February 11, 2022 – March 2, 2022
It has been a whirlwind of a few weeks, with some extreme weather and the addition of two more states on our list – Oklahoma and Mississippi!
After leaving Big Bend we headed towards Corpus Christi. One thing about Texas – it’s big! The drive wasn’t too long the way we split things up, but we did do more driving in Texas than we will be doing in many other states. We spent a few days camping right on the beach which was a lot of fun. The weather was still pretty cool so we didn’t do any swimming or paddling, but we did run and ride our bikes on the beach which was nice. It was nice to just stay in one spot and not have a lot of site seeing to do. Each day we had several people paramotoring but one person in particular was fun to watch. He did loops in the sky and would scream down and almost touch the water. I’m surprised he didn’t crash, but he obviously was not a newbie.
San Antonio was next on the agenda. We headed straight to the Alamo on our first day, which we thought was very interesting. We both know our basic history but traveling in the US has been very educational and has made us painfully aware of how much history we do not know. That night we stayed in the driveway of a woman with Harvest Host, and when she asked us what we thought of the Alamo we both said we enjoyed it. She was surprised because she said almost everyone else is either disappointed or underwhelmed. The Alamo is not very big and I guess most people have expectations of something grand, neither of us had any expectations so maybe that helped.
The next day we walked 6 miles on the Riverwalk trail, having lunch at one of the old hotels and just enjoying a beautiful warm day walking by the river.
We then headed to Austin. We decided to take the scenic route and about 5 miles out of Blanco, TX our tire monitor went off – yep, flat tire! We decided to call AAA instead of trying to change it ourselves but ended up having to wait 2 hours for the guy to drive out. We are glad we ended up waiting, the jack in the van is pretty small and he had full size jack and he also ended up using his air compressor to fill up our spare tire. It would have been ok to get us back to the nearest town, but all in all we were glad for AAA.
Austin has a very cool vibe with lots of young people and lots of traffic. It was a little unnerving driving there. We immediately made our way to a well rated BBQ restaurant and were not disappointed. Our timing was perfect because the lines got huge after we got there (the next day we decided to try another place and gave up because of the long lines). We were able to get a campsite at a State Park close to the city the first night which was scenic and has some swimming holes that I’m sure would be fun in the summer. We had a nice run along the river and then Lee took me to an arcade with all the old classics. It was fun playing some of the old video games I remember as a kid (Ms PacMan, Centipede, Galaga).
Unfortunately that night the campground was full, so we boondocked in the parking lot of a park in the city. It ended up being a nice quiet night and was perfect for us to hop on our bikes the next morning and ride the Ann and Roy Butler Trail, with a side trip to see the capital.
We agreed that Austin would be a fun place to fly to and stay if there was a concert you wanted to see, but not a place we’d want to go back to in the van. We also thought it would be a fun city to live in if you were young.
Next on the list was Dallas. We spent the first day doing chores (Lee had a Drs appt, we got an oil change on the van, laundry and cleaning) and then that night we met up with several people that Lee used to work with at Fidelity. We had a great time and it was nice to meet these people, that Lee talked to me about, in person. I should also mention that the high temp that day was 90 degrees. That night we watched a great lightening show and then the wind and rain woke us up that night. The next day we had lunch with another former co-worker of Lee’s, Kevin Glanzer. He hired Lee many years ago at Fidelity. I think Lee had a nice time catching up and I enjoyed meeting him.
The next morning we had plans of visiting the JFK museum before heading to Lee’s cousin Jon’s house an hour away. However, we woke up to sleet and very cold temps (I think it was a high of 28 degrees that day) and it was only going to get worse, so we decided we better just make our way to Greenville, TX (although we did stop to work out). The roads were wet and icy in spots and the traffic was very slow but we made it to Greenville. We had every intention of only staying a night at Jon’s and even staying in the van, however we decided it would probably be best to stay an extra day and take Jon up on his offer to stay in his guest suite. We are sure glad we did because the next morning the van was literally covered in ice. This was an interesting juncture in history – this was when Putin (the President of Russia) decided to invade the Ukraine. This has cause a lot of disruptions, and between the market going down and gas going up, it has been disappointing to see this happen, not just for the people in the Ukraine suffering, but also all the fall-out that comes up when things like this take place.
Jon’s large family (8 kids!) kept us entertained and Lee had a nice visit catching up.
With the weather finally somewhat settling down we decided to head out to Oklahoma. Since we ended up staying an extra day in Texas due to the weather and we had hotel reservations in Hot Springs, AR coming up, we decided we should skip our plans of going to Oklahoma City and just visit the south east corner of Oklahoma. Oklahoma was a lot more wooded and beautiful than we were expecting. We drove to Hugo via Broken Bow which was beautiful and stayed at a campground on the lake with only one other camper. The next day we made our way to Talihini via McAlester.
As I mentioned we had hotel reservations in Hot Springs National Park so headed there after staying the night in Talihini. We decided to take the Talimena Scenic Byway to Hot Springs but after about 10 miles on that road, which does not get plowed, decided the snow and icy conditions would make for a very long drive so turned around and went the more direct route, but the few miles we were on the byway were beautiful.
Hot Springs National Park was nothing of what we expected. It mainly consists of some old bathhouses that have been repurposed. One is now a brewery, another is the park visitor center and museum which was really cool, one is a hotel which we stayed at and loved, another is still a working bath house and the last is a spa with thermal pools. When we got there that afternoon we decided to go for a run since it was the first time in may days that we had good weather. We ran up the road to the watch tower in the park (ok, Lee made it, I didn’t quite get there), and then we had a nice dinner in our hotel. The next morning we went to the spa at the Quapaw bathhouse and got massages and soaked in their thermal pools (I know, hard life). It was very nice!! We did however go biking later that day, again making our way to the watch tower and then found some fun mountain bike trails a few miles away.
We really enjoyed our stay and would come back again if we ever got the chance. We then headed to Little Rock where we stayed at a campground that was right on the Arkansas River and close to some more mountain bike trails. We setup and headed out for a ride. The trails were fun but very rocky so I took it slow, we made it back to camp just before sundown. The next morning, we debated about whether we should just head to Mississippi or check out the Clinton Library. We decided on the library and we were glad we did. It was our first Presidential Library and we found it to be a very interesting museum. It had a replica of the oval office and cabinet room and just lots of memorabilia from his presidency including his daily schedules which looked exhausting. After a nice lunch at the library we made our way to Mississippi.
Mississippi definitely felt poor driving in, we made our way to camp for the night at a State Park in the city of Jackson and on a lake.
The last few weeks showed us some extremes in weather and also made me appreciate yet again how handy my husband is. Our heater died on us (luckily we had purchased a space heater as a back up), he pulled the fan out, found out it was dead and got another ordered so we can pick it up in New Orleans. It always seems like there is something to fix, I guess that’s part of the adventure!
