I wandered around Whitaker Point Thursday night into Friday morning while collecting some imagery and time lapse. I met a nice fella name John from Fayetteville when I got there. He was there for the stars too, and it was his first time ever. He got a night sky education, he was stoked. But it got pretty darn cold, dropped to 35 degrees so he left around midnight. That’s when I had the place all to myself. I was prepared, I had layers on layers with duck down shells, ready for what mother nature was going to throw at me (although I still froze my ass off). It was too cold to sleep in the hammock, so I did calisthenics on and off to keep the blood pumping. When you are out in the wilderness by yourself, it gives you lots of time to think, and contemplate life’s next moves. I have a few ideas, nothing set in stone, but the potential is there, and that is exciting.

The Ozarks have these really cool places to explore like this 19th century homestead on the Buffalo River.

This is the Villines Homestead cabin that was under construction starting in 1850. The Homestead is a short hike up the hill from The low water bridge at Ponca access. There are a few outbuildings along with this cabin. Go explore, but don’t go inside.

The Buffalo River is America’s first National River, designated by an Act of Congress in 1972, ending the US Army Corp of Engineers’ plans to dam the river.

Karen and I had a fun time tripping around this place. What’s crazy is we have been trekking around these woods for almost a decade now, and never walked the 200 yards or so up the hill to the Homestead. If you have the opportunity, go check it out for yourselves!

Gotta love the dark skies in the Ozarks. If we didn’t have to fight fog, heat, humidity and bugs all the time, there would be more successful night missions. We were fogged out again about midnight on Saturday. This seems to be the theme this season.

Oh yeah, also, Eric walked through a spider web that had thousands of little babies. He was covered in itsy bitsy spiders. Not gunna lie, he was freaked out a little, almost stripped his clothes off, but the skeeters were thick. It was quite the debacle and provided some comic relief from the heat watching him try to wipe off the spiders.