Leaving the Arkansas Delta

 Location: Rising Star Corps of Engineers Campground; Grady, Arkansas (about 15 miles south of Pine Bluff, Ark)

Today is day 3 of 3 at this campground and it is the last of the campgrounds I'll be staying at that are located in the Arkansas River Delta area of the state. The state has two distinct geological regions. Those two regions are separated by an imaginary line from the northeast corner to the southwest corner of the state. Everything to the northwest side of that line is basically the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains. Everything generally southeast of that line, which is where I've been for the last week or so, is considered the Delta area. It is a flat farmland area that grows rice, soy beans, corn, wheat and cotton. I was surprised to learn that Arkansas grows about 50% of the total rice grown in the country. 

The only exploring I did while here was a laundromat (wash-a-teria), Walmart and a pretty good Chinese buffet place. 

This looking back at Liberty on one of my walks in the campground.

One of the good things about camping near the river is being able to watch the Tow Boats work. 

I found a nice bench on the banks of the river in the campground. It was good for watch the barge traffic as well as a semi-nice sunset. 

Due to the need for a large amount of farm labor, the delta area was dominated by slavery plantations before the Civil War. After the war, massive farm labor was still needed so the "sharecropping" and "tenet farming" systems were created. Mechanization, primarily tractors, replaced the sharecropping system in the late 1930's which created what I'm seeing today. The amount of farmland hasn't changed in hundreds of years, but the number of people needed per acre has changed dramatically. With that change, it appears to me that instead of small tightly knit communities of sharecropping families, we now have farms with one or two homes and those farms are separated by miles. I am just a stranger passing through this area but I get an underlying feeling of sadness around here. I've visited many isolated places in this country and the only other place I've gotten this sort of sad vibe feeling was from some of the Indian Reservations, not the rich casino areas, but the dirt poor areas in the back of the reservation. This feeling has surprised the heck out of me and I hope it passes quickly as I leave here tomorrow.

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll continue to follow the Arkansas River upstream as it heads northwest of here. The next campground will also be on the banks of the river but about 100 miles north on the edge of the Ozarks and Ouachita Mountains. There should be a distinct change in scenery and hopefully a change in my vibes. We will see. 

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe, I'll Cya down the road.