Siqing, Jiang Bian, and myself went on a northern Arkansas adventure this last weekend. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it an adventure, it was mostly driving around aimlessly looking for a place to camp.

As you can imagine it is a nightmare trying to find a spot on Memorial Day weekend without a reservation. We were able to do a few things though. We finally ended up at Tyler Bend at the Buffalo River Saturday night, where we swam, hiked a trail to the Collister Homestead (where there were some really great overlooks), and enjoyed an interpretive disscussion from a national park ranger.

The next day we drove to Eureka Springs, which is basically a tourist trap disguised as a historial landmark. Later that day we drove back to Lost Valley near Ponca, to see the waterfall in the cave they have there. I had been there before, but Jiang had not. You must take a flashlight, be willing to crawl almost on your bellow 200 feet and not be claustrophobic. It is well worth the effort to see and plus it is like an air-conditioner in the cave, which is great on a hot summer day like it was.

Lastly, we went and swam at Pruitt on the Buffalo River before heading home, because we couldn’t find a suitable camping spot. All in all it was a good time, but way to much driving and wondering around looking for a camping spot.

One photo of Jiang at the Collister Homestead: (click here for all the photos)