Every fall I intend to go out and shoot some epic fall foliage and every year I seem to miss the great color. So the third week in October we planned to take Daisy up in the Ozarks and do the classic-fall-foliage-gawking thing. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find an RV park with hookups that had any vacancies for that weekend. We had to settle for a hotel room in Harrison.
On Saturday we headed south out of town into the Jasper area of the Buffalo River National Park. We stopped off at Mystic Caverns to get a little tourist-trap action. I’m a big fan of cave tours. Mystic Caverns was a disappointment. I didn’t even take any pictures in there. Heading on down into the park we hit the historic Parker Hickman Homestead. It’s worth seeing, but hard to photograph at noon under clear blue skies. Abby and I got a kick out of the privy behind the the main house. It’s pretty easy to blow a 6-year-olds mind with stuff like this.
We crossed the Buffalo River on the nearby low-water bridge and headed up into the Erbie area to hike out to the top of Goat Bluff. It’s a nice level hike. Abby packmuled the snacks and water in Gina’s backpack. The fall color was pretty spectacular in spots, but a lot of green remained. The clear skies and the bright sun washed out the color, making it nearly impossible to photograph.
The whole region is dotted with ancient barns, houses and outbuildings. Some are maintained by the Park Service and some, like this one, are still in use by area farmers.
After another night in the Harrison La Quinta, we headed to do another hike, this time we did the Hideout Hollow trail near Compton. The trial runs about a mile out to another tall bluff affording great views of a valley off the Buffalo. The color was great but the clear skies kept the colors dull, but some cloud cover started moving in, which I hoped boded well for better color photography later in the day.
I handed Abby the camera so she could grab this snap of Gina and me on the bluff.
We hit a convenience store/restaurant/outdoor center in Compton for some lunch and Abby and I picked up a couple of mini LED flashlights for our next destination: the cave at the end of the Lost Valley trail. The promised cloud cover appeared and the color on the hillsides started to pop better, but the air was also filled with a blue haze that hampered visibility.
We got to Lost Valley and fell in with the hordes streaming onto this popular trail. This is a photo looking out from the gargantuan overhang dubbed Cob Cave, named for the corn cobs discovered there that were left by the local Native Americans. Our last trip here back in 2008 when Abby was two was pretty disastrous for Gina. It involved the two of them getting separated from me. Abby pooped her diaper and when Gina carried her for a mile out to the car she realized I had the keys with me and I was still somewhere in the rain taking photos. That trip yielded some great photos for me.
We left Cobb Cave and made our way to the real cave at the head of the canyon. The last time I went into the cave was about 16 years ago and all I could really remember was having to scoot on my back for a good ways to get through a tight spot until the cave opened up again in a big room, so I didn’t know if Abby was going to be up for such as that. Gina said she definitely wasn’t up for it, so we left her at the entrance and we got our little flashlights out and started in. A short distance in the route moves into a narrow area with plenty of head height but not much lateral room. Then you have to drop down where it’s plenty wide but very short. A couple of big fellows came in right behind us. We made it through the skinny area and then I sent Abby down to check out the crawlspace. She shined her flashlight ahead and allowed as how she didn’t think any of us could make it through. She popped back up and we made the other two guys back up to let us out. They went ahead and yelled back that they had made it and it wasn’t all that bad. Abby looked at me and said “Let’s go.” She’s not usually big on sticking her neck out, so I didn’t want to discourage her. We made our way back in and got into the crawl space. I showed her how to put her flashlight in her mouth and she took off ahead. The ceiling was about three feet high, which wasn’t a big deal to her, being only four feet tall and all. She just squatted down and “wiggle-woggled” as she called it. I couldn’t wiggle-woggle. I had to crawl/scoot. But it was only for about 20 feet and then we were standing up in the big room, with a spitting waterfall coming out of the ceiling about 40 feet up.
The other dudes cleared out and I set up the camera and flash to take a picture of us. It’s hard to nail the focus in the pitch dark with the camera on the self timer and propped on a wet rock ledge. At one point Abby said, “Wanna see how dark it is? Turn off your flashlight.” So I did and she switched hers off and then laughed nervously and said, “OK, let’s turn them back on.”
I was messing around trying to get a decent picture of Abby when she said, “Let’s go. I’m getting a little freaked out in here.” So we made our way back out.
We stopped off back at Cobb Cave again where I forced Abby to play along while I tried a little off-camera lighting on her.
And Abby and Gina reenacted some of the Native American drama that probably took place in the cave hundreds of years ago.
Then it was back down the trail and back down the road to Little Rock.