When the level of Arkansas’ Buffalo River hits six feet at Buffalo Point, the National Park Service restricts access to experienced paddlers. When it’s at 10 feet, the river is closed.
On Wednesday morning, when we were to start our four-day canoe trip from Buffalo Point to the confluence with the White River, the level was 16 feet.
On Thursday, it was 22 feet.
“We blew that one right out of the water, so to speak,” said the lady at the counter of our canoe rental office.
We never got on the river, and we are now dodging continued rain, possible flash flooding and wind and thunder storms as we head north to Kansas City.
Disappointed, but the power and danger of the river was brought home when we learned on Thursday morning that a canoeist on Wednesday had gone missing upstream of us.
Kept off the river, we turned our attention to other pursuits. We walked the Indian Rockhouse Trail in the Buffalo Point State Park and then drove over to the Blanchard Springs Caverns for a tour.
We hope to be in Independence, MO, tonight for a visit to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.
And we are starting to point toward Seattle and home.
Frontier Trails Museum in Independence is a nice little museum often overlooked by tourists.
Thanks for the advice. We spent Saturday morning in the Trails Museum and the afternoon in the Truman Presidential Library. I felt like I had read two volumes of history by day’s end, which was just fine by me.