Ouachitas Road Trip
March 27, 2005
I didn't have to wait long after the
beginning of Spring for a good waterfall-producing rain.
Charles and I figured things would be greener down south so we
left town around 10 a.m. for the Ouachitas past Mena. We
discovered a route so scenic that I'm bound to drive it many
times in the years to come.
We took my preferred route of I-540 to
Pocola, Highway 112 to Poteau, then Highway 59 into the
Ouachita National Forest. I enjoyed the scenery during this
part of the trip through the river valley. There were numerous
views of the Poteau River, Black Fork Creek, and countless
small streams - all swollen from the overnight rains. The trees
were starting to leaf out and were all kinds of colors, and it
seemed like we spotted a purple Redbud tree up every stream.
The scenery changed to a more classic
Ouachitas look as Highway 59 turned to the east and became
Highway 270 heading back into Arkansas. The highway runs
through a narrow valley between Rich Mountain to the south and
Black Fork Mountain to the north. These mountains were covered
with pine trees and we saw numerous rock glaciers. I lost count
of the number of small temporary waterfalls I saw rolling down
Rich Mountain.
My self-described Ouachitas Scenic Loop
started where we turned south off of Highway 8 outside of Mena
onto Highway 375. So far on our trip, the roads had been
relatively straight and flat as they traveled between
mountains, but now the highway twisted and turned as it climbed
up the side of Dallas Mountain. The views were breathtaking,
but I found myself wondering how many people had driven off
this narrow, curvy highway over the years. The highway changed
to dirt road at the small community of Shady, where we drove
alongside Mine Creek for about five miles, seeing some nice
cascades. We made a right turn onto Forest Road 38, which is
now one of my favorite roads in the state because of all the
great stuff we saw. Unfortunately this was one of those trips
where I wasn't able to get any photos of most of the nice stuff
we saw - it was windy and foggy so I didn't even try to take
pictures. The road seemed to alternate between two different
types of settings - one being the side of a steep, rugged
mountain with awesome views of the surrounding terrain - the
other being alongside a small stream lined with colorful,
weathered rocks much different than the standard sandstone I'm
used to in the Ozarks.
Bird's-foot Violets were thick alongside
the road in the steep areas, and the white flowers on the
Serviceberry trees were in full bloom. A couple hundred yards
past the Buckeye Trailhead, in a breathtaking spot where the
road hugged the side of Blaylock Mountain and we could see
Buckeye Mountain just across the valley, Charles spotted a nice
waterfall down below us. There was too much vegetation for us
to get a good view of it, but we could tell it was pretty big,
so I marked it in my GPS receiver.
Somewhere past the Caney Creek Trailhead
but before the turnoff to Bard Springs, I quickly brought the
truck to a halt when we saw a tall waterfall pouring down the
mountainside and into Blaylock Creek. The flat ground between
the truck and the creek was thick with Trout Lily leaves and
blooming Ozark Wake Robins.
Just past there, Forest Road 106 took off
to the east toward Bard Springs and Albert Pike campgrounds. We
took note of this, because we would eventually be driving down
that road, but not before first continuing farther south on
Forest Road 38. The road had begun to follow the Saline River,
which would soon flow into a small Forest Service Lake, Shady
Lake. We wanted to see the waterfall there after reading about
it in Tim Ernst's Arkansas
Waterfalls book.
The waterfall was on the downstream side of
the dam, on the opposite side of the creek from us. Even though
there was lots of water going over the spillway, the waterfall
wasn't running all that much. But we paid plenty of attention
to a series of short, roaring falls spanning the width of the
river just downstream.
Next we turned around and drove back up
Forest Road 38 then took a right onto Forest Road 106 heading
East. There's a small rock dam forming a swimming hole on the
creek at the Bard Springs campsite. The waterfall going over
the dam would have made a great picture, but for some reason we
didn't stop. The road followed alongside Blaylock Creek, which
had lots of nice drops and cascades; and in the surrounding
hills we saw many small cascades that reminded me of the one at
Collier
Springs.
Forest Road 106 took us to Albert Pike
campground on the Little Missouri River. From there we headed
north on Forest Roads 73 and 43, which connected with Highway
8. To complete our scenic loop we took Highway 8 west back to
Mena. Forest Road 43 is another one of my new favorites.
Crooked Creek, which runs beside it, has got a bunch of
impressive waterfalls and cascades. This was my second time to
see the creek, the first being almost two years ago. Although it was
starting to get dark, I stopped at one area south of Mosquito
Gap so I could snap some photos, partly because I felt like I'd
done nothing but drive around all day. That turned out to be a
mistake, because when we got to Mosquito Gap I found that the
waterfalls in the creek there were ten times nicer than the
area I'd just shot. But by then there wasn’t enough light
left to do much shooting, so we just drove on by.
