Field Trip to Arkansas Post

Yesterday, Hubby announced, "Tomorrow morning, we are going on a field trip."

"Uh Oh", my little kid brain thought, "That sounds educational and I'm not gonna like it."

I was kinda, sorta right. It was educational, but I liked the chosen destination, Arkansas Post. We had discussed doing a day trip there for some time but had never gotten around to it. The part I didn't like was leaving at 8:00 a.m. I don't move well at that hour. This morning we finally got on the road at 10:30 a.m. That's not too bad considering I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. talking to a friend in California.

On the way we passed through the little town of Tillar, Arkansas. The First United Methodist church there had the coolest looking dome. The building is Classical Revival, was built in 1913, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I'm a sucker for interesting architecture and make Hubby screech to a halt at buildings with interesting details.

Most of the landscape over in eastern Arkansas is agricultural fields....miles and miles and miles of soybeans. The sky there is big and wide and you can see forever. It's very different from Lower Arkansas where the landscape is miles and miles of pine trees. I thought this photo of a cloud over a Dumas, Arkansas soybean field was neat and showed the wide-open spaces.

Then there's the quirky stuff. This gigantic tire man was in front of Charlie's Tire Service and TV Repair in Dumas, Arkansas.

The Arkansas River was swollen from all the rain we've gotten lately. The debris was rollin' down the river at a pretty fast clip. I wouldn't want to be a little boat out there on the river any time soon. It would be toooo dangerous.

This is a log cabin just outside of Arkansas Post at the museum.

The grounds of the Arkansas Post National Memorial were beautiful, lush and green. This is a spot on the walking trail by the river.

I was a little disappointed to find there are no historic buildings or re-creations on the grounds, just a few stone foundation outlines. The only existing evidence of the settlement at Arkansas Post was this 24-foot deep brick cistern built about 1811 by Frederic Notrebe, a fur dealer and cotton planter.

There was a scale model of two sides of the fort wall to show how it was constructed. It was built of split red oak. Bullets could penetrate only about an inch into the wood providing protection to the soldiers.

On our way home we passed through the little community of Mist, Arkansas in Ashley County. It's so tiny it doesn't have its own ZIP code. The signposts marking the beginning and end of Mist are about 100 yards apart. I thought Mist was a cool name for a town.