Sunday, November 15, 2015

Mississippi to Home

While driving through Arkansas I remembered that a long time family friend had moved to Alma, Arkansas.  After checking her address we found she only lived 2 miles off the Highway where we planned to stop for the night.  Our timing was great.  When I called to see if she could meet us for dinner she insisted we come to her house for dinner because she already had a turkey baking in the oven with all the fixings.  It was good to see her and she was excited to see us.  Since we were running a little ahead of schedule we decided to hang around for a few hours the next day to see some of the sights.

Fort Smith

Alma calls itself the "Spinach Capital of the World". The local canning company has canned more than half of all the spinach canned in the US, about 60 million pounds annually.
Popeye Park

After Nancy took us sight seeing, she took us back to her house for turkey sandwiches.

With our route taking us back through the Oklahoma City area we wanted to have dinner with Mary again.  I called, I emailed, I texted and I messaged for a couple of days but no answer.  We were now only a few hours away when I called one last time.  Turns out after we visited her in mid October she had to have an unexpected surgery and was now in a care facility recovering.  Her sister had just brought her phone to her.  She was up for company but let me know that the football game would be starting when we got there.


While crossing through Albuquerque we made contact with Dave's cousin John.  Had dinner with him and his wife Lynn. The last time they had seen each other they were both 15.  42 years ago.   Too many years to get caught up over one dinner. Talks of a possible family reunion were mentioned.

Enchiladas with egg are their specialty

We attended RIVCO a 4 day square dance festival.  It was good to see lots of familiar faces.

All good things must come to an end.
We saw lots of beautiful sights and met lots of nice people.

We were gone 94 nights
Took 5,783 pictures
Drove 6,031 Motorhome miles
and 3,631 Jeep miles
We really like the lower diesel prices
 Highest Murrieta CA  @ 2.49
        Cheapest Paris TX  @  1.97
We found a Precious Moments, a  tye dyed t-shirt, an Original Red Dirt t-shirt as seen on Dirty Jobs, and lots of new Off Road Maps that we just couldn't live without.

Upon arriving home our new License plate was waiting for us
 A BIG Thanks to our wonderful neighbor Gregg for looking after things at home making it much easier for us to be gone.