March 29 – April 11 Texarkana, Texas
Rocky Point ACOE (Army Corp. of Engineers) Campground on Wright Patman Lake
Don’t mess with Texas Y’all…
As we say goodbye to the Lone Star State! Journey has been waiting almost a month to get his front end fixed. You may remember from our earlier blog post at Martin Dies Jr. State Park – someone hit us in a parking lot. Off to the Dodge dealer in Texarkana he went. A week later we got him back – good as new! Yayyy!!! ….in the meantime, we had a rental car….which raised a lot of eyebrows and questions from other campers driving/walking by. Hum!!! Do you REALLY tow with THAT???
The weather here is very unpredictable. A beautiful sunny day can turn into massive thunderstorms on a dime. We had a couple nice sunny days which we took full advantage of. The park and the adjacent park (Piney Point) were perfect for getting some good exercise on our bikes – about 7 miles every ride.
Wind…….geez………it was crazy for a few days. Being right on the lake has its negatives – LOL!! Locals call it breezy. We call it a stiff wind~~~~~~
Texarkana gets its name from --- you guessed it - being in Texas and in Arkansas. We took a little drive to the historic district. Sadly, most of the town is shuttered with the exception of the post office, a few restaurants, and small businesses. It saddens us as we maneuver through some of these urban areas, to see things just falling apart and abandoned. To add some cheer to the town, there were many beautiful murals painted by locals.
Then……….it was THE day we planned our leg of the trip for…. April 8 th – the FULL SOLAR ECLIPSE!!! Okay clouds – you can go away any time now…..all we could do was keep our fingers crossed that the sky gods would come through for us…………….and they did………it was THE most remarkable, magical event we’ve ever seen in our lifetime.....
All morning as we walked the campground looking once again for the best viewing spot (there were several), the excitement was building. People were setting up chairs, testing their special eclipse glasses, and talking about where they came from to view this once in a lifetime event. Mike had bought a special lens filter and of course we had bought special eclipse shirts! We just couldn’t imagine missing out if the weather wasn’t going to cooperate. All week on the news, the weather report was iffy…predicting cloud cover. Fortunately for us, the clouds parted during the main event. We heard whooping, hollering and cheering all over the campgrounds.
Several hours after the eclipse ended, the storms arrived. All night the thunder boomed, and lighting struck all around the lake. We had a long sleepless night with our trailer rumbling with every crack of thunder.
Can’t beat those gorgeous sunsets and sitting around a campfire!!
