Horseshoe Bend to Horseshoe Canyon--Isn't that confusing?

We left Horseshoe Bend Campground this morning and headed towards Horseshoe Canyon Ranch Campground this afternoon. Having campgrounds with such similar names was really confusing when we put this trip together.  Both are in northwestern Arkansas. The road between the two is only 78 miles, but the drive took us almost three hours. One should never underestimate the roads through the Ozark Mountains. Our little pickup got a serious workout pulling our trailer up and down some of the steepest roads we've seen. It doesn't compare to the elevation of the Rockies, but does compare to the steepness of the road grades in the Rockies.

These Arkansas roads might be more crooked than the roads in the Rockies. You can see road signs that warn you to keep right, and then keep left, and then watch out for a hair-pin turn, all in the same photo. You get the picture that it was a tough drive through the Ozarks this day.

The last couple miles were on a muddy gravel road that took us off the mountain and into the canyon where we would be staying the next two nights.

We drove through a water crossing as we headed steeply down. All the time Denisa was wondering if our little pickup was going to be able to get us out of here if it continued to rain over the next two days.

Horseshoe Canyon Ranch really does have animals. We were greeted by sheep and goats as we got closer to our campground. It took us a while to get backed into our site, which was far from level and had a very steep grade on the approaching road. We wouldn't have any water, electric, or sewer hookups for the next two days. One would expect such a site to be cheap, but we will say this was the most expensive no-hook-up camp site ever for us.

But it was lovely at Horseshoe Canyon. Besides the farm animals, we were greeted by this butterfly at our site.

So why would we be staying at such a hard-to-get-to-expensive-no-hook-ups campground? It's all about the neighbors! Our oldest son and his family arrived later in the day and set up their tent in the site right next to us.

We must say that we had two of the best camp sites in the entire campground.

This family loves to climb, and Jordan had been rock-climbing here at Horseshoe Canyon many years ago. She wanted to share that experience with our two rock-climbing grandchildren.

After setting up camp, we set out on an evening hike. This ranch features a whole system of mountain bike trails, and a few hiking trails as well. It was great fun to have company as we got to wander His wonders while holding a child's hand.

We loved that our camp sites were situated right beside the babbling brook. That's the kind of white noise that we love!

This place was between the two tiny towns of Jasper and Ponca, Arkansas. Have we mentioned it was very remote? We had absolutely no cell phone service. So we walked up through the pasture to get to the office to use their wifi each evening.

The office was already closed that first evening when two tired young guys on motorcycles arrived. It seems we weren't the only ones that could get confused with the similarly-named campgrounds in Arkansas. They had reservations at Horseshoe Bend (where we were last night) but had mistakenly put Horseshoe Canyon (where we were tonight) into their GPS. They were glad to find that there were some first-come-first-served camp sites available here, because there was no way they were going to ride three hours further to get to their reserved site. We would have to agree that we wouldn't want to tackle that road in the dark this evening either. There was a little part of us that was glad that even young folks were confused by these campground names!