Cloudland Canyon State Park, Georgia

 Our next stop was Cloudland Canyon State Park in Georgia.  We had an overnight at a brewery between Little Rock and Cloudland to break up the trip.  Dave enjoyed a beer, I enjoyed a black cherry cider.  

Cloudland Canyon State Park had several hikes that we enjoyed.  We were there on our 35th Anniversary.  So we did a 5 mile hike and went to a golf resort overlooking mountains for dinner.  We sat outside, it was beautiful weather and a nice little celebration.

The first hike we did was through the woods with views of the canyon.  It is interesting  how different a “canyon” is in Georgia vs out west.  They are both spectacular in their own way.  West - the dramatic rocks and size;  East - so lush, with some views of rocks.  Nothing more refreshing to me than a walk in the woods.

There were so many pinecones on the trees that we saw.  I tried to capture jut a small example,  

Good example of how lush with view of some rock

Just never know what you find interesting along the trail.  I kind of thought of this as natures abstract art

When I see caves like this, always wonder who it is home to

The second hike we did was to two different falls, Cherokee and Hemlock.  The total number of stairs for this 1.8 mile hike was 600.  The views were well worth the effort. 

Perspective of the height

Detail of the same rock Dave is in front of

Cherokee Falls

Hemlock Falls

Watch the river wind through the woods.

If you remember, in a previous blog I said that Brian and Julie got engaged.  Julie’s parents are throwing them an engagement party in August.  So we decided to head back to Florida from Georgia since it was only 370 miles from home.   We thought it would be good to have a little refresh before being away another month and a half or so.  It will  also give Dave some time to be ready to return to work come mid August.

  So we are in Florida for about 2 weeks before we head to Jersey for Andrew & Krystal’s wedding.  We are soooo excited for them.  

Not sure what our plans will be for July.  So at this point I am going to say thanks for coming along on our Epic Journey as we called it.  I hope you enjoyed the many wonderful places we saw and things we learned and maybe even got inspired to take a journey of your own.

June & Dave

Day we left June 2024

Last Hike June 2025

Little Rock, AR

 The campground we are staying at is right over the bridge from Little Rock.  There is a nice walking bridge over.  Our first night here we decided to check out the bridge and walk over to a brewery.  It is an old train bridge that had a section that moved up when tall boats had to come through.  We had a nice time at the brewery and when we were ready to leave, it was pouring.  Thank you uber for the ride back to the campground.

A couple rainy days, so school work and car maintenance for Dave and craft projects, laundry and food shopping for me.  Still have to deal with every day things on the road.

When the rain stopped, we headed in to explore Little Rock.  It was nice with the walking bridge that we didn’t take the car, just walked everywhere.  We started at a local coffee shop.  Then we just started walking along the Arkansas River Trail.  

We went to the nature center.  We saw a ground hog outside in their garden and found out there was an alligator turtle.  Kind of a spiny shell and a large head.  It was interesting learning about the local nature. 

The walk next took us by a karate garden.  Cool entry and fun statues inside.  

The Grandfather - I like the expression on the face

I liked the detail in this staff

Statue of Nine Turtles.  Turtles traditionally signify longevity.  The eight turtles on the moms back signifies strength of family and unity.

We then went to the Old State House which is now a museum.  It was completed in 1842.  In it’s life it was the State House, a State Police headquarters and a Medical School.

Interesting facts about the Old State House:

Greek Architecture, but the building was made of all bricks.  Even the columns were brick with plaster overlay.  All the bricks were made on site.

In1867 they found that the State House was already falling into disrepair, so they approved an addition and renovation.   Throughout the years there were many bills put forth for repairs of the state house, many did not pass and its condition continued to deteriorate.

After a new state house was built there were several groups that fought long and hard to keep the Old State House as a historic site.  It was not an easy battle, but it was successful.  In 1995 there was a total replacement of the foundation of the building.  They did find many artifacts during that replacement.  

The Supreme Court of Arkansas was also housed in the building in 1836.  I liked this one quote they had:  “Although the court system was patterned upon the federal Constitution, Arkansas was a wilderness, and justice often reflected the rough customs of the frontier.”

This is a picture of a circular “hole” that went through all the floors in the Old State House.  The original blueprints for the building had a dome on top, but it was not affordable once they got to that point.  So it would have let light through all of these “holes”.

This is just a funny thing - the Date, Explorer and way they spelled Arkansas.

Next stop on our walking journey was the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden.  It was along the Arkansas River & Trail.  These are some of the sculptures I enjoyed.

Fancy Turkey

This one was funny in and of itself, but then someone added sunglasses to it.

These 2 lambs “dance steps” cracked me up.

I can imagine some annoying thing this guy said that made her make that face.

We then went across the Junction Bridge, which was 1,800 feet long.  It had a 385 foot span that would lift to let boats through and then go back down for the train to go across.

Our next and final stop for the day was a double header at the local AA Baseball team, the Arkansas Travelers, a minor league team associated with the Seattle Mariners.  Had seats right behind home plate.  It was a nice evening for baseball.  They lost both games, but when it’s not “your team”, it’s not stressful.  

This is one of the bridges lit up at night.

The last adventure day in Little Rock we had was on Friday.  We went to a different coffee shop and then went to the Clinton Presidential Library.  We have never been to a Presidential Library before.  I found it very interesting.  

Museum had interesting architecture, as the long section with only one “column” holding it up,

Flags reflected in building.  

Exact replica of oval office during Clinton’s presidency.  One interesting fact, the designer bought enough material to do the oval office and do the library all at once.

A small display of the many gifts that were received during his presidency

These blue boxes were in all of the columns in the bottom picture.  These all store documents, mostly correspondence from the American people to the president during his two terms.

We had a yummy lunch with a great view at the library

Tomorrow we leave Little Rock and head to a Harvest Host to break up the long ride to our next state park in Georgia.

Til next time…

Great News and Oklahoma

I would like to start with non-travel related news — Brian and Julie got engaged on the 24th!!!!!!   We are soooo happy for them!!!!!!!

Now to travel news:  

We visited two state parks in Oklahoma, Osage Hills and Robbers Cave. 

While at Osage Hills we went to Owasso, OK and visited our friends Lynn and Kevin.  We hadn’t seen them in several years, but it was like we saw them yesterday.  It was a fun visit…except for the tornado warning and hail while we were visiting.  Though for Dave and I it was nice to be in a house during the warning and hail, not the camper.  

Thanks, Lynn and Kevin for a great visit.

Piece of hail while in Owasso

We did two hikes while at Osage Hills.  One meandered through the woods and the other went by a portion of the lake from above.  Enjoy the pictures.

There were lots of these flowers on the woodsy walk in Osage Hills.  As seen below, in certain open areas along the hike there were fields of them.

My eyes are always drawn to purple flowers

There are two lizards hanging out together.  Look closely to see the brown head near the back of the green one.

Pretty flowers in several places on our hikes

View of the lake from above

This was just a random building along the trail

We tried to speculate what it was

But really had no idea

We thought this lizard was interesting because of hour round his middle portion was.  They are usually much more streamlined.

There were butterflies fluttering about quite a bit.  I finally caught one

We then moved on to Robbers Cave State Park.  Dave wanted to go here as it is famous for a psychology experiment that occurred there at Group Camp 2.  The name of the study is Robbers Cave study by Sherif if you would like to read about it.  I believe my telling of it from Dave would be like the old game telephone, not quite right.

There was a lot of history to the park.  The name Robbers Cave came from the fact that outlaws like Belle Star, Jesse James, Cole Younger and the Dalton Gang would use this area as a hideout.  There was an area called the Stone Corral where they could leave their horses and then there was the cave where they could hide out.  There wasn’t much law enforcement in the area, so they didn’t know about the cave. 

When the park was established, the Civilian Conservation Corp worked on roads and buildings in the park.  What a wonderful program that was.  It benefited all involved. 

There have been numerous parks that we have been to that the CCC was vital to.

When we first got to our campsite at the park and were all set up we couldn’t figure out what this loud noise was.  So we went to check it out and it was water running super fast due to the bad weather/tornado that they had a few days before we arrived.

Its’s hard to tell in the picture, but this was a side road and the water was going under the bridge, but a portion was coming over the bridge and back down into the river on the other side.  However, both point look like mini waterfalls.

The first night we were in the park we went to the restaurant for dinner, which overlooked the lake.  We walked around after and found this interesting piece of history.

                                            This was on the back side of the restaurant under the building

We did two hikes at this park, the Robbers Cave Hike and a walk through the woods hike.  We did them both the first day, since the rest of the time we were there it was supposed to rain.  

The above 3 pics are walking through the area to get to the cave.  You can see how it is a easy area to hide

This is the coral area where the outlaws left their horses before they moved on to the cave

Someone had built these very large Carins.  They were cool to look at, but they did not direct you to the trail.

Told ya, gotta love the purple flowers

This was just a very interesting rock with various colors that I saw when I looked over one of the cliffs

Robbers Cave

Robbers Cave

There were severe thunderstorms the day after our hike.  I felt really bad for the tenters through that  storm.  The forecast was not going to get better and in fact the day we were supposed to leave was going to be heavy rain all day.  So we packed up a day early and drove on the better weather day. 

This is the horse trail the day after the thunderstorm.  It was dry the day before.

A stream we saw coming down the day after the storm

Today we are in Arkansas, right outside of Little Rock.  We were right to travel here yesterday, as the prediction for about 5 hours today is 98-100% chance of rain.  It has been raining consistently for the last couple hours.  Glad we are here instead of driving in it.  We are here for the rest of the week and look forward to doing some exploring as the weather permits.

Til next time…