She Walked On High - Arkansas's Tightrope Walking Cook and Waitress, Elie Misham.

Elie Misham didn’t plan to become a cook. The former Little Miss Ouachita started out with much higher aspirations.

She wanted to be a tightrope walker.

A Spring Break Adventure on Scenic Highway Seven, in Tweets.

My daughter Hunter and I are planning our research trip on this year's hot highway, US Highway 71 in western Arkansas.  Last year, we tackled Arkansas's longest state highway, Scenic Arkansas Highway Seven, from the Louisiana Border all the way to Diamond City.  Check out our adventure through the Tweets shared that marvelous week, along with links to the articles produced from our trip, and offer your suggestions on other highways in Arkansas we should tackle.

The Girl on the Bridge.

The Pruitt Bridge (1931) across the Buffalo National River
on Scenic Arkansas Highway Seven.

I thought it was all about the ride.

When I was a young girl, I went many times to Dogpatch USA. The straight stretches of Interstate 40, though new, bored me but I always loved getting above Dover. The vehicle was a car on the best roller coaster ever, one that went longer than a minute and a half and that took me marvelous places… to Booger Hollow and the little burg of Jasper.

I always knew I was close when we crossed the Pruitt Bridge over the Buffalo National River. We’d pass the A-frame cabins of Little Switzerland, climb around a mountain, curl down into the valley and coast across the old steel frame bridge. Once the bridge was crossed, I’d put away whatever tablet or game or book I’d had in my lap, knowing that just a few curves away was Dogpatch.

The view from the overlook south of Jasper.

At 17 I started at Arkansas Tech University. Weekdays were for class, Saturdays for marching band… and Sundays? They were mine. And I found myself in those years hitting Highway Seven… which was soon designated Scenic Highway Seven… found myself sliding past Dover and climbing into the mountains, sometimes stopping at Rotary Ann, sometimes at this overlook or that… taking the hard right downtown in Jasper and then out and up… and coasting over the Pruitt bridge, that sign that Harrison was about 20 miles off, the turnaround where sometimes I’d grab lunch at the Hi-Boy and sometimes I’d eat at Master Chef before heading back down into the valley and Russellville.

Dogpatch USA closed, and the next year I graduated and moved away.

Smokeshed at Booger Hollow, October 2007.

Twelve years later I’d venture that way again, one October afternoon in 2007 when I went to learn the fate of Booger Hollow. I found it closed. When I got home I wrote the story… on a brand new blog. This one, of course.

That trip sparked in me a desire to chronicle Scenic Highway Seven. I wanted to capture what I found special about it, this ride through the mountains that had held so many memories. I started collecting stories, photographing the drive each time I went.

The lady at Nellie's knew I was expecting.

I took the drive up and back in April 2008… with the thought that I was expecting. There was a lady in a flea market along one curve that told me I was… just by looking at me. And she turned out to be right.

Pruitt Bridge, April 2008.

That time, I coasted over Pruitt Bridge, pulled over and looked back. This is what I saw. And I knew I wanted to be on that road on the bridge. But not that day.

My cabin at Little Switzerland Cabins.

The next ride, the next month, I finally satisfied my curiosity and stayed at the Little Switzerland Cabins, unplugging from the world in an A-frame that overlooked Scenic Highway Seven with a comfortable bed and a fridge full of juice and absolutely no cell phone signal at all. I had to clear my mind a bit. After all, Hunter was on the way just at a time when I was just getting my start on the road… on this path, this path of being a writer. What was that going to mean for me?

Hunter with me at Jasper City Park, April 2009.

It meant… that a year later I’d be driven by my husband over that bridge, infant in the back seat, to do a story in Jasper. Hunter had slept the entire ride from Little Rock to Harrison and back down to Pruitt, where she woke as we crossed the bridge and started to holler.

The old bridge has been around 82 years. It was commissioned and built in 1931, one of four Pennsylvania-truss style bridges still remaining in the state. The old green bridge crosses the nation’s first national river… below it, during the warmer months, kids and adults play in the water, while in spring you’ll see canoes and kayaks passing by.

It has been a landmark in my memory my entire life.

Grav Weldon's shot on the Pruitt Bridge.

It was more than 100 degrees when I stepped on the bridge on foot in July 2010. I was working on a story for Arkansas Wild, a multi-faceted story I’d been meaning to tackle for some time and had finally found a commission to write. It was also my first trip with photographer Grav Weldon. While we were collecting stories, I mentioned my desire to walk the bridge, and he photographed me there… an image that has become iconic in my life. My friends told me it needed to be the cover of my book, whatever book I ended up writing one day.

Grav's interest the day he took the bridge shot
was more piqued by these rock piles along
the Buffalo.

That was three and a half years ago. I could no more have told you that I’d have two books under my belt then than anything else. Indeed, my life is so very different these days.

I left life on the road behind at the end of 2011 for the sure thing of a day job. Hunter started school soon afterward. I’ve gone through a lot since the day I walked the bridge… divorce, publication, growth, survival. Hunter has grown into a tall girl of five.

The Excaliburger, photographed
during that July 2010 trip, is on
the back cover of my second
book.

I still find excuses to cross the bridge… for research, for stories, for the fun of it. I’ve crossed after ice storms that ripped branches from the trees. I’ve crossed in the fog of early September mornings.

April 2013… the story came… the Pruitt Bridge is being replaced. The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department was looking for a buyer – but have decided to instead just build a new bridge alongside and close the older bridge to all but pedestrians.  82 years is a long time for a bridge, especially along Arkansas’s longest state highway.

But that’s neither here nor there.

The thing is, 2013 has been a very full year, very busy. I look back and see how packed it was, how every single moment seemed to be bursting with things to do, so much time in motion.

I’ve been rather ill this past week, with one of the worst colds I’ve ever caught. I’ve been too out of it to concentrate on writing, or even just mindless TV watching to be honest with you. It’s left me with a lot of time to think.

I’ve done a lot in my life… a lot of big jobs and a lot of big events. But I have been my happiest when I’ve been sharing stories of where I’ve been and the people I’ve met… oh yes, the food I’ve tried as well, but not so much. I’ve wanted to share what is now and what was… so there will be some record of these things for the days to come.

And I realized something. I am the girl on the bridge. I have told the stories about the chances I’ve taken and the adventures I’ve had… and that is more me than anything else.

I think I need to take another drive.

Scenic Seven Survives III: The Excaliburger.

Writer Kat Robinson and photographer Grav Weldon head into the hills in search of what’s brought a stretch of Scenic Highway Seven back to life.

An abridged version of this article appears in the Fall/Winter 2010 issue of Arkansas Wild. Click through for a downloadable copy.

We went back into town for more searching out of things. It didn’t take us too long to end up at the Ozark Café.

Now I’ve been to the Ozark Café before. When I was on my trip through the area in May of 2008 I stopped in needing to feed my pregnancy cravings. And let me tell you what… there was nothing that quite hit the spot than the Deep Fried Burger. The hand-battered and deep fried patty wasn’t anywhere near as greasy as I thought it would be, and at $4.49 it wasn’t too expensive.

A lot can happen in two years. One of the assignments I’d picked up for this trip was for Serious Eats, an online publication for which I’m a hamburger correspondant. I kid you not. I knew we had to go there, and we were both hot, so we tumbled into the place for a couple of cool beverages and a sample of that burger.

The first thing our waitress told us was that there was no ice cream. The cooler had died a few days earlier and it’d be a few days more before they got the new unit in. I experienced a moment of disappointment. She gave us menus and went to fetch our beverages.

As I perused the menu I noticed another listing:

Excaliburger: Our ½ pound burger, sandwiched between two grilled cheese w/Ozark sauce… Single $5.99 Double $8.99

Well, what do you do? We debated over the two burgers, but then Grav pointed out to me that I’d already experienced the other burger and I had pictures… so why not? And since we’d already eaten breakfast -- twice -- we’d split the thing.

While we waited for our order, Grav got up and took photos. If you haven’t been to the Ozark Café and you’re in the area, you should stop in. The place is a veritable treasure trove of historical photographs and memorabilia from all over Newton County, including a great deal of Dogpatch USA items. It’d be hard to be bored there. The café itself has been around since 1909 and many of the photos you’ll see are from the restaurant over the years.

The burger was delivered to our table with a big knife stuck in it. Well, a sword would have looked strange. The grilled cheese sandwiches themselves were butter-toasted, each two slices of bread glued together with American cheese. In between the two were all the things you need on a burger — juicy tomato (very juicy, actually), the Ozark sauce (an herbed mayo, I believe), thinly sliced red onions, the burger patty, green leaf lettuce, flat hamburger dills and a thin layer of mayo.

And the burger had this perfect char on it, a grilled burger with lots of black pepper and a hint of thyme, and the strong suggestion on the use of Worchestershire throughout. It’s thick but not ovoid, and it was cooked medium well.

Now, there was one thing that was tough, and that was getting the burger to the mouth. Because of all the wet items, the burger patty tends to slide right out. In the end I procured a fork to finish my half. I was awesomely pleased with the burger, really I was.

We sat there for a while, cooling down and plotting out the rest of our day. I had interviews to conduct and Grav had images to shoot. And there was this bridge.

***

See, I’ve had this idea for an image for a long time, but no one to photograph it. That’s the problem with being out on your own as a freelancer -- you really are out on your own, so if you want a photo of you doing what you’re doing it has to be something very, very close-up, or it has to be on a timer. I’m not that technologically advanced when it comes to photography.

But having Grav along for the ride, that was a different story. This was the first assignment we’d taken together, and once I told him about the bit about me wanting a shot of me standing in the road, he wanted to oblige. And the first time he saw the perfect shot happened to be on this bridge on Highway 7.

We’ve been talking about how the road itself has dithered down with drivers and then come back up. For a little town like Jasper, though, it’s the main pipeline through which all things flow, from food for the restaurants in-town to building supplies for folks constructing their own river cabins to gravel for roadbeds. So getting this shot wasn’t easy. We parked at the river access on the north side and I walked out there and stood on the double yellow, only to run back a few seconds later at the approach of a truck. With no shoulder to speak of and the drop below, running back was the only option. Trucks making the curve from either direction at 55 miles an hour don’t give you much chance to get out of the way. In all that time we saw just one motorcycle, and we were starting to wonder if our idea about bikers on Scenic Seven was a sound one.

Grav finally caught this shot as I walked out towards the bridge, carefully listening for approaching vehicles. It was now literally 100 degrees outside, I was in long sleeves to keep my arms from burning too bad and the breeze had all but died. I wouldn’t know for another week that he’d captured this perfect shot in that second or two.

We drove from there down to the river out of curiosity, following the half a dozen vehicles that had made the turn while we were trying to catch that shot. Kids splashed in the shallows as their parents waded out to waist level on the tumbled rocks. Someone had decided to stack those rocks on the riverbank, and it was this we found the most interesting.

The afternoon was waning and we needed to get on up to Marble Falls.

Next: Down into the Dogpatch.

Scenic Seven Survives I: Into the Ozarks.

Writer Kat Robinson and photographer Grav Weldon head into the hills in search of what’s brought a stretch of Scenic Highway Seven back to life.

An abridged version of this article appears in the Fall/Winter 2010 issue of Arkansas Wild. Click through for a downloadable copy.

Highway Seven’s northern leg is a twisting, snarling buck of a ride, rolling its way over hill and crag as it crawls up into the Ozarks from Russellville for its eventual sigh of relief in Harrison. The miles in-between have been their own source of folly, a litany of attraction and motels and tourists traps mostly eaten up by time and bad fortune. These roads that once saw traffic that never stopped now sometimes lays languidly calm on autumn afternoons, waiting for the next denizen to roll up and past and onward to another destination.

Thirty years ago and more, the sound would have been of sedans and station wagons packed with kids, families escaping the cities or making that grand trek to take their ilk with them to see what Arkansas was all about. They stopped at places like Booger Hollow, the Arkansas Grand Canyon and Natural Bridge on their way to that pinnacle of hillbilly greatness -- Dogpatch, USA.

Those sounds now are quite different. Booger Hollow has been abandoned nigh on four years now, Dogpatch has echoed quiet for a decade and a half and while people still stop to take photographs into the deep crevice the Buffalo River has carved over time, those visitors are fewer and further between. So many of the gift shops, the quilt stores and flea markets and craft fairs and such -- they’ve all dried up and blown away. Boomtime was three decades and more ago.

But there is an echo of progress and more traffic on the road now than has been in a decade or longer. There are still sedans, but now they haul families up to Ponca to watch elk in the early morning hours. There are couples in coupes heading to a hillside cabin retreat. And there are the two-wheeled variety of traveler, the weekend warriors, motorcycle enthusiasts who are searching out the thrill of a good ride and a place to lay their heads in-between stretches of pavement on a Friday or Saturday night. These are the people who are coming home off of Seven and sharing their tales, who are heralding a little town in the hills called Jasper, and who keep telling people about the miracle at Marble Falls overlooking the ruins of Dogpatch. This is a story of Scenic Highway Seven, today.

***

We came to Scenic Seven, photographer Grav Weldon and I, on a hot dusty July morning to find out how the communities along the road are surviving. I’ve traveled the stretch many times and watched the eventual degradation of the area.

As we traveled, I told Grav my stories of Scenic Seven. I shared with him the stories from the 1992 presidential elections, when reporters lit on Booger Hollow (population seven, countin’ one coon dog) to find out more about The Man From Hope and to show the world what Arkansas was like. I shared also the thrill I’d get from stopping in at the store with my folks as a kid, paying a buck to pick up a bag of tumbled rocks and how the whole place smelled like smoked ham.

I went back to Booger Hollow in October 2007 because I wanted it as one of my first entries on my blog, Tie Dye Travels, but it had been closed most of a year and the property was in dispute. At the time it looked empty but not that far gone.

We passed by Mack’s Pines this day (I was surprised to see it was up for sale) and rounded the curve a short time later to view the remnants of Booger Hollow. There was another vehicle there, a truck with a guy talking on a cell phone. We hopped out and I showed Grav the famed Double Decker Outhouse. He showed concern for picking up chiggers but chronicled the ruins of the attraction; I walked around and noticed the back door standing wide open, a sour stench coming from inside. I’m not sure if transients had used the place for a flophouse or if it was just the aging of the dead attraction, but while I’d felt ghosts on my last visit this time it just felt like an empty shell.

It’s a real shame. Booger Hollow was the place to stop for any sort of hillbilly kitsch, for a good smoked pork product or a handwoven basket or even a postcard and a Coke before heading on up the road. I’d hoped that it would survive and come back, but that looks unlikely now. Even the place that sprung up down the road from there, called Chigger Hollow, seems quiet. Like so much of Scenic Seven, Booger Hollow has faded away.

***

But you don’t have to go far up the road to find a place to stop and have a bite to eat. It’s in a quiet place, barely a stop-over before heading up further into the Ozark National Forest. We were stopped by the smoke.

A Facebook fan had keyed me in on Hankins Country Store, an older property at Pelsor along Scenic Seven. On my last trip up I had noticed the building was empty. This reader had told me I needed to drop in and have myself a bread pudding muffin. Since I’ve been on a breakfast trek this summer, we had to stop.

But the scent we had picked up was of pork ribs smoking in a small black contraption out front of the store. We pulled in and took out the cameras. The store was alive and active.

Grav questioned a guy who came out to check on the smoker about the delicious scents. I went on in to see if I could find these pastries.

Jennie Yohn was just walking a big hot pan of pecan rolls over to the old school bakery case. She smiled at me and asked if I was interested in having one. I asked her in turn if it was all right for me to take photos of the place. She looked a little puzzled but agreed.

Grav came through the door, very cheerful about the smoker. “They’re doing beef brisket later today!” he told me, quite happy about this news. I pointed at the bakery case, which was starting to fog up from the just inserted pecan rolls. He also asked to shoot photos and got underway. It was nearly nine in the morning. The place smelled heavenly.

Turns out, the baked goods and the ribs and all other sorts of stuff are served up almost daily from six in the morning to six at night as part of Blue Mountain Bakery, the eats place run by Yohn and her husband, Roy. That’s not all you’ll find there -- they also carry all sorts of sundries and groceries and things you might need if you’re planning to camp in the area or if you forgot something.

We ended up walking out of there with a pecan roll and the bread pudding muffin I was there to try in the first place. As breakfast pastries, you could do far worse. The pecan roll was a symphony of butter-type notes, full of cinnamon and caramelized pecans with that great bready base. The bread pudding muffin was unusual and would have benefited from a quick pop in the microwave had we been thinking about it, but still nice and custardy. We marked it down for further investigation.

Next: The Cliff House Inn, a totem in Jasper, and the green waters of the Little Buffalo.