June 16-22, 2006 - Wal Mart, Fayetteville, Branson and Ozark Mountain

On June 16 we went to Bentonville, Arkansas, and visited the Wal-Mart Visitor's Center and drove around Bentonville to see where all of the Wal-Mart offices and warehouses are. The Wal-Mart "campus" is about 3 miles by 3 miles of huge buildings. I won't bore you with the details but Wal-Mart is quite a success story as they grew from one store to the chain it is today!

On Saturday we went to an air show in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The forecast was for an 80% chance of rain. When we woke up in the morning it was raining but we decided to go ahead and drive down there anyway. About noon it stopped raining, the cloud cover went to 12,000 feet and the visibility was excellent. We saw an excellent air show with the cloud cover providing a beautiful backdrop for the planes AND a temperature of about 77 degrees AND keeping the sun from beating down on us! We even had a guest appearance of a B-2 that flew in and made 3 beautiful passes.

On Sunday we drove from Springdale to Branson, Missouri. We went to a show on Sunday night, Monday afternoon, Monday night, Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday night and Wednesday night. One of the shows, the Hamner-Barber Show was an EXCELLENT show with a ventriloquist and a magician. All of the shows were good and were fun.

On Wednesday morning we decided to stop at this place we passed on our way to and from the campground every day that said Ozark Mountain Underground Storage. (The photos are in the last batch I sent.) We went inside to see if we could get some information about what it was and a man said he would give us a tour if we could wait a few minutes. We did and he came back and as we were introducing ourselves we learned that he was from Rockport, was a house builder there, flew airplanes and had an aerial photography business and also had a bunch of rental apartments. Do you think we found anything to talk about?

In the 1950's the mountain front was blasted away for rock and stone and gravel. It was decided that instead of blasting away the entire mountain, they would stop removing stone from the face of the mountain and would start to drill tunnels and blast the rock from INSIDE the mountain. That way they would not leave a big hole in the ground and a scar on the face of the earth. They can drill, blast and remove 2000 square feet of tunnel each day. The area that we walked around was 210,000 square feet but they have more than 7,000,000 (7 million!) square feet of tunnel under the mountain. The floor of the tunnel is 150' to 185' below the top of the mountain. It is like a maze with 30 foot square pillars of rock left in place every 35 feet. The height of the tunnel is about 14 to 18 feet. IF they wanted to, they could actually dig another whole set of tunnels below this set of tunnels as long as they kept the pillars lined up with one another to support the mountain above. They don't intend to do that though because they are using this tunnel maze for storage. For years they have been using the tunnel system just like a giant warehouse. It is a constant 54 degrees inside and has very low humidity. As you could see in the photos, there are doors cut into the face of the mountain for tractor-trailers to back up to and load or unload. In the past they have stored "powdered chicken", liquid chicken broth and "rendered chicken fat" in there for a big chicken processor. The containers come in from the processor and then are shipped out as people order the products. However, after 9-11 there has been a lot of interest in the tunnels in the mountain for high security facilities. They are building (and we got to see!) huge sealed rooms inside the tunnels for the computer server systems of Fortune 500 companies. They are phasing out the storage of low-tech food products and concentrating on high-security business uses. It is TRULY cutting edge technology and experimentation. We were in there touring for an hour and a half!!

Then we went to a new area in old downtown Branson where a developer has taken a dilapidated section of town and cleared it and has built a GREAT outdoor shopping mall along the river front. The anchor store there is Bass Pro! Bass Pro will have a pavilion out in the water where you can test the boats before you buy them! Some of the stores just opened a month ago and more are opening as they are ready. They put stores on the street level and time-share apartments in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th stories. VERY nicely done.

After that we went to the local airport and hired a plane and an instructor just to go up for a sight-seeing ride. As always, you get such a great perspective of a place from the air. We went up in a 152 so Mark went first and took pictures and then I went up! (Photos in the last batch...)

When we came back to the motorhome to have dinner before the 8 PM show, we had a knock on our door!! It was the guy from the Underground Storage who figured out where we were and came to invite us to dinner with him and his wife Thursday night! We would have loved to have gone and talked some more, but we had to be in Mount Vernon by Thursday night.

So that takes you up to today!

Sorry, I know it is a long email but we are having SOOOO much fun!!

We can't wait to see Abby and Rachel on Friday and then Sarah and Ronnie after that.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=71978771503.657755847303.1158340730922&page=2&sort_order=1&navfolderid=2006&folderid=0&ownerid=71978771503

http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=71978771503.345131497303.1158340730921&page=2&sort_order=1&navfolderid=2006&folderid=0&ownerid=71978771503

http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=71978771503.864930497303.1158340730921&page=2&sort_order=1&navfolderid=2006&folderid=0&ownerid=71978771503