(click for today's pictures)
Robby and I slept incredibly well last night, as we always do in the camper. I did wake up early this morning a bit chilly because Bentley had decided to join us in the bed. When she is in the middle of the bed, I can't really pull any more covers on top of me. I keep a blanket by me in the camper, but that silly dog was laying on it too.
Some times we go camping and do absolutely nothing, and other times we stay pretty busy most of the day. Today was a busy day. We started this morning by walking Bentley up to the lodge. We sat on the porch for a little bit. Then we walked back to the camper.
We got Bentley settled in the camper, and we left again. We walked back to the lodge. This time we went inside, where I bought a sticker and got a stamp for our Arkansas state parks passport book. Then we ended up back in our chairs for a few more minutes.
Robby and I then rode the Rich Mountain scenic railroad, a miniature train that runs around the park. We were the first ride of the day and the only people on the train. It goes around the lodge, pass the scenic overlook, through the campground, and into the woods. It is a neat little ride.
Actually, the train owner man told Robby that he is ready to sell it. I did tell Robby that I could do a lot better theme-ing and merchandising in their little store. Plus I would add a coffee shop as well. However, it would take a lot of train riders paying 7 dollars each to make it profitable. Most of the rest of the day, we spent our time counting people on the trains to see if we could make a go of it up here.
We then packed an ice chest, said goodbye to Bentley, and headed down the road. Literally, we had to go down a hill to get to our stop-Cossatot River State Park. This state park was a little over an hour from here, and since it doesn't have camper camping, it was just a day trip for us.
We found the visitor center, but drove on past it to the day use area of the river. We weren't really sure what we were doing when we quickly saw that the drive was down a one-lane dirt road. Thankfully, we made it though without any cars coming back up. The river was pretty down there, but there were few rapids that we could see-it actually looked fairly peaceful and made me want to float a river.
However, this river has class 4 and even 5 rapids. They make it clear that it is not for beginners to float. We weren't able to see any of those rapids despite driving a long ways down another gravel road-we chickened out on it because we had no idea where we were going. The internet is spotty where we are so we are just guessing at most things.
We walked around the visitor center for a bit and later came back to stamp our book. The visitor center was huge and very nice. We are always curious how some places receive lots of funding and others do not. Even with all of their funding, the Cossatot could use a few more picnic tables. They only had 2-we did eat our lunch at one of those tables. Robby had a turkey and cheese sandwich while I had peanut butter and jelly. There is nothing better than a sandwich eaten outside for sure.
We then drove back towards Mena. We did find the big city and even stopped to get a frosty at Wendys for each of us. Then it was back up the hill to the camper. We walked Bentley and put our two new stickers onto the camper.
Robby and I had a bit of downtime before we headed to the Wonder House. This was a rock house bit forever ago right across from our campground. We met the park person who gave us a tour of it. The interesting thing about the house was that it was built on 9 different levels-a living room with an upstairs, then a separate kitchen, cellar, pantry (all different levels). This was connected to dining room with a bedroom containing two levels above. I am missing a level though, but the most interesting thing was all of the rock work that they did. There were outside stairs going up to the kids' bedroom, and they were strategically placed wrapped around the fireplace so they would not ice in the winter.
After the tour, we found a trail behind the house. We knew that it should only be about .4 miles. It was little bit longer, but of course we didn't want to take the tick magnet, Bentley. Robby found one tick crawling on him last night, and there was a dead one on the comforter this morning. After brushing her for at least 20 minutes last night, we gave her another check and didn't find anymore. Hopefully, we were able to get rid of all of them.
We came back to the camper for a bit, and I crocheted some and read even more. Tonight for supper I made chicken enchiladas-not really. They were from Sams, and I heated them up in the oven. They were very good, which was a good thing since we have enough for leftovers.
When it was getting near sunset, we walked towards the lodge and found our chairs again. Bentley was perfect sitting on the porch watching the people. It was almost chilly this evening as walked back to the camper.
I worked on the blog for a little bit, and now we are watching some tv before bed. I haven't heard much from the kids today. When I dropped everyone off, I did tell them to send me proof of life every so often, and Whitman is the one who has done that for sure. Keaton and Campbell both sent me pictures today, but I have heard little from the big boys. I know that they all went to church today at their different churches, but that is just about all that I know about their days.
