The crews took a couple of weeks reworking the lower dam on the OK River Recreation Area. The water formerly flowed around both ends and had eaten away a section of the embankment on the near side, and to a lesser degree on the other end. So they simplified the structure and put up walls to reduce that kind of washout, then reinforced the washed out section with more rip-rap and covered it with concrete.
I normally avoid taking pictures of homeless encampments, but this one was abandoned. I had seen a couple of guys living in it a couple of months ago, but they are gone now. I thought it was cool that they didn’t have trash piled around, but when they left it, they didn’t bother to disassemble it. There are quite a few of these makeshift shelters along the OK River Recreation Area.
I finally went back to Midlothian Road, running across parts of northern Lincoln County. I wasn’t interested in the unincorporated community called by that name; I just wanted to see the road. It had been recently plowed with a road grader, so the gravel was mostly in the middle, and it was like driving on marbles. There were places where it was really steep and the county road crews had spread some kind of fine yellow gravel on it, which tends to clump and stick almost like concrete. Despite the dust, I greatly prefer driving on it when dry.
There wasn’t much to see from the road, mostly because the heavy tree growth along the ditches obscured everything. Still, I spotted a few nice places like this cattle pasture with a stock pond. I was intrigued by the rock outcropping in the background.
Farther down a couple more miles were more stock ponds, but without the livestock this time. Still, there must be kind of grazing animals, because the grass was quite short compared to what grows everywhere else out here. This is maybe knee high after resting a bit, but wild grass out there is almost head high right now.
