Southgate RV Park, Fayetteville, AR Thursday Day 35 10/13/2022

Our first walk was uneventful as we carefully negotiated the park changing directions as required to avoid confrontations with other dogs, walking their respective owners. Several RVs were in various stages of packing up ready to move on and through the course of the morning, pulled out one by one. Back at the RV, I got out the expanding ladder, again, and climbed up to look at the roof. As far as I can tell, without actually getting on the roof, it appears to be OK with no visible damage. That is a relief as roof repairs are expensive and I considered it $40.00 well spent. 

Thinking about it, I wondered why I was the one paying for the tree service when in all reality, it should be the Park owner. It is his responsibility to make sure his sites are not damaging to the RV’s parked in them, after all. Oh well, cheap price to pay for having a pretty young thing brighten up my life for a short time…Almost made me feel young again. Yeah, right. 

I got out the blower and cleaned up the mats and such in front of the RV. The leaves are falling fast, and each gust of wind brings down more of them. Fall is definitely here, and I can see the changing colors of the trees in the distance. 

I took care of some online business and then turned my attention to the blog catching up with the current events not that there is much to write about as we are in a sort of stalemate while waiting for the Jeep repair. Our life consists of walks around the park and field several times a day and the occasional trip into town. Quiet and peaceful and somewhat boring and I really wish we were moving on. I am paying for my carelessness in more ways than just money. 

Out of curiosity and probably a little bit of desperation, I called Adam, the Rep at the repair shop where the Jeep is to find out if there are any more developments. He did say that the harness was installed, and they were expecting the Jeep back in their shop for the bodywork within the next couple of days and that the proposed date of the 25^th, still looks good. That was good news, so I called Camping World to find out what arrangements they were making for Quatro and am still waiting a call back. That was 3 hours ago so it looks like I’m getting the brushoff, again. 

We went out for an afternoon walk and as we sometimes do, walked to the bottom of the field and then took the road in the residential area. A young mother pushing a stroller passed us which is not hard to do as we do not exactly break any speed records when we walk. I fully expecting her to turn right or left at the end of the street, but she continued straight on after crossing the road. I noticed what appeared to be a concrete trail leading to the woods in the distance and we followed a long way behind her. When we reached those same woods, there were other trails, some concrete and others regular dirt trails leading off in all directions. I debated as to how far we should go and decided that this was far enough for one day and turned back. 

The concrete trail brought us back to where we had started, and we turned towards the direction we walked yesterday which I knew would bring up back to the campground. Instead of walking through the subdivision, we continued up the road until we hit HWY 71B, the main road that passes the campground. Luckily, it has sidewalks as it passes through a residential area, and we headed back to the campground. We are parked about 200 feet from the main entrance and were instantly home. With this morning’s walk, we have covered 2.1 miles so far. The dogs slurped water and then quickly found their favorite sleep places and zonked off.  

Sandy puts a lot more effort into her walks with the constant sniffing of those most interesting smells, so she wanders all over the place. Mikey is a lot more conservative and joins her if she dwells in one spot for a bit. Then they both sniff at whatever smell they have found before I usually have to say, “Let’s go” sometimes with pressure on the leash to get Sandy moving. She can be a very stubborn little girl sometimes and literally digs in or sometimes, even lays down. 

Back in the RV, I grabbed a Seltzer and sat down to recount the afternoons going on while it was still fresh in my mind. I wrote for about an hour and the dogs were bugging me again, so we went out for a short walk around the park. We managed to cover 2.5 miles for the day without walking around Walmart’s. 

We ended the evening in the usual way with food all around followed by TV and a glass of wine. 

Written 10/13/2022. Read my other blogs at https://pondblog2011.com  

Southgate RV Park, Fayetteville, AR Friday Day 36 10/14/2022

I slept well with no disturbing dreams and even crawled out at a reasonable hour, for me. Our first walk was uneventful as we wandered around. There was very little activity, and we only met a couple of residents busy with the outside chores of their RV’s. Things that must be done and most of the time, routine. 

Following breakfast, I checked emails as usual and then looked for any developments around the World that I should worry about. Not that I can make any difference, but it helps to at least read and know about such things. I moved on to the blog finishing off yesterday and then starting on today. I had taken a bunch of pictures yesterday of the trail we discovered and worked on them for a bit and then prepared yesterday’s blog for posting and adding a couple of the pictures. I have been doubling up on posting the blogs per day to catch up but will revert to one a day for a bit. It is hard to not get too far ahead with the posting when I only post five out of the seven days and write a daily blog for every day. 

I decided that I needed a few things from Walmart’s and hopped in the truck for the short 3-mile trip. I have been to this Walmart’s before although, you see one, you have seen them all. The only difference is in the size of the store. This one is having large extension added to it which will make it humongous. On the way in, the Highway was blocked by an Officer on a Motorbike at one of the on ramps and then came an entourage of motorbikes and police cars all with their sirens wailing and lights flashing. Behind them, led by a bright red bus with a Razorback insignia painted on it which was followed by four more such vehicles all merging onto the highway. Only then, did the traffic continue to flow. Talk about Football being important if the team travelling away needs a police escort. Maybe they were running late, and they do have over a 1000 miles to travel They play tomorrow at 2:30 pm against Brigham Young in Provo, Utah. I hope they have shift drivers to take turns as that is a lot of driving. Wonder why they left it so late? 

I had a list for the few things that I wanted but I wandered up and down and with the exception of Women’s and Men’s attire, pretty much covered the whole store, sometimes retracing my steps as I searched for different items. What I was looking for was a USB bar with more than one port on it but had no luck in finding one. I did find the Duct Tape that I need for the Macerator Hose repair but was unable to find a Roast Chicken to add to the cart. Guess I was too early for them… 

My next stop was Starbucks which was only a few hundred yards away for the inevitable Latte. Even though, I had reconnected the Starbucks App to my new Bank account, because of the card change, I had forgotten to refill the card and ended up paying cash which I rarely do for anything. Still, the Latte was just as good as the last one which seemed like ages ago. 

Back at Quatro, the dogs helped me with the groceries as they always do and between us, we put things away with them checking everything out to give their OK before it went into the cupboard or refrigerator. Then we harnessed up and went out for a walk around the park. In my row of RV’s there was a vacant space at the end and today, it was filled by an older gentleman with a regular towable RV who appeared to be on his own. My row is for long term or permanent residents and is now full although, I am hoping to change that shortly… 

Incidentally, the temperature is dropping fast at night and the forecast for next week says they could drop as low as 28 degrees overnight. Darn, that is freezing weather… The air even during the day has a cool touch to it especially in the shade. Come on Jeep. Get fixed soon. 

Written 10/14/2022. Read my other blogs at https://pondblog2011.com