Blanchard Caverns

Ozark National Forest, Arkansas

We're heading northwest this morning as soon as we can get organized. I've managed to set up the new satellite dish so Mrs' Phred can watch the tennis channel on the road. In Arkansas, the state bird is the Razorback Hog, a rough looking porker.


Yesterday we went to Blanchard Caverns in the Ozarks National Forest. It's the only cave system run by the U.S. Forest Service. I'd rank it right up there with Karchner Caverns, Carlsbad and Mammoth Caves. They do a good job with double airlocks and lights that only go on when there is a tour group to see something.

We tried to take a shortcut on a US Forest dirt road, but had to double back when roads that were on my GPS proved to be elusive.

We had lunch on the White River. Trout fishing is very popular here. We visited a hatchery that releases 1,784,327 eleven inch trout into the local rivers each year. The hatchery and the caverns both prove that some of our tax money is well spent. Apparently at least one bureaucrat is devoted to counting trout....there's one!...There's another one.

We passed the little town of Calico Rock, population 991, high on a river bluff.

I was starting to worry about running out of gas, but we finally found a gas station.

Places to eat before you die

Keller’s Kove Restaurant and Bar- Lake Norfork, Arkansas

The restaurant is by invitation only. While this sounds exclusive, don’t overdress. They want you to call in advance because they need to know how much prime rib to cook and because too many biker gangs were showing up and getting into drunken brawls.

The prime rib is very large and tender, rubbed with a thick coating of black pepper. The menu still says the meat is hand cut by John, but this seems improbable since he has moved back to California. You get horseradish sauce without asking.

The restaurant décor is rustic, as befits a fish camp on Lake Norfork. The overworked owner/waitress had a new tattoo on her arm.

Paul and I ate there during the week. We killed two bottles of Merlot at dinner and brought home about half of the huge chunks of tender prime rib that arrived on our plates.

We were looking forward to the blackberry cobbler, but the boomers have been complaining about getting seeds stuck in their dentures so they switched over to cherry cobbler.

The lake is at record levels with all the spring rainfall. It’s been a tough spring with days of downpour and one tornado that carved a record 120 mile swath of devastation between Clinton and Gasville.

I’ve found a really good blog that adds a lot to the racial dialog occurring all over America. It’s called “Stuff White People Like” and includes extensive in depth analysis of this often misunderstood minority. Subjects include old t-shirts, San Francisco, Barrack Obama, whole foods, "The Wire" on TV, St. Patrick’s Day, yoga, expensive sandwiches, hybrid cars, microbreweries, having gay friends and foreign educations (Europe is good, but Tibet trumps everything).

We drove down to Conway yesterday to help Carolyn and Jason get their house ready to sell. I got to drive a big Toro lawn mower. It was pleasing to see the Barrack Obama stickers on the back of Jason's SUV. His friend Chris had one too. We had expensive sandwiches for lunch.

The Afghanistan/Pakistan Border

Who was that red dot?
I get a red dot on a map whenever someone visits my blog. Two weeks ago they archived all my dots and started over to keep the world from becoming a big red smear.

I recognize some of the new dots, like my friend Wierdo07, the English teacher in Moscow.

I wonder though, about the dot on the Pakistan border. Could it be Osama Bin Laden? Rural tribal Pakistan must get very boring...no Wal-Mart...no Starbuck's...bad TV reception...no Blockbuster's...but maybe a MacDonald's?

You can double-click the map or any of the pictures on this blog to see them in full-size.

Motorist Bites State Trooper

Mountain Home, Arkansas

We're back in Arkansas to see our old friends, Paul and Diane.

The first morning I raid the laundry fund for two quarters and head down to the Wal-Mart to buy a Baxter Bulletin. The news in Mountain Home always has a different flavor.

On the right side of the front page I read that a local lady has been sentenced to three years in the Arkansas State Prison for rustling 20 cows. The left side of the paper has several pictures of a man being wrestled into a police car by five burly state troopers.

The man left the road a high rate of speed, leaped over a culvert and crashed into a fence. When State Troopers arrived on the scene, the man refused to get out of his car and responded to the officers with a stream of obscenities. When the officers attemped to forcibly remove the man from his vehicle he responded by biting one officer on the hand. I prefer biting ears or noses, but he probably couldn't reach one of those. The motorist is now in the Baxter County jail. Apparently local bail bondsmen have declined to help him post bail.

The property next door is for sale. It is 25 acres of woods and pasture with a four bedroom home and a four stall red horse barn. The asking price is only $250,000. Paul says he will give me $60,000 to title over the 15 acres closest to his property. I imagine making a workshop out of the big barn.

It's 298 miles to Big Brutus. The route leads though Webb City, where we know the librarian. I borrowed Paul's library card yesterday. They were updating records and asked my address and telephone number. I had to confess it was a borrowed card. They asked me Paul's wife's name to make sure I really knew Paul. In a less trusting place like New York City, I probably would have been spread-eagled on the ground by armed security guards.

Ancient Mounds

Kolomoki Mounds, Georgia

I got up early to take pictures of the mounds and walk the trail. An odd feature of the walk though the woods was the use of yellow police tape to warn you away from trail offshoots that lead to nowhere.


The Kolomoki Mounds in Southeast Georgia were probably constructed during the period 350 BC to 650 AD. The population of native Americans in this location is thought to have been, at one time, the largest north of Mexico.

One mound is 57 feet tall and covers an area larger than a football field.


It contains over 2 million cubic feet of clay and dirt. The Mound A is so solid with clay that early archeologists joked that dynamite would be needed for excavation. There are dozens of mounds in the area. Some contain pottery that describes:

• A solar calendar divided into twelve months including equinoxes and solstices
• A star map of the night sky including constellations
• Representations of the paths of Mercury and Venus in the eastern predawn sky

Around 550 AD the mound building activity and population of the area declined. There is a theory that this decline corresponds to the eruption of Krakatoa, the most severe volcanic event of the last 50,000 years. As the weather worsened and food supplies declined, increased competition for dwindling food supplies led to an increase in warfare and to the development of the bow and arrow.



We blew off most of the things we wanted to see on the way to Arkansas. The Kolomoki Mounds had that ancient odd spooky feeling like the ancient Paestum ruins that we saw last spring in Italy.