The creek was cold and still and a polluted green-blue. I stood on its bank and took a deep breath of the creek and my gray smoky sweatshirt. It was a cold, sunny morning, and it was spring break. It was the first full day in Arkansas.

My story was cut short.

“Why would you go to Arkansas?” she asked. It was Saturday and I was telling my friends about the dirty creek and Arkansas alligators.

“Why wouldn’t you go to Arkansas?” I said.

In a three-day trip, I saw the Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo, the home of the Possum Queen contest, mounds of quartz crystals and the nicest old lady you’d ever meet.

We left in five cars from the Overland Park home of junior David Hover, the organizer of the trip, the morning after The Depressing and Horrible Loss. We had a large camping group of 17 people.

After seven hours on the road, we passed a sign off Highway 270: “Welcome to Mount Ida, quartz crystal capital of the world.” Below that it said “Home of Possums Unlimited.”

We set up camp in nearby Ouachita National Forest. The next day when we stopped for milkshakes at the old-fashioned Dairyette in town, I asked the girl behind the counter, “What the heck is Possums Unlimited?”

She walked to the back of the Dairyette, came back and slapped down a magnet advertising the annual Montgomery County Possum Queen contest, sponsored by a group called Possums Unlimited. She looked at me and shrugged.

That night, eight of the guys packed up and left for Galveston, Texas, in search of beaches and babes. I guess some people aren’t cut out for life in the wilderness.

On the third day of the trip, the nine of us that didn’t go to Texas drove to Hot Springs. After visiting Bath House Row and eating at Granny’s Kitchen, we went to the Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo.

We ventured into the dimly lit alligator shed where there were 200 alligators crammed on top of each other in four pits that were each about 20 feet long. The sign above one of the pits said, “This size alligator best suited for the making of purses, billfolds and shoes.”

The strangest part was that none of the alligators moved. I thought they were fake. Then the guy who worked there walked in and stepped right through the alligators, which hissed and crawled over each other to the other end of the pit.

“They’re more scared of me than I am of them,” he said.

On the way back to camp we passed 16 rock shops. We stopped at one called Jay’s Bonanza. Rocks for $2 a pound! They also had buckets of dirt set up next to a sifter where you could pan your own gold.

We left a day early because of the rain. Taylor Lenon, Hiawatha junior, called his grandmother in Rogers, Ark., and asked if we could spend the night.

This was my favorite part. After driving through a storm for three hours, we arrived at her house. She was short and round with white hair and big glasses.

Last year some of us had camped in Arkansas and had stopped by her house on the way home. She had asked us to do some chores around the house and took us out for barbecue with her twin sister, who lives next door.

This time she had warm chocolate chip cookies waiting and enough beds and couches for all of us. She was wearing the same purple jump suit she had on when I saw her last year.

On the wall was a picture of her and her twin sister when they were three months old in their mother’s arms in their childhood home, a hillbilly Arkansas shack. As we walked through the door she shook all our hands, “Hi, I’m Lydia Collins,” she said.

When I woke up at 8:30 the next day she was cooking pancakes, sausage and biscuits for us. Nicest old lady you’d ever meet.

She waved goodbye as we walked out the door, and we drove off and said goodbye to her and to Arkansas. Until next year.