An Arkansas tourist

We were discussing places we’d like to visit. “You know where I’d like to go?” asked my mother-in-law, who has been on several overseas excursions as well as guided domestic tours. She continued before I had a chance to guess.

“I’d like to see more of Arkansas,” she said. “There’s a lot here I haven’t seen.”

I agreed, and it’s a common-place irony: decades spent living somewhere deadens one’s sightseeing sense about that place. I’ve traveled at one time or another to most of Arkansas’ 75 counties, but haven’t truly “toured” more than half a dozen.

So when an opportunity arose last weekend, I decided to become a Saturday sightseer and explore Searcy County like a tourist.

I arrived at my rented river cabin in Gilbert on Friday night, and before long had a blaze going in the corner fireplace.

I didn’t know of Gilbert’s reputation as “the coolest town” in Arkansas (often registering the state’s lowest temperature reading), but when I walked down to the river early Saturday morning,

Siri reported it to be a bracing 19 degrees.

America’s first national river, the Buffalo flows undammed for 135 miles, approximately 48 of which are within Searcy County.

During my day visit I watched its pristine waters glide by from four different banks: shrouded in frosty morning mist at Gilbert, under midday sun at Shine Eye Campground and Tyler Bend, and shadowed at sunset along the broad stone-covered riverbed at Grinder’s Ferry.

At every stop, I was the sole riverside wanderer, surrounded by the sights of breathtaking bluffs and late autumn hues, and the sounds of wind and water.

My up-at-dawn jaunt had made me hungry, and I was at Ferguson’s Country Store and Restaurant in St. Joe before it opened, enabling me to obtain “position A” seating at the table directly in front of the large stone fireplace.

The Farm Hand breakfast lived up to its fortifying claim, and I spent a little time looking around the store, which is the kind of original place that inspired the Cracker Barrel chain. Then I went back to my cabin to tidy up and check out.

In driving through the few streets of Gilbert, I came upon an enthusiastically decorated house for the holidays with a sign out front: Buffalo River Art Gallery.

Reading those words from the tiny street in a “seen better days” town with a population of around 30, I was mildly skeptical. I parked and navigated my way under the inflatable Christmas arch, past the snowmen sitting in a canoe, and walked in—fully expecting something a little hokey.

Instead, the doorway could have been a stargate to a boutique gallery situated in the arts district of any sizable Arkansas city. A small crowd equating to a third of Gilbert’s inhabitants circulated about inside, admiring as I did the art, the gifts and the place’s charm.

From there I motored down U.S. 65 to Leslie, whose elevation is a higher number than its population (like many Ozark Mountain towns). Searcy County is home to numerous National Register of Historic Places listings, and a dozen or so are located in Leslie, a once-prosperous place that boasted the largest whiskey-barrel factory in the world before Prohibition dried up that market.

The 1907 Dr. J.O. Cotton house is home to the Skylark Cafe, another authentic eatery whose feeling, food and setting are often copied but never replicated. A genuine family affair, everybody working there was related; the resemblance among the waitresses was confounding. I tried at first to order from two different cousins, thinking they were the same girl.

After lunch, I walked Leslie’s brief stretch of Main Street, host to at least a half-dozen shops with names like Elk and Eagle Trading Post and Cove Creek Emporium. The latter features a true espresso coffee bar, where I was treated to an excellent breve latte, and also picked up a handsome copy of Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.

November isn’t tourist season, and most of the people I saw and said hello to seemed to be locals. It was a great Saturday for parents to go on outings with kids, which I saw in abundance.

Flipping through the local Chamber guide, there’s a lot more to Searcy County than I could possibly see and do in one day. Heck, the Chamber guide is 75 pages long—for a county with barely 8,000 residents.

I looked for but failed to see any Rocky Mountain Elk herds, and didn’t have enough daylight to visit the waterfalls over at Witts Springs. I drove by the Ozark Arts Center, housed in a large, historic WPA building, and on the way back to Marshall passed the Kenda Drive-In, one of three remaining drive-in theaters in Arkansas and the only one open year-round.

My day as a tourist in earnest confirmed my mother-in-law’s assertion, and expanded its scale exponentially. Often characterized as “small and wondrous,” our state deserves a whole lot more staycation time from me, and probably you, too.

For a place to start, you won’t go wrong in Searcy County. But take two days.

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