White Christmas

On Christmas Eve, I drove to the small town of Charleston to celebrate Christmas with my family. So I was there on Christmas Day when the big storm blew in that gave us in Arkansas a rare White Christmas. It started sleeting in the afternoon, and soon enough, a few inches of snow started piling up on the ground.

I had the camera with me, and trudged out into the snow to try to get a few pictures. This is the view from my aunt's backyard, of a gate and a distant and snowy pasture.



The next day, me and two of my aunts decided to head out and try to take a few pictures in the snow. Charleston only got about five or six inches of snow (nothing like the 9 or 10 inches that Little Rock got). And after scraping all the snow and ice off the car, we were soon able to get out and explore a bit. One of the stops was this old home, in the middle of town. It used to belong to family, but no one has lived in it for years.



I went up on the front porch and saw this old thermometer nailed to the wall. It was apparently a chilly 29 degrees that day...



Also on the front door was this faded American flag...



And a wider view of the old house...



From there we drove over the city park along Lake Charleston. We followed a trail that lead over this bridge, and off into the snowy woods.



After that we drove around some more, and eventually found this old barn along the side of the road. Luckily we knew the person who owned it, so we were able to jump the fence and get a few pictures of it up close.

But we weren't the only ones around the barn. Apparently a few cats live there, and their tracks lined the way into the barn.





We called it quits after that, and headed back to a place to warm back up. But the next day it was time for me to head home. Luckily the roads were mostly dry and clear (and my apartment in North Little Rock had power again). I decided to take the long way home, driving along Highway 22 east through Paris and Subiaco. This is the view of the old Subiaco Abby and school, with a few cows trying to find something to eat in the snow...



I turned down a muddy dirt road, which managed to quickly coat my car in a muddy mess, in order to find this old run-down barn.



My car was happy to get back on a solid road again, as I headed back down Hwy. 22. I scanned the road trying to find more old barns in the snow, and eventually saw this one that even had a convenient place for me to pull off and park.



That was about it, I got back onto the freeway and finally made it home. As I type this now, a few days later, most of the snow has finally melted. We really don't see many big snow storms here in Little Rock, let alone on Christmas Day. But the blizzard of 2012 definitely made the holiday more interesting than a lot of people were planning....