Advertisement
Lightning Strikes
See that big blob of yellow? That was over my head sometime after midnight Well, if you’ve been reading along and paying any kind of attention to the news, you saw that the middle of the country was badly hit by thunderstorms Sunday night. I left you off saying it was over. Boy, was I wrong. I had plugged Moya back in for what I thought was the last time and left it that way. At 11 with NO warning the skies opened and the thunder and lightning were constant. There was no way this 70-year-old Nana was going outside and unplugging an electric cord from a utility pole. I prayed for the best. I was awake until 3:00 or so until it calmed down enough to fall asleep. This storm system just stayed on top of us for hours. I am used to watching weather patterns move from west to east and quickly go offshore. This mother moved from south to north along the Mississippi River with little to no west to east movement. Nasty.
The entire campground must have slept in as no one was out walking their dogs when I took Winston out at 7:30. No damage seen other than a few branches down at the river area. The river was
Zoe
Someone went to a lot of trouble to paint the name Zoe in the top middle of the bridge swollen and running quickly, but nowhere near cresting. I certainly have been in worse thunderstorms. If this system had any hail in it, it only lasted 30 seconds or so. The intensity of the rain and the length of time it hung over us made this one special. We agreed to leave at checkout time, 11; our next stop is Hot Springs only 80 miles away
I called our next stop, a lakefront campground, to make sure they were open and no flooded roads and was told to c’mon down. This time we were on I30 west out of Little Rock. I saw lots of swollen streams and flooded fields, but no real damage. What I saw on TV later in the day was a different story. People died in this storm. Houses floated away. Since I got stuck in central NC after hurricane Matthew coming home from a camping trip, I have a new healthy respect for flooded roadways, and always tread carefully. Once off the interstate, the state roads continued ok, just lots of construction, but, being Sunday, traffic was light.
We arrived at Treasure Isle RV Resort with no problem. RV Resort NOT. I mean,
I have been at much worse campgrounds, I have been at much better. This one is right in the middle. They accepted one of the half price deals we use from a camping club and 2 nights was $50 for water, electric, sewer, cable and decent free wifi. Big Dave led us to our sites in his rusty golf cart, telling each of us that he really used to be Big Dave, he weighed 340 lbs and had his stomach stapled and has lost either 58 or 77 pounds. The sites were a little muddy, and I changed locations to put my wheels and door in a less muddy area. We are in nice long and wide sites and have lake (Hamilton) view, but are not lakefront. There are fishing shacks and stationary trailers obstructing our view and a little shit kicker dog from one of those houses who runs all over the campground. There are many full-time residents here. Many. Some of those sites need major cleanups. They are working on getting the pool super clean. I can see that lots of landscaping and pot hole filling has been done. The utilities all work well. It’s just a little
like a campground from the movie Deliverance. We all did laundry. $1 to wash and $1 to dry. Cheap as campground laundry goes. Except for me. I put my washed clothes into a dryer in error and put my money into a different dryer. Pushed the button, went back in an hour to find wet clothes. Ginnie had to tell me what I did. Old age. Just like the machines, old. They worked just fine, just old. As I write this, we still haven’t seen the owner to finish paying our bill. Tomorrow.
Out at our usual 10:00 departure time to the Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center, 3 different stamps there and one in the gift shop! This introductory movie was good! The short of it: Rain water takes 4000 years to seep thru the rock and heat up enough to want to escape. It does just that in many places here in Hot Springs. Make sure you see the picture I took of the vintage postcard that shows all the steam from the warm springs before buildings were put above them. Bathhouse Row is a street of ?7? old bathhouses, the Visitor Center uses one and we
took the self-guided tour. Much of the equipment and furniture remains. Somehow, I just can’t imagine myself getting a massage using the torture chamber type electric machines they showcase. Yipes!
The entire town seems to be the National Park. We walked up the brick sidewalk (which covers the stream that flows from the hot springs so the water doesn’t get polluted or taken) to the Gift Shop, in another bathhouse, and I bought locally made soap and a pumice nail file and a sticker for the side of the RV. I have avoided buying them on this trip because they are all $4 – too much; I gave in here – this is the furthest west we are travelling.
All the restaurants that had been recommended to us were either out of our way, or closed, or not appealing. We opted on the National Park Superior Bathhouse Brewery and were very pleasantly pleased with our choices of the $8 flight of local beer and BLT paninis or chili and salad. Ginnie, our driver, had a root beer float. The beer was a fun thing to do.
We then drove up the big hill with switchback turns (sorry
sitz bath and vapor cabinet
the vapor cabinet had temps up to 143 degrees to treat rheumatism, syphilis, jaundice and obesity. Ginnie, that picture did not turn out) to the Tower, paid our $4 Senior Pass discounted (from $7) admission fee, took the glass elevator up thousands of feet (or so it seemed, I’m sure it was only a few hundred feet) to sway and rock. The view was gorgeous, thank you very much, get me out of here now, please. Back to the gift shop where they had $1 stickers and cute ones at that. Growl
Down at the bottom of the hill we saw people filling up their jugs with spring water; we filled our water bottles. It is touted to be highly mineral, but tasted just fine.
Back at the campground we all had different conversations with the other campers about their dogs. A Pyrenees Shepherd is owned by a single lady. A travelling couple have a Pekinese and a white Wolf/Huskie mix they acquired in Costa Rica. And this is at a campground that says absolutely no ……a list of multiple viscious breeds………allowed. I have seen a Rottweiler, and our own two Dobermans. What a hot.
So, as far as National Parks go, to quote Kim, “Hot Springs sure beat the crap out of
Tupelo Battlefield.” Yup, that it does.
On our way back to the campground, we passed a casino, one of those associated with a racetrack. It was not calling me, we drove right past.
We were cancelled out of our next campground, Buffalo Point National Park, due to flooding, so we are driving half way to Branson, which involves going back to Little Rock then north. More adventures. We have found another Army Core of Engineers campground which has an interesting history. More on that tomorrow.
Kat out
Advertisement
Tot: 0.413s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 9; qc: 54; dbt: 0.2993s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kathy Everett
non-member comment
tower ride
Kat, if that tower ride made you feel claustrophobic do NOT take the ride in the arch in St Louis...