It was time for another road trip.

Keeping up with the “Rona” has been a bit difficult for everyone.

Our son-in-law especially, has been working just about EVERY day since this all began.

We all thought that since things have opened up, mostly, in our Iowa and her states to the south, we would take a short trip.

Four places specifically; all in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Here are just a few highlights from our trip.

There will be a separate post telling about our sleeping accommodations later in the week.

Two reasons to visit here in Eureka Springs, Arkansas –

#1. In the following photo you can read about “a charlatan” Norman Baker, who made a name for himself here where we live during the Depression.

#2. The Crescent Hotel is known as “America’s Most Haunted Hotel”. We didn’t sense anything paranormal while we were there, but the place was a beautiful place to visit.

Our next destination took us across the top of Arkansas to a place called Hardy.

Far back in my family history, 1962 to be exact, my Grandpa and Grandma bought a piece of property there in a place called Woodland Hills.

Shortly there there after, my Grandma took ill, and passed away.

Some time in the early 80’s, Grandpa sold us his piece of property for the sum of 1 dollar.

This really appealed to us because Hardy had become quite a neat little historical destination place, and my husband had grown up in that area, and a little north in southern Missouri.

We went there and found the property. It was lovely, and remote, close to a lake, but we knew that we were just too busy trying to build a life up here to do anything with it.

Fast forward 30+ years to now, and our daughter thought it could be fun to go there and see what it was like.

With the map and address in hand, and quite a bit of help from GPS, we were able to locate it again.

Our Granddaughter was certain we were holding out on her with lake front property that she was never aware of.

Imagine her surprise when we sent her the next photo!

Probably won’t be moving there any time soon.

We stopped by Mammoth Springs before moving further north.

Next destination; The Irish Wilderness. You can read about it here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Wilderness

On our drive, we were always looking for wildlife.

You know, deer, elk, bear, Yeti.

Well in the next photo you can see what I caught out of the corner of my eye – all that Yeti talk – my heart skipped a beat!

I thought it was a Yeti with a walking stick.

Silly me. But it was a nice add to the story line.

It was oppressively hot outside, so we didn’t hike much, but we did come here to cool off a bit.

Remember all that talk about bears?

Next stop, Big Spring. So beautiful.

All the swirling water made things a tad cooler here.

One of the information board tells us how deep the water is.

If you placed the Statute of Liberty in the main hole, the water would cover her torch. (She’s 305 feet tall!)

We were able to visit with a few more family members, then we enjoyed some amazing hospitality at the home of our niece and nephew in Greenville, Missouri. Then headed home on Tuesday morning.

Storms tried to follow us home, but we made it safe and sound.

I hope you enjoyed this little photo tour.

If you want to see more photos, you can go to Facebook #fivedayswithfrank

Until next time …