Review: Flight of Passage

A memoir by Rinker Buck


He had a fantastic story to tell and he told it well. Better than well--wonderfully.

It's about two brothers, a father, and an airplane. And a magical, impossible, adorable trip across America. Having been to most of the places that the boys flew over, I understood and appreciated the scenery and challenges better than other people might. But even if you haven't been there, this book comes highly recommended.

It is quite dated now, having taken place in 1966. But not dated in a bad way--rather in a delightfully nostalgic look back at how young and innocent our country used to be and how beautiful the scenery can be when there weren't so many cars and roads and superhighways in it. Some of his descriptions of horses or prairie dogs or even Stearman pilots are a bit sad making, because their days are no more and no one can ever see what the two boys saw. But it's definitely worth a look back--a delightful one!

Review: Charles Dowding's Skills For Growing

I'd read one of his gardening books before--it was where I learned how to do "no-till gardening" and became very addicted to it.  In a plot as small as mine (25'x30') it makes a lot of sense, and seems to work well. The main problem I have is that I don't make nearly as much compost as I need (making compost is a lot of work) and so I end up periodically scraping up the mulch between the rows and using it as compost for top-dressing the beds. That also works well, but it is a good bit of work.

But back to this book. He had some new stuff to add to the previous book, and it is very well done. The skills he speaks of are all things I could use a refresher course in, like transplanting, watering, covering the beds, and succession. He's really big on succession. I've never been very successful with it.

Especially useful to me was the section on frost protection and how different families of plants vary in their degree of frost tolerance.  But other than that, I didn't learn a lot of new stuff from this book. But I enjoyed it.

Review: The Big Year

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession
by Mark Obmascik

Wow, eye-witness modern history! With a backstory--when did big years start, how did they get so big, and why in the world would someone waste so much time and money chasing about after silly birds?  

Well, he can't quite answer the last question, but you get a strong feeling for the three guys in the narrative. And it's fascinating, throughout. With a good bit of seat-gripping action thrown in from time to time.  The competition is not so much man against man against man as it is man against "previous record" and sometimes, man against bird.  Seasickness, foul weather, and mosquitoes play prominently in the action, too.

It's hard to explain how this became so interesting. All I can say is it was hard to pause (I did the audiobook recording) and easy to pick up. If I'd been reading it on paper, I'd probably have gulped in in a few long sessions.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 10

(No pictures--my phone decided to store images in a compressed format that the computer can't convert. Some stupid upgrade changed my setting.)

Fri Apr 19, at Stephens Park (Corp. of Engineers)

We've stayed in a lot of strange and unusual places, but this one was uniquely weird in a lot of ways. It looked and felt like a pull-off at the side of the road. Not really, but...really. The drive into camp is just an offshoot of a small state highway. On either side of the drive, there are camping sites--mostly back-in but a few pull through. There are no sidewalks and very little pavement; if I want to walk the dog I have to go up and down the drive past other campsites or cross the grass to the road, and walk alongside the road.

Molly's evening walk consisted of two loops around our campsite and past the ones immediately to either end of ours. If I went further backward, I'd walk past people enjoying a quiet campfire. If I went further forward, I'd pass the people at the end with the two barking poodle-type dogs. I didn't see anyone sitting outside down there, but I didn't see the point in stirring up noise.

And that's all there was. A bathroom, a pavilion, and a tiny playground down by the lake, but I couldn't get there without walking across the grass and alongside the road, which is luckily little traveled.

We were right beside a creek which is mostly dry but still has a trickle or two of water. And there's no trash around anywhere, which must mean someone is cleaning it up. There's always trash, especially at COE campgrounds, so the lack of trash means that maintenance is being done daily.

On our afternoon walk, Molly and I went across the bridge and past the power plant and alongside the huge spillway. Then the road split off to the right but there was a COE drive on the left-hand split that went up, up and up a huge hill until it reached a scenic overlook of Lake Ouachita. Wow.

The campground was a cute little place. I feel both exposed and pleased.  There were t*Tons of summer tanagers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, chipping sparrows. And a bunch of little warblers I couldn't ID by ear and couldn't see in the trees.

Better luck tomorrow...but there's a long drive tomorrow. Four hours and thirty minutes with a gas stop. Yuck.  I won't have time for birding in the morning...the spring migration trip is over.

Review Stephens Park
$15 with discount

Hard to find on google maps, but if you search for the address listed on recreation.gov, Google takes you right to the entrance. There were some dodgy little roads getting there and a few tree branches creeping out over the roadway, but nothing serious. (We came from the east, near Hot Springs)

Don't be put off by the appearance--it looks run down and crummy but once you're parked and settled, it's actually very nice. A good bit of traffic on the little road that runs beside it, but it's not a super busy road so there's only a little noise. Other than that, it's quiet and very clean.

Our site 6 was pull-through and very unlevel but we have pretty good jacks on the Class A and were able to level easily. Picnic table a little old but okay. Site surface was hard gravel. Water, sewer and 50-amp electricity. Sufficient room between us and the neighbors; not as spacious as some COE parks but okay.  And it's a small park so there aren't a lot of neighbors--maybe 20 sites or so total. More than half empty on a Friday in April.

There's no good place to walk your dog other than down to the tiny playground by the river, but if you're feeling adventurous you can walk past the power plant along the spillway, then turn right and go up the huge hill to the scenic overlook of Lake Ouachita. Nice view up there.

It's convenient to fishing in the tailwaters below the dam. Not sure if there were any fish there, but an Osprey kept patrol.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 9

Thu Apr 18

Nothing exciting happened on our second day at Lake Poinsett. We went to , Jonesboro to see the Crowley's Ridge Nature Center. It was probably a pretty nice--and very small--nature center, but the trails were closed and there were a bunch of students and wheelchair people visiting.  I didn't ask why the trails were closed, but it didn't matter so much. the crowd would have made it hard to see anything anyway.

They had an excellent botanic garden set up, but very few of the plants were blooming at the time. Odd, because there are blooms all over everywhere else.

So we went back to camp and Molly got another very long walk. We took the second half of the trail we'd done before, in reverse, and looped back to the entrance station.  The skies had been threatening thunderstorms all day, so when we passed a group of park ranger-type guys I asked them, jokingly, when are the storms coming? They said the last forecast called for 3:30 pm.  It was only about 3:15 by then, so Molly and I went on and did the trail called the Upper Heron Loop or something like that, then took the same route back to camp.  Round about 4pm, rain started spitting down on us. But it wasn't serious enough to even need a raincoat.

Nice park but very small. We pretty much hiked all the trails they had in under two hours.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 8

 My Palm Warbler pics,

 

Good-bye to Reelfoot Lake, and back to Arkansas. We went across the flat, northeast delta of Arkansas, where the farm land was marked with irrigation canals, probably from the Mississippi River. Or the St. Francis But oddly enough, I don't remember the route we took. It seems like it would have been faster to go south on I-55, but I don't think we did.

Anyway, we liked the campground a lot. It was in a forest on a hill, with no lake in sight, but still nice. Actually if you went all the way to the end of the camping loop you could get a glimpse of the lake over across the day use and playground area. When we arrived and settled in, Molly and I took a long walk across the fields, through the day use area, and then on a trail that cut through the woods behind our campsite. It eventually came out to another "arm" of the lake with a nice view.

Here's my review which will give you an idea of the details.

Review Lake Poinsett State Park
$35 site 4
Immaculate and almost brand-new
A good bit of loving care had gone into the design of the campground. On the map it looked like a straight-line road with lined-up campsites on either side, but in actuality they were varied and well spaced. Some looked like they'd be great paired sites; some had little rails making a balcony effect; the one or two at the very end of the loop had lake view.  The whole park is very park-like--clean, well-mowed, huge pine and oak trees with little undergrowth, light and airy and beautiful. But there are more than enough ticks around to remind you that you really are out "in nature."

Site surfaces hard gravel; our site 4 was extremely level. Water and electric (50-amp) worked great. No sewer, but the dump station is beside the visitor center and well set up.

There were a few trails, all of which could be walked in a couple of hours. But they were very nice.  There was a big playground, basketball goals, and a few swings to sit on and admire nature.  Our campsite was quiet other than the sound of gunfire that went on until after 9:00 at night. It was coming from down south out of the boundaries of the park--not close, but close enough to scare my dog and ruin her walks. The only other issue I have is that several campers had extremely bright outside lighting that they left on all night long. If we'd been near to them, any chances of sitting out and enjoying the everything would have been ruined.

Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration Day 7

Tue 16 Apr

Last day at Reelfoot Lake. I finally found a new warbler, I think--a Palm Warbler. The rusty-colored crown was significant, as well as the face pattern and the yellow "undertail coverts". I'm almost, almost sure about it.

But am I sure enough?

Yes. I saw another one later and took pictures.  (See tomorrow post)

Osprey and camp wildlife

We didn't do much, just went over to the State Park Visitor Center and walked the little boardwalk there. 

 

On the way back we stopped at a boat ramp/eagle nesting site and watched a pair of eagles who appeared to be feeding at least one fledgling. Here's the best pictures I could get, without approaching the nest, of course.

Ate at a Boyette's Dining Room.  Not bad; not great.  Very good slaw.