Cozy Rosie: September 2015

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Maumelle Park (Army Corps of Engineers) Park - Little Rock, Arkansas

There were several U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (COE) parks near Conway, Arkansas. Since we had a late start because of the tire purchase incident mentioned in an earlier blog posting, we called the reservation phone number listed for the Recreation.Gov Web site, which administers most, if not all, of the federal camping areas.

The person trying to help us on the phone was very nice, but said all of the COE parks in the region were full for the next three days, something we didn't want to hear after spending the day waiting for tires in Arkansas.

As a last second desperate move, we found a local phone number for one of the COE parks and called it. The park volunteer said they had plenty of spaces and they would be there waiting for us.

We asked while checking in why their reservation service thought the park was full. The response was that "recreation.gov" can only see openings more than three days out. More than 40 campers checked out that day and the reservation service will not see those opening for another 72 hours.

We asked if we could have the site for one night with an option for a second day. The volunteer said our site didn't have another reservation for three days and we could come up to the gatehouse and pay for another day if we decided to stay.

We were pleasantly surprised when we drove up to our campsite. First, the park is well maintained. There is a comfortable amount of space between individual campsites. Our site had a great view of the Arkansas River and it had shade, something we had not seen for a long time because we were camping in the west for the past three weeks.

Rosie at Maumelle COE Park

The view from Rosie's site

The Arkansas River behind Rosie

Connecting Rosie to the electrical service

After a day of high anxiety dealing with Rosie's wounds and tires, it was very calming to be back in the woods. One of the many benefits of owning a travel trailer is that you get to explore some wonderful and natural places around you. This park was just what we needed to get us back to having more happy Rosie adventures.

We made a mistake our first night in the park. We placed our trash bag outside Rosie's door. We were going on a walk in about 30 minutes and would take our trash to the dumpster while on our walk. When we finally stepped outside Rosie, every ant in the county was either attacking or rushing our trash.

These ants were not your typical little ones found in ant farms. These were huge ones that were on a mission.

We had some ant spray in the back of the truck, but we could have used a couple more gallons to combat these pests. We mentioned the ants to the park volunteer the next morning and he said they were not aggressive and they don't try to invade the trailers. His advise was to not do anything to attract them in the first place.

Here are some specifics about this park:

Our site was large, level and paved with asphalt.
Our site had electrical and water connections.
Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service.
Our site did not have a sewer connection.
We found two dump stations in the park.
AT&T placed a stong 4G signal over the park for both voice and data.
The park did not provide a Wi-Fi signal.
There were a couple of bathhouses in the park. The one closest to Rosie appeared to be well maintained. We didn't check on the other one. We did notice a bumper crop of bugs in the showers early in the mornings. The bugs were gone after the bathhouse was cleaned.
We were able to watch ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, PBS from Rosie's TV antenna. We also saw GRIT, THiS, Antenna and ME-TV.

We decided to stay two days in this park. There were several geocaches there and we enjoyed finding and logging them. We also had fun riding our bicycles through the park.