A cold Collins Creek

Magness Lake is located just outside of Heber Springs. Also conveniently close to Heber Springs is the great Collins Creek, so I headed there after I left the swans. It had been pretty cold the last few days, and temperatures that day were probably right at or below freezing. I hoped that the cold would produce some cool icicles at the waterfalls along Collins Creek...

I got to the creek and found no icicles hanging down from the waterfall. Crap! Well it's a pretty place anyways so I started taking pictures.




I did manage to notice a tiny bit of ice, hanging down from a tree branch (or root?) above the creek. I made it to the other side of the creek and crawled around on the rocks enough where I could get a good picture of the small icicles.






Some more ice had formed around the area where the pipe from Greers Ferry Lake empties into the creek bed. I wonder why ice forms in some places, but not in others?


I really liked how this one turned out, but I realized later that I've taken a picture from this spot a few times before. Oh well...


And a shot of a rock, resting in the cold waters of the creek:


And one more view of some ice, which is nice but not what I was expecting when I drove up there:


It had started to rain as I was taking the above picture. At first I was more concerned with keeping the camera dry and then it hit me - perhaps rain and temperatures at or below freezing means this isn't a good time to linger around. I hurried back to the car and started driving home. I wasn't sure if it had indeed gotten below freezing, but there were a few icy patches on the road. My car slid a bit while going over a bridge, but otherwise things went ok. I fared better than a few others, I drove by four wrecks just on the road from Heber Springs to Greenbriar. One car had gone off the road and flipped over, another slid off and hit some trees. I usually try to drive slow on that road (after getting a speeding ticket there last year), but went even slower that day. The roads seemed to get better as I got closer to Conway, and I made it home safe and sound. In fact I even made a stop at the store to buy the traditional milk and bread before the dreaded ice storm hit.