| Autumn Leaves in the Ozarks |
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| (Click on the images for a larger version.) |
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| The last time Ilaria and I went to check out the Autumn Leaves was in Boston -- just before I sold my car. |
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| Now with our Scion XD, |
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| we hit the road |
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| to see the Autumn Leaves in the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas. |
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| Ilaria designed our first day of driving around a series of mills. |
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| We stopped at the first mill |
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| to eat some lunch. |
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| It was |
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| nice |
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| The mill was "under repair". But it appeared more like they were rebuilding the thing from scratch. |
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| It was still a nice place |
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| to see the leaves. |
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| A few miles later |
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| another mill. |
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| Hodgson Water Mill |
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| is picturesque enough, that they make puzzles out of pictures of it. |
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| We took |
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| a short walk |
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| along the stream |
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| that flowed after the mill. |
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| Then we drove on to |
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| our third mill. Back in the old days, the towns would form around these mills just like towns formed around the mines in Montana. |
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| At this mill |
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| they even had a |
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| real gas pump. |
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| Pulling a lever back-and-forth to put gas in your car is really pumping your gas. |
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| Our car |
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| and the developing one |
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| liked Zanoni Mill. |
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| Nicest trees of the trip. |
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| Next we stopped at Rockbridge Mill |
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| built back in 1868 and rebuilt back in 1888. |
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| There were some men |
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| fly-fishing in the stream behind the mill. |
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| They caught fish as soon as the threw their line in the water. |
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| Both of them had pretty good collections going. |
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| Next to the mill was what was supposed to be a great restaurant, but it was too early for dinner and Ilaria wanted to see more things before dark. |
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| Our last mill of the day was middle-of-nowhere, on-a-dirt-road, for-sale Hammond Mill. |
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| We drove down to |
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| Mountain Home, Arkansas and ate dinner at Fred's Fish House on Lake Norfork. It was good, southern-priced (i.e. cheap) food, but it was too dark to see the lake. |
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| So we went back the next day to |
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| snap a few |
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| photos. Including Ilaria's artistic close-up series. |
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| Then we headed to the last stop of our trip, |
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| Mammoth Spring. |
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| Where we found |
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| a dam that used to power |
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| a Westinghouse generator. |
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| We arrived home early that evening after our short 672 mile weekend trip through the autumn leaves. |