Our Arrival in Arkansas

Let me just say this first, to all of our friends who were aghast at our decision to “stay South” this summer because we were cold most of last summer:  “It’s HOT here!”  Yes, I’m finally warm.  But like I’ve always said, I can get cooled off a lot easier than I can warm up, so as far as I’m concerned, I’m just fine.  Jim and the dogs might have a slightly different opinion, though.

Our decision was to get up way before dark-thirty this morning to get on the road and beat heat as well as the rush hour through Oklahoma City.  So, there we were, just a little after 4:00 A.M. (just want to make sure you understand it was in the morning!) and we were both awake 30 minutes before the alarm was set.  We got our morning routines completed and pulled out of the Lucky Star Casino parking lot right at 5:45 A.M.

We sailed through Oklahoma City before sunrise with absolutely no problem:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and onward to Arkansas:

We ran the dash air conditioner and had 2 ceiling vents open and the fans running for most of the  trip today.  That kept the interior of the Castle cool enough for all of us.  Yes, Janna and Karon, we’ve said, “Hello” to your home state for both of you.  We stopped 3 times, once for fuel and twice for walking the dogs.  Today we averaged 8.9 mpg and traveled about 300 miles on I-40 East.  We were surprised to find that Oklahoma has actually been doing some road work, and most of the way was on reasonably smooth roads.  There were a few miles, however, where the road is still begging for attention!

Not far after crossing the state line, we saw there are mountains in Arkansas!

We pulled in to the Old Post Road Park at Russellville, Arkansas just before noon.  The camp hosts here let us leave the Castle at the gate while we checked out our reserved site to be sure it would work for us.  As it turned out, the site we reserved would not work, so they let us change sites to the one next to it so we could get our satellite signal.  We were really impressed by that, most parks won’t allow you to change sites once you have a reservation.  I guess they are more customer and less rule oriented here!

We got set up in our 30-amp site and tried both air conditioners.  No go.  Bummer, so we are making do with one air conditioner and a fan.  We’ll leave the front AC on during the day and switch over to the back one at night.  It’s not a big deal for 3 nights, but I probably wouldn’t want to stay much longer without 50 amp service this time of year.  I’m sure in the spring and fall, it’s a different story, but the heat index is somewhere around 106* today!

The Castle, nestled in among the trees:

The Arkansas River runs behind us, and just a few hundred yards upstream is the Dardanelle Dam and Lake.  We hope to do some sightseeing while we’re here, and a lot of resting!