2023 Issue 5 Sept/Oct Focus - Mid-South Magazine

travel
Regional Oddities
Bona Fide Day Trips to Arkansas & Alabama
story and photos by Brandi Rinks
One of the perks of living in Memphis is the proximity
to so many charming and historic Southern towns for
weekend adventures. Within a few hours' drive you can be
either in Mississippi, you can be either in Mississippi eating
Kool-ickles and gearing up to hear the best Hill Country
Blues of your life; in the valleys of the gorgeous Arkansas
Ozarks seeing a folk singer at a rustic barn show in a nature
preserve; in East Tennessee drinking moonshine before
riding a rollercoaster or in Alabama touring a grotto built
by Monks, any of which can also include side quests to
unassuming dairy bars, thrift shops, BBQ junts, drive-ins,
regional oddities, and gas stations with spicy tater logs that
you’ll be craving for months afterward.
One of my favorite recent day trips was a jaunt into the
Arkansas Ozarks for the Meadowcreek Concerts in the
Barn series. When I saw that poet and folk singer Willi
Carlisle, who put out my favorite album of 2022, was
playing a Saturday show in a barn on a nature preserve just
a few hours away in my home state, there was no question
that I had to go.
My boyfriend and I left Memphis mid-morning, and our
first stop was just over an hour away at Kennon’s Dairy
Bar in Wynne, Arkansas. With a menu that ranges from
bologna sandwiches and cheeseburgers to Frito pies and
bacon-wrapped Polish sausages, it’s a lowbrow cuisine
lover’s dream restaurant. We got milkshakes and tater tots,
perusing the bulletin board for upcoming events while we
waited, which included a weekly country dance that I made
a mental note to check out later.
After acquiring the necessary fuel for a rural Arkansas
road trip (sugar, grease, salt, caffeine), we choogled on
for a scenic loop through the Bald Knob National Wildlife
Refuge, where depending on the season, you may see
some of the hundreds of species of wildlife and birds
that either live there or pass through the area during
migration, including shorebirds, ducks, geese and even
Bald Eagles. Like most people, the pandemic spurred
new hobbies for us, one of which was birding – basically
Pokemon GO but with real life creatures. On this trip
we were on the lookout for a rarity, Roseate Spoonbills
that had landed outside of their typical migration range.
After creeping along the gravel roads of the refuge,
hanging out the windows with binoculars and driving
extra slow so as to not be a disturbance to any plants
or wildlife, we spotted them! We updated our eBird
logs, tried to identify some hawks in the distance, and
then headed off for our next stop–lunch and peoplewatching
at The Bulldog in Bald Knob. I’m a sucker for
diners and tater tots, and Jeremy will try any barbeque
he encounters, so this checked both our boxes.
After lunch, downtown Heber Springs was a good
spot to look for coffee and stretch our legs. The Gem
Theater is an adorable twin cinema that looks straight
out of a Wes Anderson film if you need to take some
travel selfies in a quiet, rural downtown.
We arrived in Fox about an hour later with time
to kill, so we drove around until we found Brad and
Dad’s Drive-in, a tiny diner in nearby Timbo, Arkansas,
complete with wood-paneled walls and a camo
decorated menu that’s made up of about 99% fried
foods. Am I saying you need to have tater tots for
every meal on this trip? No. Am I saying you can find
perfectly fried and salted tots at every stop along this
route? Absolutely.
Finally, it was time to head to Meadowcreek for the
barn show. Meadowcreek is a not-for-profit located in a
privately owned, protected 1600 acre nature preserve
in a valley of the Ozarks near the unincorporated
32 Go! | Sept+Oct 2023 | focuslgbt.com