Our latest trip to the Ozark foothills

Here's a firt. We went to our vacation home in Cherokee Village, AR and stayed the entire time in it! We didn't have to take advantage of my brother's place while we are working on ours. Another first is we had a guest! Alyssa invited her friend, Haley, to spend the time with us. Everyday I tried to have something for the girls to do. On Sunday we stopped at the falls in the city center of Cherokee Village. Not a lot of water falling right now, but the girls enjoyed checking it out.

Everywere Alyssa goes she can make a Titanic moment out of it.

After having fun taking pictures at the Falls we went to Griffin Park and the girls went on a horse ride. Haley's horse's name was Hiram and Alyssa's was No-Ears.

After a ride of abour 40 minutes, the girls were back. They had some stories about the horses being horses that I won't discuss here, but a typical complaint they expressed was sore butts. Alyssa was also jealous of the name of the horse in back of her being Ozzy. Apparently that's really cool.

Monday we went to downtown Hardy (try to control your laughing at calling it "downtown") and did a little shopping. Alyssa had been looking for a "dream catcher" to match her bedroom in Arakansas. The last time we were there the Native American shop was closed. This time it was open so we stopped in. The door greeter wasn't doing her job that day, so we had to go to her. Cheyenne is a little sweetie, just a little slow.

Tuesday we went to a natural wonder called Grand Gulf State Park in Mossouri. It's nickname is the Little Grand Canyon. I don't think I'd go that far, but it was fun to explore. To the bottom of the crevice is 70'. To get there you have to take 119 steps. There was a nice breeze blowing at the top, but nothing at the bottom. That equals HOT. No complaining by Alyssa - yeah right. She is NOT on my list of traveling partners. Nope, doesn't even make the list.

We did make it to the bottom, but we didn't stay long.

I think it might have been getting to be a long day. I had to stop the girls from throwing Don over the edge.

After the Grand Canyon we went to Mammouth Springs, AR. We went there last time we were in Arkansas, but thought Haley would enjoy seeing it.

A new tradition is to feed the ducks while we're there. That is the most important thing for Alyssa, actually. We had to plead with her to get her to go see the rest.

The spring has a couple of muskrat inhabitants. If you think of them as otters they are a lot more cute.

We got the flooring in! Huge in my book. Trying to sweep the OSB clean is next to impossible. Plus, it looks great. We are getting it that much closer to complete.

As you can see below, we also have a refrigerator now (way to the right in the pic)!!! No more daily runs to get ice for the cooler. I made and hung the curtains and got some decorations up on the walls. The chairs for the table were reupholstered in blue denim. Adds a little color and is more durable - definitly need durable.

Thursday we headed back. We stopped in St. Louis and went up into the Arch. Haley was never there. Just over a year ago we were there. Little did I know I would be passing the Arch SEVERAL times since then to our new place in Arkansas!

What did we see at the top of the Arch? The Cardinals stadium for one.

And the paddleboats and barges for another.

Hopefully everyone had fun. We got a lot of work done again,too. Our next trip is sceduled with Mom and Brian in November. The leaves will be coming down then and we'll be able to see more of the foothills. Then only a month later we'll be down at Christmas. Eric requested I post the pics from our lastest trip asap (preferably while we were down there) so here they are. We only went to one place that had free Wi-FI so I didn't post earlier. Thanks for looking, Jill