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Category: Hike Reports
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Twenty-seven TrailBlazers and 2 canines headed up Highway 215 north of Mulberry on a beautiful Sunday afternoon to explore Fern Gully, an elusive place to find since it isn’t marked.  After taking the right hand curve on 215, we missed seeing the A-frame house, our landmark – surely someone moved the A-frame farther back from the road to confuse us – but we did manage to find the forest road anyway!  Newcomers soon found out what a rocky road is, and it’s not ice cream!

Once we started down the road the fun part started long before we hit the trailhead.  We have been here before, and have evened punctured tires here, but we couldn’t quite remember exactly where to turn right to find the rocky road to the parking lot.  Leader Kenya found a road that looked promising, but in this we deceived ourselves.  It was narrow with scratchy bushes and had steep ups and downs with lots of deep, squishy mud.  Realizing this couldn’t be right, Kenya did some neat driving to get us out of there!  Meanwhile, others wisely had not followed us, so when we got back to the road we had a pow-wow to figure out where to go and finally figured it out.  Wild Bill and Rietta wisely decided to park his motorcycle and hitch a ride from this point on!

 In the fullness of time, we reached the parking lot only to find that everyone and his brother had parked there. It turned out that several rock climbers were rappelling down the steep bluffs in the canyon.  Finally ready to hike, we walked over to the huge boulder where we traditionally take our group pic.  Breaking with tradition, most of us did not scramble down the steep rocks to reach the gully, but walked to the other end of the parking lot where there is a neat slot canyon where people can easily walk up and down without risking life or limb.

 Fern Gully is not actually a hike; it’s just a neat place to explore.  The creek, surrounded by huge boulders and bluffs on both sides, has lot of rocks that create a myriad of little water falls all over the place. Trekking around is really a bushwhack with tricky footing, so Yours Truly of the bad back and leg found herself both bushed and whacked before it was over!  She even had one mishap but Tom hauled her back to her feet.

There were some neat ferns, wildflowers getting ready to bloom, lovely violets, lots of velvety moss, and some flowering dogwoods.  What a neat day to get up, get out, and explore Arkansas – now where have we heard that before?  You will all be happy to know that Kenya saved the coordinates for the road to the parking lot for future reference!

Click on the first pic, or any pic below, to see them as a slide show by clicking on the arrow at the right of the pic.

 

 {gallery}2016-04-03-fern-gully{/gallery}