Rainy Day in the Delta

It's been your typical Arkansas summer - hot and muggy. There was a miserable spell where the high temperatures were over 100, and the humidity was oppressive. But this week felt like a miracle. It's been cool and rainy, with high temperatures in the 70s.

I didn't want to waste the opportunity, so I took the day off from work and headed out to take pictures as soon as I dropped Elliott off at school. I thought that I could leave early enough where I could go and get a few pictures, and then be back with enough time to take a little nap. But I forgot that I was trying to leave the city during rush hour on a rainy day. Traffic on the freeway was backed up due to a few accidents and it ended up taking about an hour and half to make it out of the traffic jams around Little Rock.

Finally, after spending way too much time in the car, I was able to get out and get a few pictures. I think this is an old cotton gin, now abandoned and surrounded by a moat of tall plants.



I stopped in the small town of England and got a few pictures of this abandoned old house.



It's a neat place, which is being slowly covered with vines and ivy.





From there I headed further east, the vast fields and farms soaking up the rain.





While passing through Stuttgart, I saw this written on the side of an old grain elevator:



South of Stuttgart is an old rice dryer, which is easy to spot because it towers over the flat landscape around it.



It's a neat structure, but I wish I could find out more information on it.







Another old rice dryer sits nearby, also silently rusting away.



There was time for a few stops on the way home, like these silos sitting below some forlorn looking rain clouds.



And one last shot before I headed home to try to salvage some of my nap-time:

At The End Of The Day

The other day, there were some clouds in the sky that looked like they could make an interesting sunset. So Jonah and I headed out to see, driving to Riverfront Park in North Little Rock. I set up the camera under the I-30 bridge while Jonah explored the river. It's really cool that he wants to tag along and go with me while I take pictures (or he was just wanting an excuse to get out of taking a bath and going to bed, who knows).

While the sunset wasn't as vibrant as we hoped, there was still some nice color in the clouds hanging over downtown Little Rock that night:

After Hours

The other night I had just gotten Elliott to sleep when a loud jolt of thunder shook the house. Luckily Elliott is a pretty heavy sleeper, so it didn't seem to bother him. But the sudden pop-up summer thunderstorm was a good excuse to go and grab the camera and run out to try to get some pictures. 

There is a parking deck downtown that I've thought would be an ideal place to try to get pictures of lightning over the Little Rock skyline. So I hurried over as lighting brightened the sky like the flashes from a bunch of paparazzi's. I got to the top of the deck and set up the camera. But of course, the thunderstorm started to fizzle out. I managed to get just one little bolt of lightning before the storm sputtered out.



The deck also provides a really nice view of the old Albert Pike Hotel, which was built in 1929.



The clouds cleared out after the storm, and the moon appeared low on the horizon. So I headed to the car and hurried out and ended up by the State Capitol building. The moon had an orange and rusty tint to it, and I found a spot to get a picture of it next to the dome of the Capitol. It took a few tries to get the right exposure, but ended up with this shot. For the record, this isn't a fake AI image. And it's not photoshopped to make the moon look larger. This was all in camera (the details, if you're interested: f/8.0, 1/30 second exposure, ISO 800, taken at 290 mm with a zoom lens).

Augusta and Wynne

From Bald Knob, I headed east across the White River into the small town of Augusta. Founded in 1848, Augusta is the county seat of Woodruff County. The county courthouse here was built in 1900.



Next to the courthouse was an old house I wanted to check in on - the Ferguson House. It was built in 1861, and managed to survive the Civil War (when most of the other buildings here were destroyed). But it looks like the house could not survive our modern era. It is completely gone now,  replaced with nothing but an empty lot of overgrown grass.



But there are still some interesting old homes and buildings here:







From there I continued driving east. I wanted to find another old building that I had taken a picture of in the past, to see it if was still standing. I never did see it, so I'm guessing that it is gone now as well. But I did find a few other things to get pictures of, including this seemingly abandoned looking area. I didn't linger here too long, it felt kinda creepy.



I made it as far as the town of Wynne before I decided to turn around and head home. Wynne is another old Delta town, and it has a nice collection of old buildings. Wynne was hit really hard by a tornado in 2023 (the same storm system that produced the tornado in Little Rock that same day).



And one last picture, before I headed home. It was a warm and muggy day in this little section of the Delta.

Judsonia and Bald Knob

I was driving through the small town of Judsonia the other day (as one does), and stopped to get a few pictures. There is a very photogenic old bridge here, which was built in 1924 across the Little Red River.



It is a cantilever swing bridge, and it used to swing out across the river for boats to float by.



Judsonia sits along Hwy. 367, which used to be designated as Route 67. Like old Route 66, Route 67 was once a busy road for travelers and there used to be several old motels here. Most of them are abandoned or torn down now, like this old motel. Nothing exists of it anymore, except for this weathered and faded sign.





And down the road is another old motel, the Texas Ill Motel. It was built in the 1940s, and was in operation up until the 1990s.



The motel probably got its name because it sat at the midway point of Hwy. 67 (which ran from Texas to Illinois).



Near the old motel was this gas station, which has also been abandoned.



And a quick peek inside:





And next to it is this old abandoned building:



Not sure what it was used for, except that it was an office for something.



I headed over to the small and amusingly-named town of Bald Knob. Along the railroad tracks, by the old train station, is this abandoned hotel.



The hotel was built in 1910. According to the "Abandoned Arkansas" website, this was one of three hotels along Bald Knob's Skid Row. Back then, "'Skid Row' was a famous strip of bars, brothels, and boarding houses in the area around 1920 to about 1970...These hotels were notorious for prostitution and hide-outs for passing through criminals."



There was nothing that nefarious going on this day, just some guy walking around taking pictures.