Highpoint: Arkansas. Mt. Magazine (2753 ft). June 29, 2010

Arkansas -- the scene of my laptop accident! This will be the last entry with miniature photographs. After leaving this state, I bought a new computer; future trip reports will have full-sized images, taken directly from my new laptop (as opposed to the pictures below, which are copied from my Facebook account).

We drove north from Louisiana, first through the rural towns of southern Arkansas, then through Hot Springs (a nice little city!), finally making our way to Mount Magazine State Park.

This park is lovely! There's a restaurant and a motel, as well as campsites and cabins. There's also an area from which hang gliders launch. Best of all, the temperatures were in the lower 70s, and the humidity was nil. This was the first time we had experienced temperatures below 90 degrees since we left New Hampshire! We were so overjoyed with the atmosphere that we decided to stay in the park an extra day to further appreciate the weather.

The trail to the highpoint lies a few dozen feet away from the campsite. It's a paved path, and only a few tenths of a mile long.



We reached the wooded peak quickly and easily.





Though there are no views from the tippy-top, there are great views to be had from the road in the park. Several pull-offs overlook the surrounding countryside and give scenic perspectives of Mount Magazine itself.





As mentioned above, we spent an extra day in this Park -- highlights of that extra day included:

1) seeing a massive rattlesnake in the middle of the road, not too far from the campground,

2) waking up to the sound of a bear roaming about our site,

3) pulling off the only tick we've had to date (it got Sage, she was nonchalant about having it yanked out of her)

4) my laptop doing a nosedive from the hood of my car (I tripped over the dangling power cord......luckily, all my documents had been fully backed up the day before...the only temporary casualties were the full sets of photos from a handful of highpoints...hence the Facebook images in some of the trip reports below).

Mt. Magazine State Park was a great place to stop and kick back for a while. We enjoyed our time there, in spite of the rattlesnake, bold bear, tick attack, and laptop disaster.

Next stop: Missouri.