This year’s trip will be so mild and tame after Alaska. I am not even sure if there are any wild animals to be on the look out. Hmm, should probably look into that. I am sure there are snakes and birds and deer–all your typical animals. In Utah there should be wild horses somewhere and bison somewhere. We shall see.

Earlier this week I hurt my foot which had me out of commission for a few days. Of course there was nothing wrong per the ER and foot doctor and two days of rest I was good as new. No clue what happened but I was in excruciating pain for two days and then it stopped. Though I had no problem sitting around with my foot up doing nothing, it did prevent me from “getting” things ready for our trip. Normally we leave the night before we plan to get a few hours into our trip. This time we stuck to the plan to leave in the morning. As we finally pulled out of the driveway at 9:00 am there was a big clunk sound and John couldn’t move forward. Seems the spring on the axle broke and we could only back up and because the trailer was now sitting lower, we scraped the tire as we backed off the road. Not a good start–but it could have been worse. We could have been on the road driving 65 mph when this happened and who knows what that would have meant. Not to mention working on the camper on the side of the road, trying to find parts. OMG! That would have been so much worse. John was smart enough to buy 2 springs to replace both–so it didn’t happen on the other side. He also changed both tires and we finally pulled out at 5:00 PM.

We spent out first night at a Cracker Barrel in Meridian, MS. We arrived about 8:15 and had dinner there and retreated to the back lot to spend the night. We try to have dinner there because we generally leave before they open in the morning. Which is exactly what we did. If they opened at 6:00 am like a good breakfast restaurant should we would just have breakfast before heading out. It’s the least we can do for a nice quiet “free” night of camping.

We headed out toward Shreveport, LA and then north to Murfreesboro, AR to Crator of Diamonds State Park. We arrived about 4:00 PM and thought we were going to head over to the park to look for diamonds but that section of the park closes at 4:00. Our only option was to tour the town, relax at the campsite and we will head over in the morning for about an hour before we leave. We are staying at Murfreesboro RV Park. Our site is awesome. This place is so nice. Very spacious sites, level lots, picnic table, some shade and a firepit. You are going to have to wait for my next post to find out how we did in the diamond field. Don’t hold your breath.

On our little tour we discovered Narrows Dam about 5 miles outside the city. Thought we should check it out so we can compare it to Hoover Dam when we get out there.