After last nights heavy thunderstorm we woke to more weather this morning…thick fog!
With hopes that things would improve we drove off to the start of the Talimena Scenic Byway, which has the reputation of being one of the most scenic drives in the Ozark Mountains, and takes in the highest point of the Ozarks at Queen Wilhelmina State Park.
You can imagine our disappointment when we arrived at the start of the road to be greeted by this sign! “Traffic Prohibited During Cold or Foggy Conditions”.
We’d planned to do a bit of a zig zag route to take in the entire byway but with the start still covered witha thick fog we decided to try plan B – take the lower roads to the middle of the byway and see if the weather was any better there. It turned out to be a good move, by the time we’d driven down-east-and back up again the sun had broken through and we could set off along the byway.
It was better supplied with with scenic overlooks ( lookouts!) than the drives we’d done in the Arkansas Ozarks and the view to the distance was pretty, but again there is no comparing these mountains with the peaks we’d seen on previous trips.
We crossed back into Arkansas again at one point, where there had been a long running dispute over the borderline going back to mistakes made by very early surveyors. There’s a marker at the spot so i stood with one foot in each state – we really have spent a lot of time going back and forth between these two in the last few days!
Finally we drove down from the mountains and set off for the long drive back to Dallas, crossing the last state border of our trip on the way. back to Texas!
We made a brief stop in Paris. No, not that Paris…Paris, Texas! Naturally they tip their hat to their namesake…literally! The Texas Eiffel Tower may be smaller than the original, but it wears a natty stetson 🙂
So we’ve finally arrived back in Dallas. We’re staying downtown in the Magnolia Hotel for the last two nights of the trip and tomorrow we hope to see the major sights.
Posted by Adrienne at 7:05 AM