Thursday, July 19, 2007

Mountain View, AR


Mountain View is the small town near Blanchard Springs. It is known as the folk music capitol of the world. This lends to curious entertainment on the weekend. Hundreds of people, mostly grey hairs, invade the town square with their lawn chairs to listen to many different folk groups playing all around it. The photos do not do this scene justice. They mostly just play their various instruments, and many of the instruments are home-made, but some groups do have singers. It's weirdly quiet, not much clapping, toe tapping, or dancing, much less talking. Then we realized what it was... its a dry county! We aren't drinkers, but we are from Memphis, where public events are loud, drunk, and rowdy! You definitely don't want to miss this experience if you ever go to Blanchard Springs.
In my hand is fried apples bought from one of the street vendors. They were pretty good! Ice cream is the most popular treat to eat while enjoying the music.

There is a great old-fashioned soda fountain pharmacy right off the square, but you'll want to check their hours, as they aren't open very late. We had a great rootbeer float, and mixed Dr. Pepper!

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Blanchard Springs Caverns


We went on the Wild Cave Tour at Blanchard Springs Caverns. We managed to convince some of our friends that this would be great fun, and not scary at all. Do you know how hard it is to convince people to go into a dark cave? We thought it might be kind of lame on our adventure meter, because it is guided and all. We hoped for more, but really all we expected was a walk off the path through some caverns that you don't get to see on the regular tour. Well, were we surprised! It was awesome. Who knew caving would be "indoor" mountain climbing! You start right off sliding down a steep hillside on your bottom, and if you don't do it right, you could fall right off the edge to your death!!! This sliding had to be done several times on the trip. We crawled through very tight spaces, edged along cliffs, climbed up and around through holes from one level of cave to the next, and climbed many hillsides, always with the fall to death right there! We had a blast, at least most of us did! (Notice the guy with the torn pants.)
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