Arizona 2024: Day 35: Saint Genevieve, MO: 13 is ours

Must say, a pretty good night sleep at the side of the highway at our Harvest Host.  For the morning walk I headed up the hill a few hundred meters and then cut into a neighbourhood to get off the main drag.  The neighbourhood began with a slightly run down section to single wides and then turned into a nice, sterile ‘hood of brick homes.  Just over a km in to the ‘hood there was a park that included a damn on the Magness Creek and a bridge over the creek.  

We had been up early so I was back early.  We did our stuff, Amy did her stuff and we hit the road just after 0900.  To depart our cement pad onto the dewy grass, I angled the van such that we could get a good drop down angle off the pad and could just keep driving.  We succeeded and hit the road.  We felt bad about not saying goodbye to our host.  He is a nice fellow and is proud of what he is building.  Mrs Milddogs will leave a nice review.

On the road early meant we had time to poke along and take our time.  But not too much!  We did have about an hour and a half of non-travel time we could use before the 1500 check-in time at our destination.   

Our first stop was at a strawberry farm off of exit 63 in Newport <insert state here>.  We could have picked our own, but we did not have that much time.  Mrs Milddogs picked out a container of strawberries and paid the $4.25 for them.  This purchase required a new stop be added to the agenda.  We must have the fixings for Strawberry Shortcake.  I have a cousin (you may remember her as the parent of the infant that could sing “Danny Boy” in my dream) that loved the cartoon Strawberry Shortcake when she was a child.  Her entire room had to be pink.  I am unsure if her current bedroom down in Australia is decorated like that.

Off we went to the Hays grocery store in Walnut Ridge, AR to get supplies.  On the way there Mrs Milddogs had scoped out a taco truck right around the corner from the Hays.  In fairness, everything in Walnut Ridge is right around the corner.  The Hays had crawdads on for $15.98 for 5 pounds.  Mrs Milddogs did not procure those because:  they are a lot of work, 5lbs is too many, we don’t have the fridge room nor enough baking soda to take the stink out of the fridge.

Around the corner we go to Lala’s Mexican Food.  Interestingly, right across the street from Sonic.  Hard Choice?  Nah, go with the food truck!  We did entertain popping over to Sonic for a few beverages (watch the ice content!) but decided against that.  Tacos procured, we headed around the corner to the city park for a picnic.

The city park was nice, we went down to the far end and grabbed a picnic table in half sun.  The tacos were really good.  Maybe the best we have had on the trip.  The rice was the best we have had and the beans (for a non-bean eater) were pretty good too.  If you are keeping score, we drove all the way to Arizona, sampled Mexican food in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas and the best we had was in norther Arkansas.   I must add that I think Mrs Milddogs cheated a bit. She had tacos with chicken, bacon and cheddar while I had regular chicken tacos. She made the better choice.

We hit the road and did a longer stint stopping for gas twice and never getting any as pumps were broken or could not pay at pump (we did get gas later, no crisis).  

I had a fun time allowing my inner 10 year old giggle at some of the city/town names.  Mrs Milddogs suggested I not list them.  So, if you plot a course from Cabot, AR to Saint Genevieve, MO then put on your own mental filter for things a 10 year old male would find funny, you’ll figure them out.

We arrived at our campground just after 1500 and settled in our spot.  Here in Missouri you pull into your spot, click the checkin link they sent you, enter the codes they sent you and then you are all checked in.  IF you have cell service.  We only have 1 bar on AT&T and Verizon and our JetPack won’t lock on a provider.  Fortunately Mrs Milddogs did the high-phone pose and got us checked in.  Fortuitous it was.  As we relaxed here in site 13, yup 13 again, a diesel truck pulling a pop-up arrived a few minutes after we had checked in and idled in front of our site for a few minutes.  No biggy, diesels love to idle.  Tyler popped out of his carbon-spewing truck and declared that he had this site booked.  He kindly showed me a screen capture.  The computer says no!  Mrs Milddogs shared our confirmation and we agreed Tyler would go back to the camp hosts to straighten it out.  Tyler never returned.  I did hold off consuming a Bud Light just in case I had to drive somewhere.  That leaves one more Bud Light I have to consume tomorrow!

We are in Hawn State Park in Saint Genevieve, MO.  It reminds me a lot of the Upper Canada Migratory Bird Sanctuary near Iroquois, ON (aka, Goose Poop Park).  Outer circle of more desirable sites staring at less desirable inner circle sites.  I had a hard time figuring out why there were so many children.  Ah, it’s Saturday!  Far more than children than the usual complement of home-schooled trailer kids.

The scenery is nice and there are supposed to be really good trails here.  I’ll sample a few miles of them in the morning.

For dinner we had lunch leftovers followed by strawberry shortcake using yesterday’s donuts as the “cake”.  A little donut forward, but it was great!

The showers score 6/10.  They are private (your own locking shower room) have plenty of hot water and have upper and lower shower heads for all of the attention your body needs.

Tomorrow we head past St Louis into Illinois.  It’s a shorter drive so we will make some stops along the way.  Not sure what yet.

I’m going to try and post this with 1 bar of LTE.  Took me over an hour to upload the pictures.  Retry, retry, retry

Remember to stay tuned for tomorrow’s huge surprise!