Tuxachanie Trail, De Soto National Forest - Out-and-back for Boys-to-men (11.2 miles)

Trip Overview

Tuxachanie Trail is a 12 mile trail near Saucier, MS in De Soto National Forest. The trail is very easy and a popular destination for day hikes because the first five miles from the trailhead at the Airey Lake Recreation Area. I picked this trail because my 11 year old son and his 10 year old friend ("Joker") were joining me, and I wanted to make sure they had a positive experience. The plan was to (1) hike from the Tuxachanie Trail Head to Airey Lake and camp for the afternoon and night and (2) then hike back to the car the next day. No permits or fees are required to use the trail or Airey camping area, and primitive camping is permitted 100 feet away from the trail, except during deer hunting season. We completed an out-and-back hike of the first 5.6 miles in two days at the end of March 2018.

GPX file

Preparation

I was very casual with the preparation of this trip because the distance was so short. The general goal was to make a large, medium, and small pack for the three of us to carry. The large pack had breakfast and dinner, the tent, cooking gear, 2.5 liters of water, and my sleeping gear and personals. The medium pack had lunch, about 2 liters of water, and one kid's sleeping gear and personals. The small pack had snacks, about two liters of water, and the final kid's sleeping gear and personals. This lighter pack list has all of my gear, and the rest we brought was just odds and ends that we threw together from what we already had.

The weekend before the hike, we put the packs together and did a 1.6 mile hike around the neighborhood to give the boys a feel for the weight. Both of the boys were pretty seasoned campers, but they had never backpacked before. They seemed up to the challenge, especially after I explained to them that there would be plenty of "honeys" at the lake. I actually had never been to the lake before and had no idea why prepubescent boys would even care about honeys, but it seemed to at least give my son a goal he could fixate on before and during the hike.

The food we brought was pretty similar to my last hike:

• Breakfast
• Quaker High Protein Oatmeal
• Coffee 
• Ramen
• Lunch
• Tortillas
• Peanut Butter
• Jerky
• Dinner 
• Knorr Sides
• Three Musketeers
• Kind Bars
• Snacks
• Cheezits
• Cookies
• Fruit snacks
• Clif Builder Bars
• Zebra cakes

Weather

The weather was absolutely perfect. On both days, the low was about 50, and the high was about 70. I did not see or feel a mosquito the entire time, which is just short of a miracle in late March in Mississippi. There wasn't much rain the week before our trip, so water levels were low, making for easy crossings at all the streams.

Difficulty

The Tuxachanie is very well blazed. Parts of it are almost ten feet wide, completely clear, and flat. I taught the boys how to look for markers and how to tell the difference between the main trail and side trails, and even being on their first hike, the boys seemed very confident when following the trail.

The Hike - Day 1

Strava activity for Day 1

Joker slept over at our house so that it would be easier for us to head out in the morning just after 8 am. Of course my gas tank was almost empty, so we had to stop at the Giterdone C-Store in Diamondhead, which resembled a mashup of an Indian casino and a country store. I purchased a large cup of coffee, and the boys got cheddar fries, a giant honeybun, and some Mountain Dew. My son actually wanted hot fries, so he was pretty disappointed. We arrived at the trailhead around 9:15 am, take a picture to use as proof of life for Joker's mom, and then we were off. The almost full bag of cheddar fries were left open in the car to bake and fill the interior with their glorious odor.

The plan was to take breaks at every mile, and everything was nice and easy to our first stop. The boys seemed to be doing very well, so we decided to go 1.5 miles before our second stop. We didn't see much wildlife, but I could hear tons of birds and the forest was very scenic and relaxing. Joker had to do a spiel every time we crossed a road along the lines of "WHY ARE WE HIKING WHEN WE COULD HAVE JUST DRIVEN HERE!?" He's a pretty good actor, so it was still mostly funny by the fourth time I heard it.

Our second stop was at 2.5 miles, and we took a long break for snacks and water. My son had his Tamagotchi with him because he didn't trust his sister to babysit, and I believe this is when he lost his pocket knife while pulling out his digital pet. How are Tamagotchi's still a thing? A couple bridges were down and not replaced, but it was easy to go around because the water level was low. A little after this second stop, we saw what I'm pretty sure was a copperhead snake swimming around.

Our third stop was at around 4 miles, which was a quick one since we were getting close and wanted to finish. A little after this final stop, we ran into a water crossing that Joker thought we should jump. My son and I went first, and he proceeded to lose his balance and push me in into the stream. Both the boys thought this was hilarious since a couple of "honeys" happened to be coming up behind us and probably got a good laugh. Joker tossed his bag across, and since my feet were already wet, I carried my son across the stream. Joker showed us his mad jumping skills and cleared the stream no problem before we got back on track.

The boys were very excited to arrive at the camp site. Once the lake started to come into view, they took off in a mad dash for the last few hundred yards.

Camping

Joker insisted we setup the tent right away. It was only my second time setting up this tent, and our helpful neighbors were happy to lend a helping hand.

Airey Lake

As soon as the tent was setup, the boys decided it was time to swim in the lake. Our other neighbors got a kick out of the boys and were very helpful encouraging them to fight past fear of mud and critters. We all swam out to the middle and back without too much drama. Then we decided to swim all the way across, and I made the mistake of yelping in pain as something bit my toe, which sent my son's anxiety into overdrive. Joker ripped right across the entire lake and back, but my son took a lot of coaxing to even get back in the water. We made it across by letting my son take breaks on my back every 20 feet or so and then walked back after making to the other side. I found about 6 leeches on me, but the boys were surprisingly leech free. I guess they only like drinking old blood.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing frisbee, cooking dinner, and getting our bedding ready for the night. At some point, the boys threw the frisbee into the lake, but Joker was willing to retrieve it with a little coaxing. I thoroughly enjoyed the leisurely camping, so I was feeling pretty good about our decision to keep the mileage low.

We didn't really need a fire to make dinner, but the boys were hellbent on making one. Joker started with a teepee structure, which didn't work out, and then moved onto a log cabin/teepee hybrid. There wasn't much wood around, so the fire was small and only useful for tests of manhood.

Fire ritual

As darkness descended, our Canadian neighbors built a large fire and started singing songs to their Mandalay guitar. I was able to convince my son that they were cool, and we sat out for a while to have a good chat. Joker wasn't convinced though, so he was the first to bed around 10 pm. The Canadians were going on a multi-month trip up and down the United States, and they were super nice and open as I lamented about the drudgery of my office life ;).

My son and I rolled into bed around 11 pm, and the sleeping was rough for me since I couldn't get comfortable. I got up around 2 am for a nice stroll around the lake, which ended up being the highlight of the trip for me. The lake was so peaceful after everyone was asleep.

The Hike - Day 2

Strava activity for Day 2

In the morning, I got up first to start packing and preparing breakfast. The boys got up around 8 am to cook and help finish up the packing. We were able to get things loaded around 9, so we said our goodbyes to the Canadians and started trekking back to the car.

I'm not sure if it is typical to be in a rush on the last day to get back to civilization, but I certainly appear to be developing a pattern of just that. I'll spare you the details, but the second day was a bit of a hell hike. Joker came at me strong with seemingly infinite variations of "are we there yet" for the first four miles. I finally got him to focus his energy on something positive for the last two miles, and we coasted to the car for a pleasant finish.

We immediately drove to Sonic for our post-hike feast, but it was closed for Easter. We then drove to Taco Bell, which was also closed for Easter. At this point, I was about ready to go Old Testament on this Southern town when we finally found a Wendy's that was open. Frosty's, burgers, and fries capped off a great weekend.

HOWTO: Create a GPX trail from a non-georeferenced trail map image

There are various trail web pages that you can subscribe to for GPX files of almost all the trails in the US. However, if you are thrifty and would like to make your own for free, it is relatively easy to create a GPX trail that you can use on your watch or phone from a non-georeferenced trail map. For the curious techies, non-georeferenced simply means that the trail map has no metadata for placing the map in its appropriate location in a GIS (geographic information system) application. I'll now describe how to (1) georeference the trail map and (2) then hand-trace the trail into a GPX file. General instructions on how to georeference a raster image can be found here.

Initial Requirements

• GIS application such as QGIS.
• GIS base data layers for rivers, lakes, roads, county boundaries, etc. For example, Natural Earth Data has a lot of free 1:10 m national data layers you can download, and you can search Google to find State specific datasets such as these for Mississippi.
• OPTIONAL, MMQGIS plugin for drawing latitude and latitude lines. This makes it easier to georeference the trail map but is not required because you can instead use other geographic features such as rivers and roads.

Initial Setup

If you are already familiar with GIS, feel free to use or make your own base map for the area of interest and skip to the Georeferencing the Map section below.

• Create map with base Layers
• Download and save base layers to hard drive. I recommend using at least a county layer, a river layer, a lake layer, and a road layer.
• Create project in GIS application.
• Add base layers to project.
• Reorder base layers so that, for example, the county layer acts as a base for your roads and river layers.
• Change rendering of layers so that, for example, rivers are blue and roads are gray.
• OPTIONAL, change the coordinate reference system (in QGIS go to Project > Project Properties > CRS) of the base map to a regional projection for the area of interest. For the Tuxachanie Trail in Mississippi, I used a NAD83 (North American Datum 1983) East Mississippi projection.

Example base map for Harrison County in East Mississippi

• OPTIONAL, create lat/long grid lines. In QGIS, the MMQGIS plugin (in QGIS, go to Plugins >> Manage and Install Plugins) can be used for this purpose and is pretty self-explanatory. The grid lines are probably going have to be pretty small (0.05 degrees or smaller), so be sure you are zoomed in and don't overdo the extent when generating the lines. The grid lines can be used when adding georeference points as described below.

Georeference Image in QGIS

• If necessary, install Georeferencer GDAL plugin (Plugins >> Manage and Install Plugins).
• Obtain the highest resolution image of trail map possible. I recommend doing a Google Image search and then filtering for large sized images.
• Initiate GDAL plugin (Raster >> Georeferencer >> Georeferencer).
• Add at least four georeference points at easily identifiable locations (road or river intersections, intersecting grid lines, etc.).  Find the same location on Google Maps (right-click to drop a point in Google Maps at georeference point and use X and Y coordinates of point) to determine the coordinates for each georeference point.

Example georeferencer points (little red dots that are difficult to find)

• "Start Georeferencing" to execute plugin and generate georeferenced raster, which should be automatically added to your map project.

Georeferenced raster with base map confirmation

Convert Trail Map to GPX

• Create a new empty shapefile layer of line type.
• Enable editing by toggling editing of the new line layer.
• Create a new feature and trace the trail image to add all the vertices to a single polyline. In QGIS, you can use the arrow keys to pan the map while zoomed in.
• Save edits in the new line layer.
• Export the line layer to GPX (Layer >> Save as). In the Save As dialog, select GPX as the format, specify a filename, and deselect any attributes before running export.

Final product