All shook up

I write this from the banks of the Mississippi River, in West Memphis, Arkansas. It seems that it's taken us a while to get here, just over a week, but it has all been a good time! After driving away from my mom's house in suburban Philly, PA, we drove down south, out of the snow and spent the night in Lexington, VA. This is the home to Washington and Lee University, nestled between two mountain ranges, the names of them escape me right now. On the way there we watched the snow disappear until a nice bit of rain took over the highway and obscured our view of any scenery. Using our "Healthy Highways" book we found a sweet local co-op in Lexington where we stocked up on some food for the next few days. Our first RV park was actually attached to a truck stop, quite noisy and we have learned a lesson not to visit a truck stop/combo RV park again! It rained all night and the next morning, giving the inside of the van a nice cake of red mud from the dogs and our shoes!
  We continued on our way to our next stay in Fletcher, NC which is close to Asheville. We met some really nice people living in the campground, a family with a 3 year old and 7 month old. Sorrel and Parula quickly made friends with Mick, the 3 year old, and played with him in the giant sandbox/playground for many hours during our two day stay there. We checked out downtown Asheville, which is very "local business" oriented and very vegetarian/vegan happy, which we liked. We ate a late lunch at a great vegetarian spot called the "Green Light Cafe". The next morning we got off to a bit of a slow start and had lunch with my friend Chris and his wife Lea in Asheville. I met Chris on a NOLS course in Wyoming in 1999 and we both lived in AZ at the same time for a while and went on several (epic?) backpacking trips which included some altitude sickness, wolf carnage, life-threatening flash floods and scarily close lightening strikes. Yipes! It was great to see them and hear how much they love Asheville and take advantage of all the mountains have to offer. It definitely seems like a nice place, but being in the midst of all this land makes me yearn to be closer the the ocean!
     I met a really nice man at the RV campground in Fletcher, as he and his wife were departing. He told me that he and his family (he is currently a retired doctor) packed up a VW pop-top bus and drove from NY to Alaska and back when his daughter was just one year old. He told me it was a great time and was happy to see us on our travels, reminding him of his trip long ago. It is great to hear stories from all different kinds of people along our travels, I am quickly realizing that the RV travelers have a lot of travel bug in them, which James and I both have been infected but have just started exploring as a family!
   Our next stop was Nashville, TN. We were aware that the forecast was calling for rain, so decided to do a night in a hotel. Once I actually saw what the weather was calling for I was very glad we chose a solid roof over our heads. Apparently the Tennessee valley was in a severe weather warning (including where we were currently located), severe thunderstorms that could lead to tornadoes were a strong likely-hood. Even though I missed the van for the night, I sure was glad that we were snug in a big building for the night!
    We departed a bit late this morning due to some laundry mis-haps at the hotel, but avoided more storms and downpours by leaving mid day as well. With new wiper blades on the van we got back on I-40 for as long as we could handle it, for about 5 hours, which got us to West Memphis, Arkansas. We found the Tom Sawyer RV park on the internet with little hope that we were going to find anything between Memphis, TN and Little Rock, AR (apparently nothing comes up between these cities, and looking at the map there isn't much going on around those parts!). This RV park is quite a hidden little gem. We drove through some broken-down neighborhoods, industry, over the railroad tracks and back a bumpy windy dirt road, out into the plain on the banks of the Mississippi. I heard tree frogs earlier this evening, a sound I won't even think about hearing until May in Maine, and Sorrel was very excited to see a barge going up the river shortly after we arrived. Tomorrow I am curious to see what Arkansas has to offer, I have never been here before, only heard a few things about Texarkana (which appears to be a cross between Texas, Arkansas, and Louisianna). I only remember seeing roadsigns pointing to its direction when in Northern Louisianna a few years ago for a wedding....
       Arkansas's modo is "the Nature State", of which I was unaware of before today, so I am very curious to see the "Nature State" via I-40 and maybe some more camping here tomorrow!