Mountain Valley Arkansas

So there I was, right outside of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. The map showed the Lake Ouachita State Park campground was a blip over to the left but it showed no roads between. Sure I saw a sign by the side of the road a ways back, but the sign was pointing out more than which way to turn, it was pointing out that I needed a better map.

A good map will get you a long way in life. A good map will show you not only how to get from A to B it will also show you all of the different ways to get there. Options of discovery. I used to like just go out driving, seeing how far I could get lost and then find my way back again. I still do enjoy that now and then. But I now find that when using a good map, I can study it before hand and see something that might look interesting, a slight twist from where I might have randomly missed it. I can make that my point B or point C and wend my way toward that. A good map is a treasure map, only you get to decide what the treasure will be.

Let's be honest here. We are diving automobiles/motorcycles/bicycles/scateboards/etc. on roads. This is not the unexplored plains. The only discovery going on is personal. Not only has somebody been there before us, a crew of people built the road and there are probably folk living where we're headed. Take advantage of the situation and use a good map.

But what do I mean by a good map? There are the wonderful topographical maps from the USGS, but with those you might need to pull out a new 17" x 22" map every five miles. It's wonderful stuff, but a bit too much detail for a driving trip. Of course there are the standard folding maps. Every gas station has them. If you are goind to do any amount of exploring in a metro area, a good city-specific folding map can be a godsend. But for state-wide meandering they can still be a bit fuzzy, not to mention difficult to work with with all of those accordion folds. My favorite paper maps are the state-specific maps put out by Delorme Maps. These maps are wonderful! They are topographical so you can see what the terrain is like. They give you an idea whether you are going to be driving through swamps or forests or open land. And they show ALL of the roads. Even the nasty rutted ones you would never consider driving… well you might think twice first. But most importantly you will be able to find all of the lovely side routs that only the locals know of—and now you! They are in an atlas format. It often takes 60 pages or more to cover a state, but once you get used to them you wouldn't want to be without one. They are not cheap, $12 to $20 per (depending on where you buy them) but well worth it.

Where was I? Oh yes, Hot Springs Villiage, Arkansas, wanting a better map. Good fortune was with me that morning I fell into a gas station that had a Delorme map of Arkansas. Ah me, how could I refuse? My eyes were opened. Good Map in hand, not only did I see the route to the campground, I was able to spot five alternatives (which I drove over the next few days.) Get a Good Map.

On my way to the Lake Ouachita campground, I was driving the long, dry country highway. Hot and Humid was the order for the day. I passed a young couple walking the other way along the road and admired their tenacity. It seemed way out in the middle of nowhere and awfully hot for a romantic walk. Ah youth. A few miles later the romantic walk was revealed as less so when I passed a car with a flat tire. I decided to be a Good Samaritan and turned around.

"Awfully hot day for a walk way our here." I called out as I pulled up behind them. "Is that your car with a flat back there? Can I give you a ride anywhere?" They accepted my offer and I ended up taking them a few miles further than the closest phone to his brothers house. Off the highway and a few bends up a gravel road we came upon a cluster of small houses, about 30 to 60 years old—some of them in incredible disrepair. A bit beyond that we came to his brothers place where I let them off then headed back how I came.

Lake Ouachita is one of the monstrous man-made lakes they have here in the Ozarks. Similar to the process outlined in Deliverance, the lake-builders put a dam at the outlet of the right mountain stream and the result is a lake with a shoreline as convoluted as the fjords in Finland. It makes a wonderful recreation area with islands and a plethora of private coves. I found a nice cove of my own in which I spend the greater portion of the next few days just swimming and relaxing.

Lake Ouchita State Park is an easy drive to the Lumber Mill town of Mountain Pine, a town not nearly as prosperous now as in the past. The old school house is a wonderful, large, long building with a gaping hole in the roof at one end. The sign on the Mill gate claims they make Plywood there. There is an amazing, array of long ducts over the rail yard that they use to move sawdust, and the hoppers have a lovely patina of rust under blue and green paint.

Up a ways from Mountain Pine is Mountain Valley, Arkansas. Yes this is the very same place where they bottle Mountain Valley Spring Water. It is a water brand that is shipped all over the country and all over the world. I drank the water when I was in California. I had suspected it was nothing more than a label that they put on bottles of filtered water (in the manner that Coca Cola adds a sprit of minerals instead of flavored syrup to the same filtered water they use for their soda-pop and charge twice as much!) But no, Mountain Valley Spring Water is bottled from the source and then shipped. They have been around since 1871 and golly it is a BIG operation. The sign said they give tours, so I dodged between the semi- trucks and found the office. Sadly they only give tours on Tuesdays. But the gentleman at the desk was most helpful and informative. Not surprisingly, our conversation digressed from water to geology and geology naturally leads to rocks and from rocks we turned to arrowheads and I was treated to the tale of his own finding of an arrowhead.

"It had rained the day before and my wife and I were out on our evening walk…" he digressed into his dogs…"I just looked down and there it was. It was late and we had walked, fuh-thuh than normal…" That word struck me. There had been a slight pause and then he had said "fuh-thuh." Before that his accent had just been a softer version of the country dialect from where I had been living in the North Part of the Ozarks. That distinct pronunciation for the word "farther" landed me into the South. I had a vision of Blanche DuBois relying on the kindness of strangers and Carl Malden waiting for Baby Doll, "Stella!" My movie metaphors were all jumbled up. He finished his tale, never suspecting the impact of his pronunciation of that one word. Or perhaps it was a trick he played for all of the tourists, that pause, then the word, almost sighed out: "we had walked… fuh-thuh… than we normally do on our walks, I just looked down and there it was." In memory everything he said after that comes out with the smooth rounded sounds of the genteel South. Though I know it was a dialect more common to the Ozarks.