White Oak Lake State Park, Bluff City, AR; Oct 14-20, 2013

Abandoned town

Pretty city sign

Our drive to White Oak State Park took us through some deserted

countryside, then through the similarly deserted town of Bluff City. It was sad to see two blocks of buildings completely deserted. Shortly after we passed through Bluff City we arrived at the park. I can’t say enough good things about the folks who work there – friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. This park was laid out rather

Campground

Campsite

strangely – most of the time campgrounds are laid out so the camping unit is between your awning side and your neighbor’s awning side and at nearly right angles to the road. This place had the awning side right along the road. After we got used to it, it was fine – of course, it helped that it wasn’t busy and most of the folks who were staying there were hunters and weren’t in camp most of the daylight hours.

What used to be the lake

At one time, our sight would have backed up to White Oak Lake,

Poison Springs

but a couple of years ago, they blocked off that part of the lake in order to make repairs to the dam. They have since reopened the lake but Mother Nature isn’t cooperating. It has been unusually dry and the lake hasn’t refilled so the lakebed is billed with weeds. Still, it was pretty in its own way.

There wasn’t much to do out that way, but we did get to a sister park down the road – Poison Springs. It’s certainly not a name that inspires one to visit, but at the recommendation of the ranger, we did. Poison Springs was the site of one of three Civil War battles in the area. There is a kiosk with information about the battles and a pretty nature trail through the woods.

Part of Nature Trail

We drove to a little town nearby – Chidester – to see what was there: empty buildings, a flea market, a convenience store/gas station, and a Laundromat were all I saw. Apparently both Bluff City and Chidester are suffering from the low lake level, which has ended the big fishing competitions that were held at White Oak and the biggest source of income for the two cities.

We head next over to Texarkana, TX for almost two weeks before heading down to Tickfaw.

Petit Jean State Park, Morrilton, AR; October 7-14, 2013

Rich at the bear cave

Petit Jean is a mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks and home to

House across the canyon

Arkansas’ oldest state park, born 1923. There are many beautiful trails and overlooks in the park and we managed to get to several. We weren’t sure when we saw our site whether we’d ever get it leveled – the site was about a foot and a half higher in the back than in the front and we used stabilizer pads, lego leveling

Judy on the trail to bear cave

blocks, a hydraulic jack, and 1x8s – everything we had before we got it
close. We were both antsy with jacking the tongue up hip-high, but didn’t have any problems, thank heaven.

Rich and a big rock

The campground itself was in a loblolly pine forest and no underbrush, and the sites weren’t laid out well at all – water and electric hookups were all over the place – and Rich had to straddle the bumper at the back of the site with the trailer wheels to be able to get it and the truck onto the site, and get the slides and awning open.   

Cedar Falls - can you see it?

It’s obvious that it is an older park and laid out before slides and long trailers. We did luck out with neighbors, though. We had a couple across from us with four children whom they home

Overlook on Red Bluff Drive

schooled and the kids were great. They loved Dickens and were great (translates to quiet). Then we had a grandpa with two of his grandchildren on one side of us and the kids adopted us for their short stay. Other than that, we had no near neighbors.

We took the Bear Cave Trail one day and the scenery was amazing. The forest was hickory, white and red oaks, loblolly pines, sycamore, and dogwood trees and the sandstone  

Amazing view in spite of smoke

Big forest fire we saw from the overlook

rocks were huge. The area had been the floor of an ancient ocean some 300 million years ago, but now Cedar Creek has cut through the sandstone and created a 400 foot deep canyon.

What kind of bird is this?

Across the canyon near Bear Cave Trail

Red Bluff Drive is a pretty drive through a forest along the edge of the canyon bluffs. There are two overlooks from which
you can see miles and miles in all directions. Sadly, there was a huge forest fire nearby and the smoke had settled a thick haze over the area. At one overlook, we got a photo of a bird but haven’t identified it yet. If you can, please leave a note with the common name.

Cracks in the rocks

Palisades Overlook was a huge rocky outcropping from which we could see

across the canyon to an overlook on Red Bluff Drive. There are big cracks in the rock through which you can see to the bottom of the canyon. I stayed way away!

Rich on the trail to Rock House Cave

We started out to Rock House Cave, but didn’t go far because it was all rock and our shoes were slipping on it. Since neither of us wanted any broken bones, we took some photos and turned around to explore other locations.

Cedar Falls Overlook was another beautiful spot and a bit more to our current liking. You can barely see the waterfall in the photo – it has been very dry here and the

View from Stout's Point

river is very low. You can see the semicircular spot at the bottom of the waterfall – it was nearly dry.

Tug with 12 barges

Stout’s Point was probably the most spectacular spot – and the

30-some men on motorcycles who came in just behind us added to the sight. Here as at the Red Bluff Drive overlooks the smoke was obscuring much of the scenery, but the fields of crops, the Arkansas River, a tug with 12 barges were still visible.

The rocks on top are Stout's Point

Barge being loaded with grain

The night before we left Petit Jean a lady came with a little 12 or

14 foot Casita trailer that she had personalized herself. She did a great job and I fell in love with it. Much more interesting than a plain white trailer!

Personalized Casita

Now it’s off to White Oak State Park in southwest Arkansas.

Tall Pines RV Park, Branson, MO, Oct 1-7, 2013

Twisting road

The road we took to Tall Pines was for about thirty miles as twisting as the Devil’s Backbone in North Carolina. In spite of my looking straight ahead and trying not to look side-to-side, I was very relieved when we arrived in Branson West and Rich stopped to mail Peter’s birthday present!

Tall Pines

As you probably have realized if you know us or have read much

of this blog, we don’t often stay at private RV parks because we prefer the (usually) quieter, less cramped, and more forested feel of Corps, national, and state parks. With all the federal parks closed and the nearby state parks crowded, we scoured the web

More of the campground

and opted for Tall Pines. It was a pleasant surprise. Nicely wooded and in spite of the lack of buffer between sites, the layout of the place gave a feeling of privacy. The park was located in the Ozarks on a finger of land that dropped to a valley on three sides. The restrooms/showers were spic and span.

The countryside here is beautiful – I’m sorry we won’t be able to

be here in a couple of weeks to see the leaves change. Next year hopefully we’ll be in the Northwest and see that show.

Praying Mantis

Around the area

The town of Branson is very much like Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge

– touristy and expensive and too many people. We did go into a 5 and 10 store that has more stuff crammed into less space than any place I’ve ever seen. Inventory there must be a nightmare – and they do it by hand. We did find a couple of nice little produce stands with fresh apples, okra, cheese curds, and homegrown

Around the area

tomatoes, which we visited multiple times.

Around the area

There was a couple next to us in the RV park who were very

interesting. They were traveling with their horse trailer, which although there were no horses was outfitted with living quarters. The woman raises and shows horses (she had bought one from a farm in Ocala, FL), raises sheep and spins yarn from the fleece then weaves with the yarn. She told me a lot about spinning and weaving – enough to know I wouldn’t have either the patience or the pocket book for it! She said she comes to Branson for classes and that Missouri has the largest population of spinners and weavers in the US. Strangely enough, the northeast is where the most sheep are raised.

We didn’t go to Silver City, the p ark where craftsmen display techniques and crafts as well as teach. There are also entertainment shows with impersonators of big name artists, lots of shops with presumably homemade/handmade food items, and a train that takes visitors around the park. The $58 ticket price per person was just too steep for the little in which we were interested, but a lot of folks enjoy that sort of thing.

We enjoyed our time in the area and will plan on spending more time there next year.

Prairie Creek Campground, Beaver Lake AR; Sept 30-Oct 1

This campground is in northwest Arkansas and we had planned on spending a week here prior to going on up to Indian Point which is on the Missouri side of the same lake. It is a dinghy looking campground, with sites on the one lakeside loop crammed in on twisty little roads. The loop we settled on was out of sight of the lake, but had some room between sites and very few were occupied. Just our style!  The restrooms in our loop were less than satisfactory - cobwebs all over one of the two stalls, the faucet in the one sink spun around if you didn’t hold the base as you were turning it off. Definitely in need of a new building or at the very least, complete renovation. There was another building closer to the lake that housed restrooms and showers, but we weren’t there long enough to check them out. We weren't even there long enough to take photos!

The next morning we were told that because of the federal government shutdown we would have to leave, so packed up and headed up to a private campground in Branson Missouri. We’ll see that it’s like.