Bench Plaques for Jeff Smith and Tommy Sue Marsh – July 15, 2015
Traildogs Al Gathright and Jerry Shields hit the trail today to do some trimming and to install two plaques on sponsored benches. We drove to the Brady Mountain Trailhead parking area for the 3/4 mile hike into the first bench, located on the banks of the small creek the Trail crosses.
This bench was purchased by the Traildogs to be sponsored for Jeff Smith of the Hot Springs Sentinel Record, who was tragically killed in a car accident. Jeff had followed the development of the LOViT from the first day of construction until his untimely death. He wrote hundreds of articles about the Trail’s development and was instrumental in bringing the Trail’s existence into the public eye.
We installed a brass plaque in honor of Jeff’s support. The location is a beautiful, secluded location and has a very nice view of the creek and the small waterfall just upstream from the bench.
Hiking into Jeff’s Bench site, we trimmed the undergrowth and brush from the trail, but the short spur from the parking area to the trail, as well as the entrance to the trail from Brady road, are badly overgrown. We will schedule an early morning work day to open up these three trail entrances in the near future.
We then drove a mile north on Brady Mountain Road to the old forest road, and we then drove and trimmed the road to near the parking area just below where the old road intersects the trail.
We then hiked and trimmed about a mile up to the summit of Brady Mountain, where we have two benches installed at the base of the rocky spine near the Balanced Rock formation. We installed the plaque for Jay Marsh’s wife on one of the benches that Jay has sponsored for that location.
Hiking back to our vehicle, we found where some stupid fool had attempted to pull up trail mile marker Number 33 that was installed last year. We will have to pull up the bent rod and replace the rod and reinstall the maker.