Roving Cooks

First off, we made it to Arkansas! Day 1: Omaha -> Carthage, MO (326 miles). Day 2: Carthage -> Hot Springs (300 miles).

The drive from Omaha was pretty smooth – we listened to Kansas past Kansas City, had McDonald’s breakfast in Carthage MO after a quick night at the Days Inn, and only needed to ford one river before making it into our RV park around 2pm Sunday, January 17. From our practice drives and thanks to a nice concrete pad, we had the RV stabilized pretty quickly.

Since this was our first overnight stay, we needed to de-winterize (flush out the pink anti-freeze solution in the pipes that keeps them from freezing). Our site has electric, water, and sewer hookup at the site, so Greg set to work getting all the hoses and dongles out. Do all men love dongles? It didn’t take too long to flush the water out (hooray hand washing!) and to realize that it was still pretty chilly inside. Apparently the couple weeks with the heat on in Wisconsin used up our propane tanks…and we missed the “propane guy” by about 15 minutes. Luckily, with Jackie’s superb list making skills and Greg’s excellent propane tank purchasing skills, we had groceries and heat by 5:30. Issue solved and we all slept warmly inside. No hot water yet; issue put on the parking lot. A strange noise in the night was a piece of paper flapping around an air vent…and not a small creature. Issue solved, with a vacuum and no panic attacks.

Early Monday morning, we had very little water coming out of the faucet – ominous. If like us, you have had a frozen pipe before, then you also would have quickly figured out the water hose was frozen. Rookie mistake! But happily, Greg was able to turn off the city water source with some warm water, unhook the hose from the pump and the RV, and off we went for a day of exploration in Hot Springs. Amazingly when we returned, the hose was intact. Lessons learned: when it’s cold, switch to the water tank or get a heated hose. Despite significant troubleshooting, no hot water yet; issue marked for escalation.

Tuesday: Our RV site neighbor lent us a maintenance person who is installing a washer/dryer for him. Within about 30 minutes, we had hot water, a list of RV and Arkansas advice from the very kind Randall of RC’s, and an Amazon cart in progress. Plus Randall showed Grayson all the cool tools and gadgets he used and how they work.

For a few fun things: The campground has a small playground that the kids were happy to see, a river on one side to throw rocks into, and a few other kids run with. One pair of girls had a remote controlled truck that entranced Grayson for several minutes until he asked if it could go any faster. Greg took a couple days off, and Monday was up to about 60 degrees so we headed into Hot Springs. The entrance to the National Park is the town, with the Visitors Center at an old bathhouse (on “Bathhouse Row”).  More fun Arkansas adventures in the next post!