Monday March 23 - Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas - 10 miles hike

After checking into our duplex cabin last night, I had a relaxing bath in the surprisingly accommodating bath tub in our room.  We went to bed early. Brian was really feeling weary after so many miles of hiking in the past week plus fighting off a sinus infection,  When we started on our long hike this morning I could feel my muscles aching so taking yesterday off from hiking (mostly because of the weather) was probably a good thing.

The plan was to do the 12 mile boy scout trail here at Petit Jean.  That trail connects 4 or 5 of the individual feature trails here at the park. Sometimes covering just a portion of the feature trail, sometimes incorporating most of it.  As it turned out, we headed out from the cabin, to the lodge (which is also the portal to some of the trails) and made it through Bear Cave trail, a piece of connecting trail, part of the premiere trail here called Seven Hollows Trail, then a lone (2+ mile?) connecting trail to Blue Hole area.  When we got to Blue Hole there was a large stream to cross and we couldn't confidently cross it with the stepping stones they provided because the water was pretty high and the far side of the creek didn't have stones.  So we turned around which was a little disappointing.  The boy scout trail segment up from Blue Hole back to Seven Hollows was a long uphill climb but very pretty.  On the plus side, we decided we should at least complete the Seven Hollows loop trail since our original route only caught about half a mile of it.

There is no doubt now why Seven Hollows often comes up on lists of Arkansas's best trails. It's an all star bonanza of geology features with water and general landscape filling out the roster.  This is about a quarter of the pictures we took in total.

Distant view of Lodge across canyon


Attractive curved section of park road we crossed on Boy Scout trail

The other half of the above curve



Action shot 1

Action Shot 2

Action Shot 3 (finally over the obstacle)

'The Grotto' which was a .very challenging but short 25 mile spur off of the main Seven Hollows Trail




Brian carrying the backpack


The total mileage was 10 miles and I have no idea what the total elevation was but I'm thinking it was ~1200 given that the Seven Hollows part was almost 600 by itself.

After showering as soon as we got back into the room, we had a lunch/dinner of burgers and pie from the Lodge restaurant.  It was really nice being able to leave the car parked outside our cabin and walk to everything including the hike today.  

Tomorrow's destination is Paducah Kentucky.

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