Jo and I decided to take advantage of a mild January day by heading up to the Buffalo National River. What we had in mind was a hike from the Highway 65 bridge over towards Gilbert. Maybe we'd hike the whole route, then turn around and hike back. Maybe we'd only hike part ways and turn around whenever we started feeling tired.
As it turned out, Jo and I did not hike very far at all -- only a couple of miles total. When we came to the first unmarked fork in the trail, we chose wrong. We looped back to where we started instead of heading on toward Gilbert.
Instead of hiking we drove down to to Shineye, a swimming beach popular with locals because it's not as crowded as the swimming areas at Tyler Bend or Buffalo Point. On this winter day, we had the entire area all to ourselves.
Bucket was the only one wanting to go for a swim. Jo and Rusty thought the lower fifties were still way to chilly for swimming and wanted to keep their feet dry.
And the river flows on.
