On Monday afternoon we left Fort Smith for a short hours
drive north to Devils Den State Park.
I’m a few days late posting this particular blog because there is no
wifi in the park which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Our cabin is a really nice studio type cabin that was built
by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930’s. What a novel concept the CCC was in its day,
offer employment plus educational opportunities to healthy and capable young
men instead of a handout……………interesting!
The park is an outstanding state park with plenty of shaded
camp sites, cabins (which thankfully now are air conditioned) and plenty of
great hiking trails through some interesting terrain that runs along creek
beds, close to waterfalls and by some really interesting sandstone caves and
crevices. If you’re in this neck of the
woods and this is your cup of tea I’d highly recommend you checking it
out. They even have a swimming pool for
park guests although they have rather silly hours (12:00 Noon-6:00 PM but
closed from 2:30-3:30 for a “pool break”).
I never really knew a pool needed a break, I guess you’re never too old
to learn something new.
Beth and I are early risers, always have been and continue
to be even in retirement. One of our
favorite things to do early is to walk before it gets too hot or too sunny
which is really important this week since our timing was impeccable and we’re
here during what the weather guys are saying is the “hottest week of the year”.
This morning we were fully caffeinated and had eaten our
Cheerios by 7:00 and were hitting the trail.
The temperature was great and we had plenty of shade from the rising sun
however there was one little drawback we encountered. We were clearly the first folks on the trail
and did any hikers that followed behind us a great favor by clearing all the
spider webs that had been spun overnight and it seemed like there were hundreds
of them.
As we were pushing our way through the webs I was reminded
of one of my lifelong best friends deathly fear of spiders. I’ll not share his name but he was a fellow
Mulberrian who graduated from Mulberry High School in 1974 and is a fellow
alumni of the University of Florida……some of you will figure it out pretty
quickly and I think he’s actually been reading this blog or at least he told me
he was going to read it. To him all
spiders no matter how small and harmless were man eating creatures with the
intent on destroying mankind. I remember
him sharing with me that one morning while brushing his teeth that a tiny
spider dropped down in front of him causing him to swallow his toothpaste which
led to him puking. Now why I can
remember this trivial nonsense but can’t remember where I parked the car 10
minutes earlier is one of the great mysteries that I frequently ponder but I
guess it makes for good storytelling.
As Beth and I talked about all the spider webs we were destroying (mainly me since she volunteered me to walk in front this morning) we came
to the following brilliant philosophical conclusion; the “glass half empty”
person would focus on destroying the spider webs that the spiders had worked so
hard on while the “glass half full” person would focus on all the bugs lives we
were saving from an agonizing and painful death in a spiders web. I think my friend would be a “glass half full”
guy on this one.
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| Cabin 17 in Devil's Den-A cute and cozy studio |
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| She lifted this rock over her head right after I put the camera away |
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| Devil's Den Trail |
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| Some of the nice stacked rock formations in the creek bed |
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| Up River from the Bridge |
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| I just couldn't resist this picture.....I would have never figured out what all that stuff in the background was without the sign! |
