Walking trails help community get into healthy habit

A walk in the woods is an activity appealing to many Faulkner County residents, including those who don't regard themselves as outdoors people.

Walking is extremely good exercise with little risks, according to medical authorities and physical conditioning experts. Most any program prescribed for shaping up or recuperating from an illness will include some form of exercise, and walking is at the top of most lists.

That's why you see people at all hours walking the track at Estes Stadium at the University of Central Arkansas, the one at Conway High's McConnell Stadium and the asphalt path at Hendrix College.

For more of an aesthetic setting, other choices may be the Tucker Creek trail in western Conway or Bell Slough Nature Trail near Mayflower. There are trails at Woolly Hollow State Park, northeast of Greenbrier, too.

The Tucker Creek trail is highly popular, and one end is at a parking area on Salem Road, south of College Avenue. This is a one-direction paved path, not a loop. It accommodates walkers, joggers and bicyclists with seldom a conflict.

Walkers should be ready to move aside for runners or wheeled travelers, and the latter should make their presence known when approaching walkers from behind.

Benches are scattered along the mile-and-a-half trail for users who need a rest.

The trail is through residential areas, with houses always within sight. The trail crosses streets here and there, another need for watchfulness by users.

Bell Slough Nature Trail is a new facility, opened in 1999 by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission on its Bell Slough Wildlife Management Area just south of Lake Conway's dam.

The trail is a wooded patch 214 miles in length, a loop with a shorter loop for persons not wanting to make the full circuit. There are some ups and downs in the trail and steps in a couple of places, but it's not a difficult walk.

Much of the appeal of a walk on Bell Slough Nature Trail is what you may see and hear.

That constant hum is traffic on Interstate 40, but a few strides after the start of the trial, and users are in the woods away from vehicles or buildings. All sorts of birds can be seen and heard, including migrant birds. Most users get a fleeting glimpse of deer in the woods. There is a spot overlooking water where patient visitors have good opportunities for seeing ducks and other water birds.

Restroom facilities are at the trail's start, and it is open year-round with no fee or permits needed.

Woolly Hollow State Park has a trail leading to the old Woolly cabin that dates from the 19th century, and other paths include walks around the edge of Lake Bennett, the nation's first soil conservation lake, built in the late 1930s.

At Cadron Settlement Park, a short distance northwest of Conway, the Tollantusky Trail is named for a Native American leader and takes users to a scenic overlook of the Arkansas River as well as to points of historic interest from the early 1920s, when Cadron was a thriving center in the wilderness.