Rock Climbing and a Brand New Smores Technique

We were camping at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch, and we had even more good neighbors this morning. We fixed breakfast on our griddle for this hungry tribe. Besides our son's family joining us here, we also got to spend the weekend with their dear friends. The two young mothers in the picture below were each other's maid-of-honor when they both got married over a decade ago.

The hammock was very popular today, and very full of giggles.

It rained again last night, and the trails were even muddier. But this sturdy group headed out on a hike on the Bone Tree trail to see what we could find.

We eventually ran out of hiking trails, and had to loop back on a mountain bike trail. We didn't take pictures in the muddiest worst of it. But it's safe to say that each one of our shoes weighed three pounds more from the wet clay mud encrusted on it. We got a leg workout from all that extra gooey shoe mud.

We met more of the ranch animals on our walk. We found out that Horseshoe Canyon has llamas . . .

and a herd of cows with their spring calves.

But the real reason we were at Horseshoe Canyon was not for the animals or the hiking. We were here for the rock climbing! Eli has been asking, "How much longer 'til we climb?" every fifteen minutes since he woke up before 7:00 a.m. He could hardly wait until the 1:00 scheduled private rock climbing tour. The four climbers got geared up with their climbing shoes, helmets, and harnesses.

It was a half-mile hike to get to the first climbing wall of the afternoon. Even though it seemed quite tall to the grandparents, the guides called this the "kindergarten wall." Gram thought it looked more like a high school wall to her. In the picture below you can see our granddaughter starting near the bottom while our grandson was already to the top.

It was fun for them to have their mother to climb with them!

Five-year-old Eli was so excited about this rock climbing that he couldn't wipe that grin off his face. Normally Grandude would be climbing too, but his back was bothering him. Likewise, our son's shoulder was hurt. Gram had no excuse, other than her arms were weak and she's a big chicken.

After scampering up the kindergarten wall a couple times each, we moved deeper into the trail for a tougher climb. Climbing rocks are graded based on their steepness, and the availability of places to hold on with your hands and feet. This second wall was a 5.6.

Eli was still smiling after that climb. The owner would tell us later that he heard about the "five-year-old that was crushing it" on the walls. That was Eli!

The third wall was a 5.8--harder because it was almost smooth except for that diagonal crease. When you're only 42 inches tall, it was especially hard to find anything to hang onto. The guides had names like "high leg move" and "double knee hold" for the moves that Eli was naturally using to climb up that wall.

This area of Arkansas was lovely, and we were blessed to be sharing this day with loved ones while we were wandering His wonders.

Seven-year-old Carter was trying to find something--anything!--to help her up that wall. How did Mark get such a good picture?

Well, he was standing right beside the wall and she wasn't very high yet. She was having to do the splits to find feet holds! It would take Mark a long time to look through the 600 photos he took this day.

Both children have climbed many times at the rock climbing gym a few miles from our house. But this was their first time to tackle a real wall with no artificial hand and feet holds. It was like figuring out a puzzle to find a route to the top.

Both children have obviously inherited their climbing ability from their mother. Jordan made it look easy.

After a full four-hour guided rock climb, we would say that Carter really liked it.

But we would say that Eli really loved it!

We had another campfire, with hotdogs and brats for dinner. Then it was our second night of s'mores to celebrate our last camping night together. Instead of using graham crackers and chocolate bars, we usually make it simple and bring fudge stripe cookies. Mark whittled a forked wooden spear for his marshmallow roasting. Then there's always that messy step of transferring the roasted marshmallow onto the fudge stripe cookie. Well, we have a new invention. We found that if you thread the cookie through its center hole onto the skewer before the marshmallows . . .

you can lift the cookie up the stick and push those toasted mallows right off. I think we should patent this new s'mores cooking technique. Another advantage was the cookie's proximity to the fire made the chocolate melty and especially tasty. Remember: you saw this life-changing technique here first!

All this gooey s'mores goodness and rock-climbing fun had brought smiles to everyone's faces! A good time was had by all!

Horseshoe Bend to Horseshoe Canyon--Isn't that confusing?

We left Horseshoe Bend Campground this morning and headed towards Horseshoe Canyon Ranch Campground this afternoon. Having campgrounds with such similar names was really confusing when we put this trip together.  Both are in northwestern Arkansas. The road between the two is only 78 miles, but the drive took us almost three hours. One should never underestimate the roads through the Ozark Mountains. Our little pickup got a serious workout pulling our trailer up and down some of the steepest roads we've seen. It doesn't compare to the elevation of the Rockies, but does compare to the steepness of the road grades in the Rockies.

These Arkansas roads might be more crooked than the roads in the Rockies. You can see road signs that warn you to keep right, and then keep left, and then watch out for a hair-pin turn, all in the same photo. You get the picture that it was a tough drive through the Ozarks this day.

The last couple miles were on a muddy gravel road that took us off the mountain and into the canyon where we would be staying the next two nights.

We drove through a water crossing as we headed steeply down. All the time Denisa was wondering if our little pickup was going to be able to get us out of here if it continued to rain over the next two days.

Horseshoe Canyon Ranch really does have animals. We were greeted by sheep and goats as we got closer to our campground. It took us a while to get backed into our site, which was far from level and had a very steep grade on the approaching road. We wouldn't have any water, electric, or sewer hookups for the next two days. One would expect such a site to be cheap, but we will say this was the most expensive no-hook-up camp site ever for us.

But it was lovely at Horseshoe Canyon. Besides the farm animals, we were greeted by this butterfly at our site.

So why would we be staying at such a hard-to-get-to-expensive-no-hook-ups campground? It's all about the neighbors! Our oldest son and his family arrived later in the day and set up their tent in the site right next to us.

We must say that we had two of the best camp sites in the entire campground.

This family loves to climb, and Jordan had been rock-climbing here at Horseshoe Canyon many years ago. She wanted to share that experience with our two rock-climbing grandchildren.

After setting up camp, we set out on an evening hike. This ranch features a whole system of mountain bike trails, and a few hiking trails as well. It was great fun to have company as we got to wander His wonders while holding a child's hand.

We loved that our camp sites were situated right beside the babbling brook. That's the kind of white noise that we love!

This place was between the two tiny towns of Jasper and Ponca, Arkansas. Have we mentioned it was very remote? We had absolutely no cell phone service. So we walked up through the pasture to get to the office to use their wifi each evening.

The office was already closed that first evening when two tired young guys on motorcycles arrived. It seems we weren't the only ones that could get confused with the similarly-named campgrounds in Arkansas. They had reservations at Horseshoe Bend (where we were last night) but had mistakenly put Horseshoe Canyon (where we were tonight) into their GPS. They were glad to find that there were some first-come-first-served camp sites available here, because there was no way they were going to ride three hours further to get to their reserved site. We would have to agree that we wouldn't want to tackle that road in the dark this evening either. There was a little part of us that was glad that even young folks were confused by these campground names!

Rogers, Arkansas day -- Roger that!

"Roger that" is a phrase used when communicating via two-way radios, and it means that the message has been received and understood.  Do you "Roger that"? When we woke up to gusty winds, we were glad that we had kayaked and did our lake activities the day before. This would be a windy day filled with land activities instead of water activities. So we headed to the nearest town--Rogers, Arkansas. "Roger that!"

On our last bicycle ride, Mark's back tire had a blow out. We were in the middle of mountain bike country, and can you believe we couldn't find a replacement tube? The problem was that we were looking for a narrow townie tire, and this was mountain bike territory. So today we took turns riding Denisa's bike.

Denisa took the first turn, riding the 1.8-mile loop around Lake Atalanta in Rogers.

Another man-made lake built in the 1930's, it was a busy trail even on a Thursday morning.

It was windy, but biking was a nice way to burn some calories. Denisa walked another lap to get another couple miles of exercise. She took a picture of Mark riding her bike on the second lap.

She also took a few pictures of the local flora and fauna that were tough to see on a bike. First the flora--some beautiful yellow water irises in bloom. We find all kinds of beauty when we wander God's wonders. "Roger that!"

The only fauna was a line of turtles that were trying hard to ignore the camera by keeping their noses in the air and looking the other direction.

Besides a nice mostly-level paved trip around the lake, Lake Atalanta Park also features dirt mountain bike trails that thread their way through the surrounding Ozark mountains. We couldn't see those trails because of all the trees, and our foldable skinny-tired bikes had no business being up there.  Denisa on a skinny-tired fold-up bike on an aggressive mountain biking trail would be a recipe for disaster! "Roger that!" 

But we could walk up to the second floor overlook to watch the bikers on the Railyard Bike Park. We had a bird's eye view of the jumps and bumps that challenge the pros. In the bottom right corner they also have a track for the little pros on balance bikes.

The next stop was historic downtown Rogers--home of the Daisy BB gun museum. Here in Rogers, they've been making the Red Ryder BB guns made famous from "A Christmas Story" movie. They also made the world's largest Daisy BB gun and displayed it downtown. That's one big Red Ryder! "Roger that!"

Another downtown stop was the fresh harvest store--with lots of samples of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegars. After hearing how they make their products, and tasting how delicious they were, we walked out of there with a couple bottles. Those were pretty expensive free samples. "Roger that!"

So we headed to another free stop--the Rogers Historic Museum--hoping not to spend quite so much money. We got a free private tour of the Hawkins family home, built in 1895 and once again outfitted in period furnishings. Then we walked across the street to see the displays of early Rogers history including transportation. "Roger that!"

We made a stop for groceries and another try for a new bike tube, before we headed for a special dinner stop. On our way to our camp site yesterday, we saw an unassuming little cafe in the middle of no where with a big sign with the phone number to make reservations. Why would a little place in a remote location need reservations? Probably because according to several sources, they serve the best fried chicken in Arkansas?!? We used that phone number to make a reservation earlier today, and we watched as car-loads of people streamed in when they opened at 5:00. Only those with reservations were seated. We can now say that Monte Ne Inn Chicken was the best chicken we have eaten in a very long time! "Roger that!"

On our last night at Horseshoe Bend Campground on Beaver Lake, we had to spend some time monitoring the weather. Mark took a screen shot of the radar map with storm alerts posted at 3:00 a.m. We were the blue dot on the map below, with lots of lightning and high winds. We were glad that the tornado stayed north of us. "Roger that!"

In no hurry to get to Beaver Lake

We weren't in any hurry to leave our Boondockers Welcome camp site in Bella Vista, Arkansas, because we were only traveling an hour to our next campground. So we made a stop at the Veterans Wall of Honor in Bentonville. As we walked through the granite entry, we didn't realize that we were walking into a history classroom. 

The wall outlined every war where American soldiers have fought, beginning with the American Revolution. It included a timeline that threaded America's history on the battlefield. We read each bronze plate that summarized the U.S. role in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American war, the Spanish-American War, World War I . . . It was a history lesson that curved around a circle of memorial stones representing local soldiers. We enjoyed being schooled this day.

Have we mentioned the winding roads of Northwest Arkansas? We found out that car insurance rates were high here because of all the one-vehicle accidents that come from driving off these curvy narrow roads. That was a good description of the roads we traveled this day to get to Horseshoe Bend Campground on Beaver Lake. It's a good thing we were in no hurry, with low speed limits and so many curves in our path.

We love Corp of Engineer campgrounds that are usually found around beautiful lakes. But we have a little rant about the policy that you must make an on-line reservation before arriving at the campground. There were plenty of sites open in the middle of the week in April, but we had to choose one based on the information available on-line. We chose site #131 because it was on the water,  had some shade, was a good length for our pickup and trailer, and looked level. Perfect, right? Wrong! It looked like it was on the water on the digital map, but was actually high on a hill that made getting to the water very difficult. 

It was a good thing we were in no hurry, because it took some time to get the trailer into the site we reserved. We never could get the trailer level even using all of our leveling blocks, and our pickup had to be parked at an angle and still stuck out into the street. Of all the empty sites all over this huge campground, we certainly would have never picked this site if we saw it in person. But it looked good on the computer. We might have been able to make a change, but no one was working at the gate during this off-season. So even experienced campers can get a not-so-great camping site.

We had planned to go kayaking on Beaver Lake tomorrow. But based on the weather forecast, we decided we better go paddling this evening instead. Suddenly we were in a hurry.

We have consistently found that Corp of Engineer parks are clean and well managed, with spacious sites. Since we turned 62 year old, we especially like their half-price rates for us old-timers. But we have found very few hiking trails in these parks. It looks like the corp is all about the lake and the dam, and doesn't spend much time on trails. But directly across this neck of Beaver Lake was Hobbs State Park, home to lots of trails. It would be a 16-mile drive to get to the state park from our campground, meandering around the fingers of the lake until we could find a bridge to cross the water. But we can kayak there in 1.6 miles. The rocky shoreline ahead of us was the edge of the state park property.

We're not sure if anyone else had ever tried to kayak between Horseshoe Bend Campground to Hobbs State Park, because there was no beach to easily paddle into. It was quite a job hoisting the kayak up over the stone cliff. Then it was time to change from boat shoes into hiking boots.

It was a rocky walk around the edge of the lake.

 

It was a good thing that we had the Bayshore Ridge Loop Trail downloaded in the Alltrails app so we could find the opening in the trees that would intersect the state park trail.

It was a 3.5 mile walk through heavy forest, and we wouldn't see the lake again until we completed the circle. In April, we found only a few spring wildflowers blooming in the forest.

To tell the truth, it was a pretty boring 3.5 miles. We took almost no pictures until we came to this very picturesque tree shaped like the number 4.

 

How many pictures can you take of a 4 tree? Look, Denisa has no legs!

Mark could only play this game so long, and then he started playing possum.

That hike took longer than expected, and the sun was already low in the sky when we got back to the water. It was the golden hour, with the sunshine lighting up the rocky shore line. We have wandered God's wonders again today!

The water was calm in the cove, so we took a selfie of our first lake paddle of 2026.

After a day that got started with no hurry, we were now hurrying across the lake to make it back to the trailer before it got dark. It was a good ending to a day at Horseshoe Bend Campground at Beaver Lake.