Date of Visit: 24-25 February 2024
Marianna, AR
57º sunny & breezy
Typing out the name of this, my 21st park, Mississippi River, makes me itchy to add “State Park” to distinguish from a visit to the river itself. As the photo shows, the park rests within the St. Francis National Forest. While my overnight trip to the park proved fun and fruitful, I was quite disappointed that it lacks a focus on and easy access to the river itself. Instead, most of the park highlights the southern tip of Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas’ least-known and least-understood ecoregion. Even in the visitors center most of the presentation material centers on the land, beginning with the Louisiana Purchase survey. I did appreciate the chance to read more about this after having been to Louisiana Purchase State Park earlier in the day.
Per my usual routine, I started the visit at the welcome center and took in all of the informational displays. I stood for a long time in front of the box (maybe 18″ x 18″) with the chains shown in the picture here. Having visited the headwater swamp where the survey began, I imagined men working these lengths into straight lines in cardinal directions, marking out the land one slow, trudging, bushwhacking, malaria-suffering mile at a time. Stunning.
In the visitor center, a cut-away diagram of Crowley’s Ridge rising up out of the delta also dazzled me. Fun fact: the ridge is not an uplift formation. Instead, much like the Ozark Mountains in the northwest, the ridge is the product of erosion created by wind, rain, and eventually rivers. In fact, the St. Francis River forms the eastern border border and the L’Anguille River the west.
For this trip, I lucked out and a good friend accompanied me. We gave the camper cabins at the park a double thumbs up, and we found the Bear Creek Loop Trail fascinating. The trail provides a chance to learn to identify at least a dozen trees native to Arkansas, as placards in front of key species offer information on height, leaves, flowers, and bark. My friend is a master naturalist and general fan of all things nature. To my delight she caught this wee cricket frog so we could take a closer look before letting it get back to doing whatever it is that little frogs do. We saw deer and raccoon tracks, caught prairie trillium coming up out of the ground, checked out the stiff bristle fern growing on tree trunks, and at the very end of our hike, thought a bear or a very large person must be hiking off trail based on the sound of the disturbance in the leaf litter down below us. Turns out it was an armadillo scrambling around. A lot of noise for such a pint-sized creature.
The next morning, our luck ran out. We headed out from the cabin by car, determined to find the confluence of the St. Francis and Mississippi Rivers. After all, the title of the park promised as much, and I could see a little road marked on the map. Alas, we made it to within 500 yards (so said my GPS), when flooding forced us to turn back. Here’s a picture of the dry road that we took out of the park, windows down to catch the birdsong and to better view the swampy surroundings. It seems that at every park I’m left saying, “I need to come back so I can … .” This one was no exception. Heads up, confluence, I’ll be back next year (after I’ve managed to visit all 52 parks once) to check you out.
Next up: Delta Heritage Trail
