The Ouachita Mountains run east to west, "the only place in the
hemisphere where this occurs".
"Back in the early times before the dinosaurs, Arkansas was on the shore
of a deep ocean, called the Ouachita Basin."
" But it didn't stop there. It created Louisiana and all of the
southeastern gulf coast that we know and love. That's why people from Texas
and Louisiana come to Arkansas to collect rocks, and why people from Arkansas
drive eight hours south for our seashore vacations!"
Also your part of Texas, Richard. :-)
I racked up a lot of vertical foot mobile miles there in 1966 installing
equipment for
a military aircraft under the radar target acquisition exercise. No
GPS to tell you where you wuz.
Frederick
Fred.. Was that you trapsing across my pack pasture? Had
hot coffee and chicken and dumplings waiting for you.
Speaking of Arkansas and Texas, the closer you get
between these two state, the more weird the geology and the folks
become.. lotsa feet with 7 toes back in the woods. Also seismic
folks have their share of fun trying to figure out what they caught in
the bucket when magnetic lines of force just don't want to follow the
darn rules. Barium mines play fun tricks too.. Baroid Corp, now a div of
Halliburton has lotsa fun stuff tales. Once was a company called Magcobar..
Magnetic Cove Barium Co.. wonder how they came up with that name ?
Water well drillers can tell tales that not even a Texan
can believe < grin>. Stuff like getting core samples of cypress trees
some 500 feet down ( still in the vertical) near the Trinity river.
Probably the weirdest are stories about digging hand dug water wells
on the north side of Houston back in the old days and hearing running water in
underground rivers beneath your feet. Nobody would believe them. Well, neither
did I until I heard the story about the two scuba divers exploring underwater
spring fed caves in Lake Houston. The diver surfaced, climbing in the skiff
saying, ain't going down there, nary never again, when I look a catfish in the
face thats big enough to swallow me. I'm taking up a new sport.
Richard
