Staying at the Corp of Engineers Parks

For the last several weeks we have been staying at Corp of Engineer (COE) parks. They honor the Golden Age Passport which you can get when you turn 62. With the card we stay at half price in any national park, forest, COE park, and get free admission to any national park, monument. It has saved us a ton of money over the years and we have stayed at some very nice parks. They are all on water and mostly in the eastern US.

We left a park just south of Texarkana, Texas Sunday morning and drove here to the park on the Arkansas river west of Little Rock, Arkansas. Here are a couple of pictures from the Texas park.

Like everyone else associated with the government, the COE parks were scheduled to close down Sunday if they did not reach a budget agreement. We were told we had to be out of the campground by 8pm Sunday. We were doing a lot of research looking for someplace cheap to stay for a while and not having a lot of luck. But luckily that disaster was averted. We decided to move anyway as the cell phone and internet service was very, very bad. The campground is down in a hole.

The park here is called Murray lock and dam, Maumelle camp ground. We were lucky to get a 50 amp site backed up to the river. But we can only have it for five days as it is reserved for the weekend. So we will have to move on Friday. We will move to another site here in the park.

Bet you do not have a view like this out of your back window…..

We even have barge traffic moving up and down the river. I think they actually call them “tows”, even though they are pushed up and down the river.

It is kind of nice to be near a big city for a while. We have been in small towns for so long without all of the great shopping and restaurants the big cities have…….of course there is also the traffic and congestion.

Had a big storm come thru very early this morning……what a light and sound show, with lots of rain to go with it. Hopefully our new roof kept all of the water out. It should, I went up  on the roof to take a look around and it looks really good…they calked everything with plenty of sealant.

We full timer like to say that our plans are cast in jello, because they are always changing. Plan was to be back in Woodstock, IL. around May 1st  and park in our son’s driveway for a couple of weeks. Plans changed. Now we will be back In Garden Prairie, IL. which is about 40 miles west of Woodstock on the 29th of April. Our old camping club’s first outing of the year is that weekend and our kids are co wagon masters. So we will meet them there and get to visit with lots of old, dear friends.

Take care y’all

we love ya

Jim and Linda