A Mountain Day

Mountain Home – Mountain View, AR

This day maybe combined all the different things that you might think of when you think about the Ozarks into one day.

Super beautiful. Maybe more beautiful than we had given the Ozarks credit for. It really is pretty amazing. Love the terrain and the vistas and the rivers.

Super hilly. Again, maybe more than we had even thought the Ozarks might have for hills. We only went about 50 miles today and yet this was our biggest elevation day to date – with just under 4,000 feet of climbing. Was not our longest day by any stretch – but definitely some serious work out there . . ..

Some severe poverty. An interesting mix of normal homes, or even some wealth – and some extreme poverty – with falling down houses, garbage strung about, old vehicles rotting away, and just a general sense of hopelessness. Again, this was by no means everywhere – but it was there for sure. 

Some cute vacation towns. Norfolk and Calico Rock were particularly impressive – with quaint downtowns and lots of shops – that were actually still open.

And some more sobering things. To its credit, Norfolk had some interpretive signage about the Trail of Tears and the history of slavery in the area. But we also went by a state penitentiary. No big deal, except we saw what looked like a labor crew from the penitentiary marching out to dig ditches or something – with two men on horses standing guard over the procession. Chain gangs are supposedly a thing of the past, but this scene certainly evoked images of those ignomius relics of days gone by. A little difficult for our Minnesota sensibilities to look at all this . . .

Churches and dog grooming. We noted yesterday how many churches there seem to be down here. Diana noted today that there are also a ton of pet grooming and pet boarding places. Which made me think of a reference that only the older members of our blog community will know. Remember in When Harry Met Sally (one of the greatest movies of all time, by the way) when Billy Crystal’s character notes that they should combine the obituaries and the apartment rental ads: Richard Peterson passed away yesterday; he leaves behind his daughter and a 2-bedroom apartment on 3rd Avenue . . .

We’re thinking they should do something similar around here: church services complete with a baptism for the children and a good washing for the dogs. After all, the churches seem pretty competitive, might be a good way to attract new people.

One other thing about Arkansas. There are lots of brown signs around here. I mention this because brown signs usually represent some public amenity. An historical marker. A state park. A trail (we were impressed that we saw mountain bike trails on state land today). Things that make for a nice area. Iowa – very few. Missouri – not many. Illinois seemed to do pretty well on this score. But have to say – I wouldn’t have predicted that Arkansas would be a leader on this . . .

And then a more general observation about camping as you go farther south. It seems like people don’t use tents down here. Many of the campgrounds don’t even allow tents (kind of like Rochester). But it’s not unusual down here to have a campground with absolutely no tent facilities. And you don’t see anyone tent camping. Not only that, but people don’t even do campfires. The place we are staying in tonight has zero facilities for making fires. The upshot tonight was that we had to go out to dinner again – Mexican for what seems like the 43rd time. I know, I know – we should get used to it . . . Yes, but there is plenty of time for that. All the more reason that we would rather branch out now.

On the more dramatic front, we need to go back to last night and J.R. When we arrived back at the Oak Tree Mobile Home Park after the rain and dinner, we were confused to see a blue tarp strung over part of our tent. Weird.

Before we could fully investigate the situation, J.R. appeared (people seem to appear and disappear around that mobile home park with remarkable ease).

“We saw this tarp and this suitcase farther down the creek and we thought they must be yours,” he said as he started riffling through the blue tarp to reveal an old suitcase.

”We thought maybe they blew down there in the storm.”

Now, we’re not any great experts on Southern storms, but unless there was a tornado (which, we thought, we probably would have noticed), it didn’t really seem like this whole, rather large, suitcase could have “blown” away from our campsite. But, again, maybe storms in the South, particularly in mobile home parks, work a little different than they do in the North.

This point was really brought home when JR opened the suitcase to reveal a full pantry worth of canned goods, some tent stakes, and some other various accouterments of living – none of which appeared to be particularly light.

Anyway, we told JR that this stuff was not ours. He packed everything up, apologized – he really is a very nice young man – and we thought nothing more of all this.

Until the next morning, when we packed up – and realized that the bags for the tent and the tent stakes were gone.

”I guess whoever owned the tarp and the suitcase must have found them and taken them for some reason,” we surmised. (We had no explanation for why the remainder of our stuff – the actual valuable stuff – was left. But then, I guess you can’t account for the logic of someone living out of a suitcase.)

We spent the whole day surmising what might have happened. We weren’t too upset about it – I had been wondering whether there was really a point to these bags that just ended up stuffed into our panniers anyway.

Okay, now before you start offering suggestions on how to better secure our tent against marauding suitcase haulers, I need to get to the end of this story. It’s not a very dramatic ending really . . . Turns out that we had shoved the bags into some corner of the panniers and we found them again upon setting up camp tonight. So – at least for now we’ll dispense with the surveillance camera or kryptonite lock for our tent encampments . . .

One more difficult day of hills tomorrow – so I’m off to bed. Diana – she’s still going strong practicing Spanish. 

Adios Amigos!