This time I started where I left off from the last ride, and resumed following the shore road. While it was still muddy from the previous rains, some heavy vehicles really stirred things up. Then it dried. Hard. I had find a track along the margin of this “road” and headed south.
Today it was a very stiff winds (20-30+ MPH) from the south. That made it a bit slow heading out to the lake on the Sooner Road corridor. What made it rather disappointing was the heavy cloud layer that rolled in while I was on my way out. There wasn’t supposed to be much chance of rain, but it meant the wind was very high and cooler. I was chilled, but I never got cold with 60° F.
This ride is one of the best I’ve had out around Draper Lake. The shore road wasn’t that rough all the way around. But all the way I kept seeing these lovely rocky spots. On this one you can see where something caused the rocky layers to fold and bend. That’s all solid, not loose boulders. It’s a rare sight in this part of Oklahoma.
This rocky point was almost inaccessible, particularly for an aging, arthritic man with old injuries. You would have had to come around from the left side through some thick brush; I’m standing on a bluff higher than the top of my head with no cut-outs or steps. I’m also standing on the edge of the road. I did run into a couple of mud ponds. The first was confined with wide margins and I was able to ride around it, but the second was churned up and still mucky wet all the way across the road — a bluff down on one side and bluff up on the other. However, most of the road bed featured exposed bedrock that had been carved by heavy equipment to make the road.
I stopped to have lunch where this little island stood just off shore. When the water level goes down, you can easily walk out because the bottom is a very shallow rocky ridge that runs out that way. I was sitting on a ledge and I could see the shallows arcing off to my left. While I was there, the wind changed to a dampish feel and the wind actually picked up with a few heavy gusts. While rain didn’t fall, I could see curtains of rain off to the south, too close for comfort. So I decided to make the road around the one biggest point of land and then take a shortcut out of there.
On the way I spotted this rather larger island and couldn’t find it on the satellite view anywhere. I decided it had to be an orphaned point, but with the recent rise in water level, it was very much orphaned from one of the points I’ve explored in the past. From this angle it didn’t appear to be close to anything. That’s a pretty tight telephoto shot, and I had to rest the camera on my bicycle seat to get it steady.
So with this heavy stiff wind behind me on the way back, I made it back home in record time.
