Well I traveled back down to the great state of Arkansas for my fall trip, last week, decided to stay in Hot Springs on Lake Hamilton this year, since Mountain Harbor was completely booked with two events…but after giving it a lot of thought, deciding I was going to do some more photo shoots down closer to Hot Springs and would only have time to work one dig in for quartz crystasl this trip….it must made more sense to stay in Hot Springs this time.

I started researching places to stay in Hot Springs, dog friendly places no less, and checked with Jessica at the Hot Springs Convention Center, on locations similar to Mountain Harbor since I was kind of spoiled staying there the last five fall seasons…and she was quite helpful in coming up with several locations to check out, most of them located right on Lake Hamilton…and I also checked out a few private residences and condos that were available for rent as vacation homes and time shares. My budget was a little tight this year so I finally opted to stay at the Staybridge Suites on the south shores of Lake Hamilton, off Hwy 7 south of Hwy 270. It was one of the few dog friendly hotels in the entire Hot Springs area, and after staying there three nights, I couldnt have made a better choice, let me tell you !

Mom and I took off about 7 am Thursday morning and had a good drive down, I was actually monitoring my gas mileage on my Colorado pickup and didnt have to stop and fill the tank til I arrived in Fort Smith and dropped mom off at the home of one of her brothers there.  She always spends a few days there shopping with a couple of my aunts and cousins while I vacation down in the Hot Springs area. Then on Sunday we join up with several other relatives and many friends at my grandfathers farm in Scott County near Waldron and have a big dinner there before heading home.

I still had a quarter tank of gas but found a good price in Fort Smith so I stopped to fill up and after doing the math, determined that once again I was still getting 25 miles per gallon. After a 90 min shoot just west of Fort Smith in the Roland area, I then drove on down toward Hot Springs…crossing the Fouche River south of Waldron….

…and then I headed on down to Y City where I picked up Hwy 270 east to Mount Ida and Hot Springs….I decided to text Randy, one of my Hot Springs models, who was planning to go to Coltons Steakhouse as soon as I arrived, and let him know I was going to be running just a little bit behind on my schedule…and luckily he was okay with waiting for me…I was about to starve by the time I got into the hotel in Hot Springs an hour later…there was a nice sunset on the way down but I never could find a good place to shoot it from as I drove down through there…

I got checked in quickly and cleaned up and then Missy and I headed north on Central Avenue to Coltons Steakhouse…Randy was there ahead of us and had a booth and a big glass of sweet tea waiting on me…I found Randy down there a few years ago and he is the guy that took me to the waterfall back in July that I shot at several times while there then. He also told me about Gulpha Gorge last year but I didnt check it out til July this year, and kind of still kick myself for not checking it out last fall, talk about a beautiful place to just drive or hike thru…more on it later….had a great dinner and visit with Randy again and then headed back to the hotel to relax and unwind…talk about a very pretty suite hotel…four stories tall, sitting up on a hill above Lake Hamilton and we had been assigned to the third floor with a nice view of the lake to the north…nicely furnished and a beautiful walkin dark gray marble shower with glass doors  and big king sized bed with a pillowtop mattress…knew I was going to sleep well. I checked out the treadmill in the fitness center and got a good run in before heading to bed the first night.

Missy and I slept in just a little bit and then headed to Miller Mountain the next morning…arriving shortly after 7:30 and finding out we were the first arrivals of the day….after talking to Faith and checking in while Bill was bringing up fresh dirt piles, I drove over to the parking area and let Missy out to stretch her legs as I prepared to find some nice quartz.

Well I didnt have to wait long to find something nice and big…soon after lacing up my boots and grabbing my rake and bags, I ambled behind the truck to the first pile and found a very large quartz chunk with crystals all over one end and both sides…so I backed my truck up and loaded it right up…then decided to do some surface collecting while I had the place to myself….I filled half a bag with smaller crystals laying around in sight and soon after, another couple of folks showed up to look for quartz too…they turned out to be a nice couple from Topeka, Kansas, and were like me, just looking for anything pretty to take home…I helped them locate some nice crystals while digging into a few of the piles near the parking lot…I was mainly still surface collecting but if I located something, I would dig down and see what else was nearby and usually there were quite a few small clusters and points nearby. I filled two bags pretty quickly….within the first hour I dug out a couple of smaller clusters of smokey colored crystals…and was quite happy with them…decided even if I found nothing else the rest of the day, my day was complete with them…but as it was, in the five hours I was there, I did find quite a few nice singles and clusters…

…here Missy is seen on one of her many jaunts around the tailing piles checking things out…with the beautiful fall foliage in full display near the entrance to Miller Mountain Mine…

…and a little closer up here….well I decided to take the rest of the day off and just do a little sightseeing, so we packed up the rocks after wrapping them up and headed to Gulpha Gorge….taking the scenic route…and for those that havent been to this area, GG is the hollow that runs through the middle of the Hot Springs National Park, where the campground is located on the east side of the city….

and…

I was scheduled to shoot Randy later Friday afternoon, but he got called into work so I opted to take a nap instead and then shot the pretty sunset from the dock for the Belle Cruise Ship nearby…

When I pulled into the parking lot, they had just closed the doors and the lot was empty save for a firefighter from Malvern…while chitchatting with him, he told me that he came up there to watch the sunsets and he photographs them with his phone camera…I was able to ask him about fall foliage in the area and he told me it was pretty everywhere and he had the phone camera pics to prove it, too. While I shot with my digital Nikon 35mm camera, he chose to shoot some video using his laptop…I walked down to the dock where these fishermen were trying their hand, then I saw a speedboat approaching and was able to shoot it as it crossed the lake…

..and then the sun started sinking lower and here are the last few photos I took before heading to McDonalds for a McRib and some fries…

Saturday morning, Missy and I got up early and headed west to Little Missouri River Falls…a waterfall in the US Forest and a very pretty place I had been to several fall seasons to photograph…I figured it wouldnt be as colorful as it was around the Hot Springs area, mainly because it sits in a deeper valley than the lakes area…I decided to take a different route this time, Hwy 70 which runs southwest to Glenwood, then I would drive north on Hwy 27 and up to Norman, where I would take Hwy 8 west to the Crooked Creek Road turnoff…I had never driven out Hwy 70 but could see from researching mapquest that it was a straighter road and traversed alot of valleys instead of mountain ranges…it was a much better drive than Hwy 270 just for those reasons.

I drove thru Glenwood, nice little town…I have a photographer friend that lives there, but I hadnt heard back from him lately so didnt try to call him…then we drove through Caddo Gap, a name I had heard of several times but had no idea what was there…found out shortly that there wasnt much there, wide spot in the road and almost non existent except for a large school on the north side of town and the river that runs thru there named after it….and on over to Norman and then west on Hwy 8…we found some decent color not too far from the turn off to the falls…a country road off Hwy 8 had a nice canopy of color…....and looking at that rugged area and thinking of the climb up and the care one would have to exercise going up or coming down, maybe even dragging a deer out of there…I thought…better you guys and not me….wow….and last year they were running all over the place down there on all terrain vehicles and four wheelers…this year we saw very few hunters down there…

Well we drove on down to the parking lot at Little Missouri Falls and walked down the trail, and then down the staircase to the first set of falls……nice set of wood steps all the way down to the foot of the hill, then they poured concrete steps and ramps down to the rocks…so one could easily step out to the shelf that the water actually runs down on…

..this is the first set of falls…and there are a few cascades below these and then the last fall is nicely framed from up on the trail….

…and then we walked on down the trail to see if there were any other cascades or falls below…

..but we didnt find anything half a mile down, and since it was gun deer season down there, I decided we shouldnt venture much further down…we were hearing gunshots all around us afterall…and it was quite cool down there too…so we headed back to the truck and back to Hot Springs…

I decided to stop at a little waterfall next to a campsite on the way out…it stairsteps down twice off this little bluff….

…we headed back to the hotel and waited for Randy to get back into town from work, and then met him over at Gulpha Gorge to shoot the pretty fall foliage and creek over in the campground area….he was in need of some new photos for his portfolio.

It warmed up a lot from that morning so Randy opted for just a little hoodie jacket and holie jeans…we started up by the highway bridge over the creek, which has a concrete arch underneath that makes for neat framing and reflections….and I`ll just post the highlights of the shoot below…

…and then we moved down the creek and shot some sections where the foliage was stunning….

…this section of the creek along the campsites is a series of cascades and pretty fall maples on the opposite bank….we moved on down to the section of the creek on the other side of the road and found some big rocks to work with and a long pool below the rocks….

…this was shot back in the direction of the campground…I then got on the other side of Randy and shot him toward the pool below and liked what I saw backlit by the afternoon sun better….

…I saw a set of rocks down in the middle of the pool and had him move down there instead and shot him in a few poses that came out looking like an oil painting….

…and then he got creative with his posing…

and then he smiled for me…

After finishing the shoot, Randy and I headed for New China and had a great supper there…talk about a great buffet lineup of tasty food…wow there were five buffet tables of food there and two more loaded with desserts alone…

The next morning, bright and early, Missy and I got up about 7 am and found a dense fog covering the lake…we were waiting for a model on his way down from Little Rock…Pierre was referred to me by photographer friend DJ and I figured I was going to have to shoot his portfolio photos inside the suite, which wouldnt be a problem as pretty as it was, but I was hoping to get some outside shots of him as well…Pierre is a bodybuilder….well by the time he arrived at 8 am to shoot with me, alot of the fog had burned off and so we shot inside for about 45 minutes and then headed south to the Cool Blue Pool Falls for a few pics…disovered someone had trimmed back the brush quite a bit at the entrance to the Hole, probably a right of way issue…but it just allowed more sunlight to hit the rocks which was just fine by me…but I can tell you, the angle in the fall is much different than the angle of light in the summer…took a little bit to adjust to.

I decided to start Pierre in the bunker pants that a friend had given me, and see how they would look on his muscular torso…

and as you can see, he actually looked pretty good in bunker pants at this location…and after this next arty shot….

…this one was fun…he had never done anything like this so it was a new experience for Pierre…one he prob wont soon forget, lol…we headed for Gulpha Gorge after this. We walked over to the bridge and found the angle of light wrong, turned around and saw this great reflection, so decided to try a few artsy type shots here…..it was stunning and so we shot a few here first….Pierre shed his shirt and walked out on the bridge and struck some art poses for me….

…as you can see, Pierre is quite an art hottie and the scenery around him was highly saturated with beautiful colors….cant go wrong with a location and model like this……well we decided to go downstream to the location I shot Randy at the evening before and see what color we could find there in the morning light…and found some nice color and light there too…

..and I`ll leave you one with just a bit more color than these…

..yet another painting of art….after working with Pierre, I headed up to Scott County to meet up with Mom and several relatives at my Grandpa`s  farmplace now being cared for by my Uncle Joe and Uncle Harley,  for a great reunion and dinner before Mom and I headed for home….

…Uncle Joe always caters a great dinner with everyone cooking and bringing a side dish of their own choosing, and if you go away hungry there is def something wrong with ya..great food and great fellowship, finishing off yet another great mini fall vacation in Arkansas.