Arkansas Camping trip June 25-28th
Went on a 4 day camping trip to Arkansas with 13 other people from my church. I guess I should start off my saying that this is REALLY dumbed down version of the story, If I had the motivation to type what all happened out, no doubt it would take me a week and a half lol. Got to Bentonville, AR and stopped for dinner, got back on the road and it took forever to get to the campground road. The roads in NW Arkansas are super curvy and 20 miles on a map is really about an hours drive lol. That is the big Phrase of the trip..."we'll be there in about 20 minutes."
once we got on the road to the campground we got lost and couldn't find the campground (keep in mind it's after sunset now, way after). We have to make two river crossings and thats when I take out the camera for the first time. Its a really cool scene, but really hard to capture on camera without a tripod.
The scene was rather neat, with the crescent moon over the road at times, while being lost in the wilderness of Arkansas lol. We pondered the idea of just camping near some sign and finding the campground in the morning. Later we found a really creepy church in the middle of nowhere. A few of us decided to go inside. It was pretty creepy being in there, but got a few "cool shots" of scary blurry "like you are about to get murdered" type images.
Here's Mark playing the Piano, man that was really creepy lol. There were probably 10 rows of Pews behind him, I have left out those shots due to how blurry they were. No tripod obviously, I just set the camera on the podium for this one.
Later we did finally get to the campground and setup and weht for a swim in the river. Met this cool guy Jeff that was managing the grounds and he helped us out quite a bit on the trip. The Night sky was pretty cool too, probably borderline the darkest I've been in. Here is a shot of the Milkyway over our campsite.
It was really fun getting in the river at night, since we hadn't see it during the day yet (another theme of the trip). Got to meet some really cool people on this trip too, which was the best part of the trip, I wasn't really available to get images during the best light, Oh well.
Went to bed around 1am and woke up to two crows in our campsite at 5:30am. Now that sucked, not only am I cramped in a 2 person tent with 3 people and had a horrible sleep, but now I don't even get any sleep. River again in the morning, breakfast and on the road to go canoeing by 9am. Got to the outfitters and they told us there are a few places to go cliff jumping along the river, so I got a little excited. Didn't make it a mile before we stopped and tried to climb some cliffs. Actually found a cave that went like 20 or more feet into the cliff! lol Mark thought we was going to be face to face with a bear at the end of it.
The next two photos are NOT taken by me, Photo credit goes to Nick Kelley. The only reason I decided to include these is because I didn't have any images of the river or cliffs.
Thats actually me jumping off that cliff lol. That was a fun one, although there was a bigger cliff that I gainer-ed off of. Those two kinda give you an idea of what the river was like, some areas had WAY higher cliffs though, up to 300 feet above the river, it was pretty cool. Once again I did NOT take those last two images, Nick Kelley did.
Finished the 7 mile trip and went back to camp and Nick made some Delicious tacos for dinner. We decided to hit up a short hike to watch the sunset, well this turned into a crazy 3 hour hike where we get lost and can't find our way back deal. Oh yeah we ran out of gas in one vehicle and had to park it at a church lol. Then we ended up on this overhanging rock. This was probably the most memorable part of the trip. It was Dark as I've ever seen, Probably no other human around for 10 miles or more. Nick blew his whistle while we were all quite and it echoed for a good 5 to 8 seconds. It was beautiful to hear. I tried to get some images on this rock but it was just too freaking dark. Here is one attempt...
We then headed back and got lost and couldn't find the trail back. Started the hike at around 9 and didn't get back until 1am to the car, it was supposed to be a 3 mile round trip hike, or only take 1hr 30min. not 4 hours. We made plans to sleep at the rock, but eventually found our way back to the van. Here is the epic, "we are lost in the woods at midnight" pic.
Got back to camp really late, I think 2 or 3am, Gavin was about to fall asleep driving lol, we were all EXHAUSTED. About this time we knew this was an epic trip and we had all become good friends. Slept in until 9 I think. Headed for another hike at noon or so, had to pick up the vehichle at the church and get gas. The we got a flat tire AT the gas station lol. That took about an hour to get fixed, it was nice to be in the air conditioning of that gas station though, since it had been close to 100 the whole time we were there.
Got to the trailhead around 2pm. About 1.6 miles into the hike we hit the main show, an incredible 207 foot waterfall in this bowl type of canyon. It was so big, my 10mm had a real hard time to get everything in. It was the most impressive canyon I've seen, although its the only one lol.
Nick and Gavin there in the last one. Oh these last three are ISo 1600 because I'm retarded. We get to the river and i'm the only one that went swimming because they saw a watersnake about 30 yards away. They missed out! it felt good. I then lost my socks crossing the river lol, then I finished the hike with soaking wet shoes. We leave and take a different way home and go on this CRAZY low maintenance road that we almost have to turn around on because it was so nuts, steven and I had to get out and guide the vehicles down the boulders, yes boulders. That was interesting. After that we went back and had another fantastic dinner and just slept.
Got up the next morning and left for Omaha. It was a trip to remember (not photography-wise). I met some of the coolest people I know. Okay time for a recap, since it was such a ROUGH summary.
crazy stuff that happened...
-Lost on the road a night
-Creepy Church
-Night river crossing (4 times)
-Lost on the trail at night
-Cliff jumping
-run out of gas
-Flat tire
-Snipe hunting lol
-blouder road
-anything else I missed.
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