Welcome and Thank-you to all my new subscribers!!
This substack newsletter is new. In 2020, I started a new WordPress Site to record our RV trips in our new 2019 Thor Vegas. We had traded in our 2002 Winnebago Minnie in December of 2019 for the Vegas. Once the pandemic made RV travel so popular, we felt pretty smart to have made that decision.
This is the link that documents two years of travel where we chose to stay in Missouri. We set a goal to visit every State Park and State Historic Site in the state and made a pretty good dent on that pursuit.
We have now returned from our first trip of 2022 and as I begin to tell the story of this journey through Arkansas and SW Missouri , I plan to post on both WordPress and Substack and decide at some point, which medium is working the best for me and for my readers. I will also continue to include some RV tips and tricks that we have learned so look for those as well.
Below is the final WordPress entry from 2020, just to give you a sense for what is out there.
Despite the fact that RV travel has been all the rage during 2020, we were able to finish on a quiet note. We started at Blue Springs Ranch on a Sunday in October. Blue Springs had been our tradition back in our early years as a couple. We would go one or two weekends each year and stay in the cabins which were dog friendly. We had stopped going there when it just got so busy and noisy that we had more peace at home than here. We continued to take a few float trips, a quintessential Missouri tradition but had found other quieter options.
But this time, we were in our RV and staying from Sunday to Friday because they were sold out for the weekend. It turned out to be very peaceful. There was no one else camping in our area until the later part of the week and even then, just a few RVs and none right by us. The skies were blue and the leaves were yellow and orange. It was simply gorgeous. Because they have horseback riding during the season, the horses were up in the pasture nearby. We saw a variety of birds including the Missouri state bird, the bluebird. I am also fairly certain we saw a red cockaded which really doesn't have much red. It is a woodpecker that is normally not this far north. Our other constant companion was a tufted titmouse.
The squirrels were full of themselves, playing and leaping from tree to tree. They were by far the nosiest inhabitants of the campground but we surely didn't mind.
We went to sit by the river. There are lots of tiny fish and frogs. I could hear the sound of the ripples of the current and warm but there was a breeze. It was peaceful, even meditative. Our second day there, an older couple came down and had a red remote control boat.
There are always interesting people at RV parks. Several mornings, we watched a lady with a bright red lounge coat and pajamas walking the road and smoking while talking on the phone. She came out of a an RV that was also home to two miniature pinschers that were almost twice the size of Aggie. She really is a mini Min-Pin.
The nights were just as spectacular. The temperatures were just right so that a fire felt good but it was not too cold. Once it was dark, we were able to see the milky way. We heard an owl several of the evenings and that made our time there even more special. During the day, we saw a bluebird and a woodpecker with that I thought might be a red-cockaded even though their range usually is a little farther south.
As far as sites go, we liked 107 a lot. It is very shady and overlooks the river. 112 would be ok when it is cool but there is not much shade. We really liked where we were, Site 100 with full hookups.