Holiday Mountain Resort, Mountain View, Arkansas

                   

                                           Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I have got behind again, because we spent a week in a campground without any internet or phone service at our campsite. I will try to catch up this week while we spend a week in Omaha, Arkansas, which is just about 10 miles from the Missouri border and 20 miles from Branson, MO.
We left Little Rock, AR and headed northeast on I-67/167, and then turned north on Hwy 5.

After leaving I-67/167, it was a two lane Hwy. all the way. I enjoy these drives because they are much more scenic, but Joe dislikes them.

At first we had a nice wide shoulder, even though it was a constant curve after curve. Most of the curves were posted at 45 mph, some were 35 mph so it took a long time to cover the distance.

This is a view of Greers Ferry Lake as we came down a mountain side. Latter on in the week, we drove back to see a property for sale there, that I blog about later.

More of those pink blooming bushes; I have since found out from two people that they are called Mimosa, which is consider as an invasive weed because it spreads so much. No wonder I have been seeing them everywhere.

We crossed over the dam on Greers Ferry Lake.

A glimpse of Greers Ferry Lake to the west.

A glimpse of the Little Red River as it leaves Greers Ferry Lake. Sorry for the glare on the windows.

After leaving Greers Ferry Lake and Herber Springs, the road went from wide shoulders to no shoulders. This makes the drive for Joe a little more stressful. With a wide bus like ours it doesn't leave much room for error, and if we needed to pull over there wouldn't be enough room to fit.

Mallery sees some cows along the way and tells them they are in her territory.

Then we came to this very curvy and steep area, where the county is in the process to remedy it. Unfortunately it is not ready for our passage through the area.

This part of the construction was very, very stressful for Joe. Not only was there no shoulder, but the road dropped off quite a bit. When you are a wide RV, there is no room for error.  Just as we crested the  top of this road, Joe met a semi, which just made matters worse for him.

There were two routes to our next destination, and Joe was wishing he had gone on the other route, even though it was longer. But who knows what that route would have been like!

Mountain View was our next destination. It has a population of 2,748.

View as we headed into Mountain View. True to its name.

Our resort, was 6 miles north of Moutain View, and down between two mountains.

At the bottom of the mountain we saw this sign and turned left onto the road. If you are looking to purchase a RV resort, this park is going up for auction on July 25 and selling regardless of price. We came to this resort because it is a Coast To Coast park,which cost us $10 a day. While we were on our way to this park, Coast To Coast called us, to tell us that this park was going up for auction, and they did not know if they would honor the price or what condition it would be in.

The road leading you to the park is only about 1and 1/2 lanes wide. We just hoped we wouldn't meet another RV on the way in. This road is at least 1/2 of a mile to the resort.

We arrive to Holiday Mountain Resort, just before we get to the swinging bridge ahead. 

This is the office/store at Holiday Mountain Resort.

On the other side of the same building is the entrance to the club house where you can get a pretty decent internet signal. Joe and I used it a couple of times, but, I have a bad back, and my back hurt a lot while trying to sit in their chair for for a short time. I gave it up and decide to just wait until our next resort. ( So now I am behind once again).

The resort has 15 cabins up on the hill across from the office. One of those cabins is a huge cabin for a large family get together.

We had to drive the Nest down a steep hill, and cross a cement bridge that had large cracks in the cement and the bridge was bowed down in the middle, making it nerve racking as Joe crossed over the creek. The road going down to the bridge had been patched. You could tell that a section of the road had been washed out by a flood.

We found a spot in the park that we could get satellite service for our TV. There are only a couple of places in the park, that you can get it. If you get a spot without a satellite signal, you can pay $2.50/day for  their cable.

Our Nest was parked right across from the laundry/shower/pool area.You can see from this picture why we had no phone or internet service, with the way we sat at the bottom of that mountain.

We got our binoculars out, because we could barely see what looked like a house on the top of the ridge.

Sure enough, there was a house sitting on the edge of the bluff.

The pool is adequate for those who like to swim in a chlorinated pool. I have enough chemicals in my environment, so I avoid pools.

The bathhouse/laundry has a new roof on it, but Joe said the inside needs to be updated.

After setting up we walked the park to finish our review of it.

Sylamore Creek runs through the park and joins the White River a few miles down stream.

We walked up the hill from the creek and back out to the front of the park, then turned toward the swinging bridge on Swinging Bridge Road, that was built in 1943 and rebuilt in 1985 after a flood damaged it.

There is a sign before the bridge giving weight restrictions. Our motorhome is too heavy to cross. 
The dimensions of the bridge are

Total length: 200.0 ft.
Deck width: 11.1 ft. and, vertical clearance above deck: 13.9 ft. 

I didn't like walking across the bridge as it had large gaps between the wood planks. As you walked across the bridge, we could feel it swing. I found this information about the bridge below:

Inspection (as of 01/2012)

Deck condition rating: Poor (4 out of 9)
Superstructure condition rating: Fair (5 out of 9)
Substructure condition rating: Good (7 out of 9)
Appraisal: Structurally deficient
Sufficiency rating: 2.0 (out of 100)

Average daily traffic (as of 1987)

169

This is a view from the bridge, looking up creek to our campground.

Zooming in from previous picture. The creek was low making it nice for campers to swim in the clear water creek.

Looking north toward where the creek will join the White River.

A man who lives around here walked out and started to talk to us.
I saw a car coming, so Mallery and I headed to get off the bridge before it came across.  The man told Joe that a flood took out this swinging bridge in 1985, and had to be rebuilt.

As Joe talked to the man on the bridge, Mallery and I checked out the anchoring hardware of the swinging bridge.

Check out the size of these nuts!

A view of the swinging bridge from the cement bridge in the resort. You can see how high the water had to be to flood out the swinging bridge. The campground would have been under water.

We had a nice view out our kitchen table of Sylamore Creek.

During the weekend, the park filled up and someone parked next to us, blocking our view. Luckily they left on Sunday, so we got it back.

I watch a Great Blue Heron  fish at this same spot every evening.

I actually saw him catch a fish, but didn't get a picture of it.

He/she had a couple of wounds on it's left side.

We saw many kids swim in the creek, which felt really good since we had temperatures that were in the high 90's the entire week we were at Holiday Mountain Resort. It is a nice resort, except that there is no phone signal ( You have to drive up the mountain for 3 miles before you get a signal),  no internet signal at your site, and you will be luckily if you get a satellite signal. The resort seemed to be neglecting the grass, as  it was about 3 inches long  in the campground, when we arrived, and 4 to 5 inches when we left. Tree limbs also had not been trimmed in a long time. We found our dryer vent cover broke after arriving. Joe said that it might have been broke when he had the motor home washed at a RV wash in Little Rock though. We don't know for sure, so we couldn't blame the park. Good thing someone will be taking it over soon. There are 113 RV sites, so it is a nice size park.