I’ve reached the point where I not only post crappy photos here, but terrible low-res video clips hastily stitched together with Imovie, as well. Why do just one thing poorly when there is opportunity for two?

Finding something through exploration or by chance, vs looking it up in a travel book and going there expecting to see it ..are two very different things.

I don’t have the writing skills to communicate that idea well enough.

For an ordinary great thing you see, has got nothing on the unexpected great thing, the surprising great thing.

Two weeks ago, on a Friday after a big rain, by accident I found something great. Tens of thousands of people in Little Rock live within 5 miles of this place, and they don’t know it.

Being in a city park, it’s protected, ..but it’s so far out of the way from where anyone would think of going, that I’m sure there are only a few of us who’ll ever see it.

This past Sunday Jason rounded us up to float the Mulberry. I’d never been there either. Great day. To go along with the usual beater-canoes in various stages of complete disrepair, Jason rented a big raft from Turner Bend. We put in below Wolf Pen and floated around 15 miles back down.

Below is my wife, and in the background Brent, who serves on the financial board of Stephens & Associates when he isn’t being a mechanical engineer, or studying to be a male nurse, or eating our food.

Click Here for the rest of the photos. The wife took most if not all of them.

Corey managed to get a snake in the raft and everybody bailed out pretty quick, as I was told. I wasn’t there to see it, as the pregnant wife and I were occupied upstream lodged on a rock. Imagine her trust in my manliness emptying out in direct inverse proportion to the river water, slowly but surely filling our canoe.

She married a nerd.

Our first two examples below, depict the temperament of the common Weiner Dog (Canis lupus Familiaris Greedyandlazy’ous) while in captivity. Images that follow immediately thereafter are are meant to document the behavior of such beasts in the wild.

Photos of other people’s weiners at the Flickr Dachshund Pool

Most often you find the best things through indirect means. Today my brother took me to float a section of Cadron Creek. Great scenic river with enough rapids to keep things interesting, and it’s right outside of Conway. I’ve been an idiot for not really knowing much about it. So I’ll be going back. Often.

So I get home this evening, take off wet shoes, pet dogs, eat some dinner, and I remembered that sometime this week there will be a presentation at the Little Rock library about the new Encyclopedia of Arkansas that I’d read about in the Times. I check the site out for the first time and take a look around. It has a fair amount of information, and quite a bit of Arkansas imagery available, as well.

Thinking about it, I wonder if they are taking the best approach. The design is ok. And like the vast majority of other state-funded endeavors, they used Aristotle, of course. But, ultimately I wonder if Wikipedia isn’t a better resource, with a better method of gathering information.

Cadron Creek was still on my mind, so I searched for it in the Arkansas Encyclopedia and didn’t really find much, besides a reference to “Cove Creek Natural Area” which runs into the Cadron. Curious, I searched google and found more about the Cove Creek Natural Area on the website for the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, which turns out to be a great resource.

I highly recommend downloading the 2005 System of Natural Areas report (pdf). Lots of hole-in-the-wall places are designated as natural heritage sites, and if you’re like me, you aren’t aware of 90% of them.

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