Day
9 - Friday 18th September 2015
Written by Kev
I sleep in
until 8.30am. The others have been up and around for an hour or
so.
The coffee has been percolated, so I sit on the balcony and write
up my trip report while enjoying a cup and enjoying the smell of
the pine.
The temperatures are going to be in the 90’s today, but
it’s a dry heat and so a little more tolerable than the
humid conditions found in Florida. We have breakfast of cereal
and toast and are ready for the day.
We climb into The Beast and the first stop of the day is Carson’s Creek in Beaver’s Bend State Park. This is really just a car park with picnic tables and a slipway for boats. The only other vehicle there has an empty boat trailer, so they must be out on the water.
It’s very
beautiful and very peaceful. We wander around for a bit taking
video and photos and then jump back in the car and drive to
Walmart where we need a few things lacking in the cabin. One of
these things is a method for playing music, so we buy a $20
portable speaker to link to an mp3 player. Another missing item
is a lime squeezer, most important when making margaritas.
Pruett’s Foods is next, where Matt nips in to by a good
supply of limes.
We drive to the
Ouichita National Forest Visitor Centre, where we talk to the
ladies there and even they are unsure how to pronounce Ouichita.
I think we settle on Wee Cheater, although it could equally be
Which E Tar.
One lady has a skunk hand puppet, which reminds Susan of when she
was a child and had a pet skunk. She called it Stinky.
Next is the Heritage Centre, where we look at a 100 year old cabin and learn about the forest and it’s history before getting back in The Beast and driving over the dam to the marina. We walk down to the boat dock and enquire about boat hire as we might take one out on Sunday.
We finish driving through Beaver’s Bend State Park and then make a stop for refreshments at The Grateful Head. This is a bar and restaurant just a mile or so from our cabin. We have beers and a snack of cheesebread and chicken wings to share between the 5 of us.
We return to the cabin and leave Deb, Matt and Susan to relax while Tam and I drive back to the Heritage Centre to start a 3-mile walk. The tracks are fairly well defined and signposted and we walk through the forest entirely on our own. It’s very peaceful and rather hot as well. At 5.00pm it’s 94°F and Tam gets a bit overheated at one point, as there are some rather hilly sectors to the walk, so I pour water over her head. It runs down over her top half and she looks a little like an entrant into the Miss Beaver’s Bend Wet T-Shirt competition for a short while, but the sun soon dries her out again.
The last part of our walk is through one of the RV campgrounds. It runs alongside the water and must be a lovely place to relax. Some of the RV’s are massive, they are more like mobile homes and some people have set out a sort of garden in front of them with seating, tables, lights and lanterns.
Back to the
cabin where Tam and I jump in the hot tub to relax. Deb and Matt
join us after a while and we have fun chatting and drinking beer
in the late afternoon sunshine.
After showering I make a batch of margaritas in our makeshift
cocktail shaker and then it’s time to eat. The pork butt
that we bought back at Hominy Meats has been cooking away slowly
all day. When I get it out of the oven it falls apart very
easily. We mix this with BBQ sauce – also purchased at
Hominy Meats – and this makes our pulled pork rolls. We eat
these with broccoli slaw and Susan’s homemade pickles. Tam
isn’t normally a big fan of pickles, but she likes these a
lot. They are thinly sliced and sweeter than the normal pickles
we get. All in all, an entirely satisfactory meal.
Outside, Tam
and I light the campfire and Susan joins us to enjoy the night
and listen to music quietly on our little portable speaker we
bought earlier. Matt and Deb turn up an hour later as they both
fell asleep on the bed!
Deb chats for a while then dozes off again. She is the only
person I know that can sleep, wake up and party, drop off to
sleep, then wake up and party again.