Katherine’s Spot

Since I arrived at Tech 2 1/2 years ago, I have made various interesting observations.  Here are some of my random and ridiculous thoughts… 

Never chain your bike to something that is mobile.

Why walk on the sidewalk?  Sidewalks are flat and uninteresting.

Try walking up and down the halls of your dorm yelling “Aflac!  Aflac!”  and see if people stick their heads out of their rooms and look at your strangely.

If you ignore the zombies, they won’t bother you.  Really.

The least worst thing to eat at the cafeteria is something from the sandwich bar.  Even then, better check the bread for mold before you take a bite.   Also, the cookies are ok most of the time.  (If they aren’t burned, that is.)

Studying in the tree in front of the library is quite fun.  It’s amazing how many people walk under it without looking up and seeing you.

On the same note, sitting quietly in the tree in front of the library until someone finally looks up, sees you, and gasps from being so startled is quite fun as well.

Disclaimer:  The people who aren’t startled at seeing you climbing the tree or in the tree will stare at you like you’re crazy, and may also whistle/wave at you.

Practicing the guitar out under the goal post in the football field is fun for once, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it on a regular basis.

Sitting with your back to the cafeteria door is not a very good idea.

While we’re once again on the subject of the cafeteria…  If you’re eating with friends, never leave your plate of food or drink unattended if you care about what happens to it.

Cowboy boots are the funnest shoes to wear on campus.  (And I don’t care if “funnest’” isn’t a word.)

The variety of ways in which guys can wear hats is endless.

Those guys who wear hats all the time look totally different when they take their hats off.  “Oh!  I didn’t recognize you!”  (Yes, I’ve had to say that…more than once.)

Using an umbrella and rain boots may be practical, but it’s a lot more fun to just walk into class soaking wet and observe the strange looks on your classmates’ faces when they see you.

Ultimate frisbee is the best game EVER.

Skipping down the sidewalk while singing “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz!” is fun…until you realize someone is watching you.

Stairways and bathrooms are great places for practicing your opera singing voice.

It is quite entertaining to go around the dorm writing interesting messages/drawing pictures on the little marker boards people hang outside of their doors.

If you can’t think of a good response to a question the teacher asks you in class, “zucchini” is always a good answer.

Guaranteed:  The campus internet and technology will drive you CRAZY.

Never forget to check out a book before walking out of the campus library with it.  Trust me, it’s embarrassing.

If you wave at everyone on the sidewalk who looks remotely familiar to you, you will gain a reputation as the person who knows everybody.

Definition of group projects = ”torture.”

Pulling 5 all-nighters in one semester +  An average amount of 5 to 6 hours of sleep for almost all other nights of the semester = bad idea.

Riding around campus with someone who has an intercom in their vehicle (and is willing to use it) is the greatest.

Bunk beds are fun.  Jumping off the top bunk to the floor in order to scare everyone in the room is even better.

A dorm’s fire alarm going off at 8:30 in the morning on “dead day” is not conducive to happiness for the girls in said dorm.

And just hope that the fire alarm never goes off when you’re in the shower. 

When you’re giving a presentation in class, the best way to not be nervous is to make the audience (and the teacher) laugh.

Just be sure it’s not a teacher who doesn’t like to laugh.

The next time the rug on your dorm room floor gets dirty, try opening the window, sticking the rug out, and shaking the dirt out the window.  The passersby will find it entertaining.

Just because some people are in college, doesn’t mean they are any smarter than they were in high school (or in kindergarten for that matter).

So, down here in the balmy South, my family doesn’t get to see truly cold weather very often.  Temperatures usually hover in the 30s, 40s, or maybe 20s (if we get lucky) for most of the winter.  However, these past few days, we’ve had some unusual cold down here…nothing like Alaska, but it’s been fun.  The wind chill has been below zero at night, and the other morning we woke up to a see the thermometer at just above zero.

Too bad we haven’t had any snow come through…it would have been great.  We did discover some fun on our neighbors’ pond though.  It froze over solid enough to walk all the way out to the middle.  This rarely happens, so some of my siblings and I were quite excited about it and we decided to go over there and have some fun.  (As it ended up, my brother did most of the fun stuff and my sister and I just watched…and I took pictures.)

Josh and our dog out in the center of the pond (that white thing next to him is a duck house):

I believe my sister is pretending to be ice skating…

Josh doing push-ups on the pond:

…Until someone sat on him.

The ice:

Hey, look, I’ll just ride my bike out here!

Hmmm…

He crashed several times…but he wouldn’t give up!

When my family travels down to visit my mom’s parents and her family over Christmas, I don’t usually venture too far outside the house because of hunting season.  (I don’t hunt yet.)  Her family lives way out in the middle of nowhere, (Buckville), where there are lots of hunters, and so even walking down to the mailbox without blaze orange on can be a good way to get shot.

However, one afternoon my brother, sister, four of my cousins, and I felt the need to go run around outside somewhere, so we hopped in our van, put on blaze orange of course, and drove over to the Buckville Church and Cemetery.  The cemetery sits right on the edge of Lake Ouachita.  Lake Ouachita was completed in 1952, the result of construction projects (damming) by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.

The original town of Buckville was actually called “Bucktown” and now lies underneath Lake Ouachita.

Here a sign inside the cemetery explains the history behind the church and cemetery:

This picture is hard to read, but the sign says this:

“The Buckville Church and Cemetery stand as visible reminders of the communities that once existed on lands now covered by Lake Ouachita.  The church was moved in the summer of 1951 to be above water level, and the cemetery is the only portion of the Buckville community that remains in its original location.  The church discontinued popular services before it was moved, but each June this site hosts a homecoming for hundreds of people who once lived in this area, their families, and friends.  The Buckville Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic places in 2007.”

The moved church:

Lake Ouachita covering the original site of Bucktown:

Lake Ouachita is actually a great lake to swim in, (if you cared to know).  The water is beautifully clear:

My brother and my two boy cousins along the shore:

Just a point of interest for me.

Here are a couple of signs that I took pictures of during our day trip in northwest Arkansas.

After seeing this one, I was disappointed that we never found any kangaroos.

Sure, hmmm…sounds like a great combination.

Birdhouse in the Ozark Mountains:

A rather windy place to live, if you ask me.

We drove back out to the highway and headed for home.  A few miles down the road, however, we spotted some elk and pulled over to take pictures.  This event pretty much completed the day for me.  We were all thrilled to see them.

Here is the king of the herd:

Embarrassed?  You should be.

This disagreement didn’t last long.  Someone had an obvious advantage.

From a distance:

Just a short distance down the road, we spotted two more herd, but didn’t stop. 

We also experienced a beautiful sunset while driving through the mountains back toward home, but my camera’s memory card was full by that point and I was getting too sleepy to really care to take more pictures.

To finish our day, we stopped at a tiny cafe in the little town of Deer, Arkansas.  The food was good and we were serenaded live by a man in his 70s, singing country gospel style songs.  Quite entertaining.

I slept well that night.

Our last major stop for the day was Lost Valley State Park.  Having never been there before, we had no idea what to expect.  We set off down the trail toward the alleged Eden Falls and Eden Falls Cave that the trail sign had pointed out to us.

As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised by the hike.  We saw several beautiful/interesting spots and found some fun photo ops.

Headed down the trail:

Woodpecker hole:

Unusually shaped tree.  It’s alive and growing!

We found this trail marker to be a bit confusing, seeing as the arrow points in one direction and the little hiker is walking in the other, but we finally figured it out.   

Large tree stump rimmed with snow:

We discovered a small cave and waterfall:

We again found many icicles to amuse us.

Inside the cave I kept hearing a strange, slight roaring sound besides the sound of running water in the nearby waterfall (which flowed out of the cave).  I looked around and found this:

It was part of the creek flowing out of a hole inside the cave.  Very cool.  The water was echoing inside to make occasional thundering/roaring-like sounds.

Beyond the cave (we had diverged from the trail significantly) we found more water, bluffs, and icicles.

Icicles panorama:  (Click to enlarge).

My brother found another small cave and I also went in to investigate.  This cave had one opening, was very dark, and all I could hear was running water, so I took a picture with my flash to see what it looked like.

Mouth of the cave:

We refound the trail and kept hiking.

The sun and blue sky made the bluffs across from us especially pretty.

My brother with his head in a tree covered with graffiti:

This is what he was taking a picture of:

Quite creative actually.  It would be better if we had put someone on top to look down the hole, but the tree was rather tall.

As we approached Eden Falls, we encountered an area underneath the cliffs which had received a lot of dripping from icicles above.  My uncle on the right side of the picture gives some perspective on how big those clumps of ice were.

Ice “formations.”

Eden Falls:

Cliffs above.  Very pretty!

Another unique trail marker.  The trail went into a zig-zag at this part, but some of us just took a shortcut and went over/under the tree.

At the end of the trail we found Eden Falls Cave.  It was not exceptionally exciting, but supposedly (if you have the flashlights to find it), there is a substantial waterfall in the back of the cave.  Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before, we had no flashlights and thus chose to avoid the very back of the cave.  Several years ago I once came close to falling off of a 30-ft. (or so) drop inside of a cave (a different story for a different time) and have since had no desire to repeat the experience.

My uncle in Eden Falls Cave:  (It was much darker than this; I used the flash.)

Mouth of the cave:

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the hike.  I wonder why it is that I’ve lived in Arkansas all my life and never heard of Lost Valley before?

One desire of the day was that we wanted to see some elk.  Dad and Josh had seen some in that area a couple years before, but on this particular day when we were all looking for them, they didn’t seem to exist.  On one stretch down a difficult part of the road, Dad remarked, “There are probably all kinds of elk watching from both sides.”  The laugh was on us, I guess.

While driving down the highway toward Lost Valley, however, we spotted a flock of wild turkeys in the distance.  They weren’t elk, but oh, well.  We stopped to take a few pictures.