An awesome sunset and trail discovery...

There is a neat little loop trail located right off of the freeway between Little Rock and Conway. It was built a few years back by the Game and Fish Commission to take hikers through a wetlands area that is home to migratory birds.

Although I used to drive right by the trailhead every day when I commuted to Conway, I never realized that it was there. I found the trail very randomly while looking through a guidebook of natural sites in the state and was a bit shocked to see the trail there. I've had that book for a few months and look through it often, but for some reason never noticed this trail. Oh well. I grabbed the camera and headed out there last weekend.

The trail is the Bell Slough Wildlife Loop trail, which is 2.3 miles long and is on Hwy. 365 between Mayflower and Palarm. It was a bit warm and muggy, apparently this time of the year isn't really designed for doing much hiking. I got to the trail, and was greeted by two excited dogs. I don't know what it is about trails in areas like this, but they always seem to attract random dogs. These two dogs were happy to walk along the trail, and acted as if hiking with some total stranger was the most awesome thing to happen to them ever.

They were good company, at least they didn't have rabies or anything like that. I stopped to take pictures but they kept on running and disappeared. I did see them at the end of the trail when they were following along another hiker.

For the most part, the trail is flat and a very easy hike.

The trail was built for people to go and spy on various birds and such, so there were a few blinds set up along the trail....

The trail was really quiet so there weren't any animals to see. Besides the friendly trail dogs, I saw a skunk and lots of spiders. But one good thing about the trail - the telescope here is free to use. Nice touch, Game and Fish people.

There were a few wildflowers out on the trail too...

It started to rain while I was out there. It wasn't that heavy, and it did manage to cool things off a bit. The temperature maybe dropped from 90 to 88 degrees.

The trail was nice but I was there at the wrong time. The guidebook said that in the winter the place is crazy with birds migrating through. At least now that I know where it is so I'll try to remember it next winter.

After I left the trail I headed over to Burns Park for a few shots. I went by the covered bridge there when it really started pouring down rain.

As it was raining, I had to wait a bit because a truck drove by and then randomly parked right in the middle of the bridge. It wouldn't matter except that you could still see the truck through the window in the middle of the bridge. It was annoying and a bit creepy in the way that trucks sitting around in Burns Park can be.

Then after work one day I headed down to (where else?) the Big Dam Bridge. It was raining again, so I took out the umbrella and tried to get some shots. To get this shot I was holding the camera in one hand and the umbrella in the other trying to keep the camera dry. I nearly lost the umbrella to the river below when a really strong wind came through that actually turned the umbrella inside out. I was kinda surprised since I'd only seen that happen in cartoons and movies.

When I got up there it finally stopped raining, though it was still really stormy out to the east over downtown. Here's a panoramic shot looking west:

From that shot, it looked like the beginnings of a neat sunset. The color just started to intensify as it got darker.

Looking to the east though, there were lots of lightning bolts shooting off from the clouds. I tried to set up the camera hoping to catch some, but it would only lightning when I wasn't taking a picture. The only thing I accomplished was wasting memory card space. I got a bit worried though as it seemed like the storm was moving closer to the bridge, since standing out there on a metal bridge, with a metal tripod and a metal umbrella didn't seem like such a good idea. Then the light got really bizzare out there and I decided to stay. Looking towards the east, this odd pink light lit up the clouds above the river:

Eventually, it lit up the entire sky...

It was so weird, it looked like it was the end of the world. It only lasted for a minute or so. I just got two shots of it, and one of them wasn't in focus (of course). Then I turned around and saw the most awesome sunset there:

Here's a panoramic view of the sunset:

It was such an amazing sunset...

Then after the sunset faded away, I went and got one more shot of the bridge lit up at night...

So thanks again for going through yet another set of pictures from the Big Dam Bridge. Hope you liked them!

Searching for waterfalls at Petit Jean Mountain...

Summer kinda sucks. All the waterfalls around here dry out for a few months, the weather is really hazy and muggy, and anyone going outside has to deal with bugs, the 100 degree weather, and the humidity.

Plus if you like taking pictures, it really limits what you can do. Hiking to the top of Pinnacle Mountain doesn't sound that appealing when it's 90 degrees. And there isn't any point to going around looking for waterfalls when they have long since dried up.

So during the summer months, at least, it is good to look around for places closer to home to photograph. One day last week I went and drove around downtown looking for places to take pictures. One of my favorite buildings downtown is this church, the Cathedral of St. Andrew.

After that I went down to the Clinton Library to try to get some shots of it at dusk. As I got there, it turned out that a neat sunset was starting to develop. I thought that there might be a nice view of the sunset and the river along the trail that goes from the Clinton Library to the River Market. But there didn't seem to be an area that wasn't cluttered with too much city stuff to get a good view of the sunset. I did end up walking from the library to the I-30 bridge, which was a bit surprising since it seems that rabbits like the area along the river in downtown. I probably startled about 8 different rabbits who were just hanging out along the riverbank.

I ended up going back to the library and set up the camera. It took awhile for it to finally get dark.

This shot was a bit hard to take since water from the fountains was spraying onto the camera...

I went down to the sidewalk along the river, and got this view from under the library building:

That next Monday I left work early to go see a doctor (stupid sinus infections) and decided that since I was out of work I should do something with the free time. Since it had stormed the day before, I thought that there might have been enough water to make some nice waterfalls around here, and decided to head up to Petit Jean to hike one trail with a small waterfall on it.

I ended up sitting in the waiting room for a horribly long time, so after visiting the pharmacy and all that I left town around 5:00. By the time I got to Petit Jean it was getting late in the day, so I was worried about hiking and getting stuck out on the trail as it got dark. Also, I probably shouldn't have tried to hike 4.5 miles with a sinus infection, but oh well.

I went onto the Seven Hollows Trail, a trail which probably gets overshadowed often by the more popular trails up at Petit Jean - like the one to Cedar Falls. But the Seven Hollows Trail has a few neat areas. It goes to a Natural Bridge, and then to a grotto that usually has a nice little waterfall in it. The trail is a bit oddly named, since it actually only goes through four hollows, so someone must have been a bit drunk when they came up with that.

My plan was to see if there was anything in the waterfall at the grotto, since it had rained the day before. I read online that it rained enough in the Ozarks that it put the Buffalo River at Spring-like levels. Would the streams and waterfalls around Petit Jean be as high? No, actually, not at all.

The Seven Hollows Trail starts out through an area that was burned by a forest fire a few years ago. Signs at the trailhead warn you, actually, not to hike if it is windy since the winds will knock limbs off the burned trees that could possibly KILL YOU!

It wasn't windy so I survived, but there wasn't any water anywhere to be found along the trail. All the creeks the trail passed were completely dry. In some places there were a few stagnant pools of water, but nothing that would support a waterfall.

There were a few wildflowers growing along the trail, which was at least something. After about a mile or so there is the Natural Bridge, which really isn't a bridge at all.

It had been a bit overcast all day, but the sun was trying come out when I was at the Natural Bridge. Here is the sun poking out from under the bridge.

And here is the sun hitting some rocks at the base of the bridge.

This patch of moss was growing on the rocks under the bridge:

After that I decided to go ahead and see what the water was like in the grotto, just in case there might be a waterfall there. The only problem with that, though, was that the grotto was located exactly in the middle of the trail. To get there meant that to hike out and back would mean hiking the entire trail, which again is 4.5 miles.

The trail isn't as dramatic was the trail to Cedar Falls, but it still a nice hike.

The trail follows along the edge of a bluff, where there were a lot of ferns growing.

The trail moved out of the first hollow and the dropped down into the second one, which is the home of the grotto and its waterfall. I was sad to see that there was no water in the creek there. In fact, everything was dry. I thought that since it was still June, and with some recent rains, there might be some water, but no luck.

The above picture was taken while standing in a place that normally would be underwater. The entire area was completely dry except for some water around where the waterfall should have been:

To compare and contrast: A similar shot I took a few years ago when there was some water in the falls:

Finding no water there was very annoying, but it meant searching around trying to find anything else in the dry grotto to take pictures of.

After the detour to the grotto, the trail then went over the bluff towards the next hollow. The area is interesting, with the areas above the hollows still recovering from the damage from the forest fires.

In the last hollow, the trail runs alongside a small creek which was of course completely dry.

I was a bit amazed with myself that I managed to finish the hike and make it back to my car before it got dark and I was stranded out there. As I got to the car, I noticed that it looked like it might make another nice sunset, so I sped off towards the overlook on the edge of the mountain at the "grave" of Petit Jean.

Of course, the view from the overlook there wasn't in the right direction, so there wasn't a good view of the sunset. The overlook, apparently, is an awesome place to get a sunrise shot, though.

Petit Jean's grave.

Someone had put up some graffiti by the grave which reads "JEAN LIVES." While graffiti is awful (and a problem at Petit Jean), it did make me giggle some. I wondered who wrote it, maybe it was Petit Jean's GHOST!

At this lookout there is a walkway with lots of information signs on it, about the legend of Petit Jean, the history of the park, etc. One of them was about the Arkansas River. A family was out there, with a few little kids running around. The poor mom was trying to get the kids to learn something, so she was reading the signs out to the kids, who really couldn't care less. When she got to the sign about the Arkansas River, she told the kids to listen and started reading. One of the kids then yelled out "I don't want to hear about the dumb Arkansas River! Let's go!"
I made my way around them and out of earshot, so I don't know how excited the kid was to learn about the Civilian Conservation Corps or any other thing the signs had to say about the park.

Kids these days....

And a view of the river from the mountain:

I took some shots of the river from the there in hopes of making a panoramic shot. There is this really neat software called Autostitch that will put together your shots for you, aligning them and making them look good. It is FREE and easy to use. Here is my pano shot from Petit Jean from four shots put together by autostitch:

My only complaint is that shots tend to lost a lot of sharpness after going through autostitch, but it is a lot better than any of my crappy attempts at making panoramics.

Riverfest fireworks, and Happy Birthday Olympus Evolt E-500!

This weekend marks the "birthday" of my new camera. It was a year ago that I decided to give up film and enter the world of digital photography. Before I made the change, caused by my old and usually trustworthy film camera messing up and ruining a few rolls of film, I was a bit of a film snob. I would get annoyed with all this talk about digital photography. I would scoff - digital isn't true photography, and all that. Then I got one and haven't looked back.

I took this shot in honor of me owning this camera now for a whole year. This was actually taken with my old film camera. I've been using the new camera for everything and this is one of the only times I've used the old camera in the year since I got the new one. I had forgotten how much of a pain in the arse it is to buy film and wait for it to get developed. So it will probably be awhile before I use the old camera again. The shot above was taken at Buffalo Point, along the Buffalo National River.

The Olympus camera has a counter of how many pictures it has taken (or at least, how many times the shutter fired). A few days ago I checked it, and the camera said it had taken 15,891 pictures during the past year.

Now if my math is correct (which it probably isn't, Cormack translates to "bad at math" in Irish), that would equal out to:

1,324 shots a month

305 shots a week

43 shots a day.

And again, if I were to have tried to take that many shots with a film camera, it would be equivalent to about 662 rolls of 24-exposure film. Assuming that it costs about $10 to buy film and get it developed (a bad assumption since it costs more than that), I would have had to spend $6,620 using film to get the same amount of pictures. Pretty crazy, right?

I added to that count yesterday while trying to take pictures of the Riverfest fireworks over downtown Little Rock. There is a spot that I've used before to get fireworks, way back in 1997. The spot is an odd place to position yourself for fireworks, since it is located directly next to an old cemetery.

This was taken next to Mount Holly Cemetery, by I-630. It was a bit odd to be seeing fireworks in front of you, and a bunch of old tombstones behind you. But I like this since it has the fireworks exploding while framed by the buildings downtown. Sadly, though, most of the shots that night didn't turn out. The above shot is really the only one that turned out.

For some odd reason that I couldn't figure out at the time, all of the shots I was taking were coming out really dark. I tried to do all sorts of adjustments with the camera - like changing the f-stop, etc. But no matter what, everything seemed to come out really dark. In order to get a decent shot where you could actually see the buildings, all of the exposures had to be really long. The shot above was 13 seconds. I couldn't understand what the problem was.

When I got home, I looked at the camera and immediately figured out what was wrong. The problem seems so simple and silly that I don't want to publicly mention it. Promise not to laugh, but nothing turned out because I had left a polarizing filter on the camera. Polarizing filters are useful when shooting on sunny days or shooting waterfalls. I had used one last weekend when at the Buffalo River, and had forgotten to take the filter off. The filter itself is somewhat dark, so it cuts out light going through it. Dang. It was such a dumb mistake that I hate to have to admit that I did it.

Oh well. Guess I'll have to go back and try again at the next fireworks downtown. Though I think I might try to scout out a few different locations that might be a bit better. Stay tuned!

Buffalo River and the Big Dam Bridge, again

I live just 3.5 miles from the Big Dam Bridge.
I thought I would throw that out there since it seems like I spend a lot of time taking pictures out there. Proximity counts, especially with gas costing both an arm and a leg these days. So with that in mind, I managed to spend a lot of time down at the Big Dam Bridge last week. Two nights, to be exact.

On Tuesday there seemed to be the makings of a neat sunset, so as soon as I got off work I grabbed the camera and made the 3.5 mile drive to the bridge. The weather was odd that night. It had stormed earlier that day, and still looked like it would pour down rain at any second. Yet there was a neat sunset too.



The odd thing is that while the sun was putting on a show over by Pinnacle, it had started to rain at the bridge.



I had to make a decision - stay there at the bridge and risk having the rain damage the camera, or go to the car to get an umbrella and miss the sunset. I decided to stay:



Luckily it wasn't raining that hard, so the camera survived. The water at the dam was running very high, and was thundering below the bridge where it comes out from the dam:






The sunset was starting to fade, so the focus went back to the bridge itself. I'm sure I looked like a nutcase to other people on the bridge while trying to set up this shot:



The tricky part about that shot was that it meant plopping the camera down right by a puddle of water. I did attempt to dry an area off with my shirt sleeve, but mostly was able to just move the water around. The other worry was that if I wasn't careful I could bump the camera and send it flying off the rail and into the muddy river water below.

With the camera safe I made it off the bridge. The river was very high, flooding some of the areas at the base of the bridge. A few feet of water were sitting right where people go fishing.




Here is a set of stairs that leads to the sidewalk above. The water is probably 3 feet deep there, I guess. Better watch that last step!



Luckily it had stopped raining, so there probably wouldn't be a sudden rise of the river that would sweep away anyone dumb enough to stand right there. But since it was starting to get late I tried for one last shot. I ended up staying out there a lot later than planned trying to get this one. There was a bit of something in the sky over the bridge, which I had thought was glare from the lights from the bridge hitting the lens. I tried all sorts of things to try blocking the light from getting in the lens, mostly holding my hands next to the lens in different ways. This only resulted in several shots with blurry hands in it. I ended up giving up on it, and now I think that the spot in the sky is from the lights hitting the low clouds. Oh well.



There were a few more shots of the bridge that I wanted to get, so I decided to head right back over there the next day. There is an area next to the dam that is usually home of people fishing. It is mostly a spit of land that runs out from the dam like a peninsula. I thought that since the water was up high I'd try to get a shot of the fast water colliding with objects on the beach.

Before heading back out there I stopped by the same places from the night before to see how they looked during the day:



And I took this one to do some compare and contrasting.
The view last week:




And then a shot taken last fall:



The water looks like it would be over the heads of the people fishing in the bottom picture. Kinda crazy, right? Or am I the only one who would be dorky enough to be impressed by that??

Well there were still lots of people out trying to catch fish, this guy was right by the dam. Now I am no expert on fishing, but it doesn't seem like it would be a good time to fish with the current all crazy like that. It would be a bit scary to see what got kicked up from the bottom of the river:



I went out and claimed a spot along the "beach" there. The river was crashing into the shoreline like waves. I guess since a real beach is several hundred miles away, this is as close as we'll get in Little Rock:



The plan was to find a place where the foreground would have rocks with the water crashing into it, with the Big Dam Bridge in the background. If it was a long exposure, the water would be blurred as it hit the rocks. The plan mostly worked out, but when it was dark enough for the lights on the bridge to look cool, it was almost too dark to see the rocks and water in the foreground.



It didn't take too long for it to get too dark to see the rocks at all.



And then finally one last shot before I left:



If it makes any difference I haven't been back to that Dam Bridge since then. I gave my camera some rest since it would be busy during the weekend. I went up to a wedding that was being held at Buffalo Point along the Buffalo National River.



I love the Buffalo River. And Buffalo Point is one of the places that I've only been too once up there (it's a bit out of the way). So the prospect of spending the weekend up there was exciting. I even had a plan on doing some experimenting up there with taking pictures of star trails. Star trails are pictures that have long exposures, usually at least over 10 minutes, which create trails from the stars "moving" across the frame while the picture is being taken.

My digital camera requires a special remote that allows it to take exposures over 60 seconds, which I've been too cheap to buy. Instead, I decided to dig out my old film camera and use it instead. On the way out of town I went and did something that I hadn't done in about a year - buy film. I was shocked at how expensive it was. $9. Yup, nine bucks for one roll of film. Granted it was a somewhat fancy film and it had 36 exposures on it, but still.

So I made it up to the River on Friday afternoon. The River was pretty and really made me want to head up there next weekend and just about any free time after that.



The wedding was on Saturday, but there was time for people to go and hang out a bit at the river. I went swimming in the river right where the above shot was taken. The water was cold. It was cold enough that it was actually painful to get into it. That really isn't a surprise, since the temperature outside had gotten into the 40's that night.

And here is a view of the river from an overlook:



After the wedding, on Saturday night I headed back down to the river to try my star trail shot. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and you could see millions of stars. It makes you realize how much of a city person you are when you look up and get amazed to see so many stars in the sky.

I went and tried to set up the camera, but then realized it was going to be a bit more difficult than I imagined. For one thing, I couldn't actually see anything out of the camera viewfinder. So I really had no idea if the camera was even pointed at the sky during the shot, since all I could see was darkness. But I tried, starting an exposure and going back to sit in my car that was parked nearby. As I started though, I got some company. Some park rangers drove up and nicely asked just what was going on. I said that I was shooting star pictures, which they luckily didn't think was that crazy. With a "good luck!" they drove off into the night.

I have to admit it was a bit creepy being out there at night by myself. Some bullfrogs were out croaking, and unfortunately they weren't the only visitors I would get to see that night. After being out there about 30 minutes, three vehicles pulled up to where I was parked. They belonged to a mini-van, a wrecker and a truck. The mini-van belonged to someone who managed to get a car stuck in the gravel by the river and needed to get a wrecker to pull it out.

Now, to me, it doesn't seem like such a brilliant idea to take a car onto the gravel since there was a big sign saying that unless you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, you will get stuck there. Plus that seems like something that could at least wait until daylight, instead of midnight.

The scene was a bit wrecked, so I decided to call it quits with the experiment. I managed to get about 7 shots out of the night. When I took the film to get developed, not a single shot came out. Dammit.

It turns out that to get the best results one should take pictures when there is a full moon. Of course there wasn't one that night, so the film came back blank where there was supposed to be star trails. So for all that, I ended up wasting money on film and developing. Oh well.

The next morning I went back to the same spot I was at the night before. It seemed like the person managed to free their car from the clutches of the gravel, since there weren't any cars there.



And after that it was time to leave, but not before one quick sidetrip. There is one area of the Buffalo River that I had heard about and always wanted to visit. So I was thrilled to realize that it just happened to be a few miles away from Buffalo Point. The area is the old ghost town of Rush. It is a set of old buildings dating from the 1900's from what was once a mining town.



The park service was kind enough to put up a sign with this info on it:
"The Ghost Town of Rush stands as mute testimony to the activities of a bygone era. Zinc carbonate ore was discovered in this valley in the late 1800's and the "rush" was on. Soon the hillsides were dotted with mines with colorful names such as Morning Star, White Eagle, Monte Cristo, Red Cloud, Buelah, MacIntosh, Edith and Yellow Rose. The population of the valley rose and fell with the demands of the zinc market. The peak came during the period 1914-1917 when more than 5,000 people were said to have lived and worked here. At the end of World War I the bottom feel out of the zinc market and mines were abandoned. These buildings date from the early 1900's and were inhabited until the 1960's, serving as homes and a general store and post office."

Sadly the old buildings are fragile, so they are fenced off and people aren't allowed inside.

This old building was the general store for the town:



About the store, the Park Service said:
"Across Rush creek, in front of you, are the remains of houses and shops once owned by the Morning Star. Many families lived there over the years, some until the late 1960's. The building nearest you was the Taylor-Medley Store - started by Bill Taylor and last operated by Lee Medley. Medley lived in the house just to the right of the store.

During the mining boom you'd probably buy groceries here (or at one of several Rush stores). You'd mail letters, buy stamps, and collect your mail here. Sitting on the store's front porch you could visit with your neighbors and catch up on the latest news. You could get married here, because the store owner was also shopkeeper, postmaster, and justice of the peace. The Taylor-Medley Store was the town's last hub. It was a place of business. It was a place for people. It was the last ember of a community when the store finally closed in 1956."

A few detail shots of the store:









Nearby is a short trail that loops around what was the heart of the old mining operation. Nearly all of the buildings are gone, a stone smelter and this building are all that remain now:



And some info, from the Park Service:
"Standing here, let yourself imagine the roar of a blacksmith's forge, the hiss of a bellows, and the clang of metal striking metal. The blacksmith shop was an essential cog in the Morning Star's operation. he kept the company's ore wagons ready and stock teams shoed. He repaired mine equipment, forging new parts as needed. If something broke he fixed it or remade it. Nails, nuts, bolts, and mining tools were readily stocked and available at the blacksmith shop.

In 1925 Lee Medley, the company's blacksmith, built this blacksmith shop for the reopening of the Morning Star Mine. the building had two rooms: one for forging and one for storing parts. A large, lean-to warehouse, now gone, was attached to the right side of the shop. There, wagon parts, pipe joints, and fittings were stored, along with the company general manager's prized Jordan car."

A spur trail takes off that actually goes up to some of the mines. I was pressed for time so I didn't go up there.

The main trail passes by this area, which was once the processing mill:



And again from the Park Service:
"The processing mill for the Morning Star Mine sat on these foundation pillars in front of you. During the mining boom, brought on my World War I, zinc prices soared. Profits enabled the company to expand and modernize the mill, increasing the mill's capacity to crush and separate 200 tons of zinc ore a day."

Then it was time to head home. Since I got back into town I haven't been back to the Big Dam Bridge yet.

I did take the camera out tonight to get a shot of this interesting sign in North Little Rock:



The Doggie Styles grooming service is actually part of a vet clinic in Park Hill. I think it's especially funny since the vet clinic that it is part of is actually the same one that my family has been using for well over 20 years. They are a good vet, they just have really questionable (or awesome!) judgement when it comes to naming stuff.