Doing Manly Things In a Comfortable Cabin Whilst in Arkansas

(Sort of) Roughing It...

The Mount Rushmore of Questionable Facial Hair

Eric and I had been planning a getaway for quite some time, and there were only three parameters: 1) No Wichita, 2) No Kansas City, 3) No Oklahoma City. Though combined, they are known for a touristic pedigree that rivals long-standing European destinations, I felt confident that I could plan an extended weekend trip outside of the three cities on this to-don't list. So I added a fourth stipulation: No Shaving.

No shaving was the egg to staying in a cabin's chicken. Our scraggly beards mandated we do manly things, and if we were going to be manly, what better place to do so than in a rustic cabin that used to be a blacksmith's shop in middle-of-nowhere Arkansas? We planned to "get all up in nature's grill" and spend a rustic weekend roughing it with such pioneering staples as a jacuzzi, central heating, queen-sized beds, a fully applianced kitchen,  dishwasher and a TV with a DVD player. After we removed our shoes first, so as to not track dirt on the varnished wooden floors and artisan rugs. We're men, not barbarians.

I found the Silver Run Cabins a few years back while researching different areas for a similar chance of respite. My criteria was simple - I was in search of a place to let the cell phone's battery run out, to cook meat on a stick on a grill, to renew my relationship with nature and tame a wild animal. Though unable to convince the feeblest looking goat in the herd to let me saddle up bareback, we still had an enjoyable break from city life. Which is why when my younger brother called to let me know that he too needed to have his Matrix head-plug pulled out for a few days, I immediately thought of Silver Run.

What separates my brothers and I most from each other is not in fact our choice of profession, nor is it our sense of self, our passions, our pastimes or our unique-snowflake personalities. No, what separates, yet defines us most, is our differing ability to grow facial hair. You see, dad is of the generation that was allowed to sport robust staches at work at a time when a full beard meant you hated the troops. He's always had solid facial hair, and even as time has replaced blond hairs with white ones, his Walt White goatee remains enviable.

My mustache-growing prowess needs no special introduction here, on my blog, which if you've forgotten, is entitled My Once and Future Mustache. Matt has begun to let his chin-whiskers breathe a bit as of late, now that he's no longer a corporate accounting calculo-bot. Though his cheeks sprout a bit patchy, he makes up for it with solid overall coverage; it's a quantity over quality situation. He gains high points though for the progress he's presented on the chin and especially the neck (what we call the neard).

The biggest surprise was Eric, who has never let his facial hair grow for more than a fortnight. That's not actually true - it's likely more like one week, but I really wanted to use the word "fortnight". So he abstained from the razor for a fortnight (short term call-back humor) plus one week and showed up for the man weekend rocking an impressive goatee. His mustache has always come in swankily thick, but until now we only joked about him allowing it to breathe. The goat and chops were ready for battle, if not slightly cracked in their defense of his face skin.

After a raucous night of ping pong and beers in Matt's awe-inspiring KU room, we set out early Friday morning for Arkansas, leaving in our wake dogs, cats, spouses, children, bills, computers (well some of us), alarm clocks, schedules, meeting makers, water cooler chatter, fast food, slow-moving work clocks, creepy neighbors and me having to take my dog out at 11pm, even when it's freezing and I'm tired and I really don't want to, but Melody won't, and I don't want to risk having to clean up dog pee on the carpet, even though sometimes I take her out and she still pees on the carpet in the middle of the night; and I mean, what's up with that?

(VIDEO: KU Ping Pong at Matty's place)

Eric and I drove separately with Matt splitting time between us, while dad stayed behind another hour or so to buy low and sell high when the markets opened. I don't know what that means, but if we were still in high school, I'd make a joke about Matt not going to college because of his stock portfolio's poor performance. (This is a very specific Brantner family joke; ask one of us about it).

It's roughly six hours from Wichita to the sprawling metropolis of Yellville, Arkansas. Turn right at the barbecue joint with an Arkansas Razorback flag, head another eleven miles through curvy, hilly roads and you'll reach the Silver Run Cabins.

It was sprinkling when we arrived, and the proprietor was out feeding the cows (true story), so we chatted and stretched our legs a bit while we waited. When she arrived in a beat up pick up truck, she apologized and told us that she was out feeding the cows (see...true story). Sign in was a breeze - she pointed left, told us to drive until we saw the Blacksmith cabin, and told us to enjoy our stay. No paperwork. No signing. No spiel about not trashing the place.

Waiting for the keys to leave civilization

This is the ideal place for any family or group of men who want to rough it without really roughing it. The location is legitimately remote, buried inside a massive forest, yet flush with amenities and comfort. It's the kind of place where you can lock the doors if you want to, but the owners reserve the right to make you feel foolish for doing so. Our former blacksmith shop came with three bedrooms, a massive kitchen, an oversized den with a fireplace and tiny packets of shampoo and conditioner.

I call this setting Rustic Pioneer Comfort

Outside was an oversized grill salivating in anticipation of my kebabs, a picnic table, splinter-free wooden stumps surrounding a fire pit, all curiously juxtaposed next to a barb-wire fence separating us from such wild beasts as goats, horses, bulls and three bite-size rams, complete with curly horns and all. They were adorable.

Surveying the back yard

We would obviously spend hours messing with farm animals while dad, who in a former life spent time on a farm, tried to convince us not to fear the animals. Yeah, I'm supposed to believe that goats, who are scientifically proven to eat garbage, aren't going to find my hand appetizing? Nice try pops!

The man weekend commenced!

We callously opened beers and poured them into mason jars that doubled as mugs, which was both awesome and pioneery. We threw the football in the back yard, even though it was sprinkling. Because that's what men do. Dad brought cigars, so we fired them up under the cover of the second story stairwell. We talked women, cars, Ice Road Truckers, sheet rock and bench presses.

OK, nothing in that last sentence was or has ever been true, for any of us.

The sun was rapidly setting on our first night so I began dishing out dinner prep assignments. We were having chicken, steak and veggie kebabs with the admittedly not-so-manly quinoa on the side. I did mix it with a Lipton's French Onion Soup Mix, bringing out more flavor, and possibly recovering a man point or two. But probably not.

This is how I supervise

Most food is better on a stick

The meats had been marinating in Italian dressing for two days, so all we had to do was go Vlad and impale them (that's a Dracula joke, if you're wondering - great novel). Matt and I chopped veggies while Dad and Eric tended to the fire. I grilled outside using a headlamp, the manliest way to prepare food.

If you have eight spare minutes, you can witness our entire food preparation and engorgement process. I should probably, at this time, mention that I found a new feature on the VIRB action camera - from Garmin - that allows me to easily take time-lapse videos. It's the shiny new feature on my shiny new toy. For those of you that bore easily, I've also included a couple of still images of our feast.

Don't mess with one of us!

Mason jar mugs, for the practical boozer

(VIDEO: If this video is any indication, we ate way too fast)

As you can see from the video, dinner was a blast. The only thing that it was missing was David, our other brother, who couldn't make it out for the weekend. His presence would have completed the manification of the trip, though it also may have caused the cabin's manliness threshold to burst, thus creating a temporal vortex, which as we all know leads to alternate realities, meaning that one of us would have a goatee for real (bad Spock reference, for you dad). Point is, we really missed him.

But it was refreshing to sit together at the wooden table, cutting our steak and chicken with well-worn steak knives with nicked handles, discussing the finer virtues of life, technology, beards and Walter White. As a family the Whantner's have spent more time together recently than in year's past, but this was just the dudes. And that's important.

In truth, the conversation wasn't too dissimilar from when we're with the entire family; a few more curse words slipped out, and we didn't feel constricted by social standards such as burps, farts, slightly racist jokes...things of that nature. Decades old stories of troublemaking from our childhood percolated, no longer confined by the statute of parental limitations.

We laughed. A lot. Eric of course had the zinger of the trip (you may remember his "Hidden Valley Ranch" gem from the Napa vacation - If not, read it here). It got dad good; it had him laughing the second hardest we've ever seen him laugh - top prize was an innocuous viewing of the Jim Carrey movie Yes Man when the protagonist explains that he's not a stalker, but "your new living room furniture looks great from the front yard". He almost had to go on a respirator for that one, and the story was the same for this gem. To pump up his comedic mystique, I won't reveal what he said here...but if you ask Eric, I know for a fact that he'll be more than happy to let you in on the joke. I'm grinning just thinking about it.

Cleaning was a cinch with the four of us pitching in. We retired to the den with our mason jars refilled and all the makings for smores. Dad came through, bringing tiny retractable pitchforks. It goes without saying, but he also brought graham (gram?) crackers, chocolate and marshmallows the size of baseballs. That last part's absolutely true, and a testament to dad's commitment to this man weekend.

They turned out to be terrible for smores, way too big, completely obliterating the ratio of crackers to chocolate to mallows. It was fun to roast them on a non-switch-turning-on fire inside, though. And a disproportionately goozy smore is better than no smore at all.

For the record, the term "disproportionately goozy", though accurate, is super gross.

We dimmed the lights and watched the single best cabin movie of all time: The Edge. This late-90's plane crash/hungry bear thriller, starring Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin and Bart the Bear has action, romance, betrayal, beards, f-bombs, friendly banter and a bona fide cabin scene. The four of us watched it years ago, a Blockbuster rental in 1998, my senior year, a time when dad was the only one in the group who could grow a beard.

Eric and Matt made hilarious Bart the Bear impersonations throughout the movie, voicing the unheard thoughts of the lonely bear who just wanted to play with the famous actors. Then eat them just a little. I've seen this moving a handful of times, but this was the most entertaining; certainly it was the most I've ever laughed at a bear mauling. The chuckles eventually stopped when Bart impaled himself on a spear (spoiler alert, and Dracula call back), and the end credits rolled over the blurry image of Anthony Hopkin's broken-hearted, stubbly face. I can think of no better way to signal the end to the first night of such a testosterone-filled vacation.

We all brought some form of pocket knife, so it would become imperative that we set out on a hike with the hopes of using them in a non joking manner. This would of course prove fruitless, since our plan was to catch the KU game at a bar after hiking, thus eliminating the need to trap, gut, cook and eat wild game. But if a wild goat attacked us, we had the proper tools to posture with.

We went to Rush, an abandoned zinc mining town that has somehow been preserved for over a century. Barbed wire fences prevent curiosity seekers from breaching the shabby confines of the barely-standing edifices. The splintered wooden structures now lean about thirteen degrees closer to the trodden earth, fighting a battle against gravity, one good Kansas wind away from decimation

It feels like a vacant Wild West town, the leftover set from Tombstone, with decidedly less mustaches, drinking and shenaniganry. Slowly plodding towards the trailhead in Eric's "smart" SUV felt like time travel, or at the very least visiting a small-town country museum. Think Cracker Barrel without the general store, wait staff, food and patrons. OK, think Cracker Barrel, but just the front porch.

The plan was to hike for a few hours, so of course we came prepared with bottles of water, chex-mix, strawberry gum, layering options and as previously mentioned, knives. Predictably, the only time we unsheathed the cutlery was when our picture was being snapped, and when we cut ferny limbs off trees to pretend we were making life-saving smoke signals...like Anthony Hopkins in The Edge. 

Always be prepared

Rush presents an interesting hike, as it guides you through what used to be the town - this part takes a grand total of seven minutes - then sends you down a rocky path towards the river. You pass closed mines that have No Trespassing signs, which we unsurprisingly attempted to circumvent. I snagged my only pair of boot cut Gap jeans on a barbed wire fence and poked a hole in them; Matt caused a minor rocky landslide as he struggled to boulder over a single ridge; Eric came dangerously close to toppling a fence by scaling it; Dad, he of the wise-sage generation, hiked down to a mine entrance, but left the climbing to us rock heads.

If this is the sort of attention to detail Eric has in his work life, then Access Midstream is in trouble

Dad rocking the busted Sasquatch pose in front of a mine entrance

Mudslide Matt helping to redistribute rocks from the top of the ledge to the bottom

We followed the trail downhill, towards the river. This presented an increased level of difficulty, with piles of damp fallen leaves covering slippery plots of mud. There were no full tumbles, however we had a few cartoony close calls. The trail fed us into the the road that we took into town. We goofed around a bit by the river before heading back to the trial head. Matt's failed attempt to hydroplane over a low section left him with a bad case of wet-foot, and naturally, dampened spirits. Always the golden child, this proves that Matty's superhero capabilities, though ample, fall short of walking on water.

This is the closest I've been to getting thrown into a river since an unfortunate middle school bullying incident

Reenacting the "A roll is a roll, and a toll is a toll..." scene from Robin Hood: Men in Tights

Supplemental image in the dictionary, under the phrase "Mischievous" 

Defying physics (sort of)

Eric's Rock Fishing technique proved surprisingly ineffective

A randomly chucked rock prevented Matt from doing what he ended up doing in the picture below...

That's more like it

Because we had time, we did another pass around the Rush trail, stopping to eat beef jerky and read historical information. It's difficult to imagine the concept of a town such as this, one that existed over a hundred years ago because of what lay in its underbelly. A town that was once profitable and thriving now sits untouched by anyone save the curious. A smaller, less disastrous Chernobyl, buried deep in the woods; tragic in it's own small, backwoods manner.

What also attracted me to this obscure frontier town that died in the same time period as Oscar Wilde, is the fact that it forces you to unplug. As in, there's no Wi-Fi in the boonies. My phone died on the way in and I didn't recharge until I left Sunday morning; for safety purposes - I don't exactly have a history of not locking myself out of my car.

Dad and the bro's "had bars" and used them at the cabin, for which I moderately chastised them obsessively. I gave them grief, but out here in the real boondocks, re-living our ancestor's fortune hunting ways, we were as off the grid as dried up waffle batter on the kitchen counter.

Letting Dad test out the stability of the rocky trail

Walking to the top

"Yeah, you can totally climb this face" I lied

Us men and our lack of directional sense

Prepping for the inevitable bear attack

The photographer always gets screwed

Unless he was going for a totally badass action shot

No chin-strap jokes, I just think this is a cool picture

Proof that this used to be a town

Digging for snacks

Planning out our path, in the town that's the size of my cubicle

Taking in some history

This is how I learned that Turkey Fat is a mineral 

Our motto, "Leave no man with snacks behind"

What it would have looked like if Reservoir Dogs was filmed in the Ozarks

Searching, always searching...

We found it: Ridiculousness

Trying our best not to disturb the wake left by phantom miners, we spent another hour or so plodding down the trail, this time successfully resisting the urge to fake-enter mines. We circled back to the car, and after a rather lengthy and complicated process that involved removing muddy boots and placing them into a cardboard box so as to not dirty up Eric's car, we headed for town.

We made a quick stop back at Blacksmith so that Matt could change out of his soiled socks, then hit the road towards Yellville in search of a bar and a TV so we could watch the KU game. Not exactly mirroring the habits of our pioneering forefathers, but this was KU v K-State, and the Jayhawks were due for a big win. Besides, we were on vacation with nothing preventing us from doing whatever the heck we wanted to do.

We casually drove through the heart of Yellville in approximately 17.3 seconds, and quickly realized that this wasn't the sort of town where it was common to drink beers at noon on a Sunday. Or any day, for that matter, if the disproportionate number of churches to "insert-anything-else-here"told us anything. Off to Harrison, a town I like to sum up by saying, "I think I saw a Pizza Hut on the way in". Promising?

There was in fact a Pizza Hut on the outskirts of Harrison, however we resisted the (inappropriately coined) temptation and soldiered into town. In a very suspect manner that he won't elaborate on, Matt befriended a man at a gas station, who pointed us in the direction of a non-Pizza Hut pizza joint that actually lived up to the description "promising", which is why I chose to shed its italics from the previous paragraph. The sight of beer taps and college hoops on the telly allowed me to remove the final prohibitor, leaving this establishment nothing short of, promising. Straight up, no conditions, promising.

And so was KU's play, I wrote, in an awesome transition. We dominated our in-state rivals, to the extent that some of them might have left the court in tears. I said "might have", as there's no way to know for sure.

We toasted our 25 ounce beer mugs - the kind that you have to pretend to deliberate on before ordering (12oz...25oz?); though when it's 2pm on a Saturday, that decision is made the moment you walk into a bar. It's such a great feeling, chasing a refreshing hike with an oversized beverage. Moments like this on a random Saturday are what make the weekends so special, and help push me through the duller moments of the work week.

It must have been the fresh air. Or the combination of that, beer and our reinvigorated pioneering spirit, I suppose. Whatever it was, things began to get weird. Instead of throwing the football when we got back to the cabin, we attempted to befriend the animals. Sure, there was a fence in between us, but we were breaking down boundaries; literally so, if you count the fact that at times our hands breached the chain link fence, and once I had to hop it to shag the football. If the pictures below were in a series at a fancy gallery, the title would be, "Getting Weird With Barnyard Animals: Trying To Lose a Finger".

Even the animals fought for Matt attention

I've had girlfriends look at me less seductively than this goat

I've never seen rams before, and I've certainly never seen rams not butting heads before. Disappointing.

These are the eyes the Guess Who sang about 

This is the sort of picture you show animal control when they ask if the goat was provoked when it bit off my brother's finger

For some unexplainable reason, this goat makes me think of Earnest Goes To Camp

For not eating me, I rewarded him with a full minute of unflinching eye contact 

After antagonizing the animals, we moved on to the next manly endeavor of the trip: creating fire with our bare hands. The previous day's persistent drizzle made this somewhat difficult, but nothing a lot of little lighter fluid and some crafty tee-pee making skills couldn't overcome. (By the way, I haven't written the word "tee-pee" since probably middle school, and wow, is it hilarious! I'm trying to be adult about this, but it's tough when I'm sitting here, alone, laughing, almost uncontrollably. I apologize for everything).

Here's a time-lapse video of the sun setting, and us bro's smashing large branches, or at the very least attempting to.

(VIDEO: Smashing wood then burning it)

The fire eventually opened up, reaching a level of manly respectability. Dad tried to show us how to tame it by beating it into submission with a stick. Though always open to education, I couldn't just sit there with him lashing out at my infernal creation, nature's tempestuous response to my impassioned overture.

He would expose a pocket of air, feeding deep into the fire's lungs, only to extinguish it by batting the foundation repeatedly and with the tact of a caveman, flattening the outer ring. He'd prop it back up, feed the embers the precious air they crave, then take it away with the force of a Sammy Sosa slug. I attempted multiple tacts to stop this paternal force, including negotiation, bargaining, trickery, tom-foolery, deceit and finally physical force, before giving in.

He probably had the right idea however, as we soon retired into the kitchen for another round of dinner prep. Dad prepared encyclopedia-sized steaks while we heated up the veggies from the previous night. The campfire flame calmed as the grill's intensified, searing the steaks perfectly, branding them with perpendicular grill marks. Like Burger King, but you know, real food.

After dinner, to prep for round two of the smoreage I lit an inside fire, awesomely I must proclaim, by "spinking" a match into pile of dry, wanting logs. As you can see from the video below - last one, I promise - the match landed perfectly, not requiring any non-organic additives, such as the lighter fluid that we heaped onto the logs before setting up.

(VIDEO - Yes, Another fire!)

If you have never seen the 1982 Kurt Russell classic The Thing, then you should watch it for the first time in a cabin with Eric and I. That's what Matt and Dad did, at least, and they loved it. Dad almost deposited his beer onto my lap during the blood-testing scene, which, even though I knew it was coming, still scared the crap out of me. Great movie, even better setting, and in spite of the sugar, even more smores. Hell of a way to end the trip.

Wait...that wasn't the end of it. We gravitated into the kitchen, and I did something for the first time since George Bush the first was in office: play cards. Not a fan of cards in general, I'm way too fidgety and my attention, huh, what was that, look at that cat, what'd you say, hanging chads, that's random?

But I storm troopered it out, and even managed to win a game of gin rummy. I believe camaraderie is the word they use when they describe groups of men playing cards. And that's the heck what we had. The conversation was enjoyable and free-flowing by this point in the trip, though I constantly fought the urge to google and use "Rounders Quotes" that no one would get.

Saying "good night" when you have to drive home the next morning is always a bummer, though the hiking, food and drinks had us running on empty. The Thing had us on edge (The Edge?), and only Matt and Eric were fortunate enough to share a bed. On a trip like this, cuddling is neither required nor frowned upon.

And that was the weekend! Short to say the least, but just what the Brantner brethren needed. We're already discussing the next one, this time making David's presence a requirement. We're all busy, we're all important (just ask us), but we all love spending time together. And trips like this one, quick as it may have been, are the simple reminder we need to make the time to do it more often. So I'll keep my knife sharpened and ready for absolutely nothing, in case nature - or my family - comes calling.

Here's a link to the rest of our awesomely manly pics: Awesomely Manly Pics

But here are the best! A friend of mine retouched these images, turning them into masterpieces!

The Man, The Myth: The. Doug. 

As you can see it's impossible to set the camera and climb up a rock, but not impossible to set the camera and climb halfway up a rock

This is essentially the picture that Alec Baldwin is chasing in The Edge. Adequate joke, by the way, if you've seen the movie. Just watch the freaking movie!