The Rambler

Our October started with a little dip into the land of Confederate history, with a four-night stay in Columbus-Belmont State Park in Columbus, Kentucky, and five nights in Jacksonport State Park in Jacksonport, Arkansas.

Columbus-Belmont is a beautiful and interesting park located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. During the Civil War, the Confederate Army situated a fort here, and dug many trenches and bunkers that remain to this day. In addition to the trenches, the park contains several interesting artifacts, and a museum that was a house before the civil war and then a hospital during the war. Unfortunately for us, we were at the park in the off-season so the museum was not open.

Walking the dog in the campground one morning I heard Morse Code coming from one of the campsites, and saw a guy sitting at a picnic table operating a ham radio station. I've been interested in ham radio since I was a kid, and I could not resist introducing myself and asking him about what he was doing. John was participating in the Parks On The Air program by "activating" the park, using Morse Code to communicate with people from all over the world. John is extremely friendly, gracious and interesting (he is ex-military, and had been a judge after his military life), and patiently answered all my questions and offered other fun information and stories. I explained my lifelong interest in ham radio, and the fact that I am a now-retired electrical engineer, and he suggested that as such I might consider getting my own ham license. After further discussion, I decided right then and there that I would do just that, and I have since been studying to take the licensing exam, and shopping around for radio equipment. I expect that I'll be set up with that by the end of this year!

I went on several bike rides around Columbus and explored - literally - every street, as the town is quite small. On one ride I went down to the river and found a repair depot for the barge company Ingram. From the bluff at the park, we were seeing barge containers all up and down the river and on both sides.

While at the park, Kristin and I both made several stops into Beards and Roses General Store, which is both a grocery and diner, and just a half-mile walk from the park campground. The proprietor, Rose, is delightfully sweet and friendly, and greeted us warmly and engaged us in conversation each time we came in. On our last day at the park, we had a very nice breakfast there with another full-time-RV couple we had met at the park.

One day we took a trip into Bardwell to fill up the truck and get some groceries. The gas station we found was way old-school, having mechanical pumps, and it made me smile to use it. In the grocery store we found even more evidence that we were in the south, finding several interesting canned goods, including succotash, blackeyed peas, and tomatoes, okra and corn. We picked up some of each for fun.

Leaving Columbus for Jacksonport, we entered the northwest corner of Tennessee and soon found ourselves driving through miles of cotton fields. I've always liked the look of cotton fields with their white bolls. I've also always wondered what it would be like to pick it by hand, as it once was by millions of slaves. We didn't spend much time in Tennessee before we entered the northeast corner of Arkansas and began seeing large fields of what looked like wheat or oats, but with long flooded irrigation tracks in the fields, which puzzled me. Eventually it occurred to me that it might be rice, which a quick Google search confirmed. In fact, Arkansas is a major rice producer, a factoid that I hadn't known before.

The park in Jacksonport, on initial arrival, looked a bit disappointing. However, we soon found it to be peaceful and charming. The park is on the White River, so we got Junior out to the water several times, which he enjoyed as always. Several mornings I was awakened by clattering sounds on the roof - acorn debris being thrown down by a squirrel - and one morning I found the little guy checking out Kristin's bike, still in the bike rack, just outside the back window. Across the road from the park is a cow pasture, and my morning walks with the dog were always lovely with the sun and fog rising over the pasture.

On one day we spent time at the park museum learning more about Confederate history, and then toured the Jacksonport courthouse, a building dating from the Civil War. The town of Jacksonport itself is not so charming, being a mostly dead little burg of old houses with junky yards.

From Jacksonport we proceeded west to Norfork Dam Campground, a Corps of Engineers campground at the base of the Norfork dam and power station in the Arkansas Ozarks. The Corps also operates a large trout hatchery with a small visitor center, which we visited and enjoyed. During the week we spent there we made several outings, including going to the charming farmer's market in Mountain Home.

For our Friday dinner we attempted to go to The Grill at Whispering Woods just a couple miles from the dam, but discovered that it was by reservation only, and we'd have to wait too long to get a table. So instead, we went to the Norfork Brewing Company in the little town of Norfork and ordered pizza, and were treated to live music by Carolina Mendoza, a talented singer offering an interesting folk music blend.

During our visit to Mountain Home we went to an Ace Hardware and finally acquired a new outdoor grill. Back in Decorah we had a nice Weber backyard grill, and used it a lot. When we moved to Ely we kept this grill, as we had a suitable deck for it, but we knew it would have to go as part of our downsizing, and so it did. Once we got our camper, we started looking for a suitable, smaller unit, and this Weber Q1200 fit the bill perfectly. We like it a lot!

I'd heard on the radio that there was supposed to be a comet - Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas - visible shortly after sunset, so one night around 8pm we went out to see what we could see. This image of the comet above our camper is one of several really spactacular pictures we captured. So cool!

Lake of the Ozarks State Park gets an enthusiastic five stars from us. This park is gorgeous, and we had a string of perfect, nearly windless sunny days to enjoy it. Our site was near the lake and we could see it shimmering and sparkling all the time. Most of our time at the park was spent just relaxing; at other times we did some hiking, we went out for our Friday dinner, and we spent a couple hours in Lake Ozark wandering the gaudy Bagnell Dam Strip and checking out Bagnell Dam, which is the dam that forms the entirety of Lake Of The Ozarks.

One evening we took time to take more pictures of the comet, and ended up attracting a small group of campers and showing them how to find it and take pictures. It was a fun little "community" event!

Mornings have been getting chilly, and we've had several nights below 40 degrees. We have not yet used our propane furnace, to avoid the cost of the propane, and our only other heat is a 1500 watt electric "fireplace". One morning we awoke to a bedroom temperature of 55 degrees, a bit chilly. Since we will be mostly spending time at places where we have electricity, we picked up a standalone 1500 watt space heater at Home Depot in Osage Beach to help keep us warm when the temps are low.