Mammoth moves to MIssouri, Days 2 and 3

10/19 - Still in Arkansas

Quiet day with Ed's Mom. After breakfast I took Molly for a long walk down the logging trail. No birds at all except a junco. Then I left Ed still gabbing about the RV site with his brother and went up the hill to work on Christmas stockings for my grand-kiddos. And that's about it for the whole day.


10/20
Ed's mom's house to Bennett Spring State Park, Missouri
Approximate drive time: 4:15

We went through Huntsville, with a quick stop at Walmart, then east on 412 to 65 north; through Branson and Springfield, then I-44 over to Lebanon where we got gas with difficulty. There were plenty of places but there were issues with all of them. We finally ended up at a car fill-up place that only had diesel on one pump. But it worked.

First impressions of Bennett Spring State Park.  Lovely place. Decent sites and very clean. Only 30-amp electricity but there's a whole lot of shade up there. We were in campground 2, which was up a very steep incline from the entrance gate and campground 1, by the creek. Campground 1 seems very nice, but I wouldn't care to camp there. It's probably crowded year-round. And probably noisy.

Our site has no view or anything, but the woods are very open and I can see a long way through the trees. Just at dusk I took Molly for a long walk and she got to see deer, not including the one that one I saw--and that saw me--but she never scented it. She saw plenty of squirrels. Only birds were chickadees, blue jays, titmice, white-breasted nuthatch, and lots of black vultures down by the creek. Molly really wants to chase those big black birds.

Our site is a pull though and it's extremely long.And extremely unlevel site-to-side. The people next to us have voices that carry, but they're not really all that loud or obnoxious. Just talking, talking talking. We have the windows open--it's not warm enough for air conditioning or cool enough for heat. So, perfect.

Mammoth Goes To Missouri

 Monday, October 18 2021

Home to Ed's Mother's RV Site
Planned drive time: 5:40
Actual: 5:37

Headed out to our own private RV park in Arkansas. We made exceptionally good time--in fact, the trip went so fast I began to believe that old age had crept up on my sense of time passing and sped it up into infinity. But it really was a fast trip.

We didn't take the pig trail, of course, in the Mammoth Motorhome. The pig trail is what the natives call Highway 23 going north from I-40 through the Ozark mountains. It's the shortest route to Ed's Mom's house, and we've take it innumerable times over the years. But it has two sections of "very crooked and steep" which include 20 mile-per-hour turns going downhill and uphill at excessive degrees of inclination. And there are two complete 180-degree turns at 10 miles per hour.

If you're not in a hurry, it's not all that bad, but it's not what you want to be doing in a 32-foot motorhome with a jeep on the tow bar. So we chose a route that took us up I-49 to the southern edge of Fayetteville; then back "down" to the southeast on Highway 16. So instead of going northeast, then north, we went north, then southeast. And it didn't take all that much longer.

The spot that Ed and Bill cleared back during the summer has been leveled and graveled. The turn-in was widened and they graveled a loop to make it a pull-through site. Excellent. When we were parked and leveled, only one wheel was off the ground.

  Out the front windshield:

No fall colors yet, but there was a bit of nip in the air. Very pleasant drive.

They eat "supper" in the mid-afternoon there, so we didn't have to eat our dinner meal with them. After we got settled in we went up to the house and ate their leftover chicken and rice. They don't seem to believe in vegetables, but Ed scrounged a can of ranch-style beans and I had my store-bought salad and instant noodles with stir-fried vegetables. Excellent.

And that was about all for the day. Molly got a nice walk up and down the "logging road", which is where they built the RV site. Ed's Mom's house is halfway up a big hill (you can call it a mountain, if you want to, but I wouldn't However it is a very big hill). But she owns the property all the way down the hill to an old road they used to take to cut lumber for fireplaces. On the other side of the road is a creek.

I should have taken my game cam. If not at the site itself, I could definitely have hooked it on a tree pointing toward the road and creek. Might have caught a bear.

Escape from the nuthouse

 Educated
by Tara Westover


Wow. I didn't know what I was getting into here. The girl grew up with a manic-depressive psychopath for a father; a weak-willed but intelligent mother; and three or four older brothers who shared the general lunacy of growing up in a nuthouse. Among his many absurd paranoia, the father didn't believe in doctors or hospitals. When his kids were severely injured--or he, himself--he expected his wife to fix them up with her homeopathic home remedies. Oddly enough, they mostly survived.

This memoir is chapter after chapter of disaster, and nearly impossible to stop reading once you've started. The story of a girl growing up in a 24x7 train wreck. There is a lot of stomach-churning abuse here, meted out by an older brother who is alternately nurturing and torturing.  It's pretty sick stuff, but told in a matter-of-fact voice that lets you get through the humiliation and pain quickly.

The title, Educated, reveals how she might--possibly--escape from the insane asylum. One of her brothers goes to college, and somehow, after no formal schooling and very little home schooling, she decides to do so, too. You have to love her. She's smart, but so very ignorant. She knows nothing of the world--no history, geography, mathematics beyond simple arithmetic, literature, philosophy. Is this even possible?

When you read it, you'll see.

Lots of labels: YA + historical + fiction

 The Downstairs Girl

by Stacey Lee

Very unusual and entertaining story of a young girl living with her uncle (or some older relative) in a cellar under a newspaper office. No one knows they're there, and no one must ever know, because they are Asian in a time and place when Asians are not welcome. San Francisco, maybe?  I don't remember exactly where. The time was the turn of the century.

It's hard to tell any more without spoilers, but I'll say only that it was just scary enough to be realistic but not so much to keep it away from a younger audience. I, of course, am way out of the target audience age, but still I enjoyed it very much. The author had a clever turn of plotting and a decent facility at creating characters I really wanted to spend time with. And that says it.

Humor AND travel guide

 Florida Authentica: Your field guide to the unique, eccentric, and natural marvels of the real Sunshine State

by Ron Wiggins
    

Contains some really funny descriptions, as in hilarious. I hate to quote any because they may not be so funny out of context and that might spoil the joke for you. Here's a couple I think safe to use:

[regarding one of those magical mystery tourist traps, where balls roll uphill] If you don't believe me and Tyler, take a spirit level to Spook Hill and see for yourself. And if your spirit level tells you you're rolling backward uphill, it's lying. Have it exorcised.

[regarding an amusement park ride] "Kind of reminds me of what I had for breakfast," I said

The first half of this book describes the natural areas. Parks, swamps, and marshes. Absolutely great for my purposes, which is to find places to go. I can only hope I enjoy them as much as he did. The second half goes more pedestrian, with food, landmarks, and other human history attractions. Also good and also very funny, but less valuable to my research.

Gardening Roots, fall on the calendar

We're in the pause season--that interlude between summer and fall when the grass is still green, the leaves are still on the trees, and the cooler air lends an expectation of winter. It feels chilly, but it really isn't.

My garden is still full of zinnias. A couple of years ago, I planted the accumulation of zinnia seed packets we had in the stash. Most were three years old at the time, but they didn't care--they came up in droves. Then reseeded themselves and took over my tomato and root vegetable beds. I've collected a lot of seeds and will collect more before the frost knocks them down, and next year I'll replant them somewhere else. They're beautiful and they attract tons of butterflies, but they're preventing me from getting my fall cleanup work done. It's the old "flower vs. weed" question.

 

and they are much beloved

My fall garden, what little there is --

Turnip greens

 In the very back is a bit of Speckled Bibb lettuce. Of all the lettuce seed I planted, that may be all I get.

 Probably Daikon radishes

And no picture, but a bunch of green onions coming up where the onions I planted last year failed to thrive. I guess they were waiting for colder weather?

Reading #2 first in the Zoe Chambers Mysteries

Lost Legacy
by Annette Dashofy
    

I sort-of liked this. In many ways, I liked it very much--the lead character, her many friends and people in the small town she occupies, her occupation as an EMT and the adventure that goes along with it.  So I think I'll read another one.

What I didn't like was related to a basic fear of mine--I am leery mysteries where the central plot is the lead character's origin story. After finding out the story of their father or their mother's death, where is there to go? It seems like this is akin to the kiss of death that ensues when the romantic rivals finally tie the knot--where does the story go from there? I've started (and quit on) several mystery series where the author wastes her shot in the first couple of books and then fails to make the transition into other plot lines. Will this be yet another?

Will let you know.