Saturday, 21 March 2020
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| today's route |
I crossed Huzzah Creek twice, once when I was on Route 62 and again when I turned onto Route 412. Nice name.
I passed lots of big green fields, a few cows, a donkey, some sheep. I had views of rolling hills when the road climbed high enough to let me look down.
I came to Yellville, pop. 1,204, Home of the National Wild Turkey Calling Contest. (Bet you didn't know that one.) I'd also heard it's home to Violet Hensley, renowned fiddle maker. In 2004, the Arkansas Arts Council designated her an Arkansas Living Treasure.
I passed the turn for the town of Flippin, and the turn for the Bull Shoals/White River State Park. All the businesses along Route 412 seemed geared around the White River: lodgings, boat rentals, restaurants, fishing guides.
The much larger town of Mountain Home, pop. 12,448, is the home of Mountain Valley Spring Water Co.
I passed the turn for the town of Mountain View and the Ozark Folk Center State Park. The folk center says it's designed to protect and present to the public the Ozark cultural heritage and tradition. I would very much have liked to visit, but it too is closed due to the virus.
I'm seeing lots of BBQ places - I guess for when all the fishing enthusiasts I see businesses for don't catch anything or get tired of eating fish.
I saw the very large and beautiful Norfolk Lake, a few boats on the lake, and the town of Henderson, established 1852, which bills itself as the only town on Norfolk Lake. And I saw a lakeside picnic area that wasn't itself underwater, but the road to reach it was.
I heard someone on the radio express concern that those battling for sobriety would have an extra battle now that AA meetings are being canceled. For many, those meetings make a life and death difference.
I saw a billboard that read: Trump Pence 2020 - Make America Great Again. Which seemed a little odd to me, because it's one thing to use that slogan in 2016 when he was first running, but something very different to use it after he's had almost a full term in office.
Lots of hills, lots of curves in the road. Big fields all along the way, but today I saw only a few cows and, for a long time, didn't see any at all. A horse, a donkey. Today the fields were all for crops, apparently. Mostly just scattered little communities of houses.
I passed through an actual town - Viola, pop. 337 - where the high school mascot is the Longhorns.
And I saw several longhorns mixed in with some non-long-horned cows.
Constant hills and curves in the road.
I passed a large field of solar panels with a sign: NAEC Solar Array.
And then I came to the town of Salem, pop. 1,635, and found out what NAEC stands for. The statue in this photo is in front of a building for the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative. Pretty neat statue, I thought.I've been seeing blooming japonica and wisteria coming out in brilliant yellow. I love the wisteria when people don't trim them but let them grow - shoot out branches that go straight up to the sky with their vibrant yellow arms.
More Trump 2020 flags flying on poles in people's front yards. Pres. Trump can clearly count on prevailing in North Arkansas this November.
Mammoth Spring
The town of Mammoth Spring, pop. 977, lies on the border with Missouri and has a state Welcome Center. I didn't realize it at first, but the welcome center backs up to Mammoth Spring itself.
The mouth of this spring is actually 70' below the surface of the decent-size pond it creates. From the pond, it flows out and becomes the Spring River, which I crossed after I left town.
The spring produces 9,000,000 gallons of water per hour. That's 9 million gallons per hour. It's (no surprise) one of the largest springs in the world. And here's a little of what that looks like, taken from an overlook at the national park.
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| This is the pond the spring forms. It has 2 outlets - one is center left (you can see the foam), the other is at the edge of the photo center right. |
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| A more direct view from the overlook of the left-hand outlet. |
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| That same outlet taken at a stream-side level. You can see how deceptive the previous angles were in not showing how much water was actually coming through. |
I think the video makes it easier to believe in the 9,000,000 gallons per hour statistic.
It was a bright sunny Saturday and the area was full of people not paying any apparent attention to social distancing. Of course, my dogs have been helping me practice that for years now, but I'm starting to worry both about all these non-believers, and also about me when I have to come in contact with them in grocery stores and gas stations and campgrounds. We'll see how it goes.
Back on the road
The road south from Mammoth Spring goes steeply downhill for quite a way, giving me time to realize we must have been at an elevated height, though I learned later the elevation is only 520'. Although I guess for Arkansas that's not bad, considering the very highest point is Mount Magazine at 2,753'.
Anyway, this road south was a roller coaster road, going steeply down hill, then rising up again in a series of s-curves, with this pattern continuing for a number of miles.
US Route 412/Route 62, which I followed for most of the day, had stretches that had been cut out of rock hills to make the road more level. Since I was still going up and down some steep hills, I wouldn't have automatically thought of this road as being level, until I compared it with what driving it would be like if they hadn't blasted out parts of the hills. It was like driving west from Austin into the Hill Country, only the stretches of blasted-out hills seemed to last longer.
In my experience, Ravens aren't as thin as the ones in the statues (the one in this internet photo is like all the statues), but they are more self-possessed than any other bird I know.
Also in Ravendon, I saw a sign at a church that said, "Look to God for answers, not government." I wondered if that were a comment about the current pandemic and hoped it didn't mean they'd just ignore the public health officials.
I sat at a railroad crossing and watched 133 cars plus 3 engines at either end pass. The crossing arm came down just as I drove up so I had a front-row seat.
Because it was such a beautiful day - especially after all the rain and gloomy weather we'd been having - many people were out. Lots of traffic.
I came to the town of Black Rock, pop. 662, where there was once a bad day?
From there I turned off onto a state route, drove for many more miles than I thought I should be, and wound up in the town of Powhatan. Actually, I ended up in the parking lot of the county courthouse, dating from 1888, that's part of the Powhatan Historic State Park. It includes a number of buildings, almost all older than the courthouse, that have been renovated on their original foundations. What they're showing is a thriving port town on the Black River from the mid-1800s, using the original buildings in their original locations. It's remarkable, really.
Except, it was also the middle of the afternoon, I'd been driving for quite a long way and was tired and lost and not appreciating much of my location. I called the campground using the last bit of battery juice in my old flip phone and they gave me good directions for a few miles further down the road. And they pronounced this town "pow Hat en." I've always heard it pronounced "POW at en" so I looked it up to see if this was a local thing or if I'd been wrong. What I found is that we're both right. It's pronounced both ways, apparently regardless of what part of the country the speaker came from.
When I stopped at the campground office to check in, I found their doorway open wide and the doorway completely blocked by 2 tables, set side by side across it. And realized that constituted just about 6'. The 2 rangers on the other side agreed it's now the new distance.
In almost every way, this campground was not comfortable for me. There was no wifi signal, which I'd expected but still sorry about. My campsite wasn't at all level. And the campground was surprisingly full of families with dogs. I finally realized that with all schools closed across the country, parents are probably at their wits' end trying to figure out what to do with their energetic children, and decided they could come be energetic in the open air. As a result, there seemed to me to be too many people here to constitute the social distancing we're supposed to be practicing.
And with all these dogs, I had a really hard time finding any place to take mine. They're beginning to get shorter and shorter walks, and my kids too are very energetic. Cooping them up as I've been having to do isn't very good for them.
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