Magnus Moves! Massachusetts and back

Tuesday, July 9

So begins our longest jaunt to date, a 24-day excursion to Edward's house in Massachusetts and also to Cape Cod, to see the ocean birds.  We were overly excited to finally be traveling again after Motorhome Specialist Repair Shop having kept our Magnus idle for two months for no good reason. We cancelled a trip and rescheduled another in order to let them sit on their useless butts pretending they were working on the warranty problems. In the end, they fixed about a third of them.

We finally got so disgusted at their refusal to give us an estimated pick-up date, that we gave them our own ultimatum. Politely.  We simply said we needed to pick it up on July 3, and asked what they could get done by then.  Everything else would be submitted directly to the manufacturer and we'd arrange our own repairs.

It appears that something as simple as asking the service tech to itemize work done required them to stop all work and pull it out of the shop. And of course they weren't going to do anything else at that point. So fine--we picked it up on Monday July 1 (I think) and headed home. 

So, after such a long (and unnecessary) hiatus from camping, we were happy to be on the road.  We headed out early Tuesday morning for Lake Catherine State Park in Arkansas.  The weather was nice; a cold front had come through and dropped the temperature from the upper 90s to the lower 90s.

 

 

 

 

 

The campsite at Lake Catherine State Park was nice, but not nearly as nice as I expected. Roomy, lakeside, pretty...and with a scenic view of the powerplant directly across the lake.  Unlike our last experience of "power plant camping", this one wasn't very loud. We could only hear a slight humming coming across the water.  The lights were pretty, but pretty annoying, too.

The power plant

 

It wasn't super crowded--on a Tuesday, after all--but the trails were very popular. Our campsite was within a few hundred feet of the trailheads of three trails. Molly and I took the "red loop" toward the waterfall, but we ran out of time before we got there. We did get to cross this cool hanging bridge--

 

Lucky we turned back when we did. The plan was to eat at Fisherman's Wharf in Hot Springs, and their parking lot was jammed full with a constant stream of cars circling around looking for a space. After we gave up squeezing around in the overflow parking, we took a final circle through the main parking lot and--wow--right in front of us--a man and woman were heading toward their truck, drink cups in hand. We waited, which is something I never would have done in an earlier life, in the parking lot with our turn signal on.

A few frustrated people went around us, but the man and woman finally got in their truck and backed out. And so we had it!

Very good food but not as good as I remembered. Expensive. Will do again if we're in the area.

 



Molly and I didn't get much of an evening walk. It was getting dark and there were too many deer, some mysterious animal rustling up in the trees, and then a couple of people walking their pack of dogs. She was driving me crazy and so I ended it short.

Tomorrow we'll be on the road again, to a park near Memphis. Should be great.