By Jessica Turner and Nate Paulson
Note: As the school year came to a close last year, there was a lot happening in Mini-School. When we got the year end Com-Mini-Cations ready to go to the presses, we had mistakenly left out the article about the Arkansas Buffalo River Trip (April 9 – 20). We wanted to be sure our readers got to hear about this trip, so here is the article, a little late, but definitely full of enthusiasm.
This April, 11 Mini-Schoolers and two teachers took a trip to Arkansas. The teachers were Doug Berg and Paul Gerten, and the students were Andy Sheats, Tim Miller, Nate Paulson, Andy Black, Nick Merchant, Jenny Ertz, Jessi Eiden, JJ Day, Jessica Turner, Bill Goudy, and Justin Ponter.
It was a 5:00 a.m. wake up call on a cold Sunday morning with the sun barely peeping over the horizon. Everyone had to meet at 6:00 a.m. at Perkins. We were all on time, just sleepy eyed (a few kids with growling bellies, waking up too late). We were on the road within a half an hour. Doug was playing his usual folk music, while the kids were trying to get some shut eye. Nick, however, was in back listening to his head phones. We happened to see an old Mini-Schooler at a gas station stop, Craig Schrupp. He wanted to follow us to Arkansas, but decided otherwise, since he didn’t have any equipment.
We drove all day to Knob Noster State Park in Missouri. We ate Dinty Moore beef stew for dinner, and afterwards, Doug had school with us and gave everyone a brief description of the trip. Even though we just drove all day the kids were tired and everyone went to bed early that night.
The next morning, Doug and Paul treated us to the Hometown Café, where you can find the biggest pancakes you’ll ever see. They’re two inches thick, and two feet wide! Everybody ordered pancakes with everything you could imagine on the side. Even though our waitress warned us that you should only order one pancake at a time, nobody listened. JJ was the closest to finishing his short stack: only two bites away. Poor Nate and Tim, were grunting and groaning all day. While Nick decided to save his pancake for later, Paul and Tim threw it away when Nick wasn’t looking.
After breakfast, we were headed towards Steel Creek, Arkansas. (We had a late lunch, because nobody was hungry.) This place is really beautiful. It’s down in a valley, and the campsites are right next to the river. There’s a huge bluff on one side of the river, and a big meadow and hills behind the campground. Everyone liked that place. Justin claimed he found an armadillo, so half of the kids were running around looking for armadillos.
The next day we went on a hike to Lost Valley, a really pretty place where an ancient amphitheater sits underneath a huge hill. There we climbed up the hill to a cave with a waterfall in it. At first some people got scared, because we had to crawl on our hands and knees for some time and there were tiny bats hanging just above our heads. It was worth it! You enter a huge room that’s pitch black, and there’s this small waterfall pouring right above your head. It sounds really loud because it’s trapped in a room. Everyone loved that hike.
At dinner, Doug taught us about vultures. If you get too close to them they’ll puke on you.
The fourth day we had home made oatmeal for breakfast. No, not the packets! We went on a long hike, and here are some of the highlights: Jessie got a turkey feather from some hunters (our good luck charm the rest of the trip), Big Bluff where you can see for miles, Granny’s Cabin where you can see what Ozark life used to be like, Hempden Hollow which is very beautiful, and everyone getting lost!! It was a tough day, but very beautiful.
The fifth day of the trip was the first day of canoeing. Doug and Paul packed up all of our gear and drove to the ending spot. We were only going to canoe with our day packs that day. And that was a good thing, because four out of seven canoes did sink, The first to go were Sheats and Paulson. They went through the first set of real rapids and got stuck on a rock. The canoe had so much pressure on it, that it bent in half. So we named that canoe Captain Crease. Second were Tim and Ertz. They got stuck on a rock sideways, and their canoe started to flood, so they stepped out of the canoe and dragged it to shore. The third and fourth swamps happened in a stretch of really long rapids. Jessie and JJ went first, went too far to the right, and got attacked by the trees. (Nobody was expecting that one.) Bill and Jessica were the next runners up, and did the same exact thing, except that they lost the canoe and had to go chasing after it. The swampers were all happy to get to camp and put on dry clothes. Now that’s a luxury!
One night Doug wanted to camp on the sand bar in the river. We set up camp, ate, and decided to sleep out under the stars. Well, that was a bad idea. At about 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. it started to pour! We got the tents set up and went back to sleep. We slept on a sand bar another night as well, but had no problems.
Well the last day on the river we had a pretty easy day. We didn’t have that far to go, we kept our spirits high and enjoyed all the beauty and pristine wilderness around us. The next day we packed up and hit the road. We slept most of the way home.
The first day on the river was very difficult. We were trying to get used to canoeing with each other which took some time and patience. We suffered some low spirits, and we had good times. One evening we were assigned to say something good about every one on the trip. This was not always easy; it’s hard to put that into words sometimes, but we all did all right as a group. Arkansas was great!