Mammoth Goes Birding…and stuff, Day 2

Wednesday April 9

Sunny and warmer. A little windy. Passed about 20 RVs, 1 roadside hawk

Today was an exciting—and short—drive through Little Rock to West Memphis, where we stopped at the KOA on I-55 a little bit north of I-40. It was over half empty when we arrived at 2:30 or so, but filled up at the end of the day, so it must be a good spot for overnighters like us.  It turned out to work very well for us, and would have worked better if the dog playground hadn’t been flooded recently and was too muddy to be usable.

 

But, as is usual with private campgrounds, there was no place to take a really long dog walk or go for a jog. We tried to to the road out front, but it was the feeder to the Interstate and had no shoulders and was too scary. So we just walked round and round the campground. Not pleasant. 

There were big cottonwood trees around the campground, but outside that just flat and muddy farm land. There were small flocks of very noisy geese going over but that’s about all in the birding arena. I expect the migrating songbirds stick to the tall trees in Crowley’s Ridge, about 30 miles west of where we were.  We’ve camped there but not during migration.

But it was convenient and next day will be better. I forgot to explain at the beginning that my original plans for this trip had been cratered three times already, with a fourth time to come. My original destination for the day was Tom Sawyer’s RV Park on the Mississippi River.  But they’d called me a week earlier to cancel—flooding had the campground closed. My stop for the following day was supposed to have been Lock A Campground in Tennessee near Nashville. It had been cancelled due to flooding and storm damage all over the centers of Tennessee and Kentucky. Luckily, I found a state park in Tennessee that was okay and rebooked before we set out. And my stop for the day after that was the renowned Nolin Lake State Park in Kentucky. Guess what?

The fourth cancellation happened on the return trip, in Oklahoma. Our campsite was under water.  A nice lady from the COE called me and said if I wanted to change she could find me another site, but I chose to take a shorter route and just let her cancel it.

dog park

REVIEW: Memphis KOA Journey

Decent overnight or two-day at I-40/I-55 junction

Typical KOA on a flat prairie field with big cottonwoods, but so immaculately kept up it could be called charming. They’d had flooding a few days earlier, so there was a good bit of mud spotting left on the grass, but I can’t blame them for that. It would be all clean and lovely again in a day or two.

It was half empty when we arrived at 2:30 or so, but did fill up very much at end of day. Quietly, of course, for a mid-week in April. The highway noise is pretty much constant but not overwhelmingly loud. It’s the price you pay for convenience.

We got one of the midpriced pull-thru sites, and it was plenty long for our 35’ MH and toad without unhooking. The sites were closely set side by side, of course—that’s almost the rule with KOAs.  They did tack on a $5 pet fee, which I found a little disconcerting. I’d never experienced that before at a KOA. Plus, we couldn’t use the doggie playground due to mud left over from the flooding.  But they did have a couple of pet walking areas with doggy bags—did our $5 pay for doggie bags?

 They also had a pretty nice pool (9’ at one end); a playground; dinner and breakfast sales (dinner by pre-order, breakfast in the diner); store and laundry. We didn’t use any of these features, though.  And the checkin people were very nice.