I think I have mentioned before that the missionaries are each given specific mileage each month for their vehicles. In the large areas and zone in Ft. Smith, this can be very challenging. It is especially tricky for the missionaries in the outlying areas. They are isolated from other missionaries and will do meetings on Zoom rather than use their miles to come up to Ft. Smith. Ditto on p-day....they have to find ways to relax without the other missionaries to play basketball with or do other group stuff.
We decided that we would spend a P-day down in Mena and take them to see some of the beautiful and interesting places around that little town. Elder Kutchinsky and Elder Hernandez Rojas said they were excited for us to come. So we made a plan to pick them up for lunch at a local food truck and then plan our day from there.
As we were driving down to Mena (about 90 minutes south of our house), I told Gary that maybe they were just being nice because after all, we are the ages of their grandparents...and a free meal is always worth it. But actually, it was a very fun day and I think they loved it, too (or they are very good actors.)
Food Truck--Mena
I had an Arkansas Hilly Philly Sandwich----
We decided to head east to Pine Ridge to visit a museum that Gary had found on the internet. "Lum and Abner were radio talk show personalities from 1931 to 1955. Their show was based around a fictional town in Arkansas called Pine Ridge--no such town existed, but as the show became very popular and fan mail was always asking where the town was. This little town east of Mena changed its name from Waters to Pine Ridge in 1936 to capitalize on the popularity of the radio show.
These two buildings which formed the foundation for the radio show are now a museum.
Unfortunately it was closed for health reasons, so we were unable to go inside.
We enjoyed looking around especially at the old fire truck which was stored on the property.
Gary knew there was a cemetery near by so we took the elders to introduce them to the hobby of photographing grave markers. We only spent about 30 minutes there but with five of us, we got much of it covered. Gary had spent the time since then adding them to find-a-grave and many of them were not documented before so that was good. We also were able to fulfill 6 requests for ones that had been requested. Elder Hernandez Rojas especially enjoyed it and said that he will do it again on a P-day and send them to Gary to enter in.
We stopped at the "Welcome/Thanks For Visiting" sign for Mena.
Then we were off on HWY. 88 to share some of the natural beauty of Arkansas and the Mena area with the elders,
They were blown away by the beautiful vistas...and also the graffiti rocks at this one view area.
They liked the fire watch tower on Rich Mountain but were disappointed that they couldn't climb up.
We then headed to the lodge at Queen Wilhelmina Park and filled up our water bottles for the moderate hike to Lover's Leap View Area. It was about a mile long and the sign indicated that the bottom part was more difficult than the top half, so we decided to start from the bottom and do the hard part first.
There were lots of rocks, but also it was beautiful with a couple of little bridges over dry creek beds.
Trees just starting to turn. The elders headed out ahead of us with instructions to NOT HURT THEMSELVES. They often walked up and back on the trail as we traveled along so they probably did double the miles that we did.
It turned out to be a more challenging hike than we expected. Jena was not sure that she could do it, but she did one step and stone at a time.
At one stop, Elder Kutchinsky caught a lizard which he shared with us and another family with kids who came along the trail at that time.
The family took our picture at this view point which was spectacular! (And we took theirs)
This is at the Lover's Leap view area.
Jena taking a bit of a break as we headed up the last bit of the trail. We were very glad that we had started from the hard end and worked our way back. However, when we got to the top end, the sign there clearly marked the trail as being more challenging that the one that we had read at the other end.
But we all did it. And the elders told us that their grandparents (sweet as they are) would never have taken that hike--so that made us feel pretty good at our accomplishment!!!
We made a pit stop at the train in the park which they loved climbing on.....
We got them home in time to return to their missionary labors and we enjoyed a beautiful drive north to home except for a bit of west travel after the sun had gone down (thankfully).
We will do it again for Mena elders in the future...if they don't mind hanging out with "old people." We might also do it with the Clarksville elders who are 60 miles to the east of Ft. Smith.
This week however, we get to go to the Bentonville Temple for P-day!!! How lucky are we to gather with our Ft. Smith zone and be in the temple together. All 19 of us will be there together in a session. This is why our P-days were moved to Wednesday when the temple was dedicated--so that each week one zone could attend the temple. (Temples usually are not open on Mondays). That means every other transfer, our zone will be able to attend the temple together. We are so excited. It will be our first time to attend a session there (when I got on to make an appointment, the best date I could get was this coming Friday. It was before we knew when we would go as a zone so we will be going up twice this week.)
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