Post Irony

Sometimes I’m a stupid, stupid man. When I got up at 5:30 Saturday morning to head up to King’s Bluff Falls north of Russellville, I had it in my head that the temperature was going to be in the 40s and the sun would be out part of the time. (In my defense, I got that from the weather forecast.) I donned my thin silk long underwear and put on my old New Balance running shoes over a pair of heavy wool socks. I also took two fleece jackets and thought I might be overdoing it in the warm clothes department. I was startled to find snow still on the ground when I turned north from Russellville on Highway 7. And when I got to the parking lot at the trail head, it was flat cold and the wind was whipping over the mountaintop. No sun was showing and wouldn’t the whole day. A good day for waterfall shooting, but bad for staying warm. The nice thing about the overcast and the wet ground is that the colors really saturate in the photos.

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Abby’s been gone all week and school’s over until next semester, which has been nice because I got a bunch of stuff done. But by Thursday I’d done everything that needed doing and I found myself at loose ends. I headed west into the Ouachita National Forest to see what I could see. After wandering around on the back roads for a couple of hours I found myself about halfway up Grindstone Mountain in extreme northwest Saline County. I decided to get out of the truck and walk the rest of the way up the mountain. I thought maybe a nice sunset would be in offing, but the overcast sky just took on a kind of pale yellowish glow while the evening haze clinging to the ridges took on a blue-grayish hue. The landscape kinda looked like what you always see in movies featuring dinosaurs. I guess we tend to think the sky and air looked weird a few million years ago. I shot the photo on cloudy white balance to pump up the yellow in the sky.

That big rock sticking up in the middle of the top photo is Forked Mountain.

While I was up there one of those big C-130s from Little Rock Air Force Base flew by, circled Forked Mountain and headed back to the east. Those things always fly very low. This one was at about the same altitude I was.

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My Dad and I made our second-annual day-before-the-end-of-daylight-savings-time-sunrise pilgrimage on Saturday. The first annual DBTEODSTP was so successful, we decided to do it again. This year we went to Petit Jean State Park and caught the sunrise from Stout’s Point near the gravesite of Petit Jean herself. Several photographers had already assembled by the time we got there. The sunrise wasn’t all that great photographically, but it was pretty neat to hang out up there with my Dad.

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If I never accomplish anything else in life I can always say that I was the first person at Cedar Falls in Petit Jean State Park on October 10, 2009. It rained heavily across the Ozarks and Central Arkansas on Thursday night and Friday, so I knew the waterfalls would be running for a few days. The trouble was that Saturday was supposed to dawn with clear skies, and bright sun is no good for waterfall pictures. You need the muted light of cloudy skies to get good photos. I figured if I got out there before the sun got very high, I could do some shooting before things got too bright. Problem number two was that I’d have to go somewhere close by if I was going to be there at sunrise. The only real waterfall close enough for me to get to that early is Cedar Falls. I got up at 5:30 a.m. and got to the trail head a little after 7. And as luck would have it, it stayed cloudy, dark and gloomy all day. The top photo is a panorama made from six blended and merged photos.

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The whole fam damily went to our summer home in Northwest Arkansas this weekend to do a little yard work and go to Bikes, Blues and BBQ in Fayetteville. We parked on the University of Arkansas campus and headed down to Dickson Street. On the way we stopped to show Abby where Gramps’ name is carved into the Senior Walk. She pointed out all the D’s in his name.

We didn’t stay long at BB&BBQ. It’s the exact same thing every year. Same vendors, same BBQ providers, etc. If you aren’t into motorcycles, then attending once ought to hold you for awhile. Having said that, it does make for some great people watching. You see a lot of bare midriffs that, for the good of mankind, should never see the light of day. We stayed just long enough to eat some exorbitantly priced and poorly cooked food, and I didn’t shoot many pictures. I wasn’t well, suffering from some kind of parasite or virus or something.

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It appears the old saw “time and tide waits for no man” is actually true. As recently as last month I thought it wouldn’t happen, but I actually turned 40 years old. I’m dealing with it, but it’s going to take some time. To commemorate the august occasion, Gina booked a couple nights at Lookout Point Lakeside Inn, a nice B&B in Hot Springs.

Accommodation review: Nestled on the shore of Lake Hamilton, Lakeside Inn provides the comforts of a luxury hotel in a relaxed, unpretentious atmosphere. Each of the rooms is named after a town in Arkansas. The owners picked the names to convey relaxation and a sense of country life. (They eschewed my personal favorites: Bald Knob, Oil Trough, and Blue Ball.) My companion and I stayed in Evening Shade. The king-size bed was draped with super-soft sheets (Egyptian cotton perhaps) and the bathroom contained a glorious two-headed shower. Other amenities included a whirlpool tub, a separate toilet room and a fainting couch. Large windows provided a view of the lake. (I think all the rooms have lake views.) Couple of weird things: the television was tiny and we had to sign some kind of contract promising we wouldn’t smoke on the property under penalty of $500. Soft drinks, ice and breakfast are included in the rather pricey accommodations. We opted to sleep both Saturday and Sunday mornings in lieu of having breakfast.

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I found myself with a little free time Saturday and since I haven’t gotten a lot of chances to use my ultra-wide-angle lens, I went looking for something to shoot. I eventually ended up at the old bridge over the Maumelle River on an abandoned stretch of Arkansas Highway 300 in Pinnacle Mountain State Park. This bridge is popular with local photographers and rightly so. It’s old and rusty and corroded and interesting.

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Arkansas has a split personality. High country and forest lie in the north and west and to the south and east it’s as flat as Kansas. Little Rock sits right on the dividing line. You can drive 30 minutes in one direction and climb a mountain; or drive 30 minutes in the opposite direction and see the curvature of the earth. On Saturday, Abby, Gina, Aunt Jodie and I loaded up and headed to the flat lands, where row-crop agriculture dominates.

On an earlier jaunt I had discovered a country road lined on either side with huge walnut trees that formed a leafy tunnel for a mile or so. We headed back there because I wanted to get a photo looking down the road in some nice afternoon light. That photo idea was a bust. It was still too early in the afternoon and the light was too harsh. We stopped near what looked like an old sharecropper shack to let Abby get out and play in the dirt. A man in a snazzy BMW showed up directly and told us we were on the end of his crop-duster landing strip and needed to move along. So we did.

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I had a great idea for photo of the rising full moon from the top of Pinnacle Mountain, so on Friday I set out to complete the first part of my idea, which was to get to the top of the mountain. The trail is only .75 of a mile long, but it’s uphill all the way. Pinnacle Mountain State Park is only a few miles west of Little Rock and it’s a very popular place. The trail traverses great expanses of huge rocks and so many people have been over the trail the rocks are worn slick in most places. Slick enough to slip on even when dry. The mountain is about 1,000 in elevation (the highest hill around) and provides a commanding view of the Arkansas River, Lake Maumelle and other lesser mountains to the south and west.

I got to the top about an hour before the moonrise and about two hours before sunset, so I had some time to kill. In wandering around the peak looking for something to shoot, I was drawn to the ubiquitous graffiti. I decided to make a little photographic study of the marred rocks.

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… like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.

I had been to Longpool Falls in Pope County north of Russellville back in January, but I didn’t get any photos worth looking at. So when a huge deluge hit that part of the state on Friday I decided to go back and see it when it had something to show. When I got up at 7:30 a.m. Saturday the rain had made it to Little Rock, but it was still raining in Pope County. I drove through torrential rain all the way there and the rain the didn’t stop. The top photo is a two-frame panorama of Longpool Falls and the ravine downstream.

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