This morning was foggy along the White River that runs behind our campground on Beaver Lake. We would like to kayak down this placid river, and then paddle back to our camp site. But if they release water from the dam, this river widens to double its usual width and the current increases to something impossible to paddle back against. We found a web site of the water release schedule and saw that it is controlled by the need for electricity. When temperatures go up and customers need more electricity to run their air-conditioners, water is released through the hydro-electric turbines. A hot day was forecast, and we heard the siren blow at 8:09 a.m. That siren announces that everyone should get off the river because the water level will be rising fast. We walked the 200 feet to the boat dock near our trailer and watched as the river covered the sidewalk and boat launch area quickly. The 45-degree water released from 200 feet below the lake surface felt cool on a hot day. It keeps the trout happy, and people come to fish the White River to catch their limit of fish that are less than 13 inches or more than 16 inches long.
The White River was not a possibility for kayaking, and we also decided against the huge Beaver Lake with its heavy motor boat traffic. Instead, we headed to Leatherwood Lake in a Eureka Springs city park. The water was completely smooth when we launched our kayak.
We paddled the 2.5 miles around the outside edge of Leatherwood Lake. We love spotting wildlife from the water, and this green heron was mirrored in the shallow water beneath him.
The coloring and markings of the green heron was worth two pictures!
We also spotted a two-foot-long gar resting in the moss, and many more rolling to the top on this sunny day. After Mark's repairs on our aging kayak, we're watching for leaks on this kayak trip. The good news was we stayed reasonably dry.
After a very nice ride around Lake Leatherwood, we dried out the kayak. We saw a fluttering mass near the water's edge where we were rolling up the boat.
That fluttering mass was a large group of butterflies, enjoying something tasty along the soggy shore line.
When we see the detail and colors of a common butterfly wing, we are reminded that we continually wander into more of God's wonders.
We stopped by the city park office to get advice about the best hiking trail in the area. We were greeted by Sasquatch, sitting on a bench outside of the park office.
Sasquatch was too heavy for that bench, breaking it right in two.
The ranger's advice was to hike the 3.2 mile Miner's Rock Loop through the Ozark woods. It started at this rock bridge near the trail head.
We were in the forest most of the hike, but we enjoyed some nice mossy rock formations along the way.
Our hike took us to something called "the north hub of the gravity project trails." We didn't know what that meant until we did some research. An organization named "the gravity project" runs shuttles that take mountain bikes and their riders to the top of these mountains so they can allow gravity to roll them to the bottom. The north hub is close to the drop-off point for the mountain bikers.
From the north hub, a biker can choose how difficult the trail will be that they ride--or should we say gravitate--down. One choice is the easy green trail #6.
Another choice is trail #4, a medium hard mountain biking trail.
Only experts should choose trail #7, the double black diamond. If there's any doubt about how hard this trail will be, it starts with a rock jump platform that curves straight into a tree.
A map at the top outlined the green, blue and black bike paths down on the gravity project. We are on the Miner's Rock hiking trail on the outside edge of the map below.
We crossed the bike trails on our way up and down on the Miner's Rock Loop, and we found more jumps. Mark is standing where a bike would jump down to the dirt trail far below.
Even though it was 70 degrees and we were in the shade most of the hike, it felt warm. We found this deer also searching for the shade under a rock cliff beside our trail.
The lizards on the trail seemed to relish in the hot sun.
We scared up more than one lizard on this trail. Other than scaly hikers, we had this trail to ourselves on a weekday afternoon.
About a quarter mile before the end of our loop, we finally found Miner's Rock.
It was a nice shady place to rest and take a few pictures.
The holes eroded all the way through the rock, made for perfect peek-a-book pictures.
In our experiment to see if our solar power could keep up with our refrigerator power, we unplugged the trailer from our electric camp site before we left that morning. We were unplugged seven hours, and our solar panels kept our battery at 100%. That means we were making more electricity than we were using. We cheated on this test to check our boondocking skills, because we were hot after our hike. We plugged into shore power and ran the air-conditioner for a bit, and microwaved some things for dinner. We will miss both of these two appliances when we are truly without plug-ins, because solar power cannot run those two high-energy items.
On our last day at Dam Site River Campground on Beaver Lake, we enjoyed the beautiful clouds over the White River right below our camp site. We are blessed!
Love the butterfly pictures and the Sasquatch bench!
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