Maumelle COE Park, Little Rock AR, January, 2017

Kansas City Overnight.

OK, I know we stopped at Camp Wal-Mart just south of Kansas City, MO on our first night out but there is not much to report from there.  We went into the store and walked around the inside three times and then bought a few things. A light supper and an early night.  It was still cold, probably in the teens but everything was as it should be. We brought along an electric blanket and put it on the bed under the quilt and turned it on when we left that morning.  I had placed a temperature sensor under it so once we got parked and settled in it was 72 degrees under the quilt and the memory foam mattress was no longer as hard as a brick the way it gets at sub-zero temps.

Off towards Little Rock.

A good night’s sleep and off the next morning down through Missouri and a bit east towards Little Rock, AR.  We have been down through Missouri before but usually went more west though Kansas and Oklahoma.  There are toll roads that way and the worst case is almost $100 for a motor home with a towed car (a toad).  So we went the other way towards Little Rock and then back SW towards Nacogdoches.

Maumelle COE.

We were headed for Maumelle COE (Corps of Engineers) campground on the Arkansas River just west of Little Rock and across the river from Toad Suck Holler. We thought we could take a day off and wash road grime off the coach.  The drive was nice but there are almost no rest stops along the way. The drive through the southern end of the Ozarks was pretty with long, high curving  bridges crossing from one ridge to the next.  The part through Bentonville and Fayetteville AR was a bit dreary.  Lots of small towns and road construction.  You would think that with all of the Wal-Mart money in the area that it would have been better. Someday it will be.

We arrived at Maumelle about three in the afternoon after two days of driving on dry roads in clear weather.  There was some dust but it was hardly worth cleaning. We selected one spot but the water wasn’t working (cold the night before, 40’s today) so we moved to one that did.  The COE are usually very nice and cheap, $11 a night here with our geezer pass.

We hadn’t been there for more than an hour or two when another Foretravel drove into the park.

It was people I recognized from the Owner’s Forum.  They found a nice spot over by the river where the water was working.  We went over to say Hi.  It was Jan and Bill Velting from Michigan.  Bill had a medical problem a couple of years ago that left him with limited function in his legs.  He can still drive but has pretty limited mobility beyond that.  So Jan has learned how to do all of the things that need to be done.  They had pulled into their site so that they were facing the river which put their electrical cord coming out of the coach on the opposite side  from the power post.  She tried going around the front of the coach but came up about a foot short so she wasn’t sure what to do.  Susan and I do this frequently for the sake of the view.  The solution often times is to run the power cord under the coach rather than around it.  I usually tie a small rope to a wrench from the tool box which makes it easy to toss from one side of the coach underneath to the other side.  We tie the rope to the cord and pull it under and plug it in. When we are really far away I have an extra 50 foot, 50 amp cord in the new bay. We helped her get connected and chatted for a while.  They were just glad to be south and warm and were going to stay for a couple of weeks.

That is Jan and Bill in the distance. We decided to stay for another day just to take a break.  We were on schedule or even ahead a bit so there was no hurry.

Bill posted something on the Forum that they had met us. The next day another FT owner from Little Rock read we were then and came to visit.  His name was Steve and was a very talkative fellow.  He told us about all the good places to eat and the ones to avoid. He told us that he called his wife the “nagivator”.  Pretty funny but not something I would ever call Susan.

It turned out that this route’s length was within 20 miles or so of the toll roads and Dallas route.  Much better.

More later,

Roger and Susan