Dawn419 & doc's LSTA: Confounded Computer!!!

[mississippifarmboy]

Enjoy the visit and have fun!

See ya Sunday!

 

[Dawn419]

Honeys, I'm hooooome!

Mike got here just after 2 p.m. on Thursday so I never did get to finish those last minute clean ups that I wanted to do. Oh well, they didn't matter as we lived outside until we decided it was time for bed! All in all, I'm glad he got here earlier than I expected as there are no good landmarks to point out our place and he didn't have to deal with the dusk-time deer population gatherings along the side of the road.

Had him call me when he got into Ash Flat so that I could hang out in the right-of-way and basically be the landmark and it worked! He only missed our place by 1 driveway. He'd been keeping up with his trip through Facebook via mobile phone and I got so tickled with one of his messages..."Someone told me I'd be going through cotton country but I thought they were joking!". Nope, they sure weren't and I messaged him back not to worry, he'd be hitting the hills again soon!

His first words after arriving were pretty much "Y'all live in the middle of no where, I didn't expect that when you sent me the address and it had highway in it but I love it!" . And with that, he proceeded to settle right on in to his home away from homes!

I had a small fire going when he got here so we hung out by it and caught up until doc got up to get ready for work. We ran into town to grab dinner from Subway, then came back here, got the fire going again and ate dinner. Did a quick, edge of the tree line tour ( ), showed him a couple Armadillo holes (he's never seen a live one but got his share of dead ones on the trip out here ), then we came back to the fire pit, built the fire back up and spent the evening enjoying the stars, the fire and catching up.

We talked a lot about ginseng and he said we should be growing it out here so got to fill him in on that new project here. He has a friend back in TN who has been talking to him about it and he was glad I backed up all the info the guy has given him. Around 11 p.m., we came in and was going to watch something on Netflix but ended up back on the subject of Ginseng again and he crashed out about an hour later.

He's been real stressed out and hadn't been sleeping well but he made up for it that night! We had a heck of a storm blow through around 6 a.m. on Friday morning...it had me up and he slept all the way through it!

Friday we got up, hung outside for awhile, I took him back to "the patch". He really liked the area and was bummed that there was nothing showing.

Doc got up just after we came in from the woods so we all got ready and decided to do some sight-seeing since Mike had never been to AR before. We ended up in Southern Missouri and went to Grand Gulf State Park

More inf about it:

Grand Gulf, often referred to as Missouri's "Little Grand Canyon," has a long history as a geologic curiosity. It is a spectacular sight and is a true chasm, deeper than it is wide.

To understand its origin, one must understand the geology of the area. The limestone and dolomite bedrock here are very soluble in the mildly acidic groundwater that percolates down from the surface. The water seeps into the fissures and fractures in the bedrock, eventually enlarging the cracks into caves.

Here at Grand Gulf is a cave system with a roof that collapsed an estimated 10,000 years ago. The result is a vertical-walled canyon about three-quarters of a mile long. Bussell Branch, a surface creek that drains about 28 square miles, empties into the chasm through a process called stream piracy. All of this water passes down the length of the chasm, under a 250-foot natural bridge (an uncollapsed remnant of the original cave) and back into the open canyon. Finally, at the lower end of the chasm, it enters the mouth of the remaining underground cave system. It travels nine miles underground, and re-emerges at Mammoth Spring in Arkansas. Mammoth Spring flows as much as nine million gallons of water per hour, part of it from the Grand Gulf.

The steep walls of the chasm are covered with herbaceous greenery, and from the upstream end down, the canyon gets rapidly deeper. The natural bridge, which spans the canyon at about its midpoint, is some 75 feet high at the upstream end, but the ceiling drops to about 10 feet high on the downstream side. The floor of the chasm is strewn with tumbled dolomite blocks that were once part of the cave roof, now collapsed.

The mouth of the portion of the cave that has not collapsed (at the downstream end of the chasm) is blocked only a short distance inside by mud and debris that allows the water from Bussell Branch to percolate through, but bars human access. In the early 1990s, a robot vehicle, equipped with a digging tool and remote camera, penetrated a significant distance into the cave. As a result of this reconnaissance, it was determined there is no feasible way through the massive blockage to gain access to the rest of the cave.

Early explorers were able to enter the cave. Luella Agnes Owen, in her book Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills (1898), recounted her explorations in the Grand Gulf. After entering the cave at the downstream end of the chasm, "The ceiling dipped so we were not able to stand straight, and the guide said he had never gone farther; but to his surprise here was a light boat which I am ready to admit he displayed no eagerness to appropriate to his own use, and swimming about it, close to shore, were numerous, small, eyeless fish, pure white and perfectly fearless; the first I have ever seen, and little beauties," she wrote. Owen used the boat to explore the underground system for a considerable distance.

Access to the deeper portions of the cave remained possible until the 1920s when a severe storm washed many downed trees and other debris into the gulf, filling the cave. Today, heavy rains fill the gulf to depths exceeding 100 feet, and the water drains out slowly over a period of several weeks.

In 1971, Grand Gulf was designated a National Natural Landmark, and in 1984, the property became a Missouri state park through a lease agreement between the L-A-D Foundation and the Department of Natural Resources. The department has laid out trails and installed boardwalks at this day-use park, and there are many picnic sites scattered on the tree-shaded rim of the chasm.

Glad we decided to go check it out as doc and I have been threatening to visit ever since we moved here. It was awesome and we're looking forward to going back again after the leaves are down, the greenery really hid a lot of the unique features of the formations.

Didn't roam there as long as we had liked as it was late in the afternoon, so we headed back into Thayer and had dinner at the State Line Restraunt. That's when it happened...Mike gets a call from his mom letting him know that his toilet was leaking, they turned the water off to it, cleaned up the lake but unfortunately he's stressed out again.

Got back home, hauled in more wood and sat out by the firepit and Mike decided to cut the visit short by a day so he could get home and deal with the toilet before he had to go back to work on Monday. We were all bummed by the decision but he's always been that responsible since we met him when he was 15 years young.

So, even though the visit was cut a bit short, we had the best time and wouldn't trade it for the world! And even though we hadn't seen one another in 3 years...it was like there was no time elapsed and our freindship picked right up where we had left it when we moved from TN.

The best part was that he got out here to help us celebrate 3 years at Long Strange Trip Acres and he was the best present!

Well, my eyes are tired and I'm sure yours are too, if you've made it this far!

Aaaaaah, it's good to be home with my other family!

 

[moolie]

Sounds/looks like really cool place! So glad you had a good visit with your friend and that he's one of those guys that you can just pick up with like it was yesterday--those are the best friendships.

And congrats on your 3-year anniversary

 

[Dawn419]

Thanks moolie!

The park was really neat but I do not like heights and the place gave me the willies! All the more reason to go back and get myself over it.

I did okay on the overlooks and boardwalk trail as the fences/rails are super heavy-duty. We started to walk the longer loop and it was straight down on either side of the trail. I made sure to stay in the center of it and just watch where I put my feet. Daylight was with me (or lack of it) as we decided not to spend 45 minutes and risk it getting too near-dark. Whew! I may need a set of blinders to get through that one but I will do it!

I don't like closed in places either but love to go spelunking/caving...go figure!

 

[moolie]

Thought you were off to bed I think it's an hour or two later for you than for me?

I bet railings would have helped you a lot. Sometimes heights freak me out a bit as well, never can tell which situations will do it. I've done some roofing in the past and most houses didn't bother me at all, but one place was high on a hill and just looking down off the roof into the valley really freaked me out--first time I had issues with heights and there've been a few other times since.

I guess your part of the world has some big cave systems? I remember reading a Trixie Belden book when I was a kid that was all about spelunking in the Ozarks, are you near there?

 

[dragonlaurel]

Such a beautiful place. Thanks for posting all those pics. Glad you had a nice anniversary and got to see your friend again.

 

[Denim Deb]

Moolie, that would be Trixie Belden and the Mystery at Bob White Cave.

Dawn, sounds like you had a nice visit. I don't know if I'd want to be on some of those heights though. I'd be too afraid that I'd get a vertigo attack and end up over the edge!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Glad you're back, but sorry your visitor had to cut his visit short.

Thanks so much for the pics of the park - I really, really need to put that on my list of things I need to see.

 

[moolie]

Moolie, that would be Trixie Belden and the Mystery at Bob White Cave.

Yes it would! Did you read Trixie Belden as well? I have the whole set, at least of the hard cover books, plus a few of the later paperback books that they never put out in hard cover. I loved those stories, and Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames. I was a bit of a bookworm when I was a kid

 

[Denim Deb]

I have all the hard cover books as well. Never knew about the other ones until I was older. Recently, I reread them and was amazed that some of the horses were able to switch sex.

As for Nancy Drew, I read some of them, but thought she changed her clothes too often. I can just barely remember reading Cherry Ames. I did, however, read the Bobbsey Twins and the Happy Hollisters books. Another that I liked but was never able to find all the books was Robin Kane. I think I was finally able to find 5 out of the 6.