All Hallows day, posted a little late for lack of internet

October 31, 2011

There are no birds in Arkansas.  These birdhouses would make you think that birds have been here in the past, but all that I have seen are vultures, crows and herons. I think the rest of them left with the Ivory Billed Woodpecker  a few years back.

I do like this group of houses that looks like a bird village, even if there are no birds for them.

Speaking of deserted villages, this is what it looks like facing towards the lake from our RV.  It has looked exactly like that since we came here more than a week ago.  No other RV’s coming or going, no people out walking or sitting outside or picnicking.   Nada.   No one.  Do you think we have accidentally moved into one of those government bomb-testing villages?  I guess this is seriously off-season here.

  In-season must be something because there are over 100 sites here at   Kirby Landing and there are several more State Parks and recreation areas all around the lake.  I don’t think there is one square inch of shoreline that is not a park.  Each has about 100 camping sites and that many again picnic sites.   Of  course, there is the Lake Greeson dam at the narrows.

 The parks are beautiful and well kept..  Look at these places for group outdoor activities.

This one has a huge barbeque with a serving table down the middle.

This one has a fire pit with seating all around in a circle

And this one has the longest picnic table I have ever seen.

They all have swimming areas, ampitheaters, and marinas with docking for 60-80 boats at each of the places that I saw….some more.  Kirby Landing even has a motel at the marina…….you can stay here for a mere $150 a night. Not very special looking for that price.

We made one more trip to the diamond mine and this time a gemologist or mineralist or  geologist (something like that) lady came by and showed us what we were looking for.

  These are diamonds found here…

a white one, a yellow one, and a brown diamond.  Yep..a brown diamond.  They are about the size of a match head.
These are about a quasrter of a carat but the day before we went there a one carat diamond was found.   Not by us.

We also went to Hot Springs which proudly announces it is the birthplace of William Jefferson Clinton  (no picture-no interest in it).  It is a very historic town  but we didn’t  get to do much as it was kind of late in the day.

  This is the original building from when  the hot springs were first popular…. I’m guessing turn of the century.

Following picture from Hot Springs is an example of why you shouldn’t take pictures from inside the car.

Neil  took this picture because he thought it unusual that the roots  of this tree became exposed and then developed bark and became the trunk of the tree..

We  cleaned the shovel, emptied the lunch bag and are returning the screens.  Our mining days are over.

Tomorrow we head out to Texas.

Oct 27, 2011 Glenwood ARk

October 23, 2011

We are at Lake Greeson, a Corps of Engineers Campground.  These are areas where the Army Corps of Engineers have dams and flood control  projects and they always have campgrounds that are available on a first come first serve basis at a really reasonable cost.  Some of them are bare bones and some are a good deal nicer.  This is one of the nicer ones.   They honor the Golden Age pass which gets us half price (one of the perks of being old) so we are staying for one fourth the price that it cost us at  the KOA campground… true the KOA had more amenities but they were mostly for kids and this place is frequented more by boaters and fishermen.

Speaking of the KOA, look at this jumping place at the Bristol campground.  It is just huge and there is soft sand all around so the kids won’t get hurt.   What fun!

Neil found a more exciting  play place.

These are the docks here at the Lake Greeson marina, part of the campground where we are now.  Notice the poles sticking up in the air on either end of the docks…. the docks raise or lower on those poles with the water level.    Clever!

We are trying to train Twink to a leash… as you can see, he isn’t very happy with lesson one.  Progress report on that later.

I have seen cotton fields after harvest b but this is the first one I have seen when the cotton was ready to pick. Is it possible that some of this will be in one of my quilts some day?

The diamond mine in Murfeesboro

Here is Neil’s best find.  No, not a diamond, just a pretty rock

I wondered why these few acres of Arkansas were gifted with diamonds and no other such place existed  nearby.  Well, as I understand it, here is what happened:

  A gagzillion years ago this area was a volcano that erupted and the gas-rich volcanic ash and bits of lava shot into the air like champagne out of a bottle.  Then, when the gas cloud cooled and collapsed, it filed the 600 foot deep crater with ash which later became diamonds..   There is some returning ocean and layers of sand stuff involved too, but in a nutshell,  one quick boom and a few million years= tourist trade for an area of Arkanses that has no other reason to draw attention.  To give you an idea of its relative lack of feature, there is no Walmart for 30 miles.  Even Sam Walton passed it by.

The following picture is their demonstration of the rocks you can find there.  Each is so small that the location of the rock in this dish is marked by a push pin.  You have to have good eyes to be a diamond miner

.
No diamonds yet but tomorrow we go back with a long shovel and great expectations.  Heh

October 21, 2011

Bristol, Tennessee

Mucho heavy rain.  Not much chance for me to get out and walk and we were just starting to get into the heavy 18-wheeler traffic that I always associate with Tennessee so it seemed like a good time to stop for a few days.

The fall foliage here is as pretty as New England's this year

When the sign says a campground  has wifi, don't be fooled into thinking that it will be just like home.  I spent all last night trying to upload pictures and the on again-off again signal would cut out and I would have to start all over.  Luckily, Project Runway was on and I could watch most of the show in between uploads that I eventually lost altogether.  Also, out of boredom, I added a little Halloween touch to most of my pictures I am posting today, so you might look for those.

So, today, Friday, the sun is out and after yummy breakfast at Cracker Barrell,  we did a little loooking around . 

Do you think that after they ordered the sign and hung it up, the brothers Bare saw that it might have a second and unintentional meaning?

The south never gives up on flying this flag.  You lost.  Get over it.

There is some kind of aggressive vine here (I don't think it is Virginia creeper), that left to it's own I think would wipe out all other vegetation.  Here it is climbing up this tower.. I'm guessing 30 feet.  Stephen King could write a whole book about  that.

This is just wrong, isn't it?  I don't think Jesus would approve.

We leave here tomorrow am heading for Hot Springs, Ark, feeling refreshed and glad we stopped.

Hopefully more exciting stuff from there.

From Howie's corner

I'm so bored.

Trip to Belfast

This is a test run for our travel blog which we hope to start the first week in October.  So, to see if I can jump thru all the hoops and load pictures etc.  I will try to tell you a little about a trip we took to Belfast yesterday and hope I can remember how to do this. 

Very impressive changes in the Front Street Shipyard.  For anyone not familiar with this shipyard, it is a fairly new business with hopes of becoming a custom boat building facility as well as marina and boat repair.




FSS has a huge boat lift.  It is 40 ft high and can lift 165 metric tons.

  I started talking to a guy who was also taking pictures and it turns out that he knows a lot about this place.  His name is Merv and he tells me he is a Naval Architect, retired, and he and his boat  pull into Belfast in the summer and Fla in the winter.

So Merv says that one of the reasons that there are all those big catamarans and sailboats is  not only that a lot of the boats wanted out of the water for the recent storms, but that the nearest similarly able lift is in Norfolk, Va.

He also showed me this cat that is owned by an Italian man who is handicapped and confined to a wheelchair, so he has this lift on his custom built cat.

 Merv says this handicapped man often takes other wheelchair bound people  on the boat.

I guess he was in for repair/refurbishing  judging from the washing machine that I can see in the back of the picture there.  Looks like there are still clothes in it.  
A washer in your sailboat?  That is custom!


So, maybe when we come back in the spring,  Building 5 which is planned for this footprint,

 will be in progress.  It is where the lift will take the big boats for repair.  It will be 55 feet high  and have 40 ft high doors.  


Merv said that as a Naval Architect, his favorite boat here was a sailboat that cost $ 8 million .  He couldn't show me which one it was but I would like to see the family/person who owns an $8mil boat.