Listing Through Life

I’ve been to Bald Knob National Wildlife Refuge 67 times since I moved to Arkansas, and that means I’ve driven past this restaurant at least 100 times. It didn’t impress me, so I never gave it a try until a couple months ago when I stopped in for lunch with a friend. I just got a burger, and although it was tasty, I didn’t think any more of it. Then I discovered that it made the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame in 2023.

I stopped in for lunch today and made sure I ordered something more impressive — pulled pork with beans and slaw with a side of onion rings.

I now understand. The beans and pork/BBQ sauce were amazing, as were the onion rings. The slaw was mediocre, but I wasn’t complaining. They advertised strawberry shortcake with fresh Arkansas strawberries, and I was planning on getting one, but after the main meal, I had no room left for more food.

I’ll probably stick with burgers most of the time in the future, but I’ll definitely be back.

The refuge contains three basic habitats — snake-infested fields, most of which are planted with soybeans or rice, snake-infested swamps, and snake-infested woods. And it can be rather dead at times, bird-wise. But when it’s hopping, it’s hopping.

I’m told they lease so much of it to farmers to get the funds needed to manage it. That’s fine, unless I happen to go on a day when their crop-dusting. There’s a huge silo complex in the center of the refuge.

I’ve been here 67 times in the four years I’ve lived in Arkansas, even though it’s a two-and-a-half hour round-trip. That’s once every three weeks, but since most of the refuge is closed between November and March for duck hunting, it’s more like twice a month.

I’ve seen perhaps 15 Cottonmouths in Arkansas, and probably 10 of them have been crossing the roads here. (Picture taken in April 2023.)

There’s also dust to deal with, and heat, and fast-driving farmers who don’t think birders should exist. But I’ve also been there when there were thousands and thousands of shorebirds and/or hundreds of egrets and herons. (Picture taken August, 2025.)

There’s a whole group of birders from the Searcy area who hardly bird anywhere else.

Each year, they set aside three cells and manage them for shorebirds and waders.

On the day I took these photos, I spotted four Otters swimming in one of the channels through the woods.

I’ve also seen Mink. (Picture taken June, 2025.)

My best bird was three immature Red Knots that nobody believed I really saw until a birding friend refound them later in the day. In all, I’ve seen 192 species.

It’s definitely an “anything can happen” kind of place.

I can’t pass up a toy train museum. Wayne Ruland built this one in his yard in a residential section of Heber Springs. As I got out of my car, he came out of his house to greet me.

Wayne offered a tour, and I took him up on it. He explained that his father loved toy trains but was too poor to buy one, so he made his own. These are cars he built himself.

Wayne then showed me several that he had made when he was a kid. As he walked me around the display, he pointed out how much of it was constructed of found materials — lightbulb boxes, toilet paper rolls, buttons, etc. The downstairs section was standard gauge, and after showing around, he flipped some switches and got two trains running for a couple minutes.

There was another large set-up upstairs, this one in a smaller gauge (but not as small as HO).

There was even a roundhouse with a working turntable. The whole thing is set up so that as many as 16 people can work together to operate the trains, the switches, the turntable, etc.

Wayne set four trains in motion, and they ran all the way around the room on shelves.

There were other tracks on a lower level beneath the tables along with additional trains, buildings, and train memorabilia. There were even trail brochures and photos on the ceiling. It was close to visual overload.

Wayne’s passion is to invite kids with various learning difficulties to visit and work with his set-up. He teaches them how to make their own trains, buildings, and tracks and gets them to work together in ways they would normally be too shy to do. You can see two of them in the background of the above photo.

It was all very cool, and I stayed probably close to an hour. Of course I liked it. In many places, it reminded me of my wall.

This small park overlooks Greers Ferry Dam and the Red River. In the shade under the shelter, a pleasant breeze made it comfortable even on an afternoon when the temperature was in the low 90s.

The Internet explains, “In his last major appearance [October 3, 1963] before his death [November 22, 1963], President John F. Kennedy stood on a flag-draped platform overlooking the just-completed Greers Ferry Dam and spoke of the prosperity the lake would bring to the region.” I can’t help wondering if the park would be here if he hadn’t died just 50 days later.

Fifty yards downstream from the shelter, there’s an unflattering bust of Kennedy.

And across from Kennedy’s bust is one of Wilbur Mills, the U.S. Congressman from Arkansas who promoted the dam project and emceed the dedication. There’s nothing on the plaque about his alcoholism or the long-standing affair he had with stripper Fanny Foxe. The scandal ended his career 11 years after his appearance here. I thought the bird poop and broken glasses were a nice touch.

This is my third visit to this park. The first was in the early ’80’s, and all I remember about that visit is the clog dancing in the auditorium. I wandered through all the workshops when I visited in April, 2023, but I needed to go back again to get my passport stamped.

I skipped many of the workshops this time, and just stuck my head into a couple others. This is the herb garden. The last time I was here, the woman inside latched on to me and talked my ear off for half an hour, so I didn’t go inside this time.

I bought an iron snake in the blacksmith shop. And for just a couple minutes, I watched four guys playing bluegrass music on the stage.

But I spent most of my visit here.

This workshop wasn’t here when I last visited. The guy makes old-fashioned magic trick supplies for the last remaining magician supply company. The walls of the workshop have displays of the old-time showmen and patent medicine sellers who wandered the Ozarks between the late 1800’s and WWII.

He told me all this stuff was authentic from actual old shows, but he also said during his show that “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t lie to you about.”

The show was short, about 17 minutes, and not over complicated, but the guy gave an example of the banter and did four or five tricks for the four of us in the audience. I enjoyed it.

After finishing with the village, I ate at The Skillet Restaurant in the park. The food was mediocre at best. This part of the experience, I wouldn’t recommend.