In April of 2018 our, for lack of a better term, “Adventure Group” completed the eastern half of the Oklahoma Adventure Trail. The route took us through the Ouachita Mountains and down the Kiamichi Trail. At the end of it, we were sure of one thing: we would be back. This weekend was the first re-visit of many.
The Ouachita National Forest is an expansive 1.78 million acre national park that covers a fair chunk of Arkansas and some of South Eastern Oklahoma, just south of the Ozark National Forest. The park itself is home to many forest service roads and recreational offroading areas for all skill levels and vehicle types.
Seems like a pretty good way to spend a long weekend!
Originally the weather was threatening to turn the trip into a sailing trip, but in the end everything worked out great, with most trails actually being drier than the last time we were there.
Unfortunately, Taylor of the Secret XTerra wasn’t able to make it, but instead Brady of the Sidekick was able to join, so we still had the correct number of players.
Heading out
The drive out there was meant to be a relativly uneventful three hour highway drive.... but it wasn’t. While pulling out of the gas station at the start point, my Land Rover decided it didn’t particularly care for the signals coming out of my right wheel speed sensor and threw the infamous “Three Amigos”. Well crap. I guess we’ll send it, but without traction control thing were going to get interesting as the Land Rover uses TC to pseudo-lock the differentials, rather than relying on mechanical lockers.
Right so... highway!
Oh.. wait we need to pull over...
The zip ties holding down the Renegade’s MaxTrax weren’t doing their best work and the MaxTrax were threatening to fly off at 80 MPH...
Ok HIGHWAY!
Oh crap why is the Suzuki hanging back. Wait... that is floored? Oh wow... ok. So it isn’t great on the highway...
Despite this, we made good time and hit the AirBnB shortly after dark.
We did go ahead and grab dinner at the Lodge located on the awesome Talimena drive. This meant that heading out I actually finally got to finish the drive, a feat I’d never accomplished before thanks once to physical and once to mechanical breakdowns! Needless to say the smell of burning brakes followed us to the gas station...
The Kiamichi Trail
The plan for this trip originally was to do all of the Kiamichi trail. We’d done about half of it as part of the Oklahoma Adventure Trail, but avoided the western half due to legal and safety concerns. Still, we were mostly satisfied that driving it was legal and fun... until we did some more digging....
The legal status of the Kiamichi Trail is probably worth its own post, but the tl;dr is everything to the west of the fire tower is technically private and should be avoided.
Instead, we opted to do a “greatest hits” version, hitting the areas we’d liked previously, and then heading deeper into Arkansas to do someone of the stuff there the next day.
The trail was tough, but not overly so, and a great warm up.
We hit the fire tower around 2:30, enjoyed a victory beer soda, and then headed back down. We were going to do the Honobia trail south, but apparently it was closed, so we opted to take D4697 back, which was mostly uneventful.
This was also the first time we’d actually remembered to air down for a trip, which was cool. Even cooler was Brady had convinced himself to spring for an ARB air compressor. Though we’d made fun of him at the time, after seeing him re-inflate all of his tires in the time our pathetic little infiltrators did one, needless to say we saw the value. Needless to say that thing is on all of our Christmas lists now...
Wolf Pen Gap
The next day we decided to hit Wolf Pen Gap and tool around a little bit. I have a lot to say about this place, so I will get the negatives out of the way first:
- The trail maps were very inconsistent
- There were a TON of UTVs, almost none of which yielded to us
- Trail signage was inconsistent
Ok, that out of the way: This place is awesome!
Plenty of documented trails for any and all takers. Likely due to the holiday weekend, as mentioned, there were a ton of UTVs and all of them were driving around like they owned the place.
... possibly because we ended up on a couple “ATV only” trails by accident (due to points 1 and 3 above). To be fair they were also on the “highway vehicles only” trails... also likely due to 1 and 3 above. No one really caused a fuss so and in we only got in a tough spot once or twice because of them.
The trails were twisty, beautiful, and technical, but not overly difficult. The type you get to feel like the worlds best driver but you’re never in any real danger.
... mostly.
I can’t really say much else, but I will post photos.
Sadly we did run into one problem. The Disco got a flat.
“Why is that a problem?” you may ask. Well, dear reader, it wouldn’t have been except for the comedy of errors that followed.
First off, I ended up in a gravel parking lot to complete this job. Not ideal, but it seemed well packed. Also, despite being the factory correct 4-ton bottle jack, it wasn’t quite up to the task. And, oops, we forgot to chock the wheels. I’ve taken tires off countless times without wheel chocks and never had a problem, but today proves why you should always always always chock the wheels before putting a wheel in the air.
The car rolled, the jack spat out, and car fell onto the partially installed spare.
Luckily no one was hurt and the car seemed undamaged, so we tried again.
And it fell again.
...Clearly we are slow learners...
In hindsight, we didn’t realize the car was rolling, though it seems really obvious now, and I’m not sure we would have gotten it the third time if we’d been given the chance either.
At this point a passing off-duty fireman saw the car fall and insisted on changing the tire for us. Embarrassing but at least it got done.
Due to being dropped, twice, the rotor dust shield needed to be removed as it was crushed.
Still, everyone survived and yes, we learned a lot about what can go wrong when changing a tire and tuition was pretty cheap. Going forward we will make sure to have the right equipment and test it before use. We will remember to chock the tires. We will remember to sit down and talk through the job before starting.
The mistakes of this day will not be repeated.
On the way out
On the way “back into town” we hit another leg of the Round Mountain trail, which is essentially the eastern most part of the Kiamichi, which was fun, but very overgrown. Lots of “mowing grass” and more stick insects that I’ve ever seen in my life. It was literally raining stick insects onto the cars. So weird....
Serious I cannot overstate how many stick insects there were. At one point I had a minimum of six on the font of my car. I stopped to walk an obstacle once and about ten fell out of a tree and landed in front of me. Every tree had a minimum of two visible. Two of them were hanging out on my windshield for like a half hour I assume having bug sex.
It was super weird.
We also got caught in a torrential downpour right after we’d left the trail.
Part of me is really sad we weren’t on the trail for this... but the rest of me is really glad we weren’t.
All in all
This was a very good trip.
The Renegade continues to surprise everyone by keeping up with the “big boys” just fine.
The Suzuki, like always, seems to be moments from death but never fails. I think it thrives on the neglect and abuse.
The Disco did great as usual and, against all odds, was Amigo free for the whole trip. My new dis-connectable sway bar links were cool, but a bit of a faff.
Good trip.
