Ozark Adventure: Photoblog

We flew out of Seoul's international airport on the morning of February 7, changed planes in Tokyo, and continued on into the past as we crossed the international dateline. By the time that we reached an airport in Detroit, where we were to again change planes, Sun-Ae caught me and the kids in a moment of our great excitement at being headed for Arkansas. Hardly able to contain myself, I forced my rear into a seat and read the second novel in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle: The Tombs of Atuan. Sa-Rah and En-Uk dealt with their own excitement by napping.

We flew on from Detroit to Memphis, where my mother and the wife of my brother John picked us up after a delay due to tornado damage from the twisters that had hit Arkansas and Tennessee, among other states, only a couple of days before. John's wife, Sandy, drove us the 150 miles to my hometown of Salem, Arkansas, nestled in a river valley with a couple of Ozark knobs as scenic diversion . . . except that we arrived late at night and couldn't see a thing.

After a very long trip, we found ourselves crashing into bed on the same day of our leaving . . . by the calendar, anyway, but as I discovered in my very first Ozark blogging effort on the following morning, February 8, my entry posted on February 9, as if I were still in Korea. Nevertheless, the links that I make to various blog posts will lead to the correct entries despite the date shown.

Anyway, on the morning of February 8, we drove east from Salem for 20 miles on Highway 62, then turned left toward Hardy, passing through part of Ash Flat and Highland, where we saw some of the damage wreaked by Tuesday's F4 tornado. As I noted in my blog entry about that drive, "An entire shopping mall was blown away, and enormous steel sheets littered the upper branches of trees, where the 200-mile-per-hour winds had twisted and wrapped the metal about like tin foil."

The resort town of Hardy had weathered the storms without damage, and after visiting that old place for an hour or so, we drove north on Highway 63 to Mammoth Spring, where the only halfway decent photo of the spring's enormous outflow of nearly 10 million gallons each hour appears below, showing Sa-Rah peering down upon the thunderous chaos of crashing water -- though the image captures only about half the overspill at the local dam, so the effect is not so impressive. I wish that the water were not dammed up so that one could see that huge spring emerging from the ground, but the dam has its own historical value as a landmark.


After a lovely Friday driving from Mammoth Spring north into Missouri and along the Missouri-Arkansas border on dirt roads where we saw many deer and a few armadillos, as well as the expected cattle and horses grazing in the roadside fields, we returned to Salem to relax and catch up on family stories and local rumors.

On Saturday morning, we all got up early and joined my brother Tim to visit the cattle that he and our Uncle Clarence Bowling have on the latter's farm near Bexar, Arkansas, a few miles south of Viola. In the photo below, you can see Sa-Rah and me feeding the cattle.


Afterwards, we returned to Salem for a family get-together in the gymnasium that belongs to the church where my brother John preaches. In the first photograph below, you see me speaking to my paternal cousin Clyde Ashley, with whom I used to play high school basketball. Clyde could really jump back in our youth. He could take a step and a half and leap up to get his elbow on the basketball rim -- despite being merely 6 feet and 3 inches tall. I used to envy his leaping ability.

On the left of the photo, you see my nephew Andrew, son to my older brother, Pat. Andrew has studied political science and is currently working for somebody's political campaign in Kansas . . . I think.



In the next picture, you see Clyde's mother, Virginia, who's directing her mysterious Mona Lisa smile toward the camera as my paternal cousin Bill, whom I hadn't seen in 40 years, is holding forth on something or other that has so utterly enthralled the attention of my Uncle Cran's wife, Gay Hodges, that she has momentarily closed her eyes. My Uncle Woodrow Hodges, however, still handsome and youthful at about 80, looks more skeptical at Bill's remarks.


In the next photo, you see my brother Tim coaching En-Uk on the finer points of dunking a basketball: "First, young man, you have to grow a little more." Tim should know, for he's as tall as Clyde and could jump even better back when he played ball, for he could consistently stuff the ball two-handed in a behind his head dunk and occasionally nearly hit his head on the rim. Playing against him was a humbling experience . . . but I think that En-Uk posed a significant challenge to Tim's current jumping skills...


After the family reunion was over, we retired to Tim's place to drink a few beers with cousin Bill, catch up on family history, and listen to an unofficial gospel recording made by David Lynn Jones that came into the hands of Tim's older son, Justin Hodges, when Jones 'retired' from the music scene. I'll have to tell that story sometime after I've listened to the music enough to have something intelligent to say about it. Justin, by the way, has his own band, Gazer, based in Batesville, Arkansas, and used to know Jones well because Justin was dating Jones's daughter back then. But that's a different story...

The next morning dawned bright and early because we headed to the church where my brother preaches and were joined there by Daddio al-Ozarka and his family for the service before heading off on our Izard County jaunt. Daddio has a website that he calls Exploring Izard County (EIC), so he's semiprofessional as a guide to Izard's lovely Ozark sites.

In this first photo, you see some magnificent bluffs on the White River. These drop some 200 to 300 feet down to the water, so don't be fooled by appearances. The sight is dizzying -- especially after a beer that Daddio generously provided. I did no more drinking that day.


The next photograph shows a different location, this time on the upper Calico Rock Creek near Dolph, Arkansas in a hollow formed by an old, very old, collapsed cavern system of which this natural bridge remains as evidence. In this image, you see a mingling of families -- mine, Daddio's, and that of a fellow EIC man named 'Rick'. This natural bridge arches about 30 feet up, I estimate.


Next, you see another image of this bridge, with Daddio, his lovely wife, and two of their energetic children.


After our exploring, Daddio led us to a place called Roscoe's for dinner, where we were joined by an echo from my childhood -- the young fellow wearing glasses and sporting a moustache. I hadn't seen him in so long that I no longer remember his name. Just kidding. Actually, that's his name, "Just Kidding." Or something like that. Incidentally, he saw that tornado pass near Melbourne, Arkansas on its way to Zion, Arkansas, which it destroyed before heading on to Ash Flat.

You also now see in this sequence the very first image of my beautiful wife. That's Sun-Ae seated just beyond me and smiling in your direction.


The next day, a Monday, my family and I visited the home of my old Scoutmaster, Mr. Albert Holland and helped him feed his cattle. You see us bundled up, for the temperature had dropped from the day before. Sa-Rah looks frozen, and En-Uk is taking extremely seriously his job as scarecrow, which he performed very successfully, for we saw no crows. However, we did see a lot of turkeys and some deer as well.


The very next image shows us relaxing with Mr. Holland in his home. I hope that I'm doing as well as he when I reach 91! The man is amazing. He fought in the Pacific during World War Two and then again in the Korean War, where he got trapped behind enemy lines along with many other allies, and they had to fight their way back, earning the name "The Chosun Few" in honor of their achievement and the place where they were based when surrounded, the Chosun Reservoir. Mr. Holland is still mentally alert and can recount stories from that time, even recalling dates and names. I can't quite do that at a mere 50!


I don't have any photos from our time spent with Mr. Scott and his wife on Tuesday, another cold day. Mr. Scott, who is now 74, was my high school math teacher, whom I also worked for one summer as a chainman on his surveying team.

I wish that I had some photos from this day, for we saw not merely his cattle and horses, which we fed, but also a lot of deer and even a dead coyote.

In the next sequence of photographs, you'll see the ice storm that struck on the night after our visit to see Mr. Scott. Despite the clouds and cold of the previous day at Scott's place and the freezing rain that fell overnight, this Wednesday was bright and cloudless. Even the highways were clear of ice, so we drove through some 50 miles of diamond trees that glittered in the morning sunshine in the most stunningly beautiful Ozark day that I've ever seen. I'll just let you look at the next three images and imagine the rest.






Next, you see a large hotel (I presume) atop one of the high bluffs overlooking one of the tributaries to the White River. We had stopped just across the Sylamore Bridge to re-fuel, so Sun-Ae snapped this photo.


Eventually, we reached our destination, Blanchard Springs Caverns. This image is a bit dark, but I wanted to provide a hint of the underground beauty that matched that of the ice above ground.


You see us here standing with my younger brother Shan just outside the cavern. Shan's wife Shoshanna took the picture and thus doesn't appear here.


She also captured us in this pose a few hundred feet down from the cavern site at the place where Blanchard Springs bursts forth from the side of the mountain.


Now, you finally see the lovely Shoshanna standing by her Ozark man.


Only a few meters away, Sa-Rah and En-Uk stand where this mountain creek falls steeply on its way to feed into the larger stream formed by Blanchard Springs.


Later, on our way back from Blanchard Springs toward Uncle Woodrow's place, where Aunt Pauline would have a steaming hot dinner awaiting our appetites, Sun-Ae caught this scenic outlook toward a knob in the lower Boston Mountain region.


Eventually, we reached our destination, where we discovered that the ice had not melted off the trees at all, and Sa-Rah and En-Uk met up with their cousin 'Shiney' (actually, Cheyenne) to ride her horse and play around the in the field and upon the wooden fence, as the following images demonstrate.




If I may interject . . . you see here my Uncle Woodrow and his son-in-law Curren Everett smiling at the antics of En-Uk as he clambers over the fence to escape Shiney's horse.



As you see above, En-Uk's courage returned. Further below, En-Uk reveals his more domestic side as he assists first Aunt Sandy and then her husband, the already-mentioned preacher, my brother John, as they decorate the Valentine Cake for our Valentine dinner the day after our ice-storm trip.

This evening, by the way, followed a trip to Horsehoe Bend, Arkansas to see my maternal Aunt Ava Jo and her husband Uncle Clarence at their lovely home overlooking a lake about 15 miles from Salem. Unfortunately, the photos didn't turn out so well, but you can read about that fascinating day on an earlier blog entry.



Now, you find us at the actual Valentine's Day dinner in John and Sandy's home. Note my 'overexposed' mother in the lower lefthand corner. Opposite her, you can see three-quarters of Chris, my brother Tim's son.


As usual, my brother John ate too much and is suffering the predictable consequences of wind on the guts.


But that's too painful to contemplate, so let's proceed to a more civilized evening in the cultured city of Little Rock, home to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library with its many books and documents, including an entire shelf devoted to the ambiguities of the verb "is."

But enough about Slick Willie. Below, you see our gracious hosts, my childhood friend Bruce Cochran and his wife Liz, who hails from San Antonio, Texas but moved to Little Rock and met Bruce working in a hospital. She took one glance at him and knew without a doubt that he was the one. That was about 30 years ago, so she must have been right.


We were joined by the Beer Man, John Wells, and his wife whose name -- for some embarrassing reason -- escapes me at the moment. Mr. Wells, you may recall, hosts a beer website, but more on that later.


We enjoyed fine wines and wonderful food, but I'm running short on time, so I'll abbreviate my tale for now and return to the details another time.

The following day, Sun-Ae and I drove back from Little Rock to Salem and got a photo with all my full brothers and my mom. My half-brother, Matthew, was missing from this one, and the one that he appears in has us looking demon-possessed due to our hellishly red-glowing eyes. I really need to learn how to photoshop.


For some reason, this was the last of the photographs that Sun-Ae sent to my computer, so I have no more to share. We stayed several more days, of course, but this entry is a photoblog, so I'll be brief about the rest of our trip. I left soon after the above picture and drove to Bruce's old farmhouse, where I joined him and John Wells for an evening of beer and talk. John provided the beer, as was fitting for the Beer Man who hosts a beer site online.

After that evening, I awoke early on a Sunday and drove to my brother's church for absolution, then took a little trip with my nuclear family on Monday to visit with my paternal Uncle Cranford and his wife Gay, then with my wife treated my brother John and his wife to a meal in Mountain Home on Tuesday, and left the Ozarks on Wednesday for Memphis with Tim and his wife Dona doing the driving. After an evening in Memphis, we flew our weary way back to Seoul.

And that's the truth...