Follow Us In Our Travels

12/05/12, Wednesday: We are now in Arkansas, Central Time zone, at the Downtown Riverside RV Park, North Little Rock. It's a small campground which accepts Passport America, so we are only playing $23.10 for two nights, full hookups. It’s on the bank of the Arkansas River. We’re third row back, but we can still see if there’s barges going through. We checked in last night, leaving tomorrow, heading toward Hot Springs.

Today we walked across the pedestrian/bike bridge which is an old railroad bridge that has been changed to a pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River. I wanted to get to the Peabody Hotel before 11:00 to see the “famous” Peabody Ducks. The ducks come down the elevator every morning at 11 with the “Duckmaster”, walk the red carpet to the marble fountain to the tune of John Philip Sousa’s King Cotton March, climb in and spend the day in the fountain. At 5 they get out, walk the red carpet back to the elevator and go back up to their “home”.  It was fun to see this. After that we walked through the River Market section on the banks of the river and did some caching. President Clinton’s presidential library is in this area. Also Heifer International, whose mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the Earth.

11/29: Cedars of Lebanon State Park near Nashville, TN. This is about 25 miles from Nashville, but thought it would work better staying here and then driving in to town with the Jeep. When we were in Knoxville we had parked at a Walmart overnight, which was too close to town and Curt wasn’t comfortable driving there or being there. This is a nice state park, about 8 miles from the town of Lebanon, just a little way off of the highway, but it’s very peaceful there. One of the better roads we’ve been on going to a state park lately. While we were getting set up, we (I should say I) was met by a cat sitting near by. She was kind of shy, but came over while I was talking to her. I could tell she was tame. As soon as I started petting her, she started purring. Oh, I miss cats. But it would be so hard to have a litterbox in the little space we have. I’ll just enjoy those I find along the way, including Korene’s and Dean’s. One of the neighbors in the campground said someone had dumped her off and people have been feeding her and trying to get someone to take her home. I had a leftover hamburger that I gave her and she gobbled it down.

Friday we drove to Nashville. We drove around a couple of blocks trying to find parking near the visitor center down town, which is part of the Bridgestone Arena (hockey area).  Finally found an empty parking meter. We got some city maps and had the option of either feeding parking meters or going in a church parking lot for $7 for the day. Since we had no idea how long it would take us downtown, we chose the $7. As it was though, it would have been cheaper for us to feed the meter, but we didn’t have to rush this way either. We walked along blocks of country music and bars and restaurants. The Ryman theater is downtown, the Country Music Hall of Fame museum. They’re building a Music City Center downtown; it’s going to be a huge, fancy building. The amount of money spent on the buildings downtown is unbelievable. After that we went to find the Grand Ole’ Opry. Supposedly free to see it, and all decorated for Christmas. There’s a large mall by it, called Opry Mills. Well, it is closed to tours until February because of the Christmas shows that the Rockettes are putting on there. We couldn’t even peek inside the theater part, just the ticket stands and gift area.  Okay, so much for that idea. From there we went to see the Parthenon. It is a replica of the building in Greece (I have no idea why it is in Nashville).  This, we were told, was free also. Nope, only if you’re a member. By that time Curt had a headache and wasn’t really enjoying driving around any more, we decided to go back to the campground and enjoy that instead.