Day 3

After a meal of some great “Mississippi barbecue” last night and a good night sleep in a surprisingly comfy RV bed, we woke up this morning and were sitting outside drinking our coffee when another camper pulled up in his pickup truck and struck up a conversation. He asked about our rv, how the mirror visibility was, what kind of motor it had… you know… “rv talk”. Then he paused for a long awkward moment, looking straight ahead with his trucks motor running as we sat at our picnic table looking at him. Suddenly he turned towards us and said “Are you going to church this morning?” I’ve always been pretty quick on the draw mentally and verbally, but as I’ve gotten older, I find that I’m less prone to even filter something and more prone to just “cut to the chase”. In this case (and I kid you not) all of the following optional responses and many more “colorful” ones, ran through my mind in about three seconds: “What are you, my mom?” “That would be none of your business, pal.“ “I’m not quite drunk enough yet.” But, I could feel Lori looking at me, so I went with, “No.” He immediately drove off.  Ok, I know that we were camped squarely on the buckle of the Bible Belt, so maybe he was going to invite us to go to church with him or it was his way of seeing if we were “fellow Christians” or maybe he was doing some kind of mandatory Christian recruiting.  I certainly don’t  judge anyone for having their own religious beliefs as long as they do the same for everyone else, but this seemed like an obvious “Why aren’t you in church“,  So… I’m thinking he got off too easy.

Anyway, soon we were  packed up and on our way to our next stop…Arkansas!

A half hour into the drive I pulled into a “truck stop sized” McDonalds and Lori hopped into the drivers seat to take her turn. She insisted on driving it once around the parking lot first, to get the feel of it and then she did an awesome job driving us for the next 3 hours, all the way to “Where the hell are we” Arkansas (My wife is awesome!) even with me… navigating? The question mark is not a typo.

I don’t know about the rest of you couples, but Lori and I have a great system. One drives and the other navigates. I know that leads to a lot of arguments for some people, but it has worked really well for Lori and I for 20 years now. Never any problem.  Today, I had the simple task of putting in our destination and repeating the directions so Lori could hear them over Thor’s Mighty Roar. Simple. Except an hour past the Mississippi River I realized that I had absentmindedly clicked on the “over helpful spellchecks” suggestion of Harrisburg instead of Harrison, Arkansas. As it turns out, even in Arkansas those are different places, however, luckily for me, the directions to these cities were identical, up to the point in our trip that I figured out that I had screwed up.

Despite my apparent inability to read, we are finally at the end of our six hour journey and set up at a great campground in the “right Harris”. When we checked in, we found out that the park is owned by a really nice couple who just moved from the same place that we’re heading to…Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s a big country, but a “small world”.

Tomorrow, we find out more about Lori’s Arkansas family tree!