I may have worried our sweet daughter...

 

We're down for the night in a place outside of Ft Smith, Arkansas.  I would normally call where we stay "an RV park," but this doesn't quite fit that name.  If they spruce it up a bit, it could qualify as "a shithole."  I may have to monitor Joan's choices for where to stop for the night; her two criteria for picking a place when we're traveling to a destination: close to the road we're traveling on, and the price (we're spending a night, not moving in).  I generally say, "We need a decent electric connection and we're good."  I put our RV surge protector and power analyzer in before hooking our power cord to the power box... it checked out OK.

"OK, we can stay here," I told Joan.  I have concerns that we might be in the "meth lab section," but on closer inspection, they are scattered throughout the place - seems that every other site is "meth lab approved"... so, we apparently have them on both sides of us.  Yes, I'm joking.  Probably.  I told Steph (on our daily check-in): I met our neighbor, Phillip.  Phillip stuck his head out the door of his trailer (almost all trailers here, not many motorhomes) and said, "Hooooweee - that is one fancy trailer you got there!"  (He was referring to our motorhome, not the cargo trailer.  "Izzat new?"  When I told him it was far from new, he said, "Looks new - that's real purdy."  (Read that with an accent like one of the locals from Deliverance.)  I'm not being a snob, but if a tornado hit this place, it could do dozens of dollars of damage.

Steph was concerned and texted: Maybe you should move on?

"Nahh - this is Arkansas.  We'll be fine."  She asked me to text her in the morning.  I told her, "I have an Air Tag on my wallet - if they don't steal that, it may help you find our bodies."  I don't know why she worries?

All kidding aside - it's a cruddy little trailer park.  It got a 5.6 (out of 10) rating on one of the RV park sites.  I think someone here is "padding" that rating.  The next few nights look like better stops.  You win some, you lose some.

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We drove through Oklahoma City enroute this morning.  Traffic was delightfully light on this Saturday of a holiday weekend.  It is easier to go west to east through OKC than to go south to north (which goes on and on).  As we rolled east, the terrain became more wooded...

We stopped for fuel at a Pilot - unlike the roads, it was crowded; we had to wait for a gas pump.  Not as inexpensive as our fuel stop this morning ($2.78), but it was still under $3.  The coach has been getting better than 9 miles per gallon on the last 4 fill-ups.  Yes, that's good for a gas motorhome.  With Joan checking Gas Buddy along the way, she said, "Let's gas up right before we leave Oklahoma, and then again once we're through Arkansas and into Tennessee."  She is the navigator; I trust her search abilities.  Well, except for inexpensive RV parks.  I said, "This may be the crappiest park we've stayed in."  She reminded me of some of our past overnight stays in the past 35 years of RVing... yeah, probably only in the bottom 3 of crappiest.

This afternoon, we rolled out of Oklahoma and into Arkansas...

And that brings us back to where this post started.  It is hot out there (94º currently).  We'll be enjoying our air conditioning; maybe get in a nap... yeah, I always have good intentions for a nap, but it rarely works out for me.

Murphy was on our laps most of the day.  I can't say he is liking this RV travel stuff, but he seems to be tolerating it well.  We could double down on our miles made each day and get there sooner, but the RV park in NC can't get us in more than a day early - it's their busy season.  So, we make it a point to get off the road reasonably early each day... and play the "Let's See What This RV Park Looks Like" game.  ;-)

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For those keeping track: Hurricane Beryl is now predicted to make landfall (for the second time) further north along the Texas Gulf Coast, creating more of a problem for Corpus Christi and Matagorda Bay.  Port Isabel/South Padre Island will be on "the dry side" of the storm.