Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Rain, rain... go away....

All right,already... enough is enough... I am just about ready to start building our ark!!

There are so many places to go, and so much to see.. but all the rain is making it difficult. Last night the storms were so bad, and fierce, we pulled in our slide out. Rocking and rolling gave a whole different meaning..
In between the rain storms we were able to get a little sight seeing done though.
We found a lovely park to stay in while at West Memphis , Arkansas. It was called Tom Sawyers RV park. Located right on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi river. It was so unusual.... the barges passed right by our camper, only feet away!! They were huge. Watching them navigate the turns in the river was awesome. I kept waking up during the night by these powerful lights they use to navigate, lighting up the camper. Even if one did not notice the lights, you could not ignore the powerful sound of the engines of the barges. They had this low, powerful rumble. I noticed that even the other campers would come out of their rigs and take pictures of these massive machines. The campsite had benches all along the coast line that you could just sit and watch the barges come down the river. It was all and all a site to behold. We really enjoyed our time at this camp site.





Our next stop was Conway, Arkansas. This was a town that gave Harold Lloyd Jenkins his stage name.. Do you know who he was? (Conway Twitty)..
We did not take any pictures to put on the blog from this stop due to the fact we have ones that were taken the last time we were here in our blog. Always such a nice COE park to stay at, we always enjoy it.. even if it does have such a odd name ... Toad Suck Ferry...
It was time to move on... so we traveled all the great distance of 170 miles to another COE park.. Spring Hill COE park. This is right out side of Fort Smith, Arkansas. It is another wonderful park.. and I do use the description of park correctly. It is like camping in the middle of a city park.. lots of space.. it even has a lake behind our camper!! Being in Arkansas is rather uncomfortable for Georgia residents right now though. ( Georgia beat Arkansas the other day). When some folks see our Georgia plates, we have received some not so pleasant looks. Being informed at a gas station that these Arkansas folks take their football very serious, and are right down rabid about it at times.. (sorry about that folks, but we did not have any thing to do about it). Hope they will all get over it pretty soon.. that or we will be in Oklahoma soon!! We are only about 7 miles from the border now..
We are adding a few pictures of our place here in Ft. Smith for you to see..




While here at Ft. Smith, we went over to visit the Fort. It was quite interesting. Inside it was too dark to take pictures though. It had the court rooms and what the stockade was like in the 1800's. It had a hospital and a commissary. Small fort, but very important in its day. Trials were held, and hangings were commissioned here too. I was very interested with how the American Indian was treated and handled by the judge who presided (Judge Isaac Parker).

The gallows were the prisoners were taken to be hung is right outside of the courthouse, and one can go and see just how it looked during that time, if so desired.

The burial grounds for Fort Smith is adjacent to the fort, it was quite impressive, a picture follows..




Tomorrow we will be on our way again. Hopefully, we will be running out of the rain. It will be on to Oklahoma... a new place for us.. we will be happy to be able to put the sticker on our map.. this vacant place has been staring at us for years... hope we will be able to find lots of new places to see so we can share them with you all next time... till then.. take care now..
as always.. don't forget... Walk Softly.....