Random Ramble

I headed up to the Buffalo National River on Sunday to shoot some fall foliage. Gina elected to stay home and I couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to spend the day doing outdoorsy stuff with me. So I took off alone. The weather forecast earlier in the week called for cloudy with some rain maybe, which would be perfect for viewing and shooting the colorful leaves. It rained Saturday night and was still raining in Little Rock when I left the house at 6 a.m. but by the time I got to Conway the sky was clearing. When I hit Russellville the sky was clear and I knew that I was going to miss all the good light. By the time I got to the Buffalo, the sun was high and harsh. I had originally planned to do the Hawksbill Crag hike, but I bailed on that and decided to just climb to the top of Roark Bluff across from the Steele Creek campground. My photo suffers from the harsh light. You really need a cloudy day after a rain to really get the great colors that nature has painted across the bluff. This was the first time I’d hiked Roark Bluff. It’s dangerous up there. The photo-taking spot is on a little spit of rock that juts out from the main bluffline. It’s a sheer drop on either side. If you fall, you’re going to die.

With the bald skies I knew that if I wanted to get any photos I was going to have to do something different, like go somewhere where the sun wasn’t a factor. I headed over to the Villines farmstead just across the low-water bridge at Ponca to check out the old buildings. The farmstead dates to the 1850s and consists of a cabin and outbuildings that are being restored by the National Park Service. The neat thing is that you can go inside the buildings. Something about this doorknob caught my eye, but I didn’t realize what it was until I got home and looked at the photo. The faceplate is mounted upside down. Normally, the keyhole is below the doorknob. The cabin was built in two parts by two different settlers at two different times and the whole thing looked to be poorly constructed. The doorways and windows are crooked and the floor slopes oddly. I know age accounts for some of that, but age can’t explain doorknobs mounted upside down.

Playing around with some HDR on these interior shots.

The barn at the Villines farmstead. I found it interesting that a big power line now runs through the middle of the Villines property. There’s no way all the folks who lived there over the years, scrabbling a living and struggling with cutting and laying by wood to cook with and heat the place and and boil water to wash their clothes, could’ve imagined that life-saving electricity would one day be mere yards from their back door.

Then I slowly made my way over to Jasper, where I ate lunch with this pirate at the bar of the Ozark Cafe on the town square.

I spent the rest of the afternoon meandering around to the east and south and eventually went through Lurton in southeast Newton County where I came upon the Lurton Community Church. I didn’t get any decent fall foliage pics, but it seemed the leaf color hasn’t actually peaked, so I’ve still got a chance for this year.