Lake Eufala and parking the motor home for a while

We left Dan's Riverview Campground near Ozark, Arkansas, and headed west down I-40 once again. It didn't take long before we passed the Oklahoma state line. Denisa missed the big sign at the border, but she still managed to get the smaller granite marker that declared we were back into the state where we were born and raised our family.

It wasn't an easy drive, with on-going road construction along the interstate. Cement barriers along both sides of a long single lane section make for a tough drive.

Add those gusty Oklahoma winds, and dirt that fogs over the road from the construction site and we were glad to get off the road today.

We are staying a couple days at another Passport American half-price campground that is a few miles off the interstate. We chose it for the price, and its proximity to Lake Eufaula. Just a half-mile from the Onapa Campground was a good boat ramp for a kayaking trip on the lake. We were there for sunset our first evening.

But the best part of our stay was getting to see our son and daughter-in-law. Blake and Claire have been working from their home in Oklahoma City, following strict shelter-at-home guidelines. But they decided that they could also isolate at her grandparents' empty cabin on Lake Eufaula this afternoon. So they brought their Golden Retriever to the lake for some exercise--and to see us.

We didn't get to give them a hug, and we were careful to keep our proper six-foot social distance. But it was sure good to see them again!

We're not sure about the rules of social distancing for dogs, but we at least got to hug George, their golden retriever.

After they left to return to their home in Oklahoma City, we spent some time driving around Lake Eufaula. One of the largest lakes in the state, there are many fingers of water and good places to kayak. We drove into the Lake Eufaula State Park, surprised to see that the campgrounds and bathrooms are open. We walked the roads and some trails inside the park for exercise before we stumbled onto this curious pen. Inside was a mother pig, and a large litter of piglets. That must count as our wildlife picture of the day.

After two days at Onapa Campground, we headed down the interstate once again. It's too bad that we don't need to fill up our tanks, as we saw some of the lowest fuel prices of our lives. That's gasoline for 1.04 per gallon, and diesel for 1.60. We should be more excited about those prices for ourselves; but we understand what a strain this is putting on the oil and gas industry that so many of our friends and family work in--including that son that we just got to see.

We didn't stop to fill up because we won't be needing diesel for a while. We are headed to Edmond, Oklahoma, where we are parking the motor home at Denisa's sister and brother-in-law's house for a while. Our travel plans for the year have been turned upside down, so it's time to shelter in place in more familiar territory.

Our First At-Home Haircut

In our whirlwind trip through Arkansas, we had one more stop planned. We hooked up the car behind the motor home as we left North Little Rock's city park campground. Denisa couldn't help but take a picture, as we were obviously parked to do this chore in an area that was clearly posted as "no parking any time." We are experienced at this chore, so it takes just a few minutes to attach the car to the motor home for the next trip. We're glad that we didn't get ticketed for breaking the parking laws!

We were back on I-40 to make another two-hour drive across the state of Arkansas. Several miles off the interstate we stopped in at Dan's Riverview Campground near the town of Ozark. We had to cross the Arkansas River to get to this new Passport America campground, that offers one night of half-price camping.

Even though the name implies we would have a view of the river, we could only see trees at Dan's Riverview Campground. But we really like this quiet little campground with less than a dozen sites.

We are enjoying nice weather, and this seems like a good place to play barbershop. For the last five years we have dreaded trying to find places to get our hair cut as we travel across the United States. With the pandemic closing down all hair-cutting options, both of us are getting mighty shaggy.  In the "before" picture below, you can see that Mark's hair is longer than it has been in those five years.

Even though it looks much better when combed into place,  the above pictures helped Mark convince Denisa that it was time to try her first at-home hair cut. We set up the barber shop on our picnic table in the woods, and watched a couple you-tube videos. Alrighty, let's try this.

Mark was taking selfies and giving words of encouragement as Denisa started cutting. He kept saying things like, "Don't worry, it will grow back" and "No matter what, it'll look better than when you started."

This haircut wasn't without injury. Denisa was using her very sharp sewing scissors. She managed to snip a chunk out of the finger that was holding up a lock of Mark's hair. We can say now that this hair cut caused blood, sweat, and tears to flow. An hour and 20 minutes later, Denisa finally set down the scissors. Mark commented that she would need to pick up speed if she ever wanted to make a living at this. A shave and shower later, we took the "after" pictures.

That's one amazing hair cut when that bald spot magically disappears!

After that haircut, we still had a little time to do some exploring. We stayed in this area four years ago, when we were at the Corp of Engineers Aux Arc campground that is just a few miles down the road. All of the Corp of Engineers parks are closed because of the pandemic, but we were surprised to see that the gates were open to drive inside. We walked the mile-long road that lines the delightful camping spots among these tall trees. But the campground is eerily silent today.

Half of these great camp sites line the river. We walked along the Arkansas River inside the corp campground and had the place to ourselves.

The Canadian Geese were enjoying the space and the quiet of this environment. In our wildlife picture of the day, we watched the flirtings of spring time. This gander kept chasing away the other guys getting too close to his goose.

We re-read our blog posts from four years ago to see what we did when we stayed at the Aux Arc campground. After five and a half years of travel, we're glad for the blog to remind us of things we had forgotten. It looks like we stayed here for four days, and enjoyed some fine hikes in this area around Mount Magazine. But this time we are traveling more quickly, so we are heading on down the road--with less hair than when we arrived. Denisa agreed to giving Mark a haircut, in exchange for him cutting her hair. She's not quite desperate enough for that to happen yet . . . but if this pandemic lasts much longer you'll be seeing a blog about our second at-home haircut.

We're adding Little Rock to our list of places to return to

It feels like we are working on a list of places that we would like to visit again--when things reopen and we can once again spend time around people. We're adding Little Rock, Arkansas, to our list of places that we will come back to visit under more normal circumstances. We arrived at the Burns Park Campground in North Little Rock, Arkansas, in the middle of the afternoon and immediately knew that we would like it here. The welcome committee consisted of several deer across the meadow from us.

They are used to people in their neighborhood, so they didn't mind posing among the trees for our wildlife pictures of the day.

After being stuck inside at our Walmart parking lot site yesterday, we were ready to stretch our legs. So we were out on the trail next to the campground right away.

We recognized the red flowering plants on our walk as wild buckeyes. We have seen them blooming further south already this year.

We also found other wildflowers blooming near the trail. This lovely purple flower has a not-so-lovely name--spider wort. Denisa doesn't care for spiders or worts, but she does like this flower.

Even though this trail is nice, it is entirely too loud to be one of our favorites. The good news is that Burns Park is close to the interstate for easy access for travelers. The bad news is that the noise of I-40 can be very loud while hiking the trails of the park. We hadn't done much research on Burns Park, so late in the afternoon we drove some of the park roads to explore. That's when we found that the Arkansas River Trail also runs through it. It was already 5 p.m., but we thought a quick bicycle ride down the trail would be fun. So we headed down the river trail to the Big Dam Bridge, just 1.4 miles away.

We don't usually curse on this blog, but we soon found that the Big Dam Bridge was a damn big bridge! It has a long inclining ramp to get to the top.

But that gave us the best view of how wide the Arkansas River is as it flows between Little Rock and North Little Rock.

We're not exactly sure how it happened, but we suddenly realized that we could bike a loop that would take us into the city to cross another bridge, and then return to our campground on the other side. We love loop trails, so we crossed the Big Dam Bridge and pointed our bicycles toward downtown Little Rock about 6 miles away.

Because we hadn't done any research on this loop, we didn't know that the nice level river trail would get lost onto urban streets when we got into Little Rock. We lost the trail and found ourselves in some pretty sketchy parts of the city. We didn't stop to take pictures because it wasn't a very picturesque ride at this point, and we were realizing that we were going to run out of daylight. It wasn't the part of town you would want to hang out after dark. A little further into the city we did stop momentarily for this picture of the Arkansas state capitol a few blocks away. On a normal trip, we would be making plans to visit that state capitol building.

We were riding our bikes hard and fast as we finally got off the city streets and returned to the flat trail along the river once again. Now this is more like it! If it had been earlier in the day, we would have stopped for pictures over and over when we got to the nice section of the river trail in Downtown Little Rock. But instead, we headed quickly towards the Clinton Pedestrian Bridge where we could cross back over the river on this loop ride.

We had to ride our bikes past several bridge before we got to this special pedestrian bridge that is also bicycle-friendly. We're guessing that this area is usually crowded with people strolling through the adjacent downtown parks, enjoying the river and the sculptures in this nice urban setting. But we had the place to ourselves, so we could bike faster than usual. We're also guessing that the local pigeons aren't used to such fast bicyclers. That's probably the reason that one pigeon took off too slowly, and flew right into Denisa's front bicycle wheel. We didn't have time to take a picture, but our second wildlife picture of the day could have been of a dead pigeon that flew into a very surprised bicyclist's wheel.

As we look west, we can see the other bridges of downtown Little Rock that we now have to pedal past going the other direction. We know that we are still 5.9 miles from our car, and we could also see that we didn't have much daylight left for this ride.

We were relieved to see that this part of our loop stayed close to the river, so it was flat. We were also relieved to see that it didn't take us through sketchy neighborhoods here on the North Little Rock side of the Arkansas River Trail.

It was a lovely ride beside the river, watching the sunset as we pedaled . . .

and pedaled . . .

and pedaled.

You can barely see Denisa in the dark in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture below as we finally got back inside Burns Park.

It was a very nice sunset once we could stop and enjoy it. We had thought this was going to be a short bike ride, but we went almost 16 miles this evening!

It was easy to social distance on the bike trail, as no one else was riding by this time of the evening. We were the only car in the parking lot as Mark loaded our bikes.

After a hike, and a longer-than-expected bike ride, we were tired when we got back to the motor home. We slept well, and got up early enough to explore a little more of Burns Park the next morning. It was foggy this morning for our walk along the Arkansas River. We can see that this river can flood. That big log that is caught in that horizontal position so high up in that tree must have been caught there at some flood stage.

We also found that Burns Park has a big softball and soccer complex, two golf courses, a tennis center (that also includes a dozen pickleball courts), "Funland Amusement Park" with kiddy rides, and a good number of playgrounds scattered throughout its 1,700 acres. We also found a nice covered bridge, and miles of hiking trails.

All of these fun areas are roped off and silent because of the coronavirus pandemic. Arkansas is one of the last states to issue stay-at-home orders, and all this fun is now off-limits. We have enjoyed our short time here, and we definitely want to return. We'll ride that Arkansas River Trail again one day, but we'll definitely give ourselves more time to enjoy it. We'll visit the state capitol and enjoy the city. And we'll look forward to enjoying it with people again.

"Sheltering in Place" as we travel across several states

NOTE: We are about two weeks behind in posting our blogs. As things are changing quickly in our country because of the COVID-19 pandemic, please understand that some of our activities and decisions would be different if they happened on the day the blog was actually published.

We are still being careful to stay isolated from others in this time of pandemic. We hear from friends that are doing the same, and are growing tired of the view from their front window. But because we live in a motor home, we can stay in our home and get a different view every day as we shelter in place.

We reluctantly left our lovely campground in Pontotoc, Mississippi. In fact, we lingered past noon. Then we had to leave because another motor home had arrived to take our spot. The new occupants were traveling in the same make and model as our motor home. The only difference was that theirs was brand new and they were just starting their journey. We would have loved to stop and visit with them. But in this day of forced isolation, we merely waved and then headed two hours down the road. The road that took us through northern parts of Mississippi has gotten too much rain.  As we approached the bridge, we could see that the Mississippi River was out of its banks at this crossing.

From the passenger seat, Denisa tried to snap a picture of the extra long barge that was approaching the bridge that we were driving over. She just happened to also snap a picture of the extra handsome driver inside the motor home too.

In the last couple days we have stayed in Alabama and Mississippi. And just like that, we were crossing another state line into Arkansas.

Not far past that bridge we made our stop for the night in the Walmart parking lot in Helena, Arkansas. It's unusual for us, but we are working our way across states more quickly than usual because we have a destination with a time constraint.

We didn't take any pictures of our camping spot beside the Walmart garden center, but it was a quiet place for an overnight stop. We like a boondocking stop when there's no good campgrounds in the area, and we need to exercise the generator anyway. It was here at the Helena Walmart that we first saw employees wearing masks and sanitizing shopping carts outside. Then they lined up people six feet apart as they waited their turn to enter the store. Adhering to strict number limits, more shoppers couldn't go inside until shoppers exited the store.

We were glad for the cool front that blew in to give us comfortable sleeping weather without electrical hookups. That cool front also brought rain, so we stayed in the motor home in the Walmart parking lot until around noon the next day before we hit the road. Once again, Denisa is taking pictures of fields that look more like lakes as we drive through Arkansas. This morning's rain just added to the flooding.

We have a two-hour drive to our next stop in North Little Rock, Arkansas. From here we have views of another body of water--the Arkansas River--as we shelter in place in a new location.

It's a crazy time in our wanderings as we are working our way rather quickly across some states that we have wandered before. We've zipped through Alabama, Mississippi, and now Arkansas. Living in our motor home allows us to "shelter in place" while traveling across several states!

A perfect place to isolate in Pontotoc, Mississippi

NOTE: We are about two weeks behind in posting our blogs. As things are changing quickly in our country because of the COVID-19 pandemic, please understand that some of our activities and decisions would be different if they happened on the day the blog was actually published.

After eight days camped outside of repair shops, we are definitely ready for a more picturesque campground. We found a city park in Pontotoc, Mississippi, that will go down on our list of favorites. The Howard Stafford Park has sites situated around a circle of blooming azaleas under tall pine trees.

Some of those azalea bushes are as big as trees, and Mark talked Denisa into standing in front of some of those blooms for a picture.

If you look closely in the picture below, you can see that we also have our own private lake just down the hill from our motor home.

We enjoyed calm winds that left our lake perfectly still to reflect those big puffy clouds.

You might notice there are no boats on the water, or fishermen on the shores of this lake. In fact, a single duck was the only other living thing at this lovely little lake.

We'll count her as the wildlife picture of the day.

This city park is actually closed, so that is the reason that we are enjoying this private lake. When we arrived, the camp host had to unlock the gate to let us in, and issue us a key to get in and out of the campground. While registered campers can come and go, the general public is locked out.

We are finding that more and more parks and public places are closed, and we just feel so fortunate that Pontotoc decided to keep the campground open. Many of our neighbors are full-time residents in this park, but they could have certainly closed it to transient campers like us. But we're so glad they didn't because we love this little campground among the very tall pine trees!

Besides this lovely campground, the main reason we stopped in Pontotoc was the nearby Tanglefoot Trail. This is a 43-mile-long rail-to-trail, and we couldn't wait to see it for ourselves. Biking is a great activity during this social-distancing time. It's easy to stay six feet away from others on a long bike trail.

We are fans of the rail-to-trail system that converts old railroad right-of-ways into exercise trails. This is certainly a nice one, because it features smooth pavement instead of the cinder surface we often see. Just like Denisa, railroads prefer grades of less than 2%. We're glad to say that we never felt like we were pedaling uphill. Going south out of town, it's a great flat trail through the trees. 

Our destination today is the next whistle stop at Algoma,  Mississippi. We rode our bikes to this little town, probably best known for the huge fish restaurant next to the bike trail. We watched as cars and golf carts pulled into the big parking lot, picking up to-go orders from the "Seafood Junction." We would find out that people drive for an hour to eat dinner here when the coronavirus isn't changing life across this country. We enjoyed a little spot of brightness, as someone put up this Easter pyramid in the middle of Algoma.

We really can't say enough good things about the Tanglefoot Trail, as we enjoyed our 12-mile ride today. It must be relatively new, because all the bridges, signs, and mile markers are in great shape. We even found this rain protection stopping place, complete with a set of bicycle tools and an air pump attached to that red pole in the foreground of the picture below. We can think of more than one time we could have used both rain protection and tools on a long ride!

Our wildlife picture of the day is of a groundhog that we saw on a cliff beside the trail. He had a mouthful of greens, watching a couple of bikers on the trail.

He must be used to seeing bicycles on the Tanglefoot Trail, because he didn't seem to be in any hurry to duck into his hole.

We liked that ride so much, that we decided to try the north section of the Tanglefoot Trail out of Pontotoc the next day. It started in the trees like yesterday's trail. But then we started seeing fields of yellow.

It was nice to have completely different views from the tree-lanes of yesterday's bike ride. Soon we found ourselves with open fields of yellow on both side of the trail. Zooming past similar fields in the car yesterday, we assumed we were seeing canola fields.

But at bike speed, we see that those are flowers instead of canola blooms. A google search tells us these are buttercups, a noxious weed?!? We're not sure why we are seeing fields full of buttercups.

Another popular roadside plant is clover. Most of the year it is pretty inconspicuous. But for a while in the spring it puts on these royal crimson crowns that are lovely.

We really did enjoy our campground, and the nice biking opportunities of Pontotoc, Mississipppi. It would have been a perfect place to stay isolated during this crazy pandemic. We could have put the kayak onto our own private lake, and biked all 43 miles of the Tanglefoot Trail. But we have a plan and a new destination in mind, so we only stayed for two nights. On our last evening we got a nice sunset, reflected in the glass-like water of the lake. It was a nice good-bye, and we hope to be back some day!