Bench Road Trail today, again. Welcome to Running: A FEVER. Here we are, it’s the last day of April 2025, and we’re southbound on the Bench Road Trail from the parking area. I don’t know what they call the parking area. But it’s a parking area just south of the Bench Overlook, which is beautiful. I got some good shots of that yesterday and texted them out to a few people. So today we’re going south. I suppose the Bench Road Trail, with its continuous trail, technically goes across the road there, because the only thing between the two points is a road. And this is actually on the other side of the road. Which makes sense, at some point the access road, which is highway 155, has to cross the Bench Road Trail if it’s a continuous trail, and that’s where it does. So we’re on the other side of the road on the Bench Road Trail.

This looks just as wide and relatively flat. We’re on a decline now, and there will be several inclines and declines along the way. It is about a quarter to seven in the morning. I wanted to get out earlier today for several reasons. One is that I like to have the trail to myself. Although yesterday we only saw three people. One cyclist and two runners or joggers. So not a lot of people. And it was still pretty early in the day. So we may see some folks. I saw one truck in the parking lot. So presumably that’s one person who’s going to be around here somewhere. I wanted to start early for the temperature, and it’s sixty degrees out here, so it’s pretty cool. But it’s humid. The weather channel said 91% humidity today. And it was humid yesterday. I came back to the cabin, and I was just soaked with sweat. So it was internally hot. The temperature was probably in the high seventies or low eighties. The final reason was weather predictions. I had seen it before on the 10-day forecast that we might have evening rain today and thunderstorms tomorrow morning, and possible rain the next day in the morning. Then I looked this morning for some more updated information, and it turns out there is a possibility of tornadoes, maybe not exactly here, but somewhere in the middle of the United States—tornadoes, flash floods, severe thunderstorms, starting in the p.m. So afternoon-evening.

Just a rock formation there. And a few rocks on the trail here. Yesterday in Springfield, Missouri, a few hours north of here, there was a tornado—91-mile-per-hour winds reported at the Springfield-Branson airport. Meanwhile, not related to this necessarily is a one-day blackout in Europe, I think, Western Europe. Spain, Portugal. People were celebrating on the streets. Probably people who had been stranded for some reason, because when power goes out, the traffic lights go out. And they were hoping it got fixed before sundown because it was going to be coo,l and people who use electric heat might have a problem. It was a widespread area. Not just a power outage, but something else is going on there in Western Europe. Interesting to hear. I may follow up on that and figure out exactly what it was. But here I had power all night. So I was able to charge my phone and camera.

Birds are pretty loud right now. I started hearing them just before sunrise. Sunrise was predicted to be 6:22 a.m. this morning. I got up between 5:15 and 5:30. I’m a snoozer, so the alarm goes off at 5:15, and I don’t get up until 5:30. A lot of signs here. This says Varnell Spring. And I don’t see any water. “In the late 1800s, Varnell Spring was used to supply water for the town of Dardenelle. A series of pipes carried the water down to storage tanks at Dardenelle Rock. When the Civilian Conservation Corps worked on Mt. Nebo in the 1930s, they found the remains of some of these pipes.” And there it is, Sunrise Point. We’re not far below the top of the mountain. Sunrise Point, they have camping, parking, and supposedly it’s a great place to view the sunrise. My watch has figured out that I am walking. So I figure it won’t take very long to get warmed up. Sixties, not too cool to start with. I didn’t bring anything long-sleeved, except maybe one t-shirt to wear around the house. I saw the highs predicted in the 80s all week long, so I figured I wouldn’t need anything like that, and I think that’s true.

I didn’t have any trouble yesterday, physically, or otherwise. I see the sun’s starting to shine through the trees over there. More rocks. But so far, it’s a beautiful day at Mt. Nebo. However, we might have a tornado or severe thunderstorms later today. Large hail is predicted. But I should be safely back in my cabin long before then. I didn’t have a lot of itching last night, so I guess the mosquitoes didn’t get me too bad. Looks like another trail here down below us. Smaller. I think this is the biggest, widest, easiest trail in this park. I’ll get this camera as tight on my head as possible to minimize jiggling. But there’s going to be some jiggling. So yeah, I felt pretty good last night, didn’t have to take any Advil or anything like that. So I figure today we’ll do the same thing, an hour out and an hour back, and we should be fine.

It’s good that I did my turnaround and ended the show. I was glad to know that I captured an hour or 4K video. This camera doesn’t have a removable battery, so I have to rely on one charge for the whole time. And I was able to get quite a bit of video for you if you’re watching on YouTube. RunningAFEVER.com/YouTube if you’re not. There’s a whole playlist there on state parks, if you want to see all of the ones I’ve been to. Here, Devil’s Den, Mt. Magazine, Queen Wilhelmina, I’ve been to. Hobbs, I’ve been to twice. So, there are quite a few videos there that you can watch and see what the trails look like. When I’m looking at a park and a cabin, I want to know what the cabin looks like inside and out. When I first started doing this, I had trouble finding that online. There’s a picnic table and a flat area over here. At first, it reminded me of a golf green. A little fire pit there. Campsite number one, I guess. Maybe that’s a campsite. Camsites one through four are up here. Hike-in campsites if you’re into camping. I don’t know if I’m much into camping. I like having a hot shower every day. I know that there are bathhouses in some camping areas.

For some reason, there are mosquitoes around here like crazy. Buzzing around my ears. They never seem to run out of energy. There’s another campsite. If you’re into camping, you get a nice view of the campsites along this trail, campsite number two. I didn’t see any yesterday, but we didn’t get far enough on the Bench Road Trail to see the campsites on the northeast part of the trail. Note to self, next time I come this time of year, bring some bug spray. I’m trying to swat these bugs away, and I hit the camera. Yesterday it wasn’t much of a problem until I came upon that, what they call a lake. Today they’re just all over. There’s campsite number three. It doesn’t look like they are that far from the parking area. So pretty easy to get to. Blue blazes on the Bench Road Trail. I must have a whole swarm of mosquitoes following me at this point. I guess sucking blood gives you a lot of energy to fly around.

The trip back yesterday was quicker than the trip out. I guess when I’m not filming and talking, I walk a little faster. It only took me 45 or 50 minutes to get back from the one-hour outward-bound trip. So I walked a bit faster on the way back. You can hear the rush hour traffic a little bit from here, not like Mt. Magazine. By the way, I think this is about 1800 feet, or the park is at the top of the mountain. I think I saw a sign that said that, 1800 feet. In contrast, Mt. Magazine is 2800 feet. You can’t hear the traffic from the top of the mountain. While I was there, you could hear the traffic at the top of the mountain early on a Monday morning. But it’s sometimes hard to distinguish from the wind. The mosquitoes are killing me here. Just killing me.

So, thanks to thunderstorms and rain, this will probably be my last hike of this trip. They are all over me. So I went farther than I thought I would yesterday. Because on the way back, I noticed the Sunset Connector. This connects the Bench Road Trail with Sunset Point, which is the opposite end of the park from Sunrise Point, which we just looked at. So that’s farther than I thought I would get. After this one, should I continue the series, I think the next entry point would be at Sunset Point, and heading south from there. On a longer hike, I may go farther and complete the entire hike, or at least half of it. If you do half, you have to go back one way or the other, so you might as well do the whole thing. In which case, I would have to cross the road back there. There’s a slight breeze. Maybe if I could get a better breeze in here, it might help with the mosquitoes. Worse flying conditions. Perhaps if I go fast enough. Fast as The Flash.

I got a call from a friend on the way back yesterday (see Episode 418). He said I sounded happy and stress-free. That’s a good sign. I enjoy coming out here and being in nature. It’s a little steep down there, some rocks on my left. There’s still not a view from this trail, as you might think. I texted a guy I worked with who retired a couple of weeks ago. He said the only thing that he reported was the fact that he didn’t know what day it was. He said, “Is this Tuesday?”. So he guessed right. We’re crossing another trail here, I don’t know which one. I’m guessing that sign probably says it’s the Bench Road Trail, crossing. No, Miller’s Goat. We crossed Miller’s Goat yesterday, so it must be quite a meandering trail. We’ll look that up, possibly for a future visit.

I probably mentioned in the Cabin Five video, which was Episode 417, two days ago now. That Cabin Five had changed in at least one detail. The wood fireplace has been replaced with a heater, which I couldn’t turn on. I just wanted to see if I could operate it, but any button I pushed, the display just said “off.” So maybe there’s a master off switch that they can throw to prevent that heater from being used. Or perhaps it goes along with the main thermostat, I don’t know. What reminded me of that was thinking about a future visit, because though Cabin Five was previously my favorite cabin, the wood-burning fireplace was a big attraction for me in any cabin. So, not having that may change things. Of course, they may have changed that in all the cabins, I don’t know. So I’ll have to ask, before I come here next time, to see what the deal is. Maybe I’ll get another cabin with a real fireplace, maybe not. But I still like the fact that it’s kind of more isolated, I think, than any other cabin, except maybe what used to be seventy, the A-frame house. I’m not sure what the new number for that one is, but I stayed there twice. It was blocked off on either side by trees. This one has a cabin on the left side as you’re facing the view, and trees on the right side.

I’ll pick up the pace a little bit on this long, flat area. Plenty of dead trees. I don’t see this much. It’s there at Lake Fayetteville. I suppose they don’t do logging or anything there. But I think this is important to the ecosystem. These big trees provide, whatever nutrients they still have, go into the soil and help new trees to grow. Good breeze here. Helps with the mosquitoes. It’s tough to enjoy a hike when you’re constantly slapping at mosquitoes. That makes a nice resting bench if you need to rest—a log from a tree that’s been cut up. I’m not sure how they move these big logs out of the way. They must have to bring a big tractor in here to do that. No little cart can handle it. I was thinking yesterday that maybe they just cut them up into small enough pieces that a man can handle them. But there are bigger pieces, I can see them along the side of the road now. I haven’t seen any horses here, so I”m assuming there is some kind of machinery here that does that. You could do it with a horse or two.

Mosquitoes are courageous; they have no fear of death. They attack a large animal, and they will usually get killed while they are sucking blood. Now my arms are covered with dead mosquitoes, but they keep coming. If I saw a battlefield covered with dead humans, I would probably avoid it, unless it was absolutely necessary to walk over them. Survival makes us do desperate things. There’s a slowly bubbling stream, a perfect breeding ground, and stagnant areas that are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. This looks like a kind of paved area coming up ahead. Paved with rocks and a bridge. Somewhere along the trail is what they call a seasonal waterfall. I don’t think it’s on this section of the trail. I think it’s on the west side. But I see some formation. A rather steep decline on the way in. It doesn’t seem like that time has passed, but we’re already forty-five minutes into the trail here. I’ll show you this little stream coming down the rocks. It’s a tiny stream, but it has cut a path, because water is very powerful, in between the stones. We don’t have to jump from rock to rock; you can step. Like I said, it looks paved.

This is Dickens Spring. “Dickens Spring provided drinking water to the nearby Summit Park Hotel. A system of pipes and pumps moved the spring water up to the summit of the mountain. Access to water has always played an important role to the residents and visitors of Mt. Nebo. And the streams were the first substantial sources of water for the people here.” I remember when I made my first hike here around the Rim Trail, the first hike of some distance, I drank from one of those water sources. Gum Springs. “Mount Nebo’s many springs were improved by the residents of the Bench during the 1880s. The Nebolitans spent their money building pavilions and stone work around the springs. Wildfires over the course of the years destroyed the pavilions.” This is the Gum Springs waterfall trail. I don’t see a waterfall here, but it’s got to be somewhere. I don’t know. It seems to me it was in the southwestern section, but I could be wrong about that. I don’t know, the trails seem to wander all over.

And finally, Campsite Number Four. This looks to be a relatively large clearing with a picnic table. Two picnic tables. And plenty of room, and a fire pit in the middle with a couple of stones you could sit on. Very nice. And it’s only a forty-five-minute walk in from the parking lot. I don’t see any campers today. Foresters, people who cut down trees, are able through technique to determine which way they are going to fall almost exactly. I saw someone once cut down a tree that fell exactly in a space right between two houses. So if there’s a dead tree nearby, you can probably preemptively cut it down. So that it doesn’t hit the trail, and you don’t have to cut it up and bring in whatever equipment is necessary to move the pieces around.

I’m starting to get a little tired. I think there have been more ups and downs here on this side of the trail. We’re going south on the Bench Road Trail on the east side of the mountain. I’m feeling this ninety-one percent humidity out here. I’m probably not sweating as much as I was yesterday, possibly due to slightly cooler temperatures. We did have some light rain yesterday after I got back. And maybe some overnight. I noticed the front porch was wet this morning, but the back porch was dry. I guess that was true last evening, too, when I was able to do my second cookout of the trip. I think the rest of my cooking is going to be in the kitchen. And of course, I’m only cooking one meal a day. The rest is coming out of a bottle. It feels nice here. There’s a slight breeze, you can’t even see it in the trees. And it’s still pretty cool. I couldn’t say for sure, my watch is not going to be accurate. It says sixty-eight degrees, but we don’t have a connection. It only seems to work when I have a wifi connection, which doesn’t make sense. It should work whenever it can connect with my phone. But I have not been very good at figuring out this watch since I got it.

I do know I did about 4700 steps yesterday, which seems low considering I went on a two-hour hike. But I guess I’m making fewer steps than I would on a Lake Fayetteville or Spring Creek Trail, where everything is level. That’s a big rock right there. Huge. So I got out here about twenty minutes after sunrise. It’s still not terribly bright. Yesterday, it was so overcast that my automatic headlights on my truck came on on my drive back to the cabin. But the sun came out later in the day for a little bit. I did see some hikers going past my house on the Rim Trail, going past my cabin. The Rim Trail is something you can just walk down from the cabins, the view cabins, and start there. You know I did that from, I think, Cabin 65 one time. And I went a little bit in either direction, not too far. Certainly not an hour. But we could do that again from a different cabin and get a different view. However, I think that time I didn’t get video, except maybe some of me.

I’m crossing another trail here, Miller’s Goat trail again. It zigzags. It joins this trail quite a bit. This one, Miller’s Goat trail, you have to go along the Bench Road Trail. It looks like there’s another lake coming up. This looks a lot like the other lake we saw yesterday when we were going the other direction. There’s a wet spillway. Barely moving here, going under the trail. It’s pretty stagnant. Fern Lake. “The year is 1889. You are one of 150 guests at the Summit Park Hotel on top of Mt. Nebo. It is a hot June day. How do you cool off? A plank and rock walk leads you from the mountaintop to the edge of Fern Lake. Fern Lake is too shallow for swimming, but canoes and paddleboats carry well-dressed passengers over the clear, sunlit water. Gentlemen in white shirts with detachable collars and cuffs wear flat-top boater hats, while the ladies wear long dresses of various colors with buttoned-up collars. Their upswept hair is protected from the breeze by a hat. Girls in long smocks and boys in knee-length pants and wide-collared shirts play around the lake and springs. Beautiful gazebos cover the three springs around the lake. Each has comfortable seats creating cool retreats where you can indulge in a favorite passtime sipping the cool spring water and chatting with the other hotel guests. Research tends to indicate there was a heart-shaped lake including a large wooden duck or swan in the center of Fern Lake. One reason for the construction of Fern Lake was to provide ice for resort guests. In winter, when the lake was frozen, large blocks of ice were cut and stored in an ice house near the lake. In summer, the ice was carried up the mountain for the guests. Sunset Point gazebo is typical of ones that would have been at Fern Lake. Carriages took guests from the Summit Park Hotel along the Bench Road to Fern Lake.” Supposedly, there was a hotel right here. That looks like a diving board over there, even though swimming was not allowed.

I’m hearing sounds that could be animals or machinery. Here’s where Miller’s Goat continues downward. Not only does this look like the lake we passed yesterday, but the description is there as well. Even though it’s for sure we’re not on that trail. We’re on the southbound trail today. So I don’t know if they were mixed up. It seems unusual that both would have a heart-shaped island in the middle. Maybe they didn’t want to make another placard, so they just used the other one. So, which one is Fern Lake? I don’t know. It sounds like an animal. I don’t want to come into contact with any bears along here. I suppose it could be a huge duck or goose. I don’t know if you can hear it on the recording here.

So we’re coming to the end of our hour outbound. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down the south part of the loop on the east side from the parking area on the Bench Road Trail at Mt. Nebo State Park. I hope this 2025 visit to the park has been enjoyable for you. I likely won’t be hiking anymore on this trip. We may continue the Bench Road trail if we come here again. Until then, keep the fever if you’ve got it. If you don’t, catch the fever, and I will see you next time on Running: A FEVER.