Day 13 -- Alma (near Fort Smith) to Hazen (near Little Rock), Arkansas -- 181 Miles

As I've said many times before, the best and most exciting thing about life on the road are the people who constantly cross your path. This morning as I was breaking down the water, electric, and sewer connections prior to our leaving, our next door neighbor wandered out and wished me a good morning. I returned the wish, and after that we got into a fifteen-minute conversation about a dozen different topics covering everything from the proper way to set up a sewer line to the American Civil War.

It turned out that both of us were California natives, both of us had moved away from California, and both of us were veterans. Ted was the neighbor's name, and he told me that he had spent his service time flying in heliocopters for the Coast Guard, and I told him that I had spent my time in fixed-wing, anti-submarine planes for the Navy.

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From those revelations, we segued into a discussion of things like driving the Nachez Trace in Mississippi, spending some time in upstate Michigan, and his recent visit to the Civil War Battlefield of Shiloh. The minutes slid away when I should have been clearing up my gear, but we just talked and talked and talked.

Finally I told Ted I better get on with it as we were driving to Little Rock, and he told me that he had to be off as well. He didn't have far to go, he told me, as he just lived in Mississippi having relocated there from the northern California town of Petaluma. We shook hands and went our separate ways, but each of us, I know, carried with us today the knowledge that most Americans are pretty straight arrow, and all of us have a story to tell if we take time to listen.

After we rolled out of the beautiful Alma RV park that we accidently found just west of Fort Smith, Arkansas, we headed south for just a bit until we were able to join Interstate 40. Once on Route 40, we set the cruise control and sat back to enjoy some of the prettiest forest that we've yet seen on this vacation. The trees hadn't yet started to show any real color, but the forest in general looked so healthy and green that it was a pure pleasure to see after the rather austere plains vegetation of Texas and parts of Oklahoma.

Everything went so smoothly that we were almost to Little Rock by lunch time. Choosing an offramp that promised a park just up the road, we exited the Interstate and looked for a nice, shady patch of level ground to park for lunch. At first we chose the parking lot for a golf course, but we couldn't find level spot. Retracing our steps for just a quarter mile or so, we turned left down a tiny road that seemed to have sports fields just ahead. Sure enough, there was a nice level spot to park just adjacent to the basketball courts, and it came complete with huge trees for shade.

During lunch I was studying the atlas in hopes of finding some referenece to museums or other attractions when my eye fell on a reference for the name "Clinton." Of course I knew that President Clinton hailed from Arkansas, so I put down the atlas and grabbed a book out of our onboard reference collection for the Presidential Libraries and their locations in each state. Sure enough, William Jefferson Clinton's Presidential library was located in Little Rock.

The guide book came complete with addresses, so when we had cleaned up from lunch and were ready once again to rejoin the Interstate, I asked Concetta to feed the address into her iPhone and tell me how far away we might be. Sounding incredulous, Concetta said, "I don't believe it, the library is just 10 miles from here!" And that's how we picked the Clinton Library for our afternoon's adventure.

So far in our travels, Concetta and I have visited the Presidential Libraries for Gerald Ford in Michigan and Jimmy Carter in Georgia. Each of those libraries were a not-to-be-missed experience. We were so impressed by each of them that the experience easily brought us to tears at times. Though the Clinton Library did not exhibit the same awesomeness that the former two libraries possessed, it was pretty impressive in its stark modernity, its beautiful setting next to the Arkansas River, and its sort of "down home" approach to conveying the President's message. We enjoyed our visit and recommend that you stop by on one of your vacations.

When we got out of the Clinton Library it was three o'clock and the parking lot was vitually empty. At that point we had no idea where we where going to camp for the night, so we just decided to take potluck and head east on Interstate 40 to see what we could turn up. Incredibly enough, nothing much turned up and by four o'clock the only camp that showed up Concetta's iPhone sounded a little rustic. Still, it being late and yours truly having a blog to write, we took the proper offramp and headed south a mile or so to "H & G RV Camping" and pulled into the camp's entry road.

Hastening to meet us as we pulled in was a middleaged woman, and I stopped and rolled down my window. "Your name?" the woman asked?

I knew immediately that she was expecting someone who had made a reservation, and we were not that person. "We don't have a reservation," I told her.

"Ah," the woman said. "Well, are you okay with boondocking?"

I figured what she probably meant was, would I be okay with no hookups at all, so I said, "Well, we'd like to have full hookups if you have them."

"Sorry," she said. "We're all full. But I could put you up on the highway at the grandmother's house if you can make do with just water and 110-volt power."

Naturally, I asked if there were any other camps reasonably nearby, and she kinda squinted her eyes and looked in a couple of directions. Finally she said, "No, we're pretty much it."

"Well then I guess the grandmother's place will be fine," I told her.

"Follow me," she said, and she took off walking briskly toward a house about three hundred feet away across a grassy swale and up a hill to a neat red brick house. When we had proceeded slowly across the grassy swale and and rolled into the backyard of the house, the woman said, "here's fine," and we rolled to a stop.

I jumped out of the rig and helped as the woman pulled a garden hose towards us and soon we were hooked up to water. After that, I pulled out our electrical cable, attached a long extension we always carry, and once we had hooked the cord to an outlet on the house, we had lights.

When the owner of the property, Gary King, knocked on our door about six o'clock, we gave him our twenty dollars for the night and learned that it was his mother who owned the house and farm land. His father was newly deceased, so Gary was handling things for his mom. I found everyone here we had met, including Gary and his son Luke, a highschool senior, were just the nicest, most polite people you'd ever want to meet. The woman who got us the parking spot turned out to be the camp host, a job she was doing while she was in the process of moving from California and was looking for a house to buy here in Arkansas.

Yes, it's always our desire to have full hookups when possible, but we can make do with whatever we encounter. The sewer tank is half empty and we can just dump it at our next camp. The distance from the Interstate means it's as quiet here as it is in the cemetery across the street when the sun goes down. We can hear a bit of traffic noise, but not enough to complain about.

Tonight Concetta cooked up some chilli using a banana pepper and two Jalapenos from our home garden and it was great. We also had a salad with a sliced carrot and a sliced cucumber from our garden. To say that life is good is just an understatement. We're sitting here in the side yard of a neat ranch-style house, on the edge of a newly-mown field of hay, next to a dense forest of tall trees, with soft breezes gently wafting in our screened windows, and the only thing I can think to complain about is.....well, actually I can't think of a damn thing to complain about.

So, at this point I'll wish you a great evening and many happy adventures of your own. Ciao!