Overlook. The JJ Beeman Trail looked too overgrown to follow and didn't lead to any of our 3 main destinations, so we went up to the Scyene Overlook. The trail was well defined in most areas, except for the occasional patch of overgrowth, which was easily passable. We soon reached an open patch of trees, where we got very confused on which path to follow. We eventually figured it out and found our way to the overlook. My camera got weird here, so I don't have any good pictures of this overlook. We confusedly made our way back down, getting sidetracked a few times on offshoot trails that lead nowhere. But soon enough, we had made our way back to the open field.

We walked back across the field and out towards the trail head, then took a detour when we found a small escarpment that seemed to lead to the Laceywood Overlook. We climbed it up and followed the trail until we came across what seemed to be the Laceywood Overlook. The trees had all grown too tall around the overlook, but I can imagine the view would be beautiful if not for these trees.

It's a lot steeper than it looks.

From the overlook we followed the trail back down another escarpment, which dropped us off on the west end of the parking lot of the baseball field.

Gateway Trails

Notes: Moderate terrain. Trails slightly overgrown, sometimes confusing to follow. Long pants and other protective clothing recommended. I give it a difficulty rating of MEDIUM.

Piedmont Ridge Trail

From there we walked over to the golf course to hike the Piedmont Ridge trail. The trail head is located near  32.755208 N 96.703108 W.

Piedmont Ridge trail head.

Piedmont Ridge Trail

This section of trail was very well maintained. The trail climbs in elevation almost immediately, following a few switchbacks that take you up a large hill. From there, it's pretty flat. The nature reminded me of New Mexico - short grass with many cedar-like trees and paddle cacti. After a few minutes of walking, the Piedmont Overlook will come up on your right.

Views from the overlook. God is great.

#Squad taking a water break at the overlook

We took a break here to take in the views and drink some water. We also decided to come back in the fall when the leaves are changing color, so hit me up if you wanna join that adventure.

After we took our break, we kept going. Eventually we went down a steep hill and were dropped off at Bruton road. We crossed the road and walked left along it until we came across the entrance to the Devon Anderson overlook trail. I had read that this section of trail was extremely overgrown, so we weren't sure if we'd be able to keep going. But it looked passable from where we were, so we decided to go at it.

This was a horrible decision.

Piedmont Ridge Trail

Notes: Steep terrain at beginning and end of trail, mostly flat otherwise. Poison ivy and oak spotted growing alongside trail, but not on it. Easy hike, relatively well maintained. Great views from overlook.

Devon Anderson Trail

Right off the bat, we were plagued with poison ivy and poison oak. But we all wore long pants, and we could still see the trail, so we kept going.

The overgrown Devon Anderson trail

The trail went up and down with a few switchbacks, nothing too difficult in terms of elevation. But the trail soon became EXTREMELY overgrown. Olivia described it perfectly when she said "it's like we're swimming through trees!" But the trail was again still at least faintly visible, and there were orange tape markers marking the trail, so we again kept pushing on. We ran into many interesting things on our walk in the woods here. A gasoline canister, a shotgun shell, a car seat, and a snakeskin the diameter of my forearm. Did NOT want to come in contact with the snake that shed that thing. The path grew narrower and narrower and changed elevation frequently as we went on. At times it felt like a hike through the Ozarks. We had finally gotten the hang of pushing through the overgrowth and keeping our eye on the faint trail, when suddenly the trail ended. We were barred on all sides by a thick wall of intertwined tree limbs, bushes, and thorn vines.

This was when everything went south.

I decided we should attempt to push through some of the overgrowth to try to find the trail again, and I walked off into the web of small trees and vines. After struggling to break through this web, I found myself in a bit of a predicament. I had accidentally gotten a vine with large and VERY sharp thorns a little too close to my face. I found myself with a large thorn stuck through my eyelid. "Crap," I said quietly to myself. I kept my cool as I calmly removed the thorn from my eyelid, not wanting to scare the others. I was eventually able to detach myself from this vine of Satan, but not without drawing a bit of blood. I give this experience 3/10 stars. Would not recommend.

The clearing where we lost the trail

We decided we had two options left - follow a short trail to the back of a complex of houses (behind Bodine Lane) and see if we can get to the street from there, or turn back and follow the trail out. We attempted the first option, but once we got to the back of the houses, the vegetation was too thick to go through. We could hop a few fences to get to the street, but this required going through a stranger's backyard, and I didn't want to deal with any angry homeowners wondering why 3 sweaty, raggedy, and bleeding teenagers were in their backyard. So we followed the trail out, crossed the road, and followed the Piedmont trail back to the golf course parking lot.

We were all pretty tired from that stressful experience, which took a good 2-3 hours. But we weren't about to leave without finding the Comanche Storytelling Place, so I drove us all down to the southern trail head at the end of Umphress Road.

We entered the woods and followed a short trail straight to the Comanche Storytelling Place, a sacred natural white rock amphitheater used by the Comanches since before European settlement. This area was very easy to find, and we were back out of the woods in less than 20 minutes.

Comanche Storytelling Place

To sum it up, this was an awesome adventure, except for when we made the mistake of following the trail past Bruton road. I do NOT recommend going past Bruton road, unless you enter through the southern trail head at around 32.741503 N 96.706558 W. From this trail head, the Comanche Storytelling Place is easily accessible. You can also head north from this trail head towards the Devon Anderson overlook before it gets too overgrown.

Devon Anderson Trail

Notes: Extreme overgrowth. Inescapable poison ivy and oak. Don't even think about going in if you don't have long pants. From the southern trail head, access to the Comanche Storytelling Place is easy. If you're gonna go in here, go through the southern trail head.

Fue Un Accidente in Arbor Hills

After a two week long hiatus, I finally was able to get back out into the wilderness of DFW. During my time away from exploring, I spent a week in Costa Rica on a mission trip, where I joined a crew of ruthless explorers and white water rafters. We called ourselves "Team Unique Bad Boys" (all name credits go to Luke "Unique Bad Boy" Parker) and after a series of mishaps adopted the slogan "fue un accidente," meaning, "it was an accident." After we returned to Dallas, we decided to have a team adventure.

Team Unique Bad Boys in Costa

We chose Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano, Texas as our destination, and we went early in the morning to attempt to escape the inescapable heat of a Texan summer. We arrived at around 9:30, and quickly set off into the woods.

Trail Entrance

 We set off without much idea of where we were going. I tried to look at the map, which had marked on it the main concrete trail and a few of the natural surface trails, but I had no idea where we were on the map, so it didn't help much. We decided it would be pretty hard to get too terribly lost, especially since we had my GPS, which visually tracks our movement so we can backtrack if we get lost, so we felt comfortable just wandering around.

There were many different trails and paths to choose from once we were in the woods, and I felt a little overwhelmed at times, so I delegated the responsibility of choosing which path to take to the rest of the team. After a few minutes of walking, we came across a clear creek.

The Creek

 Our only snake encounter of the trip took place here at the creek. We saw a water moccasin slither into the water and under a log, and it left us totally alone. We took a few pictures then went on our way.

We followed the trail we were on (Indian Creek Trail?) until it let off on the main concrete trail. From there we spotted another trail off to our right, so we decided to follow it. About 15 minutes or so after we entered this trail, we realized that it was actually a mountain bike trail. We decided it would be safest to get off of the bike trail, so we don't risk getting plowed into by a speeding mountain bike. The only problem was that the mountain bike trails were each somewhere around 3 miles in length with no intersecting paths or turnoffs. If we wanted to get off the path in the next hour, our only option was to turn around. So we turned around and made our way back to the concrete trail, which we then followed up to the pavilion for a bathroom and water break.

After taking our break, we made our way back into the woods and followed a rather hilly combination of paths on the north side of the park for about an hour, until it crossed over the creek and lead to a pavilion called Fort Arbor. We stopped here for a water break and ate some Chikys, a popular Costa Rican cookie bar, that Blake had brought with him. From there, we followed the Riparian Loop Trail until it connected with the Outer Loop Trail. We took this trail back to the concrete main trail, and followed that for a while, taking minor detours through natural surface trails every time we saw one.

It's hard to see, but this tree is growing out over a 15 foot drop. I'm making this stupid face because I slipped and almost fell in.

Olivia living life on the edge.

We eventually made our way to the lookout tower, a small pavilion on the edge of a steep incline that looks out over the whole park. We stopped here and ate some oranges we had brought, reflected on the beauty of nature, and shared some favorite memories from our trip to Costa. We spent a total of about 15-20 minutes here, then kept going.

The Lookout Tower

A mesquite tree on the prairie

 We made our way to the Outer Loop Trail again, and followed it along the outskirts of the preserve for a while. It took us through a prairie on the west side of the preserve, and the openness was well received.

The prairie

This trail eventually lead alongside train tracks before reentering the forested area. We decided to detour onto a loop trail that lead into the forest then met back up with the Outer Loop Trail, but as we got into the forest, there were many different loosely defined paths, and we couldn't pick out which one was the right one. In the true spirit of our slogan, "fue un accidente," we got lost in a poison ivy infested patch of heavily wooded forest. Using the tracking feature of my GPS, I lead us back to the main trail, and we found our way out, but we were all pretty certain we had gotten poison ivy. Luckily, none of us ended up getting a rash, though. 

After this close call, we were ready to call it a day. We made sure there weren't any areas we had left completely unexplored, then headed to Sonic to reward ourselves for a long day of adventure. 

YOUR TURN

If you liked what you saw with this adventure, you can head out to Arbor Hills and explore it for yourself! Arbor Hills Nature Preserve is located at 6701 W Parker Road, Plano, Texas. It's about a 30 minute drive from downtown Dallas. There is a concrete trail that loops through the whole park and natural surface trails that branch off from this trail everywhere. You could easily spend an entire day walking every trail. The park is kid friendly, with a playground near the front pavilion. The park also has a long system of bike trails - the only place bikes are permitted in the park. Bring lots of sunscreen, bug spray, and water, and consider bringing a hiking stick. I used my hiking stick heavily on my adventure here to keep me from slipping on rocks and to push poison ivy and stickers out of the way so I can pass safely. If you plan on off-roading, consider wearing long protective pants, as there was a lot of poison ivy off of the main trail. There are also snakes, but I didn't have any problems with them.

Feral Hogs and Lots of Mud: Return To Buckeye Trail

Texas Buckeye Trail: 7000 Bexar Street, Dallas, TX

Headed up the levee

After being turned around due to flooding on the trails on Sunday, I decided it would be nice to come back to this trail. So I got my friend Emerson and headed over to the south end of Bexar street at around noon on Thursday. It was a nice day: slightly cloudy with temperatures in the low to mid 80's. We pulled up to the cul de sac outside Bonton Farms at around 12;30 and got going.

Entrance to the trail

Walking into the trail, it was evident that most of the water had dried up. We could even see some of the dried up footprints I had left behind from Sunday. After walking a few minutes, we reached the split in the trail. Luckily for us, the Buckeye Trail was not under water, so we pushed through the brush into the forest.

The Buckeye Trail trail head

It was immediately clear that the trail was very overgrown. It seemed as if no one had been through in months. There were fallen trees in the path, and the vegetation was crowding the trail. It was also extraordinarily muddy. None of this was a problem to us, though, because we had dressed appropriately. 

Maybe an old fence post?

After a few minutes, we reached what seemed to be an old fence post leaning against a fallen tree to form an arch, like an official entrance into the Great Trinity Forest. We stopped for a few pictures and kept going, dodging fallen trees and spider webs.

Fallen trees making things difficult

The trail was marked every couple hundred of feet with either a post that pointed in the direction of the trail or an orange ribbon tied to a bush or tree. Despite this, it was still pretty difficult to figure out which way we were supposed to be headed. There were a few times when we couldn't tell if we were following a game trail or the actual trail, and there were a few times when we actually had been following a game trail and had to backtrack to find the real trail.

One area where the real trail was difficult to find

We eventually made our way to the Buckeye Loop, and made it all the way to near the edge of the Trinity River (I assume - we could hear rushing water) before we ran into any trouble. And by trouble, I mean feral hogs. As we were halfway through the loop. I heard a loud crack and turned to my right only to see a giant feral hog running into the woods. We immediately froze, not knowing what to do in this type of situation. We then saw several other hogs walking behind a thin line of trees maybe 100 feet from us. We decided not to take our chances on anything, not knowing about how to deal with feral hogs and whether it would be safe or not to proceed, so we turned around and headed back out the way we came.

Believe it or not, this trail is paved

When we got back out of the trail and at the split, we decided to follow the paved path to the Trinity Overlook. Even though the trail was paved, the cement was covered in about an inch of dried mud at all times, and there were several fallen logs in the way, so this was not a walk in the park, but it was miles easier than the muddy and overgrown Buckeye Trail.

The views at the Trinity Overlook were stunning. Even though the Trinity is a pretty gross river, it was still great to be standing on its banks and hearing the rushing of its waters. We stood there for a few minutes taking pictures and soaking in the beauty before heading back out.

The Trinity River

Overall, this was a solid adventure. I got my fill of adrenaline when we ran into the feral hogs, and I was thoroughly satisfied with the views. I would definitely do this trail again if the mud were to dry.

Spring Creek Forest Trail

Spring Creek Forest Trail: 1770 Holford Rd, Garland, TX

After a day of rest following my first adventure, I decided it was time for another expedition. I did a bit of research and decided to go to Spring Creek Forest Trail in Garland, and I shot out a few texts to try to gather a crew to go with me. I ended up only getting one guy to go, but that was fine, because this one guy is awesome.
We left at around 12, but we stopped at Sonic on the way and ended up getting there at 1. The drive over was easy; finding the parking lot was the only semi-challenging part of getting there. To help future visitors: it's on your right as you're going down Holford Rd, right past an open yellow gate. We pulled into the parking lot, which had about 4 other cars in it. There were several people walking around on the paved paths, and even a group of skateboarders. It was still very peaceful, even though we were not alone.

The parking lot

The bathrooms and shaded area

There was a small bathroom facility next to a shaded sitting area. From this sitting area, there were two dirt paths leading off into the forest and one paved path. We decided first to go down one of the natural surface paths, which lead us down into an empty creek bed. We meandered around a little, but much of the area proved impassible, so we turned around and followed a faint trail back to the concrete trail.

Adam and the entrance to the first path

The empty creek bed

We decided to keep following the concrete trail to the Spring Creek overlook. It was a short hike, and the creek was beautiful.

Spring Creek

Following the creek bed

At this point, there were two options: go down into the creek bed and walk along the creek, or continue straight onto an unpaved trail. We decided to follow the creek bed, then come back and follow the trail later. 

The creek bed took us about 15 minutes to travel, until we reached a bed of stones. Someone before us had stacked the stones in the bed neatly into little towers, Blair Witch Project style. The end of this bed dropped off, and there was no surface to continue walking on, but there was a wide and steep trail leading up to the top of the bluff. 

The Blair Witch is near

We followed the trail up, and it ran for a few hundred feet before dropping us off near the end of the concrete trail. Dissatisfied with the destination, we turned back around, and hiked back along the creek bed up to the overlook, where we followed the other trail.

The other trail lead us through the forest, as we slowly gained a bit of altitude. The forest then opened up into a beautiful field populated with native plants and grasses.

The field

At this point, we encountered a sign that said "Trail Detour" and pointed to the left. We decided to follow the trail until its end, then come back and do the detour. The trail continued through the field, then dropped off at the concrete trail, so we turned around and headed for the detour.

The detour ended up being a confusing system of faint trails designed to somehow make you lose all sense of direction. About 15 minutes into this "detour" we had completely lost the trail and had no idea where we were. We just kind of aimlessly wandered around through whatever area seemed passable until we, by some miraculous act of God, found the concrete trail.

We have no idea where we are

After this, we wandered around through whatever trails we could find for about another hour, then decided to see where the concrete trail ended. Turns out that it ends at Garland Road, next to the overpass. Since we were there, we decided to see if we could find any trails under the overpass, which we could not. After this, we decided to explore a few more trails, then head back to the car and go home.

Underneath Garland Road

Overall, this adventure was a huge success. There was not much poison ivy, nor did we see any snakes, and we definitely got our fill of adventure in. I would definitely come back here another time.

A Soggy Beginning: Texas Buckeye Trail

(I apologize for lack of pictures. I took this adventure before I decided to blog about it and didn't think to take many pictures.)

So as I was laying in bed on this aforementioned Sunday afternoon, I began researching just exactly what there is to explore in Dallas. A quick search brought up the Texas Buckeye Trail, a popular trail through the Great Trinity Forest. So I did some research just to figure out where I was going and what I was gonna be doing, called up a couple of friends, packed my bag and got going.
We rolled up to the entrance, a cul de sac at the south end of Bexar street right next to Bolton Farms, in my jeep at about 2:30 pm. I was worried about parking before we got there, but there are parallel spaces all down the right side of the street and in front of Bolton Farms, and the area was not crowded. Parking was definitely not an issue. There were two other cars there, and we saw a group of college aged guys headed up the levee. We checked out the map, and I took a picture for later reference, just in case we were to get terribly confused.

The map at the entrance to the levee

We didn't make it far before we did end up getting terribly confused. We walked across the small footbridge and diagonally up the levee, following the stone trail until we got to the top of the levee, at which point a gravel trail continued across the levee east and west. We didn't know where the trailhead was, and had to consult the above picture to figure out that it was actually to the west. With that confusion cleared up, we continued the expedition westward, until we spotted the trailhead.

The path that leads to the top of the levee

There was a narrow dirt path that lead down to the concrete trail, which lead into the forest. Having finally found the beginning of the trail, we excitedly embarked on our first exploration. We got about a quarter of a mile into the forest, then noticed that the entire trail up ahead was either covered in slick mud or under water. We decided to push on anyway. We continued walking, and a few minutes later, we came to the split in the trail. We could go left and follow the unpaved Buckeye Trail to the Buckeye Grove Loop, famous for its beautiful Buckeye blooms in the spring, or we could continue down the paved trail to the Trinity Overlook. As much as I would have loved to go down the Buckeye Trail, this was impossible, because the trail was under a foot of water. The only option was to continue down the paved trail. 

So continue we did, but not for long. About a hundred yards down, we realized that the paved path, too, had succumbed to the flooding. It was impassible, the whole trail from that point on having been converted into a pond complete with two to three inch long crawdads and tadpoles. It was a beautiful sight, but it meant no forest for us that day. We were forced to turn around.

Looking at the levee from the trailhead

We made our way back out of the forest, wondering what to do next. I wasn't leaving until I had had my fill of adventure, so we decided to walk along the levee and look for anything that might seem adventurous. After about 15-20 minutes of walking along the levee, we came across the entrance to Rochester Park, a seemingly neglected lake with a small island in the middle. We walked around a little and spotted a few interesting sights including a small alligator gar, a snake, and a wooden table with fishing hooks and mutilated minnow remains on it.

We made our way back to the levee and walked down for about another 30 minutes, until the levee curved and headed toward the highway. At this point we turned around and made our way back to the jeep.

Overall, it was a successful adventure. While we didn't get much time in the woods, we did get to do some exploring, and discovered an amazing area of Dallas we hadn't ever even thought of before. We will be making another journey back here in the near future, hopefully when the trails aren't flooded.

A Brief Introduction

I was laying in my bed on a Sunday afternoon, when I realized that I was extremely bored. I needed to do something, but what is there for a broke teenager in Dallas to do on a Sunday afternoon? Suddenly, it hit me. Exploring. Having lived in Dallas for about 13 years, I've become calloused to the awesome stuff there is to do here. But there's so much to do that I hadn't ever thought about. For instance, until this summer I had only been to White Rock Lake once, and I only live about 3 miles from it. Or, did you even know the Great Trinity Forest existed? Yeah, there's 6,000 acres of undeveloped bottomland woods less than 15 miles from downtown at its furthest point.

As I was laying in bed on this Sunday afternoon, I decided that it was time I finally explored everything Dallas has to offer. So follow me and my friends on this journey, as I do just that.