And here we are

This is Day 422 of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve. Deb and I are well.

Hard as it may be to believe, as I type this it’s pouring rain outside. Coming down in buckets, it is. The good news is that by the time it started raining today we’d arrived at our campground and were (mostly) set up.

I’ll explain.

We wheeled out of our previous digs just after 11am and pointed Ernie west. The route was familiar, sort of, since I’d driven it once in the opposite direction. I’ve come to appreciate the twists and grades of a road like that as part of my education.

And y’know those big arrows and yellow caution signs that suggest speeds for curves? Well, I used to take those as a dare, a sort of personal challenge. Now, piloting a 16-ton bus, I observe them with religious devotion.

If only the Arkansas DOT could’ve warned me about that sudden gust of crosswind that hit us as we drove down into a holler this morning. That, my friends, was a moment.

I set the brake in front of the campground office shortly after noon. Deb had made our reservation online and, as it turned out, the website assigned us a spot that wasn’t quite big enough for Ernie. The young woman checking us in suggested that we set up temporarily on a vacant site while she did some juggling. And so we did.

We plugged in, deployed the slides and ate lunch. By the time we were done, the young woman’s mother came out to our coach and had the perfect site for us. We picked up, moved out, moved in and hooked up — done.

We’ll be here for 12 nights.

This is a family-owned campground — a Florida family who did basically what Deb and I are doing and then decided to buy a campground. They sold everything back in Florida and moved to Arkansas. The grounds where we’re staying, along with their hospitality, show pride, hard work and commitment to doing this the right way.

One other side note — when we checked in, the young woman who greeted us was wearing a particular hat. That hat, like the signs still planted proudly in yards all along our route today, tell us unequivocally that we’re among like minds here.

We’re all gonna make camping great again.

Tonight we’ll put our feet up and relax. (The wi-fi is great, by the way.) Tomorrow we’ll get our bearings and figure out how we’ll spend our time here. We may even rent a car and explore this corner of The Ozarks — stay tuned.

Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.

#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath

---