We are literally winding our way through the state of Arkansas! After winding out of the little roads at White Cliffs campground, we headed north towards Mena, Arkansas. Here we joined highway 88, part of the Talimena scenic drive that people flock to in the autumn for its fall foliage. As we started this part of our drive today, we noted that the trees in Mena are all leafed out.
The sign at Mena warned of steep and winding roads for the next twelve miles. They aren't kidding!
As we drove higher, we also got some views above the trees. This is the kind of highway that we would have avoided in our motor home six years ago. But Mark has driven so many mountain roads that he didn't even blink at the steep drop-offs on both sides of these narrow winding roads as we approached our destination.
Besides, he's the one that picked this destination for his birthday. Long ago, we made a decision that the person celebrating a birthday gets to plan their special day. He gets to decide the activities, the location, the meal, the dessert--everything about what we will do on his birthday. It's the job of the other spouse to gladly agree with that plan. This isn't hard, since we both seem to enjoy the same things. So we pulled into our camping spot at Queen Wilhelmina State Park that Mark chose. Denisa questioned his decision to stay right beside the train tracks. It's a good thing that the child-sized Glory Railroad isn't running during the off-season, or we would have had some loud train traffic right outside our window.
It didn't take us long to get started on one of Mark's planned birthday activities--hiking. We'll actually be here several days, so we started at the Lover's Leap Trail.
This one-mile loop trail would be slower than usual, when Denisa found out that it had great wildflowers on it. These sweet little miniature irises were in large groups on both sides of the trail.
This plant must be a relative of the mountain trillium, with its three outside leaves, three inner leaves, and three-part bloom.
Besides all the wildflowers on the ground, the red bud trees are in their spring glory on the Lover's Leap trail.
The trees are just beginning to leaf out here at this higher elevation, and some of the tiny leaves are colors of pink and red. Is that because they will also be those colors in the fall?
Lover's Leap is a loop trail that starts and ends at the lodge at Wilhelmina State Park. The viewpoint here gives an uninterrupted look for miles around at this high elevation. We are 1,400 feet higher than the town of Mena where we started our drive. While the trees were leafed out in town, you can see that the trees on top of Rich Mountain are still bare.
We took another hike the next morning, which was actually Mark's day of birth. As you can tell from the coat and gloves, it was a brisk morning here on Rich Mountain as we made the hikes on the Spring Trail and the Reservoir Trail.
Fewer wildflowers on these hikes, but Mark still felt the love from this heart-shaped fallen log on the trail this morning.
We took a morning hike on his birthday for two reasons. One reason was that a colder front with fierce winds was scheduled to arrive in the afternoon. That did happen right on schedule. The other reason was that we had to be near a computer at exactly 1:00 this afternoon. We had found that Denali National Park in Alaska, was opening reservations to a very special opportunity at that time. Visitors to this national park are only allowed to drive their vehicles 15 miles into the park. Transportation deeper into the park is only provided on park buses. But with Covid restrictions that limit the number of passengers on these buses, they have decided to allow passenger vehicles to travel an additional 15 miles into Denali National park--all the way to Teklanika. They will allow only 25 vehicles per day, and they will be spaced in groups an hour apart. A spot in one of the coveted 7 spaces at 9 a.m. would be great, as those passengers will be allowed into the park earlier than even the buses can get on that road. So Mark spent part of his birthday poised at the computer, with the web site open and ready to make that reservation for our upcoming Alaska trip.
At exactly 1 p.m. central time (10 a.m. Alaska time) the link opened and Mark clicked on the 9:00 timed entry permit. He got one! We are so excited! By the time he quickly filled out the $25 payment information, he clicked back on the permit page. Within the first five minutes of opening, 21 of the 25 permits were purchased for our day. Within an hour almost all of the 25 permits for every day were sold out for the entire summer. Good job Mark, in using part of your birthday for Alaska trip planning!
We spent the rest of the afternoon inside to avoid the cold winds. We made home-made ice cream to go with the German chocolate cake that Mark requested for his birthday dessert.
We actually had cake and ice cream with breakfast and again for lunch--because when it's your birthday you can make choices like that. As you might have noticed from the decorations inside the motor home, this is a big birthday for Mark!
We finished the day at the very nice restaurant at the Queen Wilhelmina Lodge. We had their steak dinner, and they added a slice of hummingbird cake for dessert since we were celebrating a birthday. It was his third slice of cake today!
It was a nice stop at a very nice Arkansas state park. Denisa thinks Mark did a good job of planning this special birthday for her very special guy! Happy Birthday to Mark!
Wow! Three slices of cake AND a Denali permit - that's a pretty spectacular way to celebrate a milestone birthday! Congratulations on the permit (SO exciting!) and best wishes for a year full of amazing adventures, Mark!
ReplyDelete