Celebrating 16 wonderful years

On Friday Mike and I celebrated our 16th anniversary at Mount Magazine State Park. We left as soon as I cleaned up my VBS room, and got to the Lodge around suppertime. It was so beautiful! Mount Magazine is the highest point in Arkansas, at more than 2700 feet. People used to say it was the biggest mountain between the Appalachians and the Rockies; while that is not true, it does have the biggest direct rise from the surrounding area (2000 feet). My Northwest and Colorado friends might giggle at our little mountain, but the view is still amazing.

God is so creative! I love His work.
And our room at the Lodge was huge,

and had a balcony with this view:

Here it is in the morning fog:

They built the Lodge so that every room has a balcony looking toward the view--the other side of the hall is the outside wall. It's fairly new, so feels nice, and I believe every room has a jacuzzi tub, too. The "art" on the walls was all photographs taken in the park. Very nice. It is so remote that the only place to eat is the restaurant at the Lodge. They had buffets evening and morning--with yummy Southern food like field peas, fried potatoes, catfish, hushpuppies (and prime rib, which isn't necessarliy Southern but sure was good!) at supper and biscuits with white and chocolate gravy, more fried potatoes, and grits (among other things) at breakfast. Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm!
We hiked to the top of the mountain Friday night, then took 2 other trails the next morning. We saw gorgeous views, of course, as well as wildflowers and butterflies of all different colors, lush green trees and ferns and undergrowth,

and even one bright red lizard which made Mike jump

and a child's grave from the 1800's. By lunchtime we were miserably hot, and soaking wet with sweat, so we headed home (and to Angel's house to pick up our girls. Thanks again, Angel!). It was a really good time.

We took a few detours as we hiked, and one was to some rocks that looked out over this--

and we watched about 7 hawks (okay, maybe they were buzzards...) soaring around.
On the North Rim trail we crossed School Creek, which we detoured down for a while, hoping to see a waterfall.

This is the only "waterfall" we found:

This is the view straight down at "Inspiration Point"--I held my camera over the edge of the rocks--and just getting that close took my breath away!