Our last stop on our month long trip was at a state park in northeast 
Arkansas called Crowley’s Ridge. This is a beautiful small park with a pretty lake that has a swimming area. This park was probably made back in the 1930′s by the CCC in the depression area as a lot of state parks were.
We were only at this park one night and a morning. When we got to the park we had already driven through one bad rain storm in the early afternoon. The weather looked like it was clearing up, but soon enough in early evening we were hit by another thunderstorm. Luckily it did not hit the park to bad and we were able to get out for an evening walk by 8 PM. While we were walking we ran into a couple from North 
Carolina. They commented on the bad storms and had a bad tornado hit the area recently? What they were talking about was the damage from the ice storm that hit Arkansas and Kentucky really bad 
during the winter. The remark was expected – I had just said to Mike earlier in the day as we were driving through Kentucky that I bet people driving through that hadn’t heard of the ice storm would think the area had been hit by major tornado’s recently.
We had thought the damage in north Arkansas was bad – you should have seen it in Kentucky. We had heard it was bad – we drove through areas of tree damage that will take years to clean up. Here it is about 5 months later and they had tree crews out in Kentucky cutting trees from the sides of the interstate still trying to clean it up. It will take years to clear it all up. There are trees hanging sideways very close to the lanes of traffic in some places still. 
Northeast Arkansas looked a lot like that also. Here is a sign that is posted at the campground at the beginning of the hiking trail. The picture to the left and above is a photo of a part of a tree down in that area.
We bought this cute bamboo wind chime in Virginia Beach while we were there. We like to carry one set with us to hang in our campsite to catch the breeze. It was so unique we thought with the turtle on the top. Hopefully we will not forget this one at a campsite like we did the last one we carried with us 
at least that one was just a plain bamboo hanger and didn’t have the turtle on top!
That does it for the vacation pictures and now I must get my act together and start working on my quilting again. I had taken plenty of sewing things with me and got very little done. I was too busy enjoying the sites and taking walks.
Tonight I did get a simple Dear Jane block done on “Insanity Revisited” and since we got home I finished quilting the Dear Jane row that I had been working on before we left on the “Insanity” quilt. I’m not sure where I left off taking photo’s of the quilts before I left so this week I will start with where I am now.
Besides quilting and piecing in the upcoming week we are redoing a flower bed and the front steps to the house. This was an idea that we lost control of quickly!! I had noticed that the plants in the bed next to the steps were not doing well and I was going to prepare the soil for new plants and noticed that the top row of the railroad ties was rotting. These railroad ties have been the base of our flower bed there for over 15 years and had been cracked when put in place and over the years had plants growing in the cracks and soil got into it. It was not unexpected that they would eventually rot. I asked Mike if he thought he could take those out and replace them. We quickly found out that the whole thing was rotting. Now we are in the process of taking it apart. I dug all of the bulbs out and other plants to plant elsewhere and we will redo that section completely including remaking the front steps up to the porch as they all tied in together. I will post some photo’s this week of what we are doing. It will be a new look for sure.
(Melanie & Jessica this is just the side by the wooden sidewalk not the whole length of the front porch)
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