Bigfoot in Texas



Bigfoot sightings in Texas

If you think Bigfoot is only in the northwest states of America, you would be wrong. There have been sightings reported in every state except Hawaii. One of the area's with the most sightings is the nearly 12-million acre "Piney Woods" region in East Texas. Stretching from the Gulf Coast all the way up to Texarkana in the northeast corner, this huge strip of land contains four national forests, five state forests, and accounts for almost all of the state's commercial timber.

It is also home to one of the first documented sightings in history - the strange case of "The Wild Woman of Navidad." This story was recounted in the "Legends of Texas" book published by the Texas Folklore Society in 1924. The creature was described as covered in brown hair and was very fast. She eluded capture because the horses were so afraid of the strange creature that they could not be urged within reach of the lasso. The events occurred in 1837 in the Texas settlements of the lower Navidad. Mysterious barefoot tracks were seen frequently in the area for years. There are Native American legends dating back hundreds of years that describe tribes of giants that were hair-covered and lived in the woods.

In 1965, there was a spike in sightings reported by a number of people living in several small, rural towns located deep in the woods. One of the first of these came from an encounter in a cemetery just outside the town of Kountz.

At that time, there was a group of students at Kountz High School who called themselves the Rat Finks. There sure wasn't much for teenagers to do in the small, isolated town so on weekends they would amuse themselves by going "booger hunting," their name for running around in scary places looking for a boogeyman. One night they took a prospective new member of their group to their favorite place, the Old Hardin cemetery located in the woods a couple of miles outside of town. On that night though, they got more than they bargained for.

The Talking Angel

There is a gravestone in Old Hardin cemetery that has a statue of an angel pointing at the heavens. The Rat Finks called it the Talking Angel and would take the prospective club members to the cemetery in the dark of night to ask it questions. The legend they had made up was that if the angel did not answer you, you were doomed!

On this particular night though, with the half-moon providing just enough light to cast shadows, their ceremony was cut short by an eerie figure racing across the cemetery grounds. It ran into a maintenance shed, turning over cans, tossing equipment around, and generally just making a noisy ruckus for a few seconds. The figure came out of the shed and before running away as fast as they could, each of the kids got a good look at the boogeyman. To their horror, it was a huge, hairy apelike creature! One of the few girls in the Rat Finks, Sharon Gossett, let out a scream and when she did, the boogeyman turned to look at them. That was all they needed to beat feet out of there and jump in their car.

After driving back toward town for a couple of miles and regaining their wits, the teens realized that if they ever told anyone about  their experience, they would be accused of having overactive imaginations, so they went to Sharon's aunt's house and persuaded her to return with them to the cemetery for another look and to verify their sighting.

Closer look at the
Talking Angel.

Sure enough, as they pulled into the graveyard entrance, the car's headlights illuminated the creature standing on two legs at the edge of the woods on the other side of the small cemetery. The aunt later described it as being about 7 feet tall and covered with hair like an ape. The creature disappeared into the trees as the aunt and the teenagers got out of the car with several flashlights. After looking into the shed and verifying for herself the disarray of the contents, they were heading back to the car when they heard rustling noises. Their flashlights illuminated the creature which was now back inside the fenced cemetery. As they ran to the car, the boogeyman followed them, loping on all fours alongside them.

After speeding away, the horrified aunt made the kids drive her straight back to her home. Fearing she would be reluctant to verify the kid's account, they then found an adult male to go back with them. After carefully looking all around the cemetery and in the woods along the fence line and seeing nothing, the adult man was getting mad thinking the kids were playing a trick on him. Wanting to show him how the contents of the maintenance shed had been thrown around, they were walking toward it when the beast once again walked out of the shed's door. This time the creature quickly ran away in the opposite direction, leaped over the fence in one bound and into the woods. It was a good thing it did as after seeing the boogeyman, the brave adult male passed out on the spot from sheer fright!

Later, the grandmother of one of the Rat Finks told the kids she remembered hearing of similar sightings near Old Hardin in the Cypress Creek bottoms when she was a child.

Although there is not yet factual proof for the existence of a Bigfoot creature, it's hard to fully dismiss all of the stories and reported sightings. New creatures are routinely being found in the oceans and jungles of the world; strange creatures which have never been seen until now, living and even thriving in places and environments we assumed could never support life. Would it be that much of a surprise to find a species living off the land alongside creeks, streams, and ponds deep in the sparsely inhabited woods of America? Surviving members of the Rat Fink club still swear - the boogeyman is out there!

Aurora, TX. - UFO Crashes Into Windmill - Alien Buried In Local Cemetery



Cigar-shaped UFO

In 1896 & early 1897, more than six years before Orville Wright made his first flight of 12 seconds covering 120 feet, thousands of sightings of a cigar-shaped flying object were reported from California to Michigan and then down to Texas. Witnesses gave the same general description, sometimes with two lights, sometimes with none, in daylight and at night, hundreds of feet in the air, making right-angle turns and even stopping in mid-air and reversing course. On April 17, 1897, according to reports, a cigar-shaped flying machine suffered a malfunction and, trailing smoke, crashed into a windmill in the tiny town of Aurora, Texas. Afterwards, reports of seeing the UFO dropped off dramatically.

Witnesses at the time said the spaceship exploded upon impact with the windmill and the largest piece of debris hit a large tree with smaller pieces scattered across several acres. In the debris was found pieces of strange metal inscribed with hieroglyphics and the body of the pilot, a small child-sized humanoid. Although the body was badly torn up, it was evident it was a being "not of this world."

Entrance of Aurora Cemetery

The kind, rural folks buried the alien in a grave in the local cemetery underneath a tree and marked the spot with a small hand-made headstone inscribed with the outline of a cigar-shaped airship containing windows.

On April 19th, a small article appeared on page 5 in the Dallas Morning News. It read:
"About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before.

"Evidently some of the machinery was out-of-order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden.

"The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world."

Texas State Historical Marker at the
Aurora Cemetery

Over the next few weeks, the debris was removed and the farmers went on with their lives. The story was basically forgotten until May 24, 1973, when newspapers around the country published a United Press International account of the story. Within days, the alien's headstone was stolen and on several occasions, intruders were run off from the cemetery by police or, in some cases, local residents armed with their shotguns. The state of Texas declared the area a State Historical Spot and erected a Historical Marker, but eventually, things died down again and Aurora returned to being the small, quiet, rural little town it has been for over 100 years. In 2000, the town's people, utilizing memory and existing pictures, replaced the stolen headstone on the alien's grave.

Alien grave?

Is the story true or was it all just a hoax? The mystery remains.

When I visited recently, I found the residents living across the street from the cemetery to still be wary, watchful, and protective. Parking by the front gate, several dogs began barking as soon as I exited my truck and an elderly lady came out onto her porch to watch me. I waved to her and I think she nodded in return, but I was far enough away that I couldn't be sure. She watched me for a few minutes and then went inside her house and opened the curtains in a front window. About 10 minutes later, a police car slowly cruised by, but didn't stop. I was dressed in good jeans and a pullover shirt and carried nothing in my hands except my camera so I guess I passed his inspection.

Alien's headstone?

The cemetery was very well-kept and pretty with fields of Bluebonnets. It took a while to find the alien's grave. I finally figured out the corner containing the oldest graves and concentrated my search there. Eventually I found what I was looking for. It had been easy to miss because the marker is small and there are no other graves within about 10 feet of it. All of the other graves were next to each other in the normal layout. It was as if nobody had wanted their kin buried next to the alien.

I had been roaming around the cemetery for about an hour and nobody else came in. There had even been very few cars pass on the road, but I still felt like I was being watched the whole time. I'm sure the old lady across the street never took her eyes off me. It wasn't a scary feeling, it wasn't like that "somethings not right, I better be on alert" feeling you sometimes get when you are by yourself in an unfamiliar place; just that general feeling of having someone's eyes on you. I noticed the police car slowly cruise by again, but by then, I was already on my way out. I waved at the policeman and received a small wave of his hand in return, but no smile. I could almost hear the thoughts in his head saying, "It doesn't appear you are here with harmful intent and you are not breaking any laws, but I'm keeping my eye on you just the same." I didn't hang around to see him come back a third time.

I don't know if there's anything in the "alien" grave or not; don't know if the tale is true or not, but either way, it's an interesting story.
 

Luckiest or Unluckiest?



Yamaguchi

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, 29, was on a business trip for his employer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. After three long months away from his wife and children, he was finally heading home on that warm summer Monday morning. He and two co-workers arrived at the train station early that morning and were waiting when Yamaguchi discovered he had left in the office his hanko, an official stamp used in place of his signature on business documents. Fortunately, there was still enough time to make a quick trip back into the city to retrieve this important tool. He was stepping off of a tram when an unimaginably bright light went off. The date was August 6, 1945, and an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, had just dropped a 13-kiloton uranium atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Yamaguchi was less than 2 miles from the explosion.

Hiroshima after the bomb

The bomb temporarily blinded him, destroyed his eardrums, and left him with serious burns on the left side of his body. It had killed more than 70,000 other people. Several hours later, in spite of his wounds, Yamaguchi walked back to the station where his two co-workers had also survived. They managed to find a bomb shelter which they spent the night in. The next day, with Yamaguchi swaddled in bandages, they began their journey home. It took two days.

After arriving back home, a doctor put a salve on his wounds and changed the bandages which covered the upper part of his body. The next day, Yamaguchi reported to work. He was in the office explaining what had happened in Hiroshima to his boss when once again, a bright light hit just like before. The U.S. B-29 bomber Bock’s Car had dropped the atomic bomb “Fat Man” on Yamaguchi’s home city of Nagasaki. Just as before, he was less than 2 miles from the epicenter.

Amazingly, Yamaguchi survived once again. His bandages were mostly blown off and his wounds were covered in dirt, but he suffered no additional bodily trauma. He was unable to get his wounds properly cleaned and re-bandaged and for over a week he suffered from a high fever due to infections. It would take several years for him to recover enough that he no longer had to wear bandages, but he had survived. The bombing of Nagasaki had killed over 73,800 others.

After the war, Yamaguchi served as a translator for the American forces and then became a school teacher before eventually going back to work for Mitsubishi. For twice surviving an atomic bomb, he was given a small monthly compensation from the Japanese government, free medical checkups and a free funeral. In the final years of his life, he wrote a memoir and appeared in the 2006 documentary “Twice Bombed, Twice Survived: The Doubly Atomic Bombed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

More than 144,000 people died from the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government as surviving both explosions, passed away on January 4, 2010, over 64 years later.
 

In Search of The Boggy Creek Monster

Fouke, AR water tower

Late the night of May 1, 1971, just south of the little town of Fouke, Arkansas, something attacked the home of Bobby and Elizabeth Ford. According to Elizabeth, the creature, which she initially thought was a bear, broke and reached through a screen window while she was sleeping on a couch. Her husband and his brother Don just happened to be returning from a hunting trip at that time, heard Elizabeth's screams, and chased off the monster, firing several shots as it fled into the dense surrounding woods. The creature returned after midnight the next night and grabbed Bobby across the shoulders as he stood on the porch having a smoke, throwing him to the ground. Bobby managed to crawl free and made it inside the house where he retrieved his gun. He was later treated in St. Michael Hospital, Texarkana, for scratches across his back and mild shock.

The Fords believed they had hit the monster with shots from their rifles, but no traces of blood were found. An extensive search of the area did not locate the creature, but found three-toed footprints close to the house, scratch marks on the porch, and some damage to a window and the house's siding. The Fords said they had heard noises outside the small house several nights before, but they had never seen the monster previously as they had only lived in the house for one week.

Boggy Creek, near where the Ford Family lived.

On May 23, three people, D. Woods, Wilma Woods, and Mrs. Sedgass reported to the police they had seen an ape-like creature crossing Highway 71 south of Fouke near the Sulphur River. They reported the creature was about 7 - 8 feet tall, was covered in thick long hair, weighed about 300 pounds and ran upright, Numerous more sightings were reported over the next few months by both residents and tourists and several large 3-toed footprints were found along the banks of Boggy Creek and in a soybean field which belonged to Scott Keith, a local gas station owner. They were investigated by game warden Carl Galyon who indicated he had never seen anything like them.

The dense woods around Boggy Creek.

Not long after word got out about the Ford's experience, the Little Rock radio station KAAY offered a $1,009 reward for the creature, dead or alive. Numerous attempts were made trying to track the creature with dogs, but they were unable to track its scent except once. Just before sundown one day, several hunters with 3 hunting dogs were in the woods south of Fouke between the Sulphur and Red Rivers when the dogs indicated they had the scent and began running through the underbrush. A few yards in though, all 3 dogs began whimpering and refused to go any further. The hunters said they didn't see anything, but felt like they were being watched and when they smelled something foul, they decided with the daylight fading, it would be best to get out of those woods before darkness fully descended.



At the Red River at the exact spot where the
monster was seen.

Soon enough, public interest in what had become known as the Boggy Creek Monster waned. Then in 1973, a documentary-style horror movie based on the creature was released. Costing only $160,000 to make, the film became a cult hit and grossed over $22 million.

By late 1974, interest had again waned with the lack of public sightings or any further evidence. But in 1978, the same 3-toed tracks were found by two brothers who were out prospecting. Several ranchers reported missing cattle and the body of a dog was found in the woods. Some people blamed the monster, but definitive proof of the creature's guilt was never found.

Since the 1970's, there have been sporadic reports of the monster. In 1997, there were 40 sightings reported to the police. In 1998, almost 20 more sightings were reported with the last one of the year being in a dry creek bed 5 miles south of Fouke. The last two sightings were in 1999 with one stating the monster was seen jumping off the Highway 71 bridge over the Sulphur River and the last was reported by four boaters who stated they saw it at sundown standing on the boat landing just down from where the Sulphur River joins the Red River.



The Hwy 60 bridge where the Sulphur and
Red Rivers merge.

The Momma-woman and Youngest-daughter recently joined me for a weekend of Boggy Creek monster hunting. Located just a couple of hours from where we live, no way could I go for long without investigating with my own little eyes. Just because I didn't get to shake the monster's hand doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere. We found and walked around the edge of the woods where it was reportedly seen and I can tell you, those woods are dense and very creepy. At the place of the last sighting, it was lonesome, eerie and the only noise was the occasional car crossing over the Highway 60 bridge in the distance. I could definitely understand how something that's not supposed to be there could in fact be there and not be found. We stayed in that spot for a while, exploring along the edge of the river and peering into the woods. But when the sun began to go down and there were no other people around, the spookiness factor began to rise and we got ourselves out of there.

The Monster Mart

We stopped in at the Monster Mart in Fouke (pronounced like "folk" with a silent "L"), visited the little corner of the store where they have posted on the wall a bunch of old yellowed newspaper clippings reporting on the monster and had a nice long chat with Sonya, the grand-daughter of the original owner, Denny Roberts. She said she had never seen the creature, but she's sure her grandfather did. However, he would never admit it as he was afraid of people thinking he was crazy. We purchased a handful of Boggy Creek Monster souvenir postcards along with some road trip health food - chips, candy, soda's and enough Double Bubble gum to enable Youngest-daughter to showcase her talent for blowing really big bubbles during the drive back home.

Mural inside the Monster Mart, right next to the
monster t-shirts, caps and coffee cups for sale.

I like to think the Boggy Creek Monster is really out there, maybe with a momma monster and a couple of young monsters, happily living out their lives in the deep dark woods where humans don't go. I like to believe there are still unknowns here among us, that the earth still holds secrets not just in the deepest oceans, but right next door. I like to believe the earth is indeed stranger than fiction. With all of our vaunted knowledge, I think we've only just begun to scratch the surface. There is so much more. Things that will astound us. Things that will make us exclaim, "Holy cow!" Things of such beauty that the poets will be speechless. Things that will make us sit with our mouths open in stunned silence. In the long ago, when men thought the earth was flat, they would draw maps and clearly mark the boundaries of the lands they knew. Beyond those boundaries, at the far edge of the known, they wrote, "Beware! Here there be monsters!" I believe it's still so.
 

Grand Granite Grand

Tyler is a small, pretty city in east Texas. There’s a lot of roses grown around the area. If you buy a rose anywhere in America, there’s a good chance it either was grown in Tyler or was processed in Tyler. It has a beautiful public rose garden which you shouldn’t miss if you find yourself in the area, and hosts the fun Texas Rose Festival each year. It is known as the “Rose Capital of the Nation.” In 1985, the International Adopt-A-Highway movement originated in Tyler when the local Civitan chapter adopted 2 miles of U.S. Hwy 69. It is the home of at least 4 Miss Texas winners, a Miss America winner, Sandy Duncan, the actress, Dooley Wilson, famous for playing Sam in the movie Casablanca, Earl Campbell and numerous other professional athletes, musicians, actors, and Kelley Thompson, Playboy Playmate for the month of November, 2009.

Even though I was born and raised in and around Dallas, Texas, I’m not fond of cities. I try to stay away from cities. Too much traffic, too crowded. If I’m driving on a road wider than 2 lanes, then it’s because for some unavoidable reason I’m in a hurry or there isn't another way to get from here to there. Tyler is a city, but it is an exception to my rule. You see, my son and grandson live there. Plus there's some mighty good Bar-B-Que joints in Tyler so I go there as often as I can.

So why am I telling a story of Tyler? Because Tyler is also home to a story I like; a story about a person who was a little weird, a bit eccentric – right up my alley.

Madge Ward was a life-long player of the piano. She never obtained celebrity-hood during her 83 years, but she managed to make a good living taking her 1-woman show around the country to resorts, hotels, clubs and on cruise ships. She entertained the troops in World War II and when she wasn’t on tour, she taught children how to tickle the ivories. She had an interesting life, but relatively speaking, not that many people outside of her family really noticed or gave her a lot of thought.

Madge passed away on May 4, 1995 and was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery. Very soon after, lots of folks took note of her. As a matter of fact, she started a small war of words among the citizens of Tyler.

You see, a year before her death, she commissioned a Tyler memorial builder to design a gravestone that symbolized the love, the passion she had held with the piano her whole life. The result was the largest single-person monument in the cemetery; an 8-foot tall, 25-ton granite grand piano mausoleum, inside of which Madge will spend eternity. The price tag has never been revealed, but Madge told a few people she had saved for 35 years to afford it. Poor Madge never got to actually see it before being laid to rest in it. She saw pictures and drawings, but it was so big, the local maker couldn’t handle the job so it was actually cut outside the state and shipped to the cemetery shortly after her passing.

A good number of the movers and shakers in Tyler didn’t appreciate such a grand monument being in Tyler’s largest cemetery, which just happens to be the resting place for their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, the movers and shakers during Tyler’s earlier days. Seeing as how Madge had made her living as a ”B-list” entertainer didn’t help. But there was no law or even a cemetery rule against it and the grand granite Grand still remains.

Today, Rose Hill gets a lot of visitors, many of them stopping by to see the piano headstone of Madge Ward. Locals bring their out-of-town visitors to see it, people from around the country stop by, even tour buses cruise through and stop for their passengers to take pictures. Madge was an entertainer in life and, in Tyler, she’s still attracting an audience, even in death.

Booger Hollow & The Double-Decker Outhouse

Sign leading to Booger Hollow Trading Post

Yes, Virginia, there really is a place called Booger Hollow and yes, it really does have a two-story outhouse. Situated in Pope County on Scenic Arkansas Highway 7, Booger Hollow Trading Post was built in 1961. Booger Hollow, with a "Population 7, count'en one coon dog"  perfectly represents the barefoot hillbilly image the state has tried to live down for many years. Honestly though, there's still enough truth in the myth that the stereotype isn't going away anytime soon.

A hollow (holler) is a narrow valley between hills and mountains. The word "Booger" is derived from the ancient Welsh word "Bwg," which meant "to scare." Eventually the word evolved into "Boo," Bogus," and "Booger," all of which have slightly different meanings, but all indicate something frightening or unknown.


In the 1800's, the road from Russellville to Dover ran through the Bull Frog Valley to the geographic site of where Booger Hollow is today. On either side of the hollow are two cemeteries. Locals believed the area was haunted by the inhabitants of the cemeteries. Few people went traipsing around by themselves after dark. The name Booger Hollow stuck and that's how it's known to this day.

The Booger Hollow Trading Post is situated on a mountain top about 10 miles from the actual Booger Hollow. At least the buildings are anyway. I recently took a little day trip to see this place with my own eyes and found that sadly, after 44 years in business, the doors were shut and it is no more. In early 2004, several people offered to buy the property from Charlotte Johnson, the owner. All indicated they wanted to keep the place open. After years of hard work with little time off, she wanted to slow down, to spend time with her family, so she sold to a couple from Green Forest. Unfortunately, they didn't make the payments and the place closed down. Charlotte got the place back, but the land beneath the buildings somehow legally went to someone else and although there were several attempts to re-open, the doors have remained closed since late that year.

Front porch of the post store.

In it's heyday, the trading post consisted of the post itself, which featured hillbilly themed knick-knacks like corn-cob pipes, polished rocks, painted hand-saws, hand-made quilts, and hand-carved walking sticks. It also sold hand-crafted items and goods like honey with a piece of the comb in the jar, sorghum, and lye soap. Items like the "Hillbilly Chicken Dinner" (a wooden box you opened only to find a piece of corn glued inside) and the "Hillbilly Lighter" (a wooden box which contained a match) were popular sellers. It also held a post office and sold fishing bait. Next door to the post was a restaurant called The Chuckwagon which featured high-browed fair like the Boogerburger, the Boogerdog, ham sandwiches and frito chili pie. There was also a small store that sold cured hams. Perhaps the main attraction though was the two story outhouse. The lower level was a real "working" outhouse, but the upper level was always closed, with a sign on the front which said, "upstairs closed til we figure out plummin."

There used to be red and white signs, starting about 10 miles away in both directions, that advertised the cured hams, the ice cold drinks, the keepsakes, and said, "Booger Hollow, 9 miles;" "Booger Hollow, 8 miles" and so on.  They drew you on, closer and closer, until you simply could not pass it up. They are gone now. There is still the population sign on the north side, but it is within feet of the turn in and I missed it before I could slow down enough. Fortunately, there is another turn in on the south side so I used that one to pull into the small gravel parking lot.

The empty store

In front of me stood the old red and white buildings, looking sad, lonely, and showing the years of neglect. Blackberry bushes with thorns, but no berries, have grown up through the floorboards of the porch. The signs are still on the doors and windows, the windows which haven't been broken out anyway. There is no breeze, no cars pass on the road a few feet away. I'm alone and the sound of solitude is loud in my ears. For some strange reason I feel a little uneasy. It's afternoon daylight and I'm not a scaredy-type person, but this time I feel better after retrieving the Bowie knife I carry in the truck. I attached it to my belt and ventured onto the front porch. The boards creaked and gave a little, but held.

Being careful to avoid the sticker bushes as much as possible, I peered through a broken pane at the rows of empty shelving inside the post. There was nothing left on the disarrayed shelves except dust and a few cobwebs. Making my way to the restaurant, I once again looked through broken windows and saw the old menu sign above the order-window, still advertising Boogerburger, $2.99, with cheese, $3.29. The kitchen area appeared neat and clean except for the layer of dust which covered everything. It looked like with a good cleaning, the Boogerburger could be cooked again tomorrow.

I stuck my camera through the broken glass and was focused on taking pictures when something big and black came hurtling through the air at my head! I instinctively jerked my head and hand back, lucky to not cut anything on the broken glass and for a split second, started to reach for the knife hanging at my side. I realized though, it was just a black bird, scared by me from the home he had probably made in the rafters, making his escape through the broken pane above the one I was looking through. I had to chuckle, picturing myself futilely flailing away like a madman with a knife in my hand at a bird flying around me. Alfred Hitchcock evidently is alive and well inside my head! Two cars sped past on the road and somehow, the uneasy feeling passed.

The cafe - and where a bird scared the 
daylights out of me!

I made my way to the side of the little complex, and there it stood, the famous double-decker outhouse. Trees and weeds are about to overtake it and I've no doubt, without maintenance, it will soon be engulfed and eventually taken down by time and green growing things.

Perhaps someday, someone will come along, re-build and re-open the Booger Hollow Trading Post. Or perhaps it will continue to slowly wither away until it is just a distant memory in old people's thoughts and fading pictures. Personally, I would like to see it restored and opened again. It may have been a perpetrator of the hillbilly stereotype, but it's still sad to lose one of the great roadside attractions in America.

The infamous double-decker outhouse

Note written beside the door to the cafe. "Ma" was
obviously very loved by her grandchildren. 

Postcard From Natural Stone Bridge of Arkansas

If you are heading to Branson coming from Little Rock, you will travel west on I-40 and turn north in Conway on State Highway 65.  In the foothills of the Ozarks about 40 miles north of Conway is one of those interesting, quirky little tourist attractions that in these days of cookie cutter McDonalds and Wal-Marts and Starbucks at seemingly every highway exit, offers something a little different, a little slower paced, and a whole lot more interesting.

As you come on the town of Clinton (population 2,283), about 3.5 miles from where SH 65 splits from Hwy 9, watch for a  road labeled "Natural Bridge." The 1 mile drive down this side road itself is a bit of an adventure - perfectly drivable by any vehicle, but do take it a bit slow. At its end is a paved widened parking area and a little wooden shack selling curio's and keepsakes. After paying the reasonable $3.00 access fee,  walk out the back door and begin a short hike to the site of the Natural Bridge.

On the way, you will pass a reproduction of an Arkansas still site (no moonshine samples available), see lots of little caves formed by fallen boulders, see a number of different species of trees and plants, and finally, you will come to the bridge.  It is not an arch bridge like those found in Utah's Arches National Park, but a compression bridge of a huge flat slab of stone stretched across a waterway tumbling down the hillside.

The main slab is about 120 feet long and over twelve feet off the ground. Located in a very quiet, heavily forested area, it is a great place to visit, listen to the birds, relax in the quietness, and just get off the road for a short break.