2005/04 Deep South trip - Florence Falls in Litchfield |
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Wednesday April 13th
It was another beautiful day but we had to move on if we were going to get back when promised. We were still about 1300 miles south of home. We retraced some of our steps from the outward trip as we headed north up the freeway to Shreveport and Texarkana. In the intervening five weeks the trees had gone green and the road sides had sprouted a mass of flowers: red, yellow, blue, purple.
Seeing a post office in a tiny village, we stopped to mail the last of our postcards. Sending postcards to Canada, England, and Australia was a big event for the lady behind the counter. She couldn’t find the right stamps, so she was going to search for them and then put them on for me. Hopefully they made it!
The road out of Texarkana is the border, with one side of the street in Texas, the other in Arkansas. Texarkana is obviously not “dry”, as there were liquor stores every hundred yards or so. We stopped at the “Welcome to Arkansas” booth to ask about mining for crystals, and the lady sent me away with armfuls of information on Arkansas.
We were headed for the crystal mining area around Mount Ida in the Ouachita Mountains. The closest campground to Mount Ida is called Crystal, appropriately enough, in a pretty valley between the mountains, with a bubbling stream, an active spring, and masses of wildflowers. There were irises here too, but these were orchid-like and only a few inches high. We learned that we were in the Ouachita (Washita) National Forest and the Womble ranger district. Yes, if you were wondering where the Wombles of Wimbledon Common had got to, they’re probably prospering here in Arkansas. 
We arrived early enough to get the fire going and cook dinner outside. At dusk the whole valley was full of fireflies blinking. It looked like the whole world had turned into a glaucoma test ; “Click the button when you see the firefly blink on”. Later we were visited by a giant moth that fell in love with our fluorescent lantern.