Mt Pleasant TX, Little Rock AR, and Memphis TN

May  8 – 10 

Now we are up to 4 mice in the RV.  The first 2 we caught in traps in Ingram TX.  Then, in Waco on Thursday the 8th we found a couple of baby mice.  The first Patty found under the dining table seemingly eating crumbs.  I managed to flick it out the front door with a fly swatter.  The next one I found between my bare feet in the kitchen area.  This one was just barely able to walk he/she was so young.  We think the last mouse we found in Ingram was pregnant and may have been the mother to these mice.  They are just at the weaning stage now.  We looked up how many mice make up a litter and found out the litter could be up to 12 but more likely 8.  Eight little mice!  We are afraid that they will die and stink up the RV.

We left Waco around 11:30 for the 4 hour trip to Mt Pleasant TX which is about 70 miles from the Arkansas border.  This will be our 2nd bump and run trip giving us now 800 miles from our south Texas winter spot going north.  The weather turned bad for the last 50 miles with lots of rain.  We made it just in time to the Ramblin Fever RV Park in Mt Pleasant TX before the really bad weather hit.  In fact, when we pulled up to the office, the woman working the check-in desk just told us to set up and we could settle up in the morning.

We no more than got set up and a large thunderstorm hit. The site we are in is very sandy so the rain made it like we were on a wet beach.   The thunder at night was incredible. This weather pattern is moving from west to east and covers a line from the Mexican border all the way to Michigan.

This is one of the hardest rains we have had since being in the RV!

During the night I was awakened by an electronic chirping sound.  It was very slow at one chirp every 6-7 seconds.   I went back to sleep for a while and then around 2 am I got up to find out where it was coming from.  After some searching for a while inside I determined it was coming from the outside of the RV.  So I got dressed and put some shoes on and went outside to explore where this sound was coming from.  It was coming from the leveling controller!  Ahhhh!!!  I went inside and got the key for the cover door and found it was announcing an error has occurred and I needed to push the enter key to acknowledge the error.  I pushed the enter key to acknowledge as I was instructed and it went back to normal.  I have no idea what is going on with this system. Hopefully this was some sort of fluke event!

All was good Friday the 9th morning with the leveling system when we picked up to leave for Little Rock Arkansas.  So far, looks like a fluke issue that night.  

Today will be our 3rd bump and run to Memphis TN.  We left Mt. Pleasant TX at 11:30 AM on I-30 going NE toward Little Rock.  This was a normal 3.5 hour 207 mile trip and it was all of that, very normal.

We are now leaving Texas after being here for over 5 months.  We arrived in Texas back at the end of October 2013.  We flew back north for the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) while the rig and truck was stored in Texas. So, really the rig has been here in Texas for about 6 months now!

We arrived at the Burns City Park in North Little Rock a little after 3 pm.   You just can’t beat these city and state parks. We got a really big back-in site with water and electric for $20.  We will be back here again but stay much longer so we can see the area and this park.  This park even has an 18 hole golf course.  This is the problem with these bump and run stay one night trips, we really don’t see anything. However, we know where to stay now and that we want to come back, so it’s still all good!

Finally leaving Texas!

We just like the names of the towns along the Texas Arkansas border.

Our site in Little Rock Arkansas.

On my 3 mile walk I found this log cabin

At the end of my walk was this very scenic creek.

On the 10th Saturday (my daughter, Jennifer Milling's, Birthday) we are headed to Memphis TN on our last bump and run to make up time we lost waiting on the leveling part. I won’t say how old Jennifer is but she is just 1 year shy of another decade birthday.  She was my daughter at a young age for me so we are very close in age.  This is something I didn’t think about and sort of caught me by surprise; we seem to be getting closer in age as time goes by.  She was born on Mother’s Day and she so reminds me of my mother and her own mother as well.  My mother passed from this life at an early age for her as well as for me so her Mother’s Day birthday always brings back memories for me.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER, I Love You!

Now I think we have the stowing arrangement right for Patty's Barely There Wear.  It must be quick and easy and this is.

Ok, back to travel stuff!  We arrived at the T.O. Fuller State Park in Memphis about 2:45 pm.  Our Garmin GPS was showing one route and the road signs were showing a different route.  First, we were on I-55 south and the road sign said turn here for the state park and Garmin said to go on to the next exit.  We usually follow the road signs over Garmin and this was no different.  However, as soon as we took the road sign exit, we were left on our own with no further signs.  Garmin did a “recalculating” so we had to take the Garmin instructions now.  This is the first time Garmin was better than the road signs!

Crossing the Mississippi River into Memphis TN.

Our site in Memphis TN.

We ended up coming in to the park via the other side but that was fine.  We followed the signs in the park to the campground and found our reserved sight #6.  I thought I reserved a 70 foot sight but sight 6 was maybe 35 foot long, not even long enough to put our 40 foot 5th wheel on let alone the 22 foot truck.  We pulled around the park and found that they do have other sites that are more than long enough for us and with a clear sight to the southern sky for our satellite TV.  Since it was a Saturday the park office was not open so we needed to see the camp host who was out to eat a late lunch.  We pulled around to the dump station and got out some chips and salsa for the wait.

We finally got with the camp host and pulled into site 18 with a clear sight for our satellite TV!  This was a back-in site as opposed to the pull-through we thought we had.  We got backed in and set up by around 4 PM.  The only bad thing about this park is that the cell data service is not good.  We have Verizon so maybe one of the other carriers is better, we don’t know.  We are very surprised that we have such poor service as we are within the city limits of Memphis.

By the way, today Patty did all of the RV driving.  Patty hasn’t pulled the rig in about 6 months so this was a big day.  Patty is very good at driving the rig.  My only criticism is that she drives a little too fast for me, albeit still under the speed limit.  Anyway, today we had to get fuel on the way with the rig and we did a back-in at the campsite.  That is 2 big things for pulling a 5th wheel and Patty did great! She is definitely better at it than me, but just a little too fast, especially leaving fuel stations.

Tomorrow the 11th we are planning to do a few tourist sites and have dinner at a BBQ rib joint.  Actually we are planning to eat at several places while we are here.

Next post will be after we leave here and are in Nashville TN on Wednesday the 14th.

Stay tuned!