Friday, April 30, 2010 – Travel Day to Devil’s Den State Park, AR

Set the alarm for 7:00, packed up, cleaned up and dumped by just after 9:00. Headed out looking for someplace for breakfast, and ended up not finding one until it was past breakfast time. Had to go to a McDonalds (our least favorite fast food), where we ended up having burgers at just after 11:00. It seems Subway has a lock on all the gas stations chains throughout this section of I-40, and I REFUSE to eat what they call breakfast at Subway! Stopped once at Camping World to try to pick up a new electrical cord (our old one has a weak spot in the middle), but they didn’t have it (what else is new, they never seem to have what we need at CW). Found a Wal-mart with gas, so we killed two birds with one stone, got our shopping done, and headed toward ever-darkening skies. We had put the tarp on last night, but it was flapping away, and the net we had put on top of that gave up the ghost and flew off irretrievably far back on the freeway. We did our best to secure it, but we ended up deciding to just take it off and hope for the best. We did run into some rain, but these bales are packed pretty tightly, and it was supposed to be sunny the next day, so we figured it would be safer without the tarp. SO glad I confirmed with the park which way to enter. The first exit was obviously closer, but was SO full of switchbacks, sharp turns and a dramatic drop off on the edge of a crumbling road, we never would have made it with our rig. And actually, the horse camp is on the north side of the park anyway, so it was a bit closer taking the second exit. It was still a steep hill down, but the road wasn’t anywhere near as narrow or curvy. I did smell my brakes burning by the time I got to the bottom, though! The horse camp is down a gravel road just a short ways, there’s a single loop with sites inside and out, all with water and electric, mostly level. We decided later, though, we prefer being on top of a mountain rather than in a hollow below it. It was fairly muddy with the rain, but we managed to fine one spot where we could highline the horses where it wasn’t too bad. Settled in later than we had hoped, by around 6 pm.