The plan was to arrive Tues evening, rent a car, meet up with Barry and join Steve, Lisa and Jess at the 'cabin' in the Ozark mountains near Mountain View. The cabin was a three bedroom, two bath house. Heavily decorated with an abundance of bear moose deer& fish knicknacks, and hefty log furniture. It had a nice full kitchen a bbq and a fire pit (yes there were Smores involved!)
It was conveniently located near a fishable river, Blanchard Springs & Caverns. Also near the town of Mountain View where the bluegrass and folk music festival was to take place on the weekend. Our first day we did a bit of antique and junk store shopping and booked Steve and Kim a guide to take them fishing the next morning. We then spent the afternoon at the Ozark Folk Center going from the vintage cabins exhibits to one artisan shop after another: pottery, wicker caning, corn husk dollmaking, blacksmithing, stained glass, printing, leatherwork, apothecary, candle making, quilting, wooden toys, woodcarver, knives, jewelry maker, basket weaver, copper artist, etc
I did help out the local economy some by purchasing two pairs of earrings and was extremely tempted by some of the beautiful copper art.
Thursday: Although the weather turned a bit cold both Steve and Kim caught a bunch of fish on their outing...none of which they kept. Neither of them like eating trout and I doubt either wanted to clean any as well. Besides we ate pretty heartily during the week without that...everything from ribs to pizza to chicken and dumplings, chicken fried steak with turnip greens, hush puppies, beans and fried okra! True southern fare.
Friday: Attempted to go to the caves at Blanchard Springs to find out they had 400 school kids touring through until 1pm so we bought tickets for the 4:30 tour and went and saw the 'spring' where the water comes out of the caverns at 10,000 gallons a minute. We then walked along the pretty but slightly cloudy(with minerals and bat guano) river for a short hike.
After hiking back a ways to the car we made it to our tour of the Caverns. It was the last one of the day and only had our group consisting of Steve, Lisa, Barry, Jessa, Kim and I and two other couples. All I can say is the photos here do not even begin to do it justice. It was without a doubt the most impressive and beautiful cave I have ever seen. Mammoth caves and Carlsbad caverns don't hold a candle to this one! More gorgeous features in the quarter mile walk through the main 'Cathedral' cavern than in all the caves I've been to put together. In addition to getting to visit with friends, good food and Folk music the tour of the caverns was the highlight for me and I would reccomend to anyone to go check out Blanchard Springs Caverns.
Saturday: My last day there we spent a good amount of time in town meandering about listening to more groups and watching the interesting dances they did. We then went back to the Ozark Folk Museum Village and saw the rest of the craft buildings we had missed the previous time.
After dinner we stopped back in town for a last scan of the musical offerings which consisted of groups of people gathered in various gazebos and porches, jamming acoustically.
Because my flight the next day was at 5:50am I decided I'd be better off driving at night while more alert than waiting until 2am and trying to drag out of bed to make the 2.5hr trek back to Little Rock. I said my goodbyes to all (including Kim) at about 11pm and headed to the airport to join my mom on yet another adventure.
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