Eureka Springs, Arkansas 2011

I have been fortunate in many ways, but among them, is becoming friends with colleagues I had at the State Bar of California. In my last entry, I posted pics from my trip, in 2006, to Victoria, British Columbia, with a friend and colleague from the Bar (Dede), to visit a retired member of our little group (Kay). Today's entry revisits my trip to see my friend and then former colleague Maridee in Jefferson City, Missouri, where she moved back in 2001 (the time that has passed boggles the mind every time), and from whence we took a car trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas and a little cabin on a creek at a Retreat Vacation locale called "Sky Ridge". I'd say it had a little of the isolation of say a Walden Pond and Maridee and I surely communed about life and philosophy and friendship. And we did some sightseeing too in the town built on the mountain in the Ozarks. I am fortunate that some of my friends moved to locales that I would not have otherwise visited. I would have missed some splendid topography and people.

With my current bout of arthritis, I doubt I could manage this town any longer. It is entirely hills and steps. 

But it is also a combination of history, old west type and new age. Comfortable. Welcoming.

It is said that the Crescent Hotel is haunted. Some years after my passing through it as a tourist, I saw a program about the ghostly residents. 

But as for me, when I went inside I found a cat, and that was all I needed to feel at home. The cat was also a resident. 

Above, our little cabin. And a bit of the landscape around us. See below as well. 

Below, if memory serves, the location of the spring? I forget. 

Maridee and me. 

Below, a little house from 1890 that I could happily have lived in. And look at that bargain basement price!

I may hate to fly, but the view is sometimes so spectacular thirty thousand feet up.