Last week we took a short trip to eastern Arkansas and, after that, over to northeast Kentucky.
Our first campground was at Village Creek State Park. The park is located on Crowley’s Ridge, a geologic anomaly of rolling hills in eastern Arkansas’s Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
With five trails totaling 7 miles, we had hoped to spend one day in the park doing some hiking.
Unfortunately, there was some kind of gnats hatching out. After taking one walk the first evening where we couldn’t get away from them, we decided to alter our plans and check out some of the other parks in the area.
The first day, we went to Parkin State Archeological Park and Jacksonport State Park. The next day, we drove over to Memphis and spent a few hours at Mud Island. I’ll be posting more on these as I get the photo gallery set up for each one.
The last evening that we were there and the next morning before we left, we didn’t have much problem with insects at all.
Our next destination was Paducah, Kentucky, so that Karen could go to the annual Paducah Quilt Show. Karen has several posts on her blog from the quilt show:
Mountain Farm Museum
May 6, 2009
near Cherokee, North Carolina
The Mountain Farm Museum is a unique collection of farm buildings assembled from locations throughout the park. Visitors can explore a log farmhouse, barn, apple house, springhouse, and a working blacksmith shop to get a sense of how families may have lived 100 years ago. Most of the structures were built in the late 19th century and were moved here in the 1950s. The Davis House offers a rare chance to view a log house built from chestnut wood before the chestnut blight decimated the American Chestnut in our forests during the 1930s and early 1940s. The museum is adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. – National Park Service website
Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
Tennessee and North Carolina
Gallery: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
The snow last week, with some hungry visitors.
The thermometer has not gotten above freezing for over a week.
While we get snow here almost every year, it’s usually melted within 2 or 3 days and, even if we get as much as a foot like we did 2 years ago, it’s gone within a week.
A week ago we had a trace of snow, not even enough to measure. It’s been so cold that some of that trace of snow is still on the ground in areas that are shaded all day long this time of year.
I’m not complaining. We’ve lived in colder places. One winter in the 70s, when we lived in a high mountain desert town in Idaho, it didn’t get above 0°F for a month and was below -20°F for a week.
And, in the almost 30 years we’ve here, we’ve had had other long cold periods.
But, that was then, and this is now.
Brrrrr!
September 15, 2009 – Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
On our last full day in Colorado, we toured the six-mile Mesa Top Loop Drive, visiting most of the archeological exhibits and overlooks.
Square Tower House cliff dwelling is named for the four-story-high structure standing against the curved back wall of the alcove. About 60 of the original 80 rooms of Square Tower House remain.
All of the cliff dwellings, including Square Tower House, were part of the final Mesa Verde building phase. People lived here between AD 1200 and 1300.
Small lizard on a ruin wall
After spending the morning among the ruins, we took a drive in the afternoon. At one point, we found ourselves on open range, with the road blocked by a herd of horses. As I very slowly eased the car forward, the horses parted and let us through.
Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 15, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Pithouse – For thousands of years, native peoples were living in the surrounding areas before coming to Mesa Verde. As with people all over the Southwest, Ancestral Puebloans lived in modest dwellings — shallow pits dug into the ground, covered with pole and mud roofs and walls, with entrances through the roofs.
In this excavation (above), what appears to be one pithouse is actually two. The larger one, built first, around AD 700, was destroyed by fire. The smaller one, which looks like an antechamber to a larger room, is actually a second pithouse built soon after the first one burned. It contains a new feature, a verticle ventilator shaft in one side, which appears in pithouses from then on — innovation!
Above is an Ancestral Puebloan kiva – an undeground religious room. The small circular hole in the floor is a sipapu, a symbolic entrance into the underworld – the Pueblo place of origin. This early kiva design was continued in the Mesa Verde villages and cliff dwellings.
Many fires have swept across Mesa Verde over time. Recent fires have exposed previously undiscovered Puebloan sites.
At our campsite on our final afternoon in
Colorado, 2009.
Mesa Verde’s Balcony House is a very memorable — and challenging — place to visit. It certainly isn’t for those who have a fear of heights or a problem with tight spaces. Those with health problems that prevent strenuous activity should not attempt this tour.
From the park website: The Balcony House tour requires visitors to descend a 100 foot staircase into the canyon; climb a 32 foot ladder; crawl through a 12 foot, 18 inches wide tunnel; and clamber up an additional 60 feet on ladders and stone steps.
The climb out:
Rain in Montezuma Valley:
Tansy Aster against a ruin wall:
Mesa Verde National Park, September 14, 2009
We had tickets for a 10 AM ranger guided tour of Balcony House. We had been to this ruin at least two other times before, the first in 1986, when we were in our mid-thirties.
To get into the ruin requires a bit of a climb, shown in the two views below and the one on the right, which exaggerates the steepness of the ladder because I had to rotate the image a little to get it all in.
Waiting to go through the small passage:
A hungry coyote zeros in on food — found on road:
Rabbitbrush with Sleeping Ute Mountain in the background:
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Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 14, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Click on any of the images to view a larger version.
Karen had stopped and was starting to slowly back up before I realized what we were hearing.
We both backed up a short distance. The rattler didn’t move and I got a snapshot of it.
Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 13, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published
on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
September 13, 2009 – Mesa Verde National Park
We were hiking the Knife’s Edge Trail near the Mesa Verde campground, with Karen in the lead, reading from the trail guide booklet, while I was trailing behind taking pictures.
Suddenly, we heard a very characteristic sound, a sound we’ve heard many times in the movies and on TV.
Most of the trail was plenty wide, but, in this area it had started to narrow a bit.
Of course, the rattlesnake blended in very well with the vegetation along the side of the trail. In the closeup crop on the right, I’ve outlined the head and tongue and added an arrow pointing to the rattle.
We didn’t turn around and go back down the trail. There was still a ways to go yet, so, from a safe distance, I started scuffing gravel and rocks toward the snake with my foot. After a little bit of that, it uncoiled and slithered into the brush, still rattling until it was a good ways off the trail.
I’ve completed another photo gallery from our visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. It includes images from Moraine Park, Bear Lake, Nymph Lake, and Dream Lake, and has photos of elk, deer, a couple of chickarees, a chipmunk, birds, wildflowers and more. (For more of my travel images see Haw Creek Galleries.)
Our son-in-law knows a lot about bedbugs.
When he travels, he always takes the headboard off the bed in his hotel room off the wall as that is a likely place to find them.
The company he works for now has a new tool to locate hard-to-find bed bugs — Max, the bedbug dog.
Our son-in-law does make an appearance — of sorts — in the video on the right.
The hand with the bedbug on it near the end of the clip? That’s his hand.
The star of the clip is, of course, Max.
Got bedbugs?
