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.