Lake Catherine State Park, Oaklawn, and then on to Little Rock, AR.

                              Sunday 6/16/2013

On our last day in Hot Springs we took a drive to Lake Catherine State Park..

We thought is was just a couple of miles from our campground, but it ended up being about 15 miles from our home site. The State Park Campground was more rustic like state parks tend to be, with lots more shade, but it was much too far from sightseeing things in Hot Springs. It also didn't look like it had many sites that accommodates big rigs. It's a great campground if you want to hang out at the park and if you have a smaller RV. Even though Catherine's Landing has no shade and is more expensive, it was more ideal for our stay in Hot Springs.

We thought Lake Catherine was just down river from Lake Hamilton, which it is, but you can not get to it from a boat, because of the dam.

From the dam further down the river you get to our resort Catherine's Landing, and then further down the  river, you come to Lake Catherine State Park.

Hot Springs has a population of 36, 750 people.

Our next stop was at the Oaklawn Casino which is located on the main road going toward Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs. Joe had found 2 coupons that gave us $10 free gambling money. Let me tell you, that $10 was gone in about 20 minutes for me and 10 minutes for Joe. No way were we going to throw our money away, so we left the casino. Oaklawn has horse races during cooler times of the year.

It was so hot that the river in front of our camp site had stream coming off of it.

Tuesday 6/18/2013

Our week was up in Hot Springs and we were glad to leave because it was just too hot for us. Unfortunately we were not going far enough to get away from the heat. We took I-30 to Little Rock, AR. I have seen these red/ pink blooming bushes every where in the Hot Springs/Little Rock area. The picture doesn't show the true color. I couldn't seem to find the name of the bushes on google. If anyone knows, please leave a comment with the flowering bush name.

The drive to Little Rock took only about 1 1/2 hours.

We pulled into Camping World for the night. Joe had made reservations to get our Nest's oil changed the next day. We were allowed to hook up to electricity after the other RV's left after 6:00 PM.

I saw this bird while parked at Camping World, but I didn't remember taking it's picture. When I uploaded my pictures to my computer, I asked Joe if he had taken it, thinking I was losing my mind. Thank goodness he took it, making me feel much better about not being forgetful! I saw one of these birds when we were in Brownsville Texas (southern Texas) , and it was called something like Ring Neck. I can't look it up right now, because our new campsite doesn't have a internet connection,so we had to come up to the club house to use their internet.

The next day while the Nest's oil was being changed, we went to a Labcorp, so I could get my blood drawn for pre-medication. This time I remembered to fast and to bring the lab order. The picture I took above was of a quick glance at the capitol building in Little Rock. After my lab work, we headed to the Whole foods Store in Little Rock, before heading back to Camping World.. The Whole Foods in Little Rocks is very nice, but it just does not compare to the one in Austin, TX. We spent a second night at Camping World, and the next morning we headed further north. We are now in Mountain View, AR. for a week. Our campground sits in a valley, and we do not have phone service or internet. We only can get internet at the club house. It is going to be a long week!