Now & Then — Vacation to the southeastern states for the first time

We’ve done some traveling in our time, but we have never been big travelers. I have had one life-time trip to the west and northwest U.S., numerous trips to the mid-west states, one trip to New York and Washington, D.C., one trip to Alaska, one trip to the Holy Land and that’s about it. So far we have never made it to the northeastern states, and until this spring we had never been in the southeast United States.

I guess we, or I, have been peculiar about vacations. I subscribed to the theory that a change is as good as a rest. That theory worked pretty well when I was young, better than it works now that I am on the verge of being old.

Back then, vacation time to us usually meant getting home to Pea Ridge to see the grandparents. Visiting the grandparents often included introducing the kids to the grandparents’ farms.

Sometimes we would join in the farming operations for a few days, running a tractor, mowing a field, moving cattle, feeding cattle, repairing fences and watergates, hoeing or harvesting in thegarden or doing other farm chores.

On occasion, the weather becomes a factor in a family’s vacation travel. That was the case several years ago when we made a trip to Alaska. The Alaska weather prevented our cruise ship from visiting Glacier Bay, and we were unable to get a personal view of Mount McKinley. Still, it was a great trip. The weather became a factor unexpectedly on our trip this spring, as tornadoes, heavy rains and flooding touched a wide area of the south.

Early this year, our son Jeff and his wife Mary began talking with Nancy and me about taking a springtime trip with them. We considered a trip to the western states, especially the southwest, but since we had never traveled to the southeast part of the country, that possibility soon attracted our attention and interest. Jefflikes to plan trips, to study alternative routes and to identify prospective points of interest and sites to visit along the way. I think he could run a travel agency if he wanted. For years we have been talking about someday making a tour of Civil War sites in the eastern United States. When our kids were young, we had visited Vicksburg, Miss., and the Shiloh Battlefield in Tennessee, but that was as far east as we had ever been to see Civil War sites.

This spring seemed like a good time for us to make the southeast trip. We would limit the trip to the deeper south states, so we would not make it to such great battlefields as Gettysburg or Manassas; but the southeast states held a strong interest for us even beyond the Civil War interests. Some of our ancestors moved to northwest Arkansas from SouthCarolina, and some lived in Bedford County, Tenn., before coming to what is now Washington County, Ark. We thought we’d like to see the areas where they had lived years ago before migrating to Arkansas. Also of interest to us are theoriginal Indian regions in Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas, where the Cherokee and Creek and other Indian tribes lived before the Indian Removal of the 1830s during the administration of president Andrew Jackson.

We were in Alabama when we began hearing of the widespread severe storms and flooding that have been in the news for the past several weeks. We had passed through Birmingham on Monday, April 25, and spent the night at Childersburg, southeast of there, when we heard that a severe tornado had hit the area of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, with heavy damage and loss of life. We saw storm damage in several of the states we visited, including Chattanooga, but we were fortunate not to have been there during the storms.

On the return trip into Arkansas, we crossed the Mississippi River at Helena.

It was amazing to see how widespread the waters of the Mississippi had become during the week and a half since we had crossed at Memphis at the beginning of our trip. We didn’t have anytrouble on the approaches to the river or the crossing itself. But, back in Arkansas, the flooded roads began to send us out of our way. We had earlier planned to come through Little Rock to visit the Old State House and the President Clinton Library, but I-40 was closed due to flooding between Brinkley and Hazen, east of Little Rock. So, we took Hwy. 49 to the Clarendon area, 79 to Moro, 78 to Wheatley and Hunter, intending to take 17 north to Hwy. 64.

But the west-bound traffic on 64, being detoured from I-40, was a massive pile of creeping congestion. So we continued on 17 to Newport for the night, intending to go home through Batesville the next morning. But by morning, we discovered that Hwy. 14 to Batesvillewas completely flooded by the White River, as was 69 to Newark. We were finally able to go south to Bradford and westward to Batesville, then across the back country to Norfork Dam and on the Mountain Home.

Being back on 412 was like coming into the home stretch, so we extended our exploring by touring old Cotter and taking the old Cotter bridge across the White River. I still think it is one of the most beautiful of Arkansas’s great old bridges.◊◊◊

Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 05/18/2011