Piney River Brewery: An Excursion!

We had a serious amount of fun this summer! We did not do a great deal of traveling, but in late August, we did spend a weekend in the Ozarks—as in, more deeply in the Ozarks. (Jefferson City and Columbia are technically “Ozark Border”—we have a taste of it, but it’s not as pure as when you go down, say, to the piney woods of Shannon County!)

We started that weekend on a celebratory note by visiting Piney River Brewing Company in Bucyrus, Missouri, Saturday afternoon, August 23. (It was interesting that not a month before, we had visited Bucyrus, Ohio, which the Bucyrus in Missouri is named for!)

Bucyrus, Missouri, is not at all a big town. It’s not even a “four corners”; it’s more of a “wide spot in the road” just east of Houston, Missouri (the seat of Texas County and the hometown of Emmett Kelly, the famous “Weary Willy” clown). And the Piney River “BARn” taproom isn’t exactly easy to find! If you’re interested in visiting Piney River Brewing like us, make sure you know the hours they’re open (only weekends at this point), and where you’re going before you get to Bucyrus. Why? Because you may have trouble getting an Internet signal in that area. Don’t depend on your “device”!



So I’m warning you: Check your Google map way before you get close, or you’ll be stopping at the tiny Bucyrus, Missouri, post office, asking for directions. (By the way, I’d like to thank the lady there that Saturday, who was kind enough to offer us what directions she knew. You big city people, you don’t know how nice people can be until you ask for, well, any kind of help, in a small town.)

More on the drive in a little bit. Let’s get to the fun part, the brewery! Check out Piney River Brewing’s website, okay? Then, you’ll want to friend them on Facebook, so you poor cusses who don’t live in their distribution area can find out when their products are finally available near you. I’m sure it’ll soon be available in St. Louis and Kansas City, but for now, hmmph. It’s pretty much exclusive to the Ozarks the beers celebrate.



Since you can perfectly well visit their website on your own, you can see for yourself how they won gold in the 2014 World Beer Cup for their Float Trip Ale, and gold in 2013 for their Old Tom Porter at the Great American Beer Festival. Pretty good for a brewery that started in 2010!



I won’t go into their beers too much, except to say “fresh and delicious!” and Hooray! Their beers, the names of their beers, and their lovely designs celebrate the Ozarks, including its natural and human heritage. (I hope they’re paying their designer well, because her designs contribute greatly to the joy of their beers.) I love it that their beers celebrate raccoons and river eddies, Missouri mules, float trips, and hot dates down on the river.

(Someday, maybe they’ll see fit to make a brew after North America's one and only native marsupial! Dear Piney River people: May I humbly submit--the “Opulent Opossum Stout”??)



The “BARn” is a renovated seventy-year-old barn that’s been made into a “nanobrewery” on the ground floor, with a spacious taproom in the second-story loft, along with a deck with a beautiful view of . . . well . . .



This is really out in the boonies, folks!

Here’s a little slideshow of our visit there.

Not knowing when they opened, we were early and waited outside while the band (it was bluegrass, y’all, and they were good!) moved their instruments and equipment into the BARn.



Though we were the first ones there, many other folks showed up, everyone driving on gravel roads to get there. It must be gratifying to have established something that people will go far out of their way to get to!



It was a regular little crowd in there! For those of you who are interested in all the particulars, here’s the details about what was on tap that day:



They really made that barn into something remarkable. You know it’s impressive when even the lavatories stay with the down-home theme.



But seriously, folks, be prepared for the drive. That photo at the top of this post was of Highway ZZ, the last stretch of paved road before you reach gravel Walnut Grove Drive, which the brewery is at the end of:



Fortunately, we arrived just as one of the Piney River guys was setting up their sign. It was encouraging we were on the right path!



We got the sampler tray, which had seven beers and (thankfully) a printed list of the beers we were tasting. I hadn’t tried their Sweet Potato Ale before (I’m usually skeptical of “flavored” beers, as they are usually too overdone and cloying), and I admired its subtlety. The Bronzeback Pale Ale (named for Missouri’s celebrated smallmouth bass) seemed especially delicious, though—maybe because its refreshing brightness complemented the heat of that weekend. And the hot, dusty road we took to get there!

(A digression: Beer and wine tastings forever remind me of the “France” episode of Absolutely Fabulous: “This is the one! . . . This is the one!”) Ahem. Oh, well. It wasn’t like that at all, but I think of it, and it cracks me up.



Finally, I should mention that the Piney River Brewery is indeed located near the Little Piney River. As you drive on Highway 17 from Houston to Bucyrus, you drive over the Big Piney River at Dog’s Bluff Public Fishing Access. All of it is very near the brewery. Isn’t it pretty?



Dog’s Bluff is a beautiful spot to have a picnic, or go swimming or wading. This scenery is inspiring, to anyone in need of rejuvenation. No wonder they make such inspired beers in this area!



Now, don’t you want to take a little drive, through hills and hollers, to the bustling metropolis of Bucyrus, Missouri? Now that we’ve been to the Piney River “BARn,” we can recommend it!

Note: Thanks to Sue, for letting me use so many of her excellent photos. All the ones in this post that look good are from her!

Vichy Fire Tower

After we finished our hike last Sunday at Spring Creek Gap Conservation Area, we decided our legs could accomplish a little more, so we crossed the road (Old Highway 63) and climbed the ca. 130 steps up to the top of the Vichy Fire Tower.




Fire spotting is no longer done by people in towers, but the groovy old towers still stand on hilltops throughout the Ozarks. They are fun places to visit.

When I was a kid, our family would often picnic at highway rest stops, often near these towers. Dad would take me and Paul up to the top of the tower. Of course we kids were rambunctious from having to sit in the car, and Mom, Grandma, and whoever else were busy digging fried chicken, potato salad, pickles, and tomatoes out of the picnic basket and preparing the table for our feast.

Revisiting these fire towers today, I am amazed that Dad took us up these. Most parents today would have fits over the potential danger of falling; they wouldn't feel safe up there themselves, much less their Nintendo-hyper kids. There's no screening to give you an illusion of safety; just the bare beams and all kinds of void around them. You would not bring a toddler up one of these.




Anyway, we didn't have any kids with us, so we could simply enjoy the sights from on high.

We could see part of Highway 63--the stretch from which you can see the tower.




It's a long way down.




And we even noticed that we could see the shadow of the tower--and the tiny figures of us--outlined on the trees of Spring Creek Gap. (Yes, we waved at ourselves!)




I'm surprised that these fire towers haven't been ripped down, fenced off with barbwire, coated with Warning Keep Off signs. Here is an actual, serious, potentially dangerous and deadly thing, on public property, with no one immediately around to rope it off during an electrical storm, hold your hand, or tell you to quit throwing things. It is pretty amazing.

So if you like to get great views of the Ozarks, stretch your legs while on a drive, or just acquire a little different perspective, you might pull off the road and clamber up one of these towers occasionally. Before the lawyers make them all come down.

Addendum, September 18, 2011: Apparently the Vichy Fire Tower is no longer accessible to the public. Read the comments below.

Heat

One of the nice things about living in Central Missouri is that we are located on physiographic and ecological borders. Here in Jeff City and in Columbia, we’re technically in the Ozark Border Natural Division, but we’re at the edges of so much more.

To our north are the rolling Glaciated Plains and their rich loess soils (think “Iowa”); to the south are the hilly and forested Ozarks, ancient eroded mountains dripping with charming natural springs, creeks, and rivers; to the west are the Osage Plains, including numerous places there native tallgrass prairie persist, given loving protection, in much the same state as when wagon trains and drovers faced it over a hundred years ago. And then we also happen to be situated on the Missouri River, whose “big river” riparian habitat, floodplain, and natural terraces create its own unique character.



Able to plant my feet upon cropfield plains and Ozark forest leaf litter, prairie grasses and the banks of a muddy, half-a-continent-draining river, I can claim it all as my home turf. Growing up here, I have always found myself unable to succinctly characterize or picture Missouri’s landscape, because I developed an organic and inclusive notion of the diversity. You can’t sum it up easily the way people tend to do, say, Kansas.

(Perhaps this is why I found the lands of Arizona so appealing; there, as here, you can drive for a couple of hours and suddenly find yourself in a whole new landscape. It’s much more subtle, here, and more mind-blowing there, but it’s the same basic thing.)

So although I’ve been talking a lot about the Ozarks so far, I also want to talk about the prairie. And this is a good time to think about it, too, because we’re getting our hottest temperatures so far this year. All this week and into next, with no relief in sight, it is getting into the nineties, with the heat index going well above a hundred.



I usually think of prairies as hot places—in part because some of the best times to see the wildflowers are right when it’s starting to heat up, and also in part because there are no trees on the prairie, thus little relief from that battering sunshine.



For fun, and to give you an idea of how prairie folks think about the summertime heat, here’s a few passages from John Madson’s Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass Prairie (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995), 181-83. This classic book (originally published in 1982), by the way, is highly recommended reading.

If you’re from the Midwest, chances are there’s someone in your family tree, back before air conditioning, who suffered “heatstroke” or “sunstroke” and died. Here’s a picture for you.

The continental weather that sweeps the tallgrass prairie region is a raw, unrefined climate, untempered by any large bodies of water that might serve as reservoirs of warmth in winter and coolness in summer. Frostbite one month, sunstroke the next. There are places in North America that are colder than the prairie Midwest, and some that are hotter. But I’ll stack our prairie country against any as the hottest cold place, or the coldest hot place, on the continent.

In a switch on Sam McGee’s famous cremation, a story is told of the old Nebraska farmer who had died in retirement in San Diego. The mortal remains were trundled into a crematorium and subjected to an hour of white-hot flame. When the furnace was opened the old man stepped out, a healthy flush suffusing his weathered cheeks. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the edge of a calloused thumb, looked up at the sky, and said:

“Shore good to be home again. But by God, another couple weeks of this and we ain’t gonna get a corn crop this year!”

It has always seemed incredible that only a few sheets of the calendar separate the prairie winter from summer. Some prairie years have a temperature range of nearly 150 degrees, beginning with the land lying numb and silent under its iron sky, melting into weeks when that land is stunned by the full weight of summer, parboiling in transpired vapor that rises in shimmering waves from fields where corn leaves droop and curl.

Given a choice of being parboiled or baked, I favor the latter. I have hoboed through midsummer in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts where the afternoons were a white blaze and nothing geared to desert life would be abroad. . . . And yet, that heat was not exactly uncomfortable—it was simply untenable in the full sun. It had an odd purifying effect, seeming to shrink tissues and burn away unneeded juices until a man was fired into the igneous conformity that the desert world requires. To one accustomed to the sweltering prairies, it wasn’t half bad.

Summer deserts notwithstanding, I can think of no purer form of hell than threshing oats in the old way, and stacking straw under the blower of a steam-driven threshing machine on a July afternoon in central Iowa or Nebraska. The stacker worked directly under the blower, tramping the center of the growing stack to give the proper rounded shape that would not only shed water readily, but which was also the mark of a good farmer. He labored in a midday twilight of dust and blown straw, his face a mask of grime and sweat, consuming vast quantities of water or “stichel”—the ginger-and-water mixture that some old-time threshers preferred. Almost as bad was the job of spreading straw through the barn lofts or “haymows,” working under airless, dust-choked eaves in a torment of itching chaff and smothering heat. It was a labor often complete with the afflictions of Job—I can recall the “thrashers” who did such work while tortured with carbuncles on their necks and wrists, fierce occupational boils that were aggravated by dirt and sweat. . . .

The sun blazes, weighing unbearably on the enduring men. The air is thick and heavy and they are drenched with sweat that cannot cool them.

Madson reflects on the hellish scene he’s just painted: “No, the working definition of heat is not to be found in the Mojave but in prairie fields with the afternoon standing at 102° and a relative humidity of 80.”

. . . It’s still only June, and my weatherman says, “No relief in sight.”

ADDENDUM, July 2015: The "stichel" Madson refers to is also called switchel, or haymaker's punch. And it's making a comeback! Read here for more details.

Cooper’s Landing

We went to Cooper’s Landing yesterday afternoon. What a great decision that was!

This is my first post about Cooper’s Landing; I am sure there will be more. It’s just upriver from Easley, which is south of Columbia on the river. If you drive to Easley and turn right (north or northwest), then Cooper’s Landing is your next stop. Unless the road’s washed out again, that is.

Fortunately, there’s more than one way to get to Cooper’s Landing, as it’s a popular fuel, groceries, and concessions stop for boaters on the Missouri as well as campground and eatery for bikers along the Katy Trail. So you can drive, boat, bike, or hike to Cooper’s.

And once you get there, you won’t want to leave. Here’s why.

1. The river. There are great views of the Missouri. Ahhh. Watchin’ the big muddy river slide by, with the sun highlighting every dimple and swirl on its surface. The trees. The primeval smell of the forest. The sound of the water lapping rhythmically against the docks. (Are we there yet?)

2. Excellent live music. There’s a small area for performers under a beautiful big sycamore tree, with chairs, benches, and picnic tables all around. Bluegrass, folk, country, acoustic, rock. Check out their calendar to see who’s playing. Yesterday afternoon, it was Pippa Letsky and a couple of her friends, playing that kind of bluegrass filled with such impossible woe that your own troubles seem light in comparison.

3. Libation. Note: they do not allow you to bring in your own beverages (see, selling beverages and food is how they get income) (and don’t worry, their prices are reasonable and they have a good selection). And bless their hearts, they have big recycling bins for all the bottles and cans. They care about the environment!

4. Food! They have a restaurant so they can serve regular kinda food, like burgers, breakfasts, and other home-cooking, but there’s also Thai food available! Chim’s Thai Kitchen is in a trailer on the premises; the food is served on paper plates and you eat it at a picnic table. So what an awesome idea, huh? We’re at Cooper’s Landing: “What are you in the mood for?”

Note: as with the beverages, they don’t want you bringing in your own food; don’t bring in a cooler at all. Again, they do offer something for everyone, and the prices are decent, so there’s no need to bring your own.

5. Family atmosphere. Seriously—even though a diverse and not squeaky-clean crowd passes through Cooper’s Landing, I’ve never seen people behaving in ways you wouldn’t let your children see. (Though I’ve never been there much after dark or on nights when rock bands play.)

6. It’s peaceful and casual. Everyone’s been pedaling all day, or boating out on the river, or trapped in some dreaded office, or something, and we’re all here to get away and relax. Camping and fishing clothes are fine. A Hawaiian shirt means “dressed up” here. Be comfortable. Wear sunscreen and Deet, perhaps, but never a tie.

As I said before, it’s easy to get to, whether you’re driving, biking, or boating. And now you can see, once you arrive, you won’t want to leave. The only solution, then, is to come here more often.

Again, check out their Web site for upcoming events and music. If you’re looking for a relaxing place to kick back, Cooper’s Landing is a great place to start.

They Call It the Arkansas Grand Canyon

First: Apologies for being so far behind. I’ve been pretty busy recently. It’s not that I don’t want to post, it’s that posting doesn’t get me money for the house payment and stuff . . . So today we’re dialing back to the little Arkansas trip.

The day was Saturday, April 25. We left Eureka Springs and drove to Hot Springs, driving first to Harrison and then south down beautiful Highway 7. And I do mean beautiful. As I read in Scenic Driving the Ozarks by Don Kurz, Newton County, Arkansas, is too rugged to have ever had a single mile of train track in it. Meanwhile, the land is rich in flora and fauna, and ecotourism is flourishing here in one of the prime natural highlights in the Natural State.

We had lunch at the famous Cliff House Inn and Restaurant, which is six miles south of the town of Jasper, in the Boston Mountains of Ozark National Forest. (That’s the next post.)

The big attraction here is the so-called Arkansas Grand Canyon, which offers grand views over several miles across the Big Creek valley. I haven’t been able to figure out quite how far the view is.

I have to admit that whoever decided to name this area the [Anything] Grand Canyon had a lot of chutzpah, and even more, marketing savvy. Millions of people see the Arizona Grand Canyon, and millions more would love to see it.

But let’s briefly compare the two, shall we?

The Grand Canyon in Arkansas:

--Presents a steep drop of over 600 feet; according to Google Maps’s topography, the Cliff House is at about 2,000 feet of elevation, and Big Creek is at about 800 feet. (Dry Branch is the creek below the Cliff House; it contributes to Big Creek, which drains into the Buffalo River.) So the valley below is at most about 1,200 feet lower than where you are sitting when you eat your Company’s Comin’ Pie.
--Has an “expansive view of several miles across Big Creek valley” (per Kurz, mentioned above). I think it is about six or seven miles to Round Mountain or Riddle Point, in the distance.
--The town down there, a ways off in the distance, is Vendor (pop. 229), elevation 834 feet. Again, the Cliff House is at ca. 2,000 feet.

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, in Arizona:

--The vertical distance from the South Rim to just the Tonto Plateau is at least 2,000 feet, probably more. Total depth ranges from 3,500 to 6,000 feet from rim to river.
--The distances across the gorge are between 4 and 15.5 miles (average of 10 miles).
--Down at the Colorado River is Phantom Ranch, at 2,550 feet in elevation. Grand Canyon Village, at the South Rim, is at about 7,000 feet.

So. If that isn’t enough to convince you these are two radically different places, and that the folks who named the Arkansas place “Grand Canyon” were gutsy and creative marketers, compare the scenes below. Which picture was taken in Arkansas, and which in Arizona? (Hint: You don’t need any hints.)

(P.S. Doesn’t my sweetie take good pictures?)

Big Trash Day ’09

Thursday, April 30, was Big Trash Day on our street. Once a year the city and the garbage company have a citywide big-trash pickup they call the “Spring Clean-Up.” They publicize it in the papers and everything.

According to the city’s Web site, here is what they would pick up:

Furniture
Large bulky items (in 2007 the city announced this includes “vacuums, tables, sofas, chairs, and chester drawers”) (sic)
Televisions
Microwaves
Tied bundles of scrap material under 4 ft.
Household garbage in Allied Waste blue carts or Allied Waste clear, printed trash bags

Here is what they would not pick up:

Appliances
Tires
Plastic bags of debris, trash or garbage
Boxes of debris, trash or garbage
Yard waste
Lumber or guttering over 4 ft.
Rocks, bricks, concrete
Waste oil
Car parts
Acid batteries

Basically it’s everyone’s big chance to get rid of dead microwaves, stained, skank sofas, white-elephant window air conditioners, broken stereo cabinets, excess rotting lumber, boxes of rags and broken toys, etc. Yes, I said boxes. Look at my pictures and note how many things got picked up that weren’t supposed to, according to the rules. I’m so glad they picked up all this boxed and bagged and oversized stuff anyway; it saved us from having the neighbors try to burn it in their backyard.

It’s amazing how these houses spew forth all this just . . . crap. One of our “neighbors” (nonresident owners of a house that’s been vacant for at least a decade) finally took the opportunity to start emptying all the junk that remained in the house after his dad passed away (again, a decade ago). I swear: The entire sidewalk in front of the house was filled with rubble. It was a pile that eventually stacked up against the terrace. It looked like an avalanche of junk.

Of course, with my revised perspective post-Arkansas, I realize I should be grateful that JC at least has this annual event: Otherwise, all this trash would end up down a ravine somewhere out in the county, or else take up permanent residence in people’s front yards. Yee-haw.

Because the city doesn’t say which specific day they’ll be by to pick up the stuff, we only know which week they’ll be coming by. In this case, our half of town was supposed to have the pickup begin as soon as 5 a.m. Monday. And the trash had been accumulating for at least an entire week prior to that.

And it’s been raining. And it’s been warm. And then raining again. Ew.

But here’s the funny thing: People are going out trolling through the junk piles. Some people come by in pickups and with trailers, taking specific items like microwaves or air conditioners. Or old lawnmowers. Or old furniture. I think they intend to try to salvage it.

Others come by with the whole family, and the whole clan pokes through the rubble like they’re at a garage sale where everything’s miraculously free. Kids play in the street with raggedy, soggy toys and on bikes too small or falling apart. Women pick through damp boxes and hold up garments. The daddies search for whatever treasures they’re into. It’s kind of funny, kind of sad.

As Sue pointed out: Trolling through the trash on our street is doggone pathetic, since most of it wasn’t new to begin with. People on our street probably found their furniture and stuff in last year’s spring clean-up! We agreed that we would both be tempted to go trolling through, say, the Constitution Drive neighborhood, a doctor-and-lawyer neighborhood, where people are probably throwing out brand-new stuff they’ve never even used. Old-style Blackberries and hopelessly out-of-date Kindle 1’s. (One man’s trash . . .)

Anyway, after almost two whole weeks of having the sidewalks buried in greasy, skank rubble, and having nightly trollers driving by slowly, peering intently at the filthy piles, a series of garbage trucks came Thursday afternoon and took it all away.

There were three garbage trucks for our block: I kid you not.

Friday Was Eureka Springs

First off, it was a “biker” weekend, and I don’t mean bicyclists. It was a good thing we didn’t stay at the historic Basin Park Hotel, right in the center of downtown, because we never would have slept.

The Town

Eureka Springs is one of those unforgettable towns, a place that makes an impression on you. If you don’t understand the Ozarks or what its hills and hollers are capable of, Eureka Springs is a great place to start. I dare you not to fall in love with the place.



The landscape is incredibly hilly; the roads curve and switchback. Many are quite steep. They are narrow. You can see why bikers would love the place. The architecture is antique, colorful, charming, stately. There are many, many Victorian homes with gorgeous paint jobs. Larger institutional buildings, hotels, businesses, and the like are made with stone. Many of the oldest sidewalks are of well-worn stone, and not concrete.




Because of the topography, you can enter a building, go down three or even four flights of stairs, and emerge again on ground level. There are stairways that compete well with those in Montmartre.

To assist in the tourist congestion, the town has a trolley system, enabling you to park at your motel and ride all around the town—what a wonderful and progressive idea.




You get the idea that there are plenty of progressive and creative types in the town. There is a lot of whimsy in architectural ornamentation and yard sculptures. The gardens, flowers, and landscaping are profuse, informal, and cheerful. It reminds me of places like Santa Fe, Jerome, Arizona, or San Francisco: Artist colony, hippies, free-thinkers, creative writers, cooks who enjoy ethnic influences, people who color outside the lines. Walking around the town, you see cool things that people have done with old stuff, junk, and other simple things, and it inspires you with crafty ideas.

The Springs

I don’t know what the official count is, but there must be dozens of natural springs in the area. Several of these are well-known historic spots and have been preserved by the town, made into nicely landscaped little town parks, with interpretive signs nearby.




It is a little hard today to imagine what it was like in the late 1800s when people were such believers in the health benefits of water. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I encourage you to read the first hundred or so pages of Loring Bullard’s Healing Waters: Missouri’s Historic Mineral Springs and Spas, which provides a great explanation of the thinking before modern allopathic medicine and microbiology became the leading pathways for understanding and fighting disease.

The “taking of waters” goes back at least to biblical days and to Classical times, and hot springs, mineral springs, sulfur springs, artesian wells, sweet springs, and so forth were conceived of as part of God’s gift to mankind, like food and medicinal herbs, things put here to help us live.

By the late 1800s, doctors who specialized in mineral water treatments were codifying water-based treatments for specific complaints and diseases that involved drinking, bathing in, and soaking in various types of mineral waters. Anecdotal evidence fueled faith in the efficacy of these treatments.

I mean, people really took this seriously, and state governments hired geologists to conduct surveys of the state’s spring locations, their rate of output, and the various types of waters that flowed forth. Think of it this way: If Paxil, Vicodin, and Prednisone seeped naturally out of the ground, today’s governments would want to have an inventory of those resource riches, too.

But now it’s mostly a quaint old memory, though the waters still flow forth out of the ground and, in Eureka Springs, in stone grottos and basins built a hundred years ago. There are drinking fountains at many of the park springs, and yes, the waters taste sweet and cold and clean. If you go, bring some empty jugs with you.



Also, bring a nice book, your paints, or your writing pad. You’ll want to spend some quiet time in Eureka Springs, sitting on a park bench somewhere, or on a little patio or porch at the hotel or B&B where you’re staying. There are lots of sweet little cottages where you can stay, or, like us, you can opt for a hotel. Next, we’re gonna talk up the Bavarian Inn. Stay tuned.

Arkansas Weekend: Overview

Well, that was pretty fun! We just got back from spending three nights in northern Arkansas. Friday night was Eureka Springs. Saturday night was Hot Springs. Sunday night was in Mountain View. I’ll write about the more fun aspects later, but first, and to get it “out of the way,” here’s the overview. Sorry it’s such dry reading.

Friday morning, from Jefferson City, we took Route 54 south through Lake Ozark and Camdenton, then Routes 7 then 5 to Lebanon, where we picked up I-44 to Springfield. After a picnic lunch (windy!) at a local park north of Lake Springfield, we continued southward on I-65, through the outskirts of Branson. Before reaching the state line, we turned west on Highway 86 and crossed over a southern arm of Table Rock Lake. We skirted the state line for quite a while, then went south on Missouri Highway P, which became Arkansas 23 when we crossed over the boundary. And Arkansas 23 leads right into Eureka Springs, where we spent the first evening.

We drove around the town’s historic loop, stopping often to look at the various springs, take photos, and partake of the healing waters when fountains were available. The hotel where we stayed was the Bavarian Inn, on the west side of town, which, considering it was a “biker weekend” in all of northern Arkansas, was incredibly quiet and clean and lovely. Easily the best lodging of the trip.

Dinner that night, if you can believe it in Arkansas, was German food, there at the hotel’s restaurant. Very good. After dark, Sue and I drove back to town and walked in some of the neighborhoods, ending up at the St. Elizabeth Catholic church, next to the historic Crescent Hotel.

Saturday, we took Highway 62 east through Berryville and Green Forest to Harrison, where we picked up Arkansas Scenic Byway 7 and drove south clear to Hot Springs, having a pit stop at Jasper and a lunch at the Cliff House restaurant, which famously overlooks the so-called Arkansas Grand Canyon. We picked at a couple of rock and crystal outlets outside of Russellville. You know I couldn’t resist it.

At Hot Springs, we had reservations at the historic Arlington Hotel, which is part of the National Park. Dinner at the Arlington’s Venetian Dining Room. Afterward, we took a walk down Central Avenue to look at tourist-trap shops (on the west side of the street) and to view the historic bathhouses (on the east side). The bathhouses are owned by the park service and are being renovated and then leased out. One, for instance, is a local art gallery.

Sunday morning, we looked at the visitor center and bathhouse/spa museum at the historic Fordyce Bathhouse on Bathhouse Row. After that, we drove to the top of Hot Springs Mountain (still part of the National Park) and went up in the viewing tower there.

Back on the road, we took Grand Avenue to Highway 70 to Interstate 30, heading to Little Rock. We stopped at Benton for lunch; the restaurant, called Catfish Barn, was worth driving in circles for. If you’re driving through there, skip “Crack Yer Barrel” and go to the Catfish Barn.

In Little Rock, we took 430 north, then 630 east to the city center, where the state capitol is located. Dad wanted to see the Arkansas state capitol, and so did we. We also saw the statutes of the Little Rock Nine, and later, as we were driving out of Little Rock, we saw the William J. Clinton Presidential Center (i.e., the presidential library) from the highway. Not enough time to stop there.

Heading north from Little Rock, we took Highway 40 to Conway, then took a route identified variously as 287, 65, and 25 through such burgs as Springhill, Greenbrier, Damascus, Bee Branch, and Choctow. Then 9/95/330 north to Clinton, and then 16 or 9 through Shirley and Rushing to Mountain View. We stayed at the Best Western Fiddler’s Inn.

Dinner was at a place called Wing Shack and Cheeseburger Grill, which I have nice things to say about. After dark, Sue and I went downtown to the square, where we enjoyed live bluegrass music outdoors in two places right across the street from each other: the “Pickin’ Porch” at Aunt Minnie’s Yellow House, and Mountain View Music.

Monday morning: a cold front was moving through, and it was windy and rainy. We had breakfast in our rooms from the Best Western’s lobby offerings. The Ozark Folk Center, an Arkansas State Park, apparently is closed on Mondays, so that was a bust. We did have fun walking the square and poking around in shops, especially a general mercantile, which happened to have a fun selection of used books at low prices, and the Mountain View Music Shop: music stores are always fun.

North on Highway 5 through Optimus to Calico Rock, which is a cool little historic town on the White River. We had lunch at a café there. Then it was all crazy backroads (5, 177, Norfork, Salesville, 5, Briarcliff) to Mountain Home; then 101 to Gamaliel, and then across the state line back into Missouri. At Caulfield, we got on 160 and took it to West Plains. A pit stop there, and then we got onto Highway 63, which leads directly to Jeff City . . . via the Vienna Drive-In for sundaes, of course.

So that’s the overview. I did most of the driving today (hence my fuzziness about today’s route, which I did not pick out myself—I just drove where my dad, the geographer and lover of blue highways, told me to). It rained or sprinkled most of today, and the roads were fairly challenging, so I’m going to leave you here with this rather dry post.

More colorful specifics, with pictures, to come. But now it’s time for me to start focusing again on work and work and work. More soon.

Prairie Home Conservation Area

Here’s another Central Missouri area that’s great for a hike. Sue and I went there on Saturday, April 4, and it was our first time to hike there. Because the area is so large, and we hiked only a part of the trails, what I’m going to describe to you is based on a first, limited impression. So bear with me, and keep your eye out for further posts. This will have to be a “developing story.”

First, the blah-blah background. Prairie Home CA is in eastern Cooper County and on the western, slanted edge of Moniteau County. If you find the town of Prairie Home on a map, the CA is about four miles south of it. There’s a gravel road—Cedron Road—going east-west through the area between Highways W and D. (By the way, it’s pronounced SEE-drun, for the small community that used to be in the area. The historic Cedron Church, founded in 1841, is still there.)

The 1,461 acres of public lands are shaped like a C, or an O that’s almost closed, and an eight-mile-long hiking trail loops around it. This trail, called the Buckhorn Hiking Trail, is remarkable because it is a favorite of Boy Scouts. In fact, it was built by scouts, and at least one portion of it is maintained by California, Missouri’s celebrated Troop 120, which has been hiking the area, planting trees, maintaining the trails, picking up litter, practicing outdoorsmanship, and in other ways generally demonstrating good stewardship of the area for decades.

The Missouri Conservation Department has a good brochure for the area, but if you can get a copy of the modified trail map put out by Troop 120, it is good to have, too, for it indicates several points of interest along the trail, including the “Halfway Fork,” “Missouri Rock” (shaped like the state’s outline), and a stately bur oak tree that was growing when the United States was born. There’s even an informative note about the powerlines that cut through the landscape: “These carry electrical power from Lake of the Ozarks to Columbia.”

The Buckhorn Trail connects several primitive camping spots, parking areas, fishing lakes, and miscellaneous points of interest. It’s easy to see why this would make a wonderful all-day hike. . . . Or a shuttle hike, which is what we did, leaving one car at Point B, driving in a second car to Point A, then hiking from Point A to B.

You could start and end the trail at any number of places. We opted to begin hiking at Parking Lot 6, on the east side of the park, following the Buckhorn Trail north, then west in a wide arc along the park’s northern perimeter, finally veering south, to end at Parking Lot 2, near the west entrance of the area.

There are several ponds and lakes in the Conservation Area, and as we drove through the park to set up our shuttle, we noticed a number of anglers hiking into the woods with their rods and tackle boxes. I understand that the parking areas were purposefully set a small hike away from the fishing areas, in order to gently discourage people from indulging in trashy beer busts at the water’s edge. (Great idea, methinks.)

By now you can tell I have some insider information, and yes, I do: My uncle is one of the leaders of Troop 120, and he has a long association with the area. In fact, he had his own good reason for encouraging us to go out there and try it out this weekend: Troop 120 and several other BSA troops recently enjoyed a camporee there, and my uncle wanted us to hike one section of the trail in particular in order to remove several tags he and my cousin had placed on trees to test the scouts’ forestry identification skills. So we were hiking with a mission!

Of course, as you can see, we got sidetracked by the pretty wildflowers. We both brought cameras, and, well, this just happens to be the beginning of the best time to look for wildflowers in the state, in my humble opinion.

Though I have to say: the ticks are already out. I plucked at least six from my jeans over the course of the afternoon. Young but not tiny ones; fast-moving. Dang them, anyhow. It’s already time to start grabbing the DEET.

Wildflowers in bloom. Whites: Dogtooth violet, toothwort, spring beauty, Dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot, rue anemone. Mayapples just coming up and unfurling the foliage. Pinks and purples: Dead nettle, redbud, violet wood sorrel, Johnny-jump-up, blue and purple violets. Yellows: Pale corydalis. Browns: well, the trillium is coming up, but it’s not blooming quite yet. (At least, not at Prairie Home. That we saw.) (I’ll spare you the Neo-Latin.)

Amazing how just a few weeks can pass, and suddenly all these pretty flowers are pushing out of the soil, threading their way through the fallen leaves, lifting their shining faces to the sun.

The trail was very enjoyable. Well-planned, varied, good relief. The creek crossings were at pretty locations and were doable by picking your way across on wobbly rocks. If you have a hiking stick, or a Leki trekking pole, it will come in handy, unless you don’t mind your feet possibly getting a little wet. Here is one of the dry crossings, however:

As for the trail condition, we noticed a few problems: Horseback riders. We studied the maps and had a hard time figuring out which trails were designated for horses and hikers (“Multi-Use”) and which were only for hikers. At times, I think the trails coincide for short distances, then diverge. And if I couldn’t quite tell where one kind of trail begins and another ends, I’ll bet horseback riders have the same problem and end up on the hiking trails by accident. So parts of the trail had been chopped and clopped up by hooves, especially when it was kind of muddy earlier this week. In a few places, we had to walk alongside the trail to keep out of the mud.

But that’s a relatively minor complaint, and I trust that the folks at the MDC are “on top of the situation.” Right?

Here’s the kicker: Even though the area offers all kinds of “outdoor uses”—for riders, hikers, hunters, fishers, and disabled and able-bodied alike—and even though we knew others were in the park because we saw their cars and horse trailers . . . we didn’t bump into anyone during our entire hike. Pretty nice, huh?

Especially on a lovely Saturday in early April in Missouri.