Arkansas - Days 25-27 - North Little Rock

Downtown Riverside RV Park
Wednesday, 25 and Thursday, 26 and Friday, 27 March 2020

my route on Thursday

We had a variety of weather while I was here, but the wind never stopped blowing.  It reminded me often of being at the coast.  The wind here felt just the same strength as the wind at the seashore does.

Wednesday was sunny and warm - like up in the low 80s warm.  By Friday it was still warm but I couldn't feel it because the wind seemed to suck out the warmth and it was overcast most of the day so we couldn't get direct sun.  I'd heard that a severe storm system was moving eastward from the Plains states, and that Oklahoma had gotten softball-size hail.  I got lucky and didn't get weather anything that bad.

This campground sits directly on the north shore of the Arkansas River, which is obviously carrying a LOT of water southeast.  It's very near Riverfront Park, where there's a submarine that can be toured and a sculpture for peace and hope.

Beacon of Peace and Hope

the irony is that the mural (background) is really
(though likely unconsciously) racist; it's an old mural
but was refurbished as recently as 2001

Riverside Park is part of the Arkansas River Trail, which is a 14-mile loop along the river in North Little Rock, across the river on a pedestrian bridge, along the river in Little Rock, and back across the river on a different pedestrian bridge.  The cities have repurposed old railroad bridges into pedestrian bridges and now boast of being the only place in the country with 4 of them.

The one that goes directly to the Clinton Presidential Library from North Little Rock was immediately next to our campground, so I saw that it was lit with colored lights at night.

the bridge in the daytime

the bridge at dawn

I waited too late to take the photo at right and the daylight was already happening.  Those green lights alternate intermittently with purple lights and the colors can be intense during the darkness.

I determined to get a photo while it was still dark, only to learn on Saturday morning that the lights were occasionally red.  They'd been green for the previous 3 nights we'd been there, but I guess weekends are special.

I wanted to walk the dogs along at least part of the trail but was afraid to.  The first time I took them out of the RV park for a walk along the river, a jogger ran by with her dog, and shortly I saw them going across the bridge.  After that I was sure with my luck we'd meet one or more dogs if we tried it and end up with a mess.  My poor dogs have no idea how many wonderful things they aren't getting to do because of their personalities.  It's really frustrating and really sad.

Not that there weren't lots of dogs in the RV park, too.  But the other owners weren't any more interested than I was in engineering a meeting, so we all managed to stay apart.

Between the RV park and Riverside Park is a quarter-mile-long area that's not developed - it's almost a mess, in fact - but lots of locals go there to fish in the river or just sit in their cars and watch the river flow by.  So we mostly walked along that area, while I tried to keep Dexter from eating poop from the resident Canada Geese. 

Speaking of Canadians, my first night here the campground was completely filled with a large group of Canadians.  They were part of a group of RVers who'd been traveling in the US and caught by the coronavirus problem.  They told me they'd been ordered to go back to Canada (though I wasn't sure if it was the US or Canada doing the ordering).  They seemed to be just fine with going back, though, since Canada started taking reasonable precautions long before the US did, and since Canada's got a better health care system for this sort of thing.  They were all gone by 10:00 the next morning.  Wonder how much trouble they'll have at the border.

This was a weird campground in several ways.  There were a few small grassy areas at one end and between the campsites and the river.  Otherwise it was all concrete and gravel.  I would have appreciated it more in a heavy rain (no mud) than in the bright sunshine.  There was a constant high level of noise from the bridge taking I-30 across the river.  It was just a few blocks from the RV park.

This photo shows the one grassy area in the campground, the I-30 bridge, and the Little Rock skyline.  You can see how close the bridge is.

The campground had no picnic tables and no fire rings.  All the electrical outlets were 50 amp and I was very thankful I already had an adapter for my 30 amp RV.  There was a metal security fence surrounding the campground everywhere except along the river.  Since that hiking trail wrapped around it, I can understand the need for security, but it still felt prison-like, what with all that concrete and all.

And then I discovered the reason their shower rooms had a closed sign on them.  I'd thought maybe they were closed for cleaning or for a plumbing problem, but when they stayed that way for a couple of days I finally called the office (the only way to contact them since their door stayed locked due to the virus) and asked.  She said the owner had told her either close the bathrooms or close the campground.  When I pointed out that nobody had said anything to me about that at any point before I actually came there, she said well, everybody has a shower in their RV and we provide the water and the sewer connections so it shouldn't be a problem.  But my shower is nonfunctional because of housing Lily's litter box and I told her so (leaving out the bit about the box) and she offered to let me find some other place to go and give me a refund for my remaining time.  Instead, I negotiated a reduced rate for my remaining time there, which she didn't like but agreed to - well, I didn't like having so few of the amenities most campgrounds routinely provide either.

So I was left to cobble together cleanliness efforts - wash my hair in the kitchen sink, take a sponge bath in the bathroom - all in cold water because I turned my water heater off 2 years ago and didn't want to try turning it on now.  Good thing it was 80° outside.

And to top things off, I started seeing ants inside the RV.  First time since last fall.  This time, though, I took it seriously and tackled them from the get-go.  I had several boxes of ant traps I'd bought last fall but didn't use because they seemed to be hibernating, so I pulled them out and put them in all the places I'd put them last year.  And I cleaned all the surfaces in the kitchen more thoroughly than usual because I'd learned that ant think even a coffee ground is food.  And of course I killed every ant I saw.  I go out of my way to keep from hurting them outside, which I figured is their territory as much as mine.  But inside is a different story because it's my territory and I get to say who comes in and who doesn't.

Actually, that might not have been the topper, because on my last day or so here, I started getting surrounded by swarms of bugs that I decided must be termites.  Despite the constant wind, they seemed to like hanging around my RV - especially the doorway - and I had to be careful not to let them in when the dogs and I came back from a walk.  Now that I've looked them up, I'm thinking they might actually have been flying ants - which is almost worse.  It seems all ant colonies grow variant ants that, unlike the workers, have reproductive capability, and when the time is right to expand the colony, these variants sprout wings and fly off looking for a mate.  They congregate in swarms for protection.  Which is all interesting but doesn't make my life any more pleasant.  I still have that messed up screen door, and I tried to renew the tape holding the pieces of torn screen together, but the constant strong wind made it impossible.  I finally closed the door and turned on the AC.  A shame to waste that nice breeze.

Purple Martin

On a brighter note, the campground's put up several birdhouses, and it looks like a batch of Purple Martins have moved in to nest.  I was unsure of what they were because I couldn't see any purple on them at all, but the bird book says they just look purple in some kinds of light and are really black - which is what I was seeing.

House Finch

And once when I was out with the dogs I saw a sparrow-type bird that had a lot of red on its chest.  Something like in this internet photo.  It was perched pretty high up so I couldn't see it well, and I didn't see red on its head and did see more red on its chest, but I still think this is what I saw - a House Finch.  They nest in this part of the country.

And I saw a pair of Bluebirds out along the riverside, so I guess they're looking for a place to nest.  This is a nice time of year.

On Thursday we went out for a few hours of doing errands in North Little Rock.  I'd intended also to do some sightseeing in Little Rock but decided to hold off a day or two.  If I followed my original plan, I'd be spending all day running around from place to place and be really tired and not be able to spend any time at all on catching up my blog posts, which I was trying hard to do.  When I got here I was 10 days behind, thanks to so many days with no wifi signal.

So instead I went to a Kroger (surprisingly little choice in grocery stores in this populous area) and several liquor stores (terrible selection for some reason), stopping a couple of times at schools to walk the dogs.  I saw online that Arkansas had finally (this is Trump country, after all) closed all its schools so knew we could find parking lots to walk in without people around. 

At North Little Rock High School, the parking lot was edged by some kind of holly relative that was blooming,  The flowers were so tiny I could hardly see them, but I could smell them and so could the bees.  They were all over those plants, even to the point of mostly ignoring the equally sweet-smelling redbuds nearby.

I passed a redbud in one front yard that was covered in beautiful blooms.  It was also covered in Easter eggs that the family had hung from every branch.  There must have been 50 of them on this one smallish redbud.  It was really cheerful.

And the azaleas were blazing away, clashing with the redbuds for a riot of color.

Along one street I saw flashing yellow lights and a sign that said, "Speed Limit 30 MPH.  No Tolerance."  Never seen that one before, but it made me check my speed.

I saw 4 male Mallards and 1 female.  Two of the males started fighting each other while the other 2 kept walking after the female who was walking away.  It's that time of year.  But why weren't there more females around?

When I got back to the campground, I decided I'd wait until Saturday and drive around Little Rock then to see the places I wanted to see.  Of course, I'd wanted to go into the Clinton Presidential Library and the Museum for Little Rock Central High School, but both are closed for the virus so I didn't have to check their operating hours.  My drive back to Harrison is only a few hours, so I figured I'd just stay in the campground and try to finish as much of my blog posts as I could while I was on level ground and had a strong wifi signal.