This blog records various activities that my wife and I enjoy within one day's drive of our cabin on Lake Norfork in the Arkansas Ozarks. Of course, many of these activities take place right on the lake outside our window, so the earliest entry begins with a little factual information (culled from various web sites) about the lake and its history.
The Arkansas Ozarks are blessed with a host of great hiking trails. I hope to use this page to provide links to GPS maps of those trails, with illustrative photos and appropriate brief remarks. If you have an Android phone and click on the links, you should be able to see your exact location as you hike along the trail. It's a good idea to download the map of the general area at home before hiking the trail. Here is how to do so. After doing that, you should click on the link for your hike below to load the map. Do this some place where there is WiFi or cell service for your phone since cell service on the trails is spotty. After that it should stay in your phone's memory as you hike and a small blue dot will show your progress as you hike the trail.
This blog posting is a work in progress. Please return often to see additional trails as they are added. Clicking on the links below will open interactive maps in new windows. Within those maps, clicking on the trail brings up basic information, clicking on the location markers brings up more information and a small photo, clicking on the small photo opens a larger version of the photo that may take some time to load. Depending on your cell phone plan and reception, you may not have access to the pictures when you are actually hiking the trail so you should glance at them in advance if you wish. Waterfalls are accurately marked with their GPS coordinates; other scenic attractions are marked only approximately, based on guesswork and my sometimes spotty memory.
Back in March Sue and I hiked the Gunner Pool to Barkshed section of the North Sylamore Creek Trail (4.3 miles one-way) with members of our local chapter of the North Central Master Naturalists.
A Google Map of this hike with more photos is available here --
Yesterday morning I joined a fairly large work crew from North Central Arkansas Master Naturalists in maintaining and grooming the first section of the 13+ mile Norfork Lake Trail. This section is 2.6 miles (or 5.2 miles out-and-back). I've posted a trail map with additional information and photos at the link below.
Earlier this week Sue and I joined our friends in the North Central Arkansas Master Naturalists for a day-long hike through the Lower Buffalo River Wilderness Area to the mountaintop above Buffalo City. The views from the mountaintop are spectacular. This Google map should give a fairly good idea of the nature of the hike.
There are lots of great hikes in the Ozarks, but the Robinson Point Trail is the closest to our cabin and therefore a good candidate for my first effort to create a trail map on Google Maps. Clicking on the link should open the map. I hope to make more maps like this and improve the content in them. Your comments and advice will be appreciated.
Admittedly, this has been a very odd year with a very odd presidential election. A lot of things I thought could never happen, have happened. Think back on the election campaign and make your own list of improbable events and outcomes. I would do so here, but I'm not interested in writing a political commentary. And besides I seem to have been wrong about almost everything so why should you listen to me? You can't trust the pundits or the polls either.
But I always thought I could trust Google -- at least for something like basic mathematical calculations. But maybe not. Here is the current result on Google when I query "2016 popular vote":
So, according to Google, Hillary Clinton won 48% of the popular vote and Donald Trump won 47%. But with some easy mental arithmetic one can see that there were at least 125 million total votes cast. One percent of 125 million equals 1.25 million. So Clinton should have at least a million more votes than Trump if she won the popular vote by 48% to his 47%. But some more easy mental arithmetic tells us that her vote total exceeds his by only 300,000 votes (or about 1/4 of one percent).
There is, of course, an explanation -- but not a good one. In fact, the explanation is so lousy that Google should be ashamed of the results posted on its site (and I note with sadness that most news sites post the same results.) Hillary Clinton earned 48.1% of the total votes cast, Donald Trump won 47.86%, and Google is apparently incapable of rounding these numbers correctly.
If one of the biggest companies in the world -- and one whose business is to work with data and numbers -- is capable of such a ludicrous misrepresentation, I guess I can forgive myself for my own flawed guesses about the course of events during this crazy election year.
It was a windy three days. I mean it. And photos or weather graphs don't do it justice. Take that photo at the top. I guess you can tell there is a breeze on the water. But you can't tell that for five hours I had been hunkered down on a tiny scrap of an island, cowering behind the ragged remnant of a shrub with the dory pulled high on the rocks of the lee shore. You can't tell that at one point the gusts shrieked so hysterically that I staggered to the boat and deeply set the anchor into the battered beach, just in case my little ship started to sprout wings. Maybe a close-up can better convey the conditions.
I don't think that is adequate either so I'll have to stick to words, and I may as well start at the beginning.
I had made plans to set off on a 3-day adventure in the Susan Lee, my homemade CLC Northeaster Dory. I knew the forecast called for substantial wind and I relished the chance to sail, but soon after Sue dropped me off at Hand Cove Landing on October 16th, I began having doubts. I rowed the boat from the cove into the open lake and felt the caress of a gentle breeze. Up went the sail; it flapped idly. This was about 9 AM, and the weather charts begin to tell my tale.
Zoom in on that chart and you can see there is very little wind in downtown Mountain Home early that morning. And what wind there was ghosted from due south. Since my course was taking me eastward, the hilltops effectively blocked the breeze. It took me over an hour to get down to the dam where I could find unobstructed wind.
And wind there was! By 9:30 the gusts in Mountain Home were exceeding 15 mph. And if there is one thing this trip taught me, it's that lake wind is not the same as town wind. The lake is dominated by the river channels. The high bluffs block the wind in some places; channel and amplify it in others. As a road cyclist, I am used to feeling the wind on my face and think I can gauge its speed. The southern breeze, gusting to over 20 mph, gave me joyous, rollicking reaches all the way up the lake to the bridges (except for the drifting I did during the east-west passage at Tracy Bluff).
As the lake twists back on itself, there is a 3-mile wind slot from Tracy to Robinson Point and then another from Flint Knob to Bidwell Point. Never in my fifty-plus years of sailing have I enjoyed such long reaches before a screeching wind. The weather chart shows gusts in the 25 mph range, but I'd put them over 30 mph in the channels. As I swooped down on the first of the bridges, I began to feel jittery -- nervous about safely navigating between its concrete legs. Yes, they are spaced widely. But sailing on a broad reach meant that I would angle through them, and the following seas were steepening as I scooted along. I've read about broaching, but never experienced it. These conditions made me start to understand. As each big wave raised the stern of the dory, it pushed me into the wind. I'd then have a few precious seconds to wrestle the tiller and get the boat back on course before the next wave. Steering between those pilings made me feel like a drunk exiting a bar through a narrow doorway.
Once I had safely threaded the pilings of the highway 412 bridge, I was confident I could manage those of the 101 bridge. Then it was smooth sailing with a bit of shelter for the 3-mile stretch past Teal Point. A bend to the west left me sailing in parts of lake that were completely new to me.
At some rare places on Norfork there are a few homes close to the water on land that the Corps of Engineers couldn't (or didn't) condemn through its acquisitive power of Eminent Domain, but only Mallard Point has a large luxury community where each homeowner owns a private boat dock in front of his house and a private launch ramp into the lake. What an untold tale of crony capitalism in the FDR's day!
Partial panorama of Mallard Point homes
Does that home have an indoor tennis court or an airplane hanger?
The wind picked up again as I steered northeast past Cranfield and died away to a drifter in the hard bends around Indian Head. At this point I had been sailing all day without any break at all, gobbling gorp and sipping water when the wind allowed. I'd gone about 30 miles in 7 hours. Once again I was in a north-south channel passing Red Bank when the fading light of the sinking sun illuminated a set of ruins off to starboard.
The ruins of Red Bank
I wish I knew more about the history of this old house. It's obvious that it was built from local rocks and it must have stood there before construction of the dam began in 1941. But I have so far been able to find no additional information about it. It stands in romantic and mysterious isolation on the edge of the water.
The strong wind in the channel made camping at Red Bank impossible, but the lake soon made another hard bend and I was able to find a protected anchorage not far from Calamity Beach. I pulled ashore on a sandy beach and cooked my dinner while a majestic bald eagle looked on from atop a tree not a hundred yards away. After doing my dishes and replenishing my supply of filtered water, I anchored well offshore and began reconfiguring the dory for the night. The series of pictures below shows my PCV cot and foam pad -- first as stored for sailing and then as assembled. With an air mattress and a sleeping bag the dory becomes a remarkably comfortable little yacht.
Cot frame and foam pad secured for sailing
PVC cot pieces
Frame assembled
Accordion-fold foam mattress pad
It's rather reassuring to be anchored well offshore when the coyotes begin howling in the middle of the night. The light breeze and the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull are a kind of lullaby. I watched the stars come out and the moon arise. Then I awakened well before dawn, fully rested.
There was no point in lying longer abed, especially since I knew that the forecast was for even stronger southerly winds. I was giving myself two days to beat back upwind -- a slow grind -- but rowing during the predawn hours should be faster than sailing.
It was delightful being alone on the lake. The moon -- only two days past full -- gave me plenty of light. The only problem was the wind, which was still blowing at a substantial 10 mph in the channel past Red Bank. But I wasn't dim enough to attempt raising sail in the dark so I slogged on until it grew light. Almost as soon as I was finally able to raise my sail, I round a corner and the wind evaporated. I drifted from puff to puff, too lazy and content to want to row. Somewhere near Seward Point, I was back in the wind again -- wind in my face that was rapidly growing in strength. Here is the weather chart for October 17th, a day in which Aeolus went wild.
Note that there are steady gusts in the 15 mph range all night long (good thing I was anchored in a little bay at night), and note that by 10 AM the gusts are ranging from 25 - 30. It was slow work beating into that wind, but a fun challenge for both the skipper and the boat. By 11 AM I had rounded Chapin Point and was headed toward Cranfield. There the southerly wind loosed its full force in the channel. It was no longer the town wind recorded on the weather chart, but a raging beast let off leash. If I had to guess, I'd say the strongest gusts were in the 30 - 40 range, and I decided to seek shelter. I dropped sail in the lee of a little island just across from Cranfield and found the spot I described in the first paragraph of this post. Here it is on Google Maps. The whole island is only 500 feet long and rises only a couple of feet above the water. The three largest dark spots are Willow trees. The small dark spots are individual shrubs, and my shelter shrub was one of the larger ones on the northeast point of the island.
A sunny, warm afternoon on a secluded beach reading a Kindle book, cooking lunch (and dinner), and taking a chilly swim -- surely that's no one's idea of suffering, especially since I still had three beers in the cooler to enjoy with dinner. But lounging on the beach was not going to get me home. The wind had started to drop a little by about 5 PM. A half-hour after that I was under sail, trying to make my way as far upwind as I could before sundown.
Just after sunset I was able to drop sail and make my way under oars into the protected harborage behind Teal Point. The routine of dropping anchor and setting up my cot was now quickly accomplished, and I had another restful night under the stars (though somewhat annoyed by the traffic noise from highway 412 up the hill).
Again, I was up before dawn and under oars. I snapped this photo as I left the Teal Point homes in my wake.
My final day of sailing wasn't quite as windy, but the conditions were still challenging.
Note the wind gusting to 20 mph most of the night, then dropping in the morning (causing me to man the oars as I left harbor), and gradually building back to the 20 - 25 range from mid-morning to early afternoon. Here is a little video I shot while sailing the dory in conditions safe enough for me to hold my phone with one hand and sail with the other. The great fun for me during this day of sailing is that, as the wind rose, I learned I could sit on the windward rail and hike out, almost the way I had done when crewing on my father's Thistle as a kid. My next modification on the dory will be to add a hiking strap!
Sometime just after the noon whistle, I was able to make a final tack and head up the arm of the lake toward home. I glided back into Hand Cove before 2 PM with the wind almost dead astern. I was tired, a bit sun-burned, and a little weather-beaten. But genuinely happy.
This has been a perfect year on Lake Norfork. The winter was mild. Spring came relatively early. Rainfall has been frequent enough to avoid prolonged drought, and despite occasional bouts of torrential rain, there has been no major flooding in the streams and rivers; hence, the lake level has been quite stable. On the whole the summer has been fairly mild with no episodes of 100+ degree heat.
With these conditions it is no surprise that the fall shows signs of being spectacular. Now that the schools are again in operation, we have the lake to ourselves just at the time when the fall wildflowers are reaching their peak.
Today, Sue and I put the dory in and rowed out to Sand Island, one of three areas near Hand Cove and Jordan Landing with white sand beaches reminiscent of those on the Gulf Coast.
Tall Thoroughwort dominates the acres of wildflowers. . . . And I do mean "tall"! On our property the same plant grows to a height of maybe two or three feet. On the island there were specimens nearing six feet tall with stalks more like the trunks of saplings than seasonal flowers.
The Tall Thoroughwort was, of course, playing host to quite a large variety of interesting insects.
Common Buckeye Butterfly
Ailanthus Webworm Moth
Possibly a Byssus Skipper
Differential Grasshopper
Unidentified Moth
Tiny Caterpillar
Unidentified Beetle
The most common butterfly of all flitted about so incessantly that I could never creep up on it for a macro portrait, but it was about the size and color of a Cloudless Sulphur. There were also lots of tinier sulphurs flitting about.
One of the handsomest butterflies I saw would not pose for a close-up, but could be seen from a distance. It looked like a very dark Buckeye.
If you look past the Tall Thoroughwort, there was quite a lot of other interesting plant life along the beach. There were some tiny bluets that I didn't bother to photograph. In addition there was Small Morning Glory. But the prettiest flower was without doubt Bluecurls.
Bluecurls, Trichostema dichotomum
But Partridge Pea is a showier flower, especially on this beach where it grew into large and healthy bushes.
Partridge Pea, Chamaecrista fasiculata
While we are on the pea family, there was also plenty of Hairy Milk Pea, Galctia volubilis.
Finally, there were some plants that I have not yet identified. If you recognize the images on this "Most Wanted List," please drop me a line.
