MOUNTAIN VIEW

Mountain View, Arkansas: Two out of the last four days have been heavy rain so some of the beautiful leaves have been beaten down. However, the rain also cleaned and polished the leaves so that we could enjoy the brilliant display on Wednesday, our 42nd anniversary, and on Thursday, Kari and Mike's 22nd anniversary. Wednesday night we stayed in Mountain View, Missouri, and last night we stayed in Mountain View, Arkansas. I think we are going to enjoy our couple of days here in Mountain View, which is the Folk Music Capitol of the World. This little place has a town square where every night, depending on weather, musicians from all over meet and make music. It was raining last night so I suppose they didn't meet outside. It's beautiful sunshine today so I expect we will be at the town square tonight for the music. This campground has a building just for musicians to meet every day at 2:00 to play their folk and bluegrass but we were gone at that time yesterday so didn't get to hear them. The downtown streets around the square have a variety of little shops, many of them shops carrying assorted musical instruments like austic guitars, mandolins, banjos, fiddles, and dulcimers. Music is a huge part of the lives of these folks.

We have a big day scheduled today. First we are going to The Skillet for breakfast so hubby can have his biscuits and gravy. Then we will buy our tickets for the Folk Center itself that is a living history enactment. We will watch traditional artisans create hand-made goods, and will have the opportunity to purchase these heirloom quality items. Sounds like fun to me, although an RV doesn't have much room for many purchases. Then tonight we will go to the theatre to see a show of mountain music played by Southern mountain musicians, in the auditorium that seats 1000! I am also looking forward to visiting the Heritage Herb Gardens to learn more about using fresh herbs in cooking.

I'm going to post a few pictures from the last couple of days. Keep in mind that yesterday was pouring rain so pictures don't begin to show the brilliant display of fall colors. (I was going to post a couple of pictures but the signal is very low and it's taking many minutes to get a picture to show up, so I'll just try to publish this post with one picture and will do others later. I can't complain because at least this campground has wireless!)