It's within ten foot of the top of the bank at Richardsons Landing, and higher than yesterday. I've been stopping there on my way home lately.

Must be one heck of a melt going on up north.

 

I just came from the launch ramp at the river - it's about six foot higher than my last post. In three feet it will be in the parking lot, maybe two.

Saw two bouys washing down the river, and a telephone pole.

All of this is from the rain in the northwest. Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missourri, etc...

They say it will crest on thursday. I talked to an old timer around here, who said that in the sixties he saw the place we were at under two feet of water. Richardsons Landing a few mile up the way used to have many houses on it, NAVY divers went down there in the sixties and said quite a few things:

The bank was so far undercut it reached back under the land from the sweep of the river and debris eroding it like wildfire!

CATFISH big enough to swallow a diver whole (tanks and all).

Fierce current, and at least seventy five foot depth of water.

The house at the end of highway 59 I reckon we can expect the land to cave under it most any time now. Ole Timer said that since he's been living here up in Randolph he's watched two houses at Richardson Landing get swallowed by the river...

At John's Boat Dock - the water is about up to the back deck but it's on stilts.

Ballard Slough Road is in places under water.

This is bad, this is NOT the spring melt yet. Old Timer figured it would drop back to 25, maybe 22 (where 22 is flood stage) before the melt waters come rolling down.

He was a river man.

 

Taken today (tuesday evening)


There is a seventy five or hundred foot boat ramp behind my truck!

 

yep its up alot

here are some pics my buddy sent me of the buffalo river in ark.
the river is normaly 5ft deep and about 60ft under the bridge





if ya know much about the area .. buffalo city cabins are under water (thats where the buffalo river dumps (ends) into the white river (just below ranchett ramp) its so bad the white river is flowing backwards for 2 miles

i go there every year to turkey hunt and trout fish for big browns
here is a 33in,11.5lb brown from there

 

I swear I saw fish backs and dorsal fins out toward the Arky side that could have been DOLPHINS - but they had to be catfish on the surface!!!

Swimming on the surface down river.

They were ten foot long if they were an INCH....

I imagine they were going with the current so they wouldn't be WHOPPED by the stuff being washed down.

A river man told me what is on top of the water is only five percent of what's in there right now. Tree's, lumber, parts of old barns, waterlogged stuff is under the surface....


He said (and I quote):
"NOTHING ON EARTH WOULD GET ME OUT ON THAT RIVER RIGHT NOW."


MY ABOVE PIC ON THE RIGHT:
Man told me that one was making time, but they were being pulled over around Saint Louis and made to lay over because the upper river is too wild.


(the tow is in the background near the Arkansas shore. You can see three barges in front of it just behind my cab)

 

Here a few months ago, our rivers and lakes were down as a low as I have ever seen them. I wish I would have taken pictures. There was small ponds of water in the low places where fish had got trapped and could not make it back to the lake.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, I dont think I would have the ***** to cross that bridge.

 

Speaking of - how often can you take a picture like THIS:

 

Cool... Looks like your walking on water . Whats that behind you?

 

That right there is a three barge tow - although the tugs push the barges upriver, rather than pull them.

I expect that boat has around 18,000 horsepower and all diesel.





*See them now in the detail photo?

 

Its amazing how much weight a tug boat can handle, its like a Ford truck on water.
You ought to put that picture in the off road contest Wolf, Technically you are offroad. You got my vote.

 

a lot of tugs got the ole Screamin jimmy Detroits in them & ya can hear em coimng up or down the river

 

Oh how I love the sound of a screamin diesel.

 

Yeah - but around sixty bucks from now (if the weather cooperates) it will look better than it ever has before. No hints just yet, but if it goes well - the first picture of THAT is the one that I dearly want to put in a contest!

I suppose I could, but it would be a joke entry...

 

HEY!

At the tobacco shack next to where I work, I heard about a boy that had been hanging out at a bar down by the big muddy for so long his name was on the back of his personal barstool.

'Seems he come up there all the time on a four wheeler (REDNECK SHOPPING CART) and got blasted, then rode it home to the trailer. The bar sounds supisciously like JOHN'S BOAT DOCK in Randolph.....

Anyway - the boy rode out one night, and while folk were standing around at the back of the place next day - here he come floating face down right to them, no four wheeler bike in sight.

(!)

Buddies....

Let a (F)ing dumb hillbilly ride out like that three sheets to the wind in the flooded backwaters....

"SUPRISE, SUPRISE, SUPRISE!!!"

What a 'GOMER'....