We just completed Day 5 of our 23 day journey. Tonight before bed Jack said "I can't believe it's only been five days." I know what he means. I feel like we've been on the road for a month! And I mean that in a good way.
Day 4 was a pretty full day. We spent it driving across most of the state of Arkansas but with a few stops along the way. We spent the morning at Graceland and now my kids actually know who Elvis is. Side note: while we were touring another museum today Ella noticed something about Elvis and Heartbreak Hotel on one of the displays and was very excited to see it and recognize it. They are learning all kinds of things on this trip!
We ended up changing our camping plans at the last minute again for the fourth night. Our plan was to drive to the northwest corner of Arkansas and catch a minor league baseball game in a town called Springdale. One of John's requests was that we pick a place with a minor league team and go to a game. Simple enough but it also required choosing a campground that was easily accessible from the ball park. I had originally reserved a site at a state park nearby, but then realized that it would require us to drive thirty minutes after the game through dark, winding roads and then BACK IN (eeeek!) to a spot that we were completely unfamiliar with. Not gonna happen!
So as we were driving away from Memphis and into Arkansas, I picked another random RV park to stay at that night despite several unfavorable reviews on TripAdvisor. I've since decided that it's stupid to pay too much attention to these reviews. I mean really, what ever happened to discovering things on your own, sight unseen? So I called this nice man named Jerry who runs the RV park and he very nicely told me to just come on in whenever we were ready and that he would leave instructions on his front porch for us as to where to park the RV and how to pay. This made me very happy because Jerry sounded like a very nice guy. So I cancelled our reservation at the state park with the beautiful scenery and potentially stressful late night back-in and went with Jerry's RV Park (actually it was called Southgate RV Park, but you get what I'm saying).
On the way to the northwest corner of Arkansas we decided to stop off at a winery to break up the trip. As you can imagine the kids were thrilled about this. Today Ella told me this was the worst thing we'd done so far on our trip. It literally took about thirty minutes since all John and I did was taste a
few wines, sip a small glass, buy a bottle and leave. It didn't really hold a candle to the wineries in Virginia and really made me appreciate the wine country we have right in our own backyard. Note to self: visit Virginia wineries more often. Seriously.
We finally made it to the ball park after several wrong turns and a hairy three point turn on a narrow country road. Arvest Ball park in Springdale Arizona, home of the Arizona Naturals. As John pointed out to pretty much everyone we met along the way, Tuesday night was also dollar "brat" night. I'm actually impressed that John controlled himself and only had two brats. I had one myself and it was very good.
The game was fun and it was a beautiful night. But what made the night even more interesting was something that happened about halfway through the game. We were sitting there minding our own business when a boy came up behind Jack, tapped him on the shoulder and told him that some girls sitting in a section behind us wanted his phone number. Jack didn't quite know what to say and then John said something along the lines of "Yeah, we're from out of town" and the boy went away. The dad sitting next to us looked over and said "Dude, that was awesome. That doesn't happen every day. Seriously, that was awesome." Jack just sort of shrugged in his "I'm a cool teenager and nothing phases me" way and Ella giggled and said how happy she was that now she could tease him about something.
Then about twenty minutes later Jack left his seat to go to the bathroom and didn't come back. John finally went to look for him and discovered that Jack had made friends with an entire girls' volleyball team and was posing for pictures with them on the concourse. As John approached them the mothers of the girls starting waving and saying "Bye Jack, have fun on your RV trip!" John said it was like Jack was some kind of celebrity or something. Oh boy.
Anyway - we managed to pry Jack away from his adoring fans back to the RV and then made our way to the Southgate RV park, which we had yet to see at this point. We arrived in the darkness of night, managed to find a map of the park on the front porch and then drove into our site, driving right over someone's cable that was strung right across our site. We were pretty proud of ourselves since we managed to hook everything up in the dark within minutes. RV experts on day 4! We all crawled into bed and managed to get a good night's sleep despite the raging thunderstorms that shook the RV throughout the night. I mean really, what better place to be than a large metal structure on rubber tires during a storm, right?
The next morning we paid for our site via the honor system - Jerry left an envelope on the porch and we put our payment in and that was it. The kids were floored. Couldn't anyone just come and park and then drive away without paying? Yes, kids they could but this is the beauty of this tiny little RV Park. It's not a big corporation, just a family run business by people who trust other people to do the right thing. It was kind of nice.
John donned his yellow utility gloves to disconnect our sewer pipe which was now wrapped in duct tape due to a previously discovered rip in the tubing. We packed it all up, double bagged of course, and were off on the next adventure. On to Oklahoma and Texas!
To be continued at the next wifi destination . . .
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