It's a relatively short drive from Little Rock, so we expected this to be an easy day. Not!! Traffic, particularly truck traffic, was heavy, and construction had constricted traffic to a single lane. It is a form of punishment to have to follow an ice cream truck through 0-20 mph traffic while staring at depictions of butter pecan and almond fudge. A trip that should have taken about an hour and a half wound up taking nearly four hours.
We finally made it to our destination: Tom Sawyer's Mississippi River RV Park. It advertises that it is "so close to the Mississippi River that sometimes we're in it". That was the case six years ago when we tried to stay here and we received a call a few miles out telling us that they were flooded.
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Even the office is on wheels so it can be easily towed out when necessary.
This photo of a barge headed up the Mississippi was taken from our door.
Some of these consists are real monsters. This one was four barges wide and seven deep. The tug had three engines, each directly connected to a propeller. Each engine is equivalent to the engine on a railroad locomotive.
We had not been here long before there was a knock at the door. We were surprised, and pleased to find our Illinois friends, Bob and Charlene. They had stopped by on their way back home. They had no idea we were here, but wound up parked behind us. A really fun coincidence.
The next day, it was on to attempt a little genealogical research into Ted's family. We were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the roads.
Our first stop was at the Cross County Historical Society. There were some cute displays, such as this one of the turn of the century country store, but not much help for out family history.
The next stop was the Poinsett County Courthouse. It was cool looking, but the original courthouse had burned in 1872, twelve years after we had our last account of Ted's Great-Great Grandfather. The few records that survived were not relevant. Bummer.
At least Ted got to see the countryside of Breshelake Township where his ancestors lived during the mid-19th century.
On the way back, we stopped by a cemetery where some of Penny'sbeloved ex-mother-in-law's family is buried.
It was rather a sad little place. There had been no recent burials, and many of the headstones were broken or had fallen over. Too bad that many of these little pioneer cemeteries have fallen into such disrepair.
We discovered that many of the trucks that were trying to avoid the construction on I-40 had taken this little side road. Too bad we hadn't known about it a couple of days earlier.
Seeing the moon-shine on the river, we couldn't help thinking of Ike and Tina Turner's Proud Mary. "Mississippi Moon keep on shinin' on me"
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