Thursday, October 26, 2006

RAINING IN ARKANSAS

Walnut Ridge, Arkansas (Lake Charles State Park): It's been raining for the past two days which makes for a miserable campsite. The ground is covered with piles of beautiful leaves that stick to your feet when they are wet. The hiking trails become more like rivers, full of rocks and wet slippery mud. So, we either sit inside the RV or run into the nearest town to check on wireless access. Found a library here in this little town that has several computers for the public to use. However, they have a couple of rules: no chatting, which I don't do so that didn't bother me. But the other rule is: NO EMAIL! I don't get that at all. What are the computers for then? Playing games, I guess. So on the remote chance that they had wireless, I asked. And, yes, they are wireless, and yes we can do email on our own computers! I'm down to 50% power though, so will make this short.

We stayed for two days in a beautiful little park near Conway, Arkansas. The park was Wooley Hollow State Park, and is one of the most beautiful parks we've seen yet. There were only a few other campers because we came in on a Sunday, so we had the place mostly to ourselves. We hiked a beautiful trail that went up and over a couple of ridges. On the second ridge I checked my phone, which back at the campsite had no bars, and on the top of this ridge I had five bars! So, I told Ernie to continue on the last mile without me and I'd follow later because I was going to call the kids we hadn't talked to recently. Caught the oldest son at home, just returning from a hunting trip with his two sons, so we had a nice visit. I talked to our second oldest son who was watching the Vikiings and getting ready to go to work. I also talked to his better half for a few minutes and caught up on their comings and goings, which includes installing the hot tub he won! Then I called the next son in Alaska, but only got his voice mail, so I left a message. He called back almost immediately and we had a good chat, me on a hiking trail in Arkansas, and him in the shop he's building on the hillside in Seldovia, Alaska. Technology amazes me! I had already talked to my mom and our two daughters and the next to youngest son, so that left only the youngest son that we hadn't connected with. Tried that number, but got no answer, but we will be calling him this weekend for his 34th birthday. I left that ridge top feeling so much better. Just connecting with the kids back home, and hearing what the grandkids are up to makes me so happy. Thank goodness for a good cell plan.

Once again Blogger won't let me post pictures. I had a couple of really nice ones from our hike that I wanted to show you but something is blocking my pictures from posting. Maybe it's the limited power I have left.

1 comment:

FosterAbba said...

I suspect your problems posting pictures have more to do with the fact that Blogger has been having a lot of troubles and outages recently than your laptop having 50% power.

FWIW, you shouldn't feel rushed when your laptop is reporting 50% power. Most laptops will continue running quite happily until they get down to around 5-10% power. Then they will put themselves in hibernate mode and shut off after saving all your work.

Unless your battery is quite old and worn out, a 50% battery shouldn't be any cause to worry. You can also buy 12V power adapters for most laptops, which means you can charge them off your truck or RV battery without having to run the generator or plug into shore power.