Hiking in the Ozarks

We made a day trip from Branson to Arkansas to do some hiking in the Buffalo National River area of the Ozarks.  There are tons of good hiking trails in this area. The plan was to hike two trails- the Whitaker's Point and Lost Valley trails.  The forecast had said that it would be partly cloudy when we checked the day before our trip, but we woke up to find that there was a decent chance of rain. While it did rain some in the morning, it had ceased by the time we began our hike

 The first trail on our list was Whitaker's Point trail (aka Hawksbill Crag).  This trail leads to the most photographed spot in Arkansas, so it was definitely a must-see.  What we did not realize was that in order to get to the trail head you had to drive six miles up a road with loose gravel and an incredibly steep grade.  We discovered rather quickly that my two-wheel drive vehicle was just not up to the task of getting up the road, so we had to abandon our hopes of hiking that trail.  Feeling a little disappointed, we headed to the local outdoor supply center to ask about other ways of getting to the trail head.  There were none.  The lady at the counter also has a two wheel drive and she said, "I usually just baja it to the top".  We did not feel good about "baja-ing it" so we just went to the second trail that we had planned for.

 The Lost Valley Trail was so great that it quickly erased our disappointment at not getting to do the first trail. This trail started off on a rather flat and even trail through the mountains, but it got rocky (literally) rather quickly.  We hit a sign that said to "exercise extreme caution beyond this point" and it wasn't lying.  The flat ground was replaced by large boulders which we had to traverse.  The kids LOVED it.

Outside of the natural bridge

 At one point the trail came to a small waterfall that was coming out of an opening in the rock.  To continue with the trail you had to climb up beside the waterfall and go through the natural bridge in the rocks.  There was another way around, but no one wanted to take the "wimpy" way, so up the waterfall we went.  On the other side of the natural bridge was a large area filled with boulders and caves.  Brain had a head lamp, so we poked into some of the caves and saw the rock formations.

Going through the natural bridge

 Further along the path was the larger Eden Falls which had a cave at the top.  There were stairs leading to the cave at the top of this cascade. We had heard that there was another waterfall inside of the cave, and we tried to get back to it.  It was really dark inside of the cave and we only had one headlamp, but we carried on.  We finally gave up when the cave got super narrow and we realized that we were going to have to crawl through the mud the rest of the way.  We did get a good view of the outdoor cascade though.  This picture shows how close that I said the kids could get to the falls...

 ...And these next two shows how close that their daddy said that they could get to the falls.  All in all we had a good time on this trail.  The testy weather kept traffic on the trail at a minimum (we pretty much had it to ourselves).  Brian and the kids all said that this was there favorite trail to date.  It was definitely the most physically challenging that we have yet to attempt.