Trip

Mary Beth and I just got back from our first vacation of any sort since covid began. It's sort of a repeat of the trip we took just about two years ago to Lake Ouachita in Arkansas. We went to the same place and stayed at the same place (a "cabin" in the State Park) though we did some different stuff. I took off on Friday so we started out and drove over in the morning. On the way we stopped off at a couple of places that are part of the National Forrest that surrounds the whole area. The first was Lake Sylvia. Mary Beth got her wish to go swimming. It was a pretty nice, not crowded lake. The water level was pretty low. You could see the markers and the level was way lower than the water mark. The shallow end where they had the dividing rope barely went up to the shins. There was a diving platform that probably woudldn't've been safe to dive off of even if it wasn't closed off due to falling apart. It looked real cool and very midcentury/national-parksy. Mary Beth was about as happy as she gets swimming in the lake. We continued on our way to the next spot. Google had us going through what ended up being miles of gravel road. Think it was mostly logging roads. It was pretty stressful driving the little Kia through so much gravel. Then when we're almost there and on a normal, nice, newly paved highway it fucks up and sends us the wrong way. This time for a short bit down another gravel road but we're almost there so...we get to the road it's supposed to be on, we're going to Iron Spring, and we get on Iron Spring Trail and it's literally a fucking trail. It's a dirt road that seems barely used with quite tall grass growing down the center. But this is the road it's on...right? We keep driving down on what's much more stressful than even the gravel was. Finally we realize we're heading towards the end and this doesn't seem fucking right and, look at the map and see what we're looking for, the park, nearby, but, you know, right on that nice fucking real-road highway. So I manage to turn around in the middle of the woods where there isn't a turnaround and get us back down off that fucking trail. Then we get to the real Iron Spring park and it's pretty cool. The water's low there too, but it's a nice little spring that's close to the parking lot and there's a little bit to walk down. Then we head to the park where we're staying and get into our "cabin" (I mean, it's like a hotel room inside but bigger and almost-house-sized, just the same as what we stayed in last time). We see we have just enough time to do one more thing so Mary Beth makes a last minute distance/time calculation and points us to Brady Mountain which is a nice little peninsula that sticks out right into one of the widest and most open parts of the lake. We pass the dam on the way and that's pretty cool. But we get there in time to watch a pretty amazing sunset. The lake's very low as well, much lower than the last time we were there (we got an explanation on this later...) and we take advantage of a little promontory that probably would mostly be covered at some other time. But we get nice and out there and get a real perfect view of the sunset. Then back to our cabin to rest up. I got a pretty nice view of the stars though the people in the cabin next to us were outside with a little fire playing acoustic guitar, it seemed like there may have been a guitar lesson of sorts...and I got to hear a version of that "love is what I got" song (I guess that's Sublime...shudder) and "Brown Eyed Girl". It was severely hampering my ability to enjoy the majestic insect sounds so I couldn't stay out too too long.

We were up Saturday for a nice action-packed day. We headed out to Talimena Scenic Drive that starts on the western side of Arkansas and crosses the border into Oklahoma. It's a mountain road that rides up across the ridge of this mountain range. It's a fifty-four mile road with lots of steepness and curves. It was a lot of fun to drive but it would be terrible in anything short of perfect weather (we were lucky to have perfect weather the whole trip) (and it's closed when it's cold or foggy as well). There are lots of vistas along the way and we stopped at a good many to get out and enjoy the incredible views. Mary Beth was nervous the whole time, but it at went pretty well. At one point in the middle we even had a black bear cross the road right in front of us! (I even got a chance to take a little Duolingo break as I had a bit of reception and where we stay on the lake mostly doesn't get any reception at all, so trying to keep my streak!) We made it to the end and turned back around and came straight back down it. It was all gorgeous and awesome. On the way back we attempted to stop at Charlton Creek, looking for another swimming place, but it seemed shallow and crowded so we skipped it and headed back to our home-base. Though about swimming there, but it was even more crowded. We had a sunset boat tour scheduled so we made our way down to the marina at the necessary time. It was out on a pontoon boat and was pretty awesome. Our guide was one of the park rangers and we charming and funny and knowledgeable. We went around, got to hear some tidbits of knowledge about the lake and etcetera. I even learned that vultures (there are a good bit of turkey vultures around the lake) doesn't circle because they're surrounding a dying animal like all the movies say, but because they use the thermals to glide up to a suitable altitude, they're very economical animals and don't flap their wings much and take advantage of those air currents to rise up nice and easy. Cool fact! We stopped at a little island on the lake. We got to see yet another beautiful sunset on the lake. The sky both days was, while mostly feeling clear, had a bit of a hazy feel diffused up around and that lent to an even more magical feel for the sunsets. Maybe it was more hazy the first day than the second. I don't know. They were very awesome with a very red sun and the lake and all that lovely stuff. The ranger made a lot of jokes and one thing he said everyone thought was a joke. Someone asked something about spiders and he was like oh yeah a bunch of spiders are going to be coming down from the ceiling soon, I should have told you that before we left! (That last part was said kinda jokey.) But then after it started getting darker, yeah, spiders started coming down from the pipes in the ceiling. They were fine, but it was kinda funny the way it'd sounded like a joke at first, but then, you know, yes, spiders.

Today was our voyage home. But we stopped at Garvan Woodland Gardens, a nice huge botanical garden kind of place. We walked all around the whole thing and got to look at lots of stuff. The main part is very gardeny. It's all on a peninsula but then there's like sort of a side-peninsula with a different section that's all the natural forest of the land. We walked around it all. Got a couple real nice views of the lake that that place is inside (Lake Hamilton) on the tips of each peninsula. Kinda the most fun part was the "children's adventure garden" (am I a damn kid?). It had lots of rocks to climb around on and a little cave behind a waterfall you could step past through and this fuckin' crazy treehouse that was this awesome architectural marvel, hard to even describe, but kinda based around these geometrical vertical slats. There was a little rope net/ladder thing at one point that I climbed up. And yeah, realized it was definitely for kids as my feet were pretty much too big to fit into the rope-holes. There was a koi pond with huge koi. There was this chapel that was also a crazy architectural marvel with a somewhat similar vertical lines premise, but a little different too. This chapel was more complex and based around narrow/acute triangles as the dimensions of the building. Lots of glass. Pretty cool. Then before we hit-hit the road out of Hot Springs (this was down in Hot Springs), we stopped at Bubba's Catfish-2-Go. They were out of a few of the first things we asked for, but we got a bunch of catfish and some delicious hush puppies and these crawfish pies that are fuckin' holy-shit amazing! They're like those little friend hand pies (kinda like empanadas) with something like a crawfish jumbalaya inside with a remoulade sauce and it was so tasty and I didn't even mind spilling a bunch on my shirt while driving. Then we stopped in Little Rock on the way home to pick up a pizza from Damgoode Pies to eat when we got back home. Then we got back home and ate it and it was delicious too! So yeah, home, great fun trip. It'd been too long! I probably forgot to mention some stuff so maybe I'll remember later and let little tidbits trickle back into my upcoming posts (or I'll just forget everything, whatever).