After a wonderful stay at the Fort Worth Stockyards, I hustled on over to Mountain View, AR to join the WINs for a couple stops of their spring kayaking circuit. Unfortunately, it rained the entire week I was there. But the WINs are a resourceful group, and all fulltime RVers should be able to amuse themselves when it's raining.
One thing we could do was go to see the Blanchard Springs Caverns.
These are beautiful caverns, with nice lighting, although the lighting was pretty dark for picture-taking. 
There were large rooms, with huge columns.
The caverns were not discovered until 1963 on national forest land. So the tour was given by forest service personnel.
Nearby is Blanchard Springs where the water seeping through the caverns comes out, and how the caverns were originally discovered.
Also in the area was ruin of an old mill, built in 1900. 
I was itching to go down and investigate it, but all I could think about was all the things that could ruin that experience. It's quite a list!Mountain View is noted for Ozark music, and we went twice to the John Taylor "Sons of the Ozarks" show. John plays the fiddle and his two sons play guitar and sing. Gentry has the best voice, and is singing "Long Black Veil" here.
"Orange Blossom Special" is considered to be the fiddle player's national anthem. I've seen many different versions and always try to tape them. Here the harmonica is highlighted. Two harmonicas are necessary because of the limited number of notes in a harmonica.
And if all else fails we can watch our friends trying to get out of the mud at the campground.
We want to see the shower that the WINs worked on last year. Did you get a picture of it?
ReplyDeleteWhen I got stuck in the mud it sure wasn't that much fun.
ReplyDeleteYup. Diana, better to look at those Ruins from a distance. Voice of experience here....You in a really big way don't want any of the Tick Fevers. I contracted Lyme Disease which went incorrectly diagnosed (as is typical) long enough for it to become Stage II. Took 8Wks of Antibiotics and a couple years to mostly get rid of the Effects.
ReplyDeleteThough not at all in the same League, Chiggers are a real PITA too.
Lew
Great pictures in the caverns. That fiddle player was good.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, great photos. We missed Blanchard Caverns...and I developed a love of caves while on my trip. So I'll put this on the list for next time.
ReplyDelete