Storms, Rain, & Other Stuff At Millwood Landing Golf RV Resort

                                   Tuesday 5/21/2013

The next day as predicted we had a tornado warning out for Ashdown, so we went to our safe place, the cinder block Pool House for shelter. We got hard rain and only had to stay there for about 20 minutes before the warning past ended. About 2 hours later we got a severe thunderstorm warning alert. We were not going to go to the Pool House until we saw these clouds moving in.

The cloud wall moved from the last picture to this picture in a matter of seconds, so we headed back to our safe place.

Chairs had been brought into the men's and women's shower rooms for us to hang out, while the warnings past. The first time we came to the Pool House another couple showed up also. The second time we came up, the guy in the RV across the street from us came up, but he hung out in the men's room while we were in the women's room. I decided it would be safer in the shower, so I drug my chair in there. OK, it's not the best picture of me, but I wasn't planning on doing anything that day, and wasn't planning on a picture. Normally I don't put lousy pictures in, but I wanted to show you our safe place! Actually, I'll  blame Joe. He takes terrible pictures, he never waits until you smile, he just takes it. When things don't go the way I like it, I just blame Joe! OK you all need to lighten up a little, if you didn't take it as a joke!
               I know I mentioned in my previous blog that my class reunion coming up mid summer, was messing up our summer travels. I realize now I am glad it has. Our original plans was to go to another Ocean Canyon Campground for 3 weeks just south of Oklahoma City. We would have just arrived at that campground the day Moore, OK got hit by the EF4 tornado. After that 3 week stay, we were going to gone to yet another Ocean Canyon Campground NE of Oklahoma City, which is in the path of tornado alley. God knows what is best for us, and the class reunion schedule was set so we would change our plans and go another way! Thank you Lord for your Faithfulness!

The next day we went to Ashdown for a few grocery items.
 Ashdown, A great place to call home.
Ashdown sits between two rivers, one to the north, The Little River, and one to the south, the Red River.

There are train tracks all over the town of Ashdown.

This train had loads of rock. I thought maybe there was some kind of rock industry in the town, so I googled it and found out that Domtar which is a paper producing facility is the largest employer in town, providing 2/3 of all the jobs, and is the largest paper producing facility in the world. The 2nd largest industry is timber, which we kind of figured out, because we have seen many trucks carrying timber on our drive to and from our resort to Ashdown. The rocks must be coming from further north in the Ouachita Mountains.

On our walks around the resort I have seen several red birds. On another day, Joe was off to the store, when I saw this red bird a couple sites away. I would have put my zoom on the camera, but it was in the car with Joe. This was the best I could get. I think it is a Hepatic Tanager. I have never seen this bird before.

It had a bit of white and black or grey under it's wings. When I saw it earlier, it was with a mustard and olive female, which seemed to agree with my bird book. I am hoping to get a better picture before we leave.

On one of our trips to Ashdown, we spotted this church 6 miles south of our resort. We decided that this would be our church for the next 3 weeks.

On Sunday we attended the morning service. I like the message on the sign out front of the church.

Our sermon was very fitting for the Memorial Day weekend.
The Pastor talked how Jesus laid down his life so we could have salvation or freedom in death, where as soldiers laid down their lives so we can have freedom in this lifetime. Now that is true Bravery, Sacrifice & Love from both Jesus and our American Hero's.
 The special music was a song sang by one of the members in the church. The song's name is, "Thank you for giving to the Lord" I had never heard the song  before, and it caused a few tears. The song was thanking people who do things that change other peoples lives. The song implies that the giving is not always recognized by others during their life on this earth, but will be in Heaven. The song "Blessed" me so much that I wanted to share it with you. 
I just want to say to all the men and women who serve in our military, "Thank You For Giving To The Lord, you have changed so many people's lives"!

  

Can anyone guess what this picture is of?

How about this one?

Or this one?

Now this one is really strange! As I was going through my pictures to upload them for this blog, I came across these pictures, I wondered what there were. Then it dawned on me that Joe had been out a few nights before with the camera. I asked him what in the heck were these pictures of. He told me that they were pictures of the moon with clouds around it. He said the moon had a very neat look to it with the clouds, so he took some pictures. I had quite a good laugh at all the pictures, so I hope you get as much of a chuckle as I did. We all need to laugh just a bit more in life, so here's to a good healthy laugh for your health! I told you Joe is not very good with the camera!

OK he finally had one out of the whole bunch that at least you could tell it was a moon and clouds, and even a tree on the side. Good picture Joe!

Millwood Landing Golf RV Resort, Ashdown, Arkansas

                                   Monday 5/20/2013

We left the Dallas area at 11:00 AM, and took I-30 across Lake Ray Hubbard toward Arkansas. We had originally planned on going north into Oklahoma, and then on into Iowa, but my 40th Class Reunion is scheduled for July 13, so we changed our plans a couple of months ago. I was hoping the reunion would be late summer, and we would go through Iowa more toward fall like we always do. I missed my class reunion 5 years ago, so I wanted to make it this time. It just has messed up our schedule forcing us to stay further south in hot weather, instead going north to cooler weather. Such is life!

I took a picture out my side window of the lake. I wish there was a way to take picture out the side window without the shadows! Oh well you get to see Joe's side view this way.

Halfway to our destination, a rest stop showed up just in time for lunch. We were glad to leave Dallas, as a severe thunderstorm was on it's way to the big city. I thought Mallery sensed the storm coming, because she had been very keyed up on the drive from Dallas. When we got to the rest stop, I literally had to drag her on a leash to get her to walk and do her duty. I had never seen her act this strange at a rest stop. It was around 1:30, and as we now know, an hour and half later, Moore OK got hit with the EF5 tornado. I believe Mallery was sensing that storm.

The farther we got from Dallas, Mallery slowly calmed down. The landscape turned from rolling plains to rolling trees

Here we are entering Texarkana, TX. and Texarkana, Arkansas. The metropolitan area has a population of 143,486 people.

Before we enter into Arkansas, I saw the star of Texas and the Texas state shape on all the interstates in Texarkana.

I never saw a sign as we came into Texarkana, so the water tower had to do!

From Texarkana we took Hwy. 71/ 59 which runs north on the state border until you get further north into Arkansas. We have driven through the NE corner of Arkansas, when traveling from Iowa to Alabama, but we have never stayed  in the state. So this is officially our first time seeing Arkansas. It was 17 miles from Texarkana to Ashdown, Arkansas. Ashdown has a population of 4,723 people. This is the closest town to our campground, where we get our groceries. I am glad I stocked up on food before we left Dallas, because stores in this town don't carry a lot of the stuff I purchase to eat.

It was another 14 miles from Ashdown to our next neighborhood. We chose this campground, because it is an Ocean Canyon Campground, which we are a member of. We can stay up to 3 weeks free here. We bought our membership to Ocean Canyon about 1 1/2 years ago, because with this membership we could also get Resorts of Distinction and Coast To Coast memberships for $150 each annually. We used the CTC and ROD all last summer on the west coast. When we leave this park in 3 weeks, are initial membership cost will be completely re-cooped from getting to stay free or at $10 a day from the  three memberships parks system. We did not renew our membership with ROD this year, because there aren't any ROD parks on our route for the year. If we want to renew our ROD membership, we can, but we will have to pay a penalty of $150. Another reason we didn't renew our ROD membership is that many of the parks have dropped out of the system. These are some of the things that when you join, they don't tell you about. When we joined there were 1/3 more ROD parks than there are now.

As we pull onto the road to Millwood Landings Golf RV Resort, Joe said, "And another guard shack unattended"! To our surprise there was someone in it waiting for our arrival. 10 bonus points goes to Millwood Landing Golf RV Resort.

We asked the register to give us a spot with no trees.  The young lady drove us down to the lower section of the park, and pointed out lot #15, and we said it was OK. We knew severe storms was coming our way and we didn't want any tree limbs falling onto us. My sister had a huge tree fall onto her house one year during a storm and a  couple of very large branch came through the roof like a giant sword right above her bed and in a closet. She was so glad she went to the basement. After bringing our Nest down to the site we noticed that site #15 had a layer of red mud on the cement pad. We decide to take # 17 instead, and left a message with the office of the change.

Come along now, as we walk the park to see what we have available during our stay. The resort only has 32 sites, though 10 more sites are in the works.  This is a view of  our Nest across the pond. You can see the new site area in front and to the left of our Nest. The utilities are in, but the sites have not been paved yet. It has rained twice now and all the mud comes flowing down toward the sites next to us. We were really glad we chose site #17 over #15.

There are 12 older cabins that sit in front of Country Club Lake.

View of playground, and swimming pool. Note the cinder block Pool House. This is where we were instructed to go for severe weather, which we did go to, two times the following day.

The pool in the park is one of the largest pools we have ever seen in any of the resorts we have stayed at.

Behind the big pool is the baby pool.

View from the front of the Pool House toward our site.

This is the Millwood Country Club in the park.

The Country Club building holds a Pro Shop, the Club House, a restaurant, and a bar. Joe came up here on Thursday and played poker. Usually it cost $5 to play Texas Hold em at most parks we have stayed at. When Joe asked how much it was to play, they told him $40. He would have backed out, except it would have been embarrassing to say that was too much, so he played. Guess what, he came in 3rd and won $120.00, but walked away with $80.00 minus the $40 entry fee. 

The Greenside Grill is the restaurant that is in the Country Club building.

In the back, there is a deck looking toward the golf course.

View from the Country Club deck. The cost to golf is $20 for 18 holes, plus a golf cart is included. It isn't any cheaper to play 9 holes. Joe went out on Friday and played 18 holes of golf . He came home and said that this was the first time in his life that he played 18 holes by himself. He used $20 of his poker winning to play.

Sales Office

 4 new cabins also on Country Club Lake.

View from our site across the pond to the other section of RV sites.
 We have been just relaxing while I get caught up again on this travel blogs diary, as well as laundry, mail, bills, emails, reading other people blogs, and ordering supplies, and giving Mallery a bath and maintenance hair cut. After we leave here, we will not be staying anywhere longer than a week, so it is too hard to synchronize our mail and online orders to arrive during those stays. We have missed mail too many times when we have them sent to places that have a short window of stay. I know I am about a week behind in the blog, but you haven't missed much!

Last Days In Dallas, Texas

                                Saturday 5/18/2013

On our next to last day in Dallas, we decided to go to the Dallas Farmers Market that runs 7 days a week, located close to the downtown area.

The city has been trying to revitalize this area for residence who want to live downtown.

The Dallas Farmers Market is located at 1010 South Pearl Expressway. This part of the farmers market is a nursery with flowers and vegetables plants for sale.

The part of the farmers market that is inside this building, you will find hand craft foods, like oils, and vinegar, chocolates, relishes, candies, and so on. You will also find food vendors, and crafts like quilts and etc.

We headed for the vegetable stands.

You can park free in the vegetable market shed. We didn't know this, but parked outside the market on a side road , but still for  free.

All the vendors had sliced fruits on plates to sample. Joe asked why I wasn't enjoying the free samples. I told him I saw a fly on one and that did it for me!

The one sample that I did try cut  personally for me by a vendor was really juicy. Unfortunately there were no organic fruits or vegetables.

We did buy a grass fed brisket, and Joe bought some tomatoes. We left the market and headed for Whole Foods.

As we went under the mass of interstates, we saw artwork making this area feel more like a park.

A lot of the cement pylons had trees painted on them. Larger cement slabs had painted murals.

A Welcome from the Police Department!

All the paintings did make the gloomy underneath interstate area look much more inviting!

We managed to get to the farmers market and Whole Foods with no problems because I had printed off 8 pages of maps to find our way, without getting on the interstates. Ever since we have been traveling in our big rig, I hate city driving in our Honda. I feel so small, like a bug just waiting to get squashed!
 The next day we went to the Bobtown Road Baptist Church just up the road from our campground. We had met another Full time couple, Eva and Bill, who had invited us to church with them. We keep meeting other RVers who invite us to church. I think God is trying to tell us something, like " OK, you have been on vacation for 4 1/2 years now. It's time to get back to a routine of worship in the Lord's House".