Sam's Throne

This weekend four friends and I went down to Arkansas to go rock climbing and camping. We went to a place called “Sam’s Throne,” a popular set of sandstone bluffs that are excellent for rock climbing. The campsites are up on the bluffs and we got in around 9pm to set up camp. Saturday we went down the bluffs and had a short hike over to the “Throne” where Derek and Amanda began setting up the ropes. Both Amanda and Derek have done lots of climbing so they did a quick review of safety and then we got on with it. I had forgotten how fun it was! It’s pretty tough but it sure feels great to get to the top of the wall. We climbed until around 4pm and then headed back to camp to get dinner started. Dave had this idea to make pizza in Aluminum foil on the fire so we tried that and it turned out ok. We didn’t know how long to leave it in the fire so the first couple pieces were fairly burnt on the bottom. After dinner we went over to the bluffs to check out the sunset. We missed the sunset-proper but we stuck around and watched the moon set right after. A couple of drunken people came down to check out the sunset as well- I’ll just say they were annoying. Luckily they didn’t have any patience and were getting thirsty again so they took off after a few minutes. The rest of the night was spent chatting around the fire.

We got up a little later than anticipated this morning and were all pretty sore so it was decided that we would go sightseeing today instead of doing some more climbing. We drove west to this place called Lost Valley where there are some campgrounds and a nice little hike to a cave. It was a fun little excursion and the drive was pretty cool.

It was a great weekend, I really enjoyed the rock climbing and we’re definitely going back down there later this Fall.