Day Twentytwo
Day Twentytwo

Petit Jean, AR to Petit Jean, AR
July 4th, 2004

High Point of the Day....
Low Point of the Day......
Brian and Theresa - Hiking in hollers
Brian & Theresa - Sweating, sweating, and more sweating
Miles Traveled Today
Total Miles Traveled
Miles Theresa Drove
Weather
32
6144
0 (1451 Total)
Hot, hazy and humid, in the high 80s
Price of Gas 
(average per gallon)
Wildlife
Night's Lodging
Where this Page was Uploaded
no fillup
Hummingbirds, lizards, one turtle, one lizard, one snake, one frog
Petite Jean State Park
Memphis, TN

Daily Didactic
The day began at a relaxed time, in what felt like genuine Arkansas weather. By ninish it was in the mid 80's, and the humidity makes a person from somewhere where it is not humid sweat all day long. Capitalizing on the new found heat and humidity levels, we headed out hiking. We drove to the trailhead of the Seven Hollows Trail, which really only travels through four hollows because of some private property issues. Brian had wanted to see a genuine "holler" in this part of the country and has not been disappointed. We slept in one in Devil's Den State Park and hiked through four on the Seven Hollows trail. A "holler" it turns out, is just a narrow valley carved between rock strata by a creek (likely pronounced "crick"). It makes for a very lush and shaded area down in the "holler" where there are many reptiles and bugs. Which reminds us that mosquitos here are very different from back home. They are small, mean and sneaky and leave nasty welts. They also represent a sort of West Nile lottery.

After our hike, we retreated to the air conditioned dining hall of the Mather Lodge to eat some very reasonably priced lunch and watch hummingbirds and wasps battle on the porch. We then headed back to our mostly deserted campground and contacted Ken for an on-site bus tuneup. The tuneup was a short distraction from Theresa's real goal, the campground pool. We, two adults amongst the legion of children, sat in the cold water grinning silly grins from ear to ear.

Back in camp, our friendly neighbors in the pop-up camper gave us some ears of corn which necessitated firing up the campfire again. Lighting a campfire in 90 degree heat is stupid, plain and simple, and everbody in this campground does it. We had some fire roasted corn and a little spaghetti before, on the tip of a local, heading to Petit Jean's grave site to watch the Morrilton fireworks. Turns out the local must have tipped off a few hundred other folks. The fun part is that at least 90% of this crowd was from the Petit Jean campgrounds, so no one really new where to expect the fireworks to happen. We all stared off in the general direction we thought Morrilton was in and waited. The view allowed us to see at least a half dozen firework displays from far off communities, and about the time we were deciding one of those was what we were there to see, Morrilton's started and we were lucky enough to have guessed at a decent view. An hour or so later, we returned to our campsite in the dark and called it a night.


Daily Pictures (Slide Show)

Morning in our Petit home It's really hot and humid, we've got an idea...
Very big green bug Babbling brook
Lizard posing The Grotto
Brian in the Grotto Undercut holler wall
Theresa on a holler's edge Natural Bridge
Arkansas River valley from the Mather Lodge deck Hummingbird
Artist's representation of Mr. Mather Our vantage point for the Morrilton fireworks
Happy fourth of July!



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