Friday, February 17, 2012

Colfax, Louisiana

Before leaving Mena, we had reserved a site at the Corps of Engineers (COE) RV park just north of Colfax, Louisiana.  It appealed to us for several reasons - it was a small park (only 24 sites), it was off the beaten path (several miles from any major town or interstate), and it was next to the Red River (so Bill could try fishing).  AND it was far enough south that the weather would be much warmer than it had been recently in Arkansas.

We arrived mid-afternoon, with plenty of daylight left to set up.  There was only one other RV in the park, and we circled through, looked over the sites, and Lynn went up to the office to see if we could choose a different site than the one we had reserved over the phone.  The park attendant said sure, and we chose #19.  Bill backed the RV into the site, we hooked up the electric, unhooked the truck, leveled the trailer, extended the slides, turned on the frig, moved the cats from the car to the RV, and Lynn started "unsecuring" things inside while I circled around and finished outside.  When I hooked up the hose - no water!  It was near freezing, so I figured the pipe above ground was just frozen, but neither the park attendant or I could figure out what was wrong with it, even after putting a portable heater blowing on it for 1/2 an hour.  So we decided to move to another site, since we still had lots of daylight left.  We hooked up to the truck, unhooked from the electric, retracted the slides, raised the RV jacks, (well, by now you probably get the picture - lots of activity to move just 100 feet).  We made a note on our arrival checklist to test the electric and water BEFORE backing into a site in the future.  Live and learn!

Shady Pines - Texarkana

We left Mena about 2pm on Saturday, February 11.  Knowing we would leave late, I had made reservations at the Shady Pines RV Park just west of Texarkana.  That way, we could take our time getting there, and arrive with plenty of daylight left to check in and set up the RV.


Shady Pines is a very nice park.  The sites are pull-through, plenty long for big rigs and then some.  We hooked up the electric, leveled the RV, extended the slides, and settled in.  We were exhausted from the past couple of weeks, and were really looking forward to this trip.