Buffalo National River

Fall Has Fell

By Don on Thursday, November 7, 2013

Abby, Gina and I embarked on our annual fall foliage expedition a couple of weeks ago. He set up our camper, Daisy, at the Buffalo Point campground as our base of operations for the weekend. The fall colors weren’t quite at their peak overall, but it was close. The dogwoods put on a vivid display of red.

We toured the Rush ghost town, home to a few historic buildings. The former blacksmith shop is my favorite for the great colors in the weathered wood siding. Rush was a Zinc mining center in the early 1900’s and was evidently a classic boom-bust town.

We dropped by the Collier Homestead at Tyler Bend to check out the historic structures and hike down to the river overlook.

Abby and I posed for a pic at the overlook.

I tried to do some fancy-schmancy flash photography, but my models were fairly divaish and I really didn’t get very far.

Arkansas Buffalo National River exploring fall foliage Photography

Random Ramble

By Don on Tuesday, October 25, 2011

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.

Arkansas Buffalo National River Indian Creek Photography

Indian Creek Redux

By Don on Saturday, February 26, 2011

My buddy Kurt and I hiked Indian Creek in the Buffalo National River a week ago. The creek is home to two waterfalls highlighted in the Tim Ernst Arkansas Waterfalls book: Copperhead Falls (seen above with Kurt posing) and Tunnel Cave Falls, formed by water exiting a cave. The trail begins at the campground at Kyle’s Landing and runs a little over two miles up into a box canyon. It’s a great hike. The park service doesn’t maintain the trail and it gets pretty rough in some places. I wouldn’t recommend it for the weak-ankled.

This was a weird hike photographically for me. I didn’t take many photos. For one thing, I did this hike a couple of years ago and shot a bunch of photos then. For another thing, I usually do these long hikes alone, which leaves me free to screw around and shoot photos that don’t end up being any good. Because I had a companion on this trip, I had other things to do, mainly flapping my gums with Kurt. For some reason I can’t seem to talk and take pictures at the same time. Kurt, however, had his camera out the whole time shooting me and the scenery and handing me his camera so I could shoot him and the scenery together. I didn’t mind. It’s more fun to have somebody along. Finally, Kurt asked me if I was going to take a photo of anything at all. So I snapped out of it and shot a bunch pictures of him in action.

This is my favorite one. Kurt emerging from the pit toilet at Kyle’s Landing with the sunset in the background.

The namesake cave for Tunnel Cave Falls is closed to explorers, but even if it wasn’t off-limits it appears a dicey proposition to enter it with it being 30 feet up a sheer bluff wall. No, I didn’t take a photo of the cave itself. I told you I didn’t do a very good job with the photography. The waterfall was dry, anyway.

I did manage to provide Kurt with a nice profile photo for his Facebook page.

Arkansas Buffalo National River Camping Photography

Maiden Voyage Of Ol’ Leaky

By Don on Wednesday, October 27, 2010

This is Ol’ Leaky. We bought this thing in July for $1,500 and thought we either got a good deal or something was wrong with it. What was wrong was the roof leaked like a sieve. It had a big air conditioner on top and the roof sagged noticeably. After doing some research on the Internets I found out that this particular model requires special braces from the manufacturer when installing one of those aftermarket air units. It had no special braces. So I removed the air conditioner and sold it on Craigslist. Then I installed a roof vent and patched up some other stray holes and replaced the weather proofing on the roof seams. The seat and bed cushions had also been wet in the past so they were pretty stinky. We tossed out the big bed cushions and washed the upholstery and replaced the foam in the bench seats, which helped with the smell.

Arkansas Buffalo National River exploring Hiking Indian Creek Outdoor fun Photography Waterfall

Another Waterfall Trek

By Don on Monday, March 9, 2009

Copperhead Falls seen from the top.

This past weekend found me making yet another journey to our summer home in Northwest Arkansas to deal with the aftermath of the Epic Ice Storm of 2009. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do any manual labor this time. I just paid a man I hired over the over phone to climb up in our once magnificent shade trees and cut down the hanging limbs. I realize hiring people over the phone to perform work the results of which you won’t see for a week is fraught with hazard but it worked out well this time.

On my way back to Little Rock, I detoured over to the Buffalo River to hike Indian Creek and see Copperhead Falls and Tunnel Cave Falls. The hike is billed as a dangerous one, but I found it less hazardous than the hike to the slot canyon on Shop Creek I took a few weeks ago. Indian Creek is actually the next drainage over from Shop Creek. An ambitious hiker could do both in one day if he started early enough.

Arkansas Buffalo National River exploring Hiking oddball stuff Photography Twin Falls Uncategorized Waterfall

Disappointment Canyon

By Don on Monday, February 16, 2009

The leaden sky was spitting snow, I had hiked a mile or so over snot-slick moss, rocks and logs, my coccyx was sore, and I was ledged out well short of my destination.

Back in the summer I had read in Tim Ernst’s blog about the slot canyon on Shop Creek upstream of the famous Twin Falls in the Buffalo National River area, and I put it in my mental file of places to go. I spent the day Saturday cleaning up ice storm damage at our summer home near Fayetteville and planned to get up early Sunday and do some waterfall hunting before heading back to Little Rock. Ernst hadn’t given the location of the slot canyon on his Web site but a little Internet sleuthing turned up this blog, which described how to get there. Thanks, Derek. It turns out you just go to Twin Falls, which is easy to get to, and then continue upstream. Derek has some good photos of the slot canyon and Tim Ernst has his usual stellar photos of the place. Both Tim and Derek wrote about the difficulty of accessing the canyon. Both of them even recommended rock climbing gear, and, in fact, Ernst wrote about using a harness to hang out over the creek to get his pictures. But I figured I could get in there a little ways at least. I was wrong.

Arkansas Buffalo National River Hiking Landscape Photography

Fallen Fall

By Don on Tuesday, November 4, 2008

We had planned to go for a drive in the Buffalo River area Sunday to see the leaves, but Abby got sick and Gina felt a 103 degree fever was not conducive to viewing fall foliage. Gina cut me loose for the afternoon and I headed out by myself.

I drove to Ponca and bought a map of the hiking trails in the western part of the national river park. Parking at the Ponca access to the river, I took off east on the Old River Road Trail, which I had never been on before. The scenery in he Buffalo River bottom is always nice, but the fall foliage seemed to be past peak down there. I bet the trees along the river in the top photo were afire in red and yellow a week ago. That would have made a better picture, of course.