It’s the journey …
Ponca General Store, Ponca, AR (Population 8)
We had an interesting last few days traveling. On Thursday we left Mount Magazine, Arkansas, headed to Sedalia, Missouri. Plotting the route, we (mostly me) decided to take a more direct route that took a combination of two- and four-lane highways to US-65 instead a longer, but mostly US highway and Interstate route. We found ourselves in an about 40 mile section of the Ozarks with roads so steep and twisty that there were warning road signs describing the roads as just that and several spots with mandatory brake check locations for commercial trucks and busses. It wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle, but LeeAnn wasn’t excited by the slow speeds and lack of gas stations. I thought the views were amazing and was happy we took the route we did.
During our mountain trek, we came across the Buffalo National River and stopped at an overlook. I learned several things at that stop:
There is a Buffalo River, and national rivers exist. They’re park of the National Park Service.
There are elk in Arkansas. The native elk population went extinct in the 19th century, but a population was reintroduced in the 1980s. The reintroduction has had mixed success.
If you’re using Apple Maps and Apple Car Play, and you turn off your vehicle, it may turn off Maps. Not a big deal, unless you are out of cell signal range and don’t know your route. Luckily, last year we learned that keeping a paper atlas in the truck is a good idea, so we were able to plot a course out of the mountains.
After that stop, we were getting concerned about our fuel supply, so we were happy to find the “town” of Ponca, Population 8, and its gas station. The town store had Wi-Fi, so I reloaded Maps. LeeAnn thinks (correctly) we would have been better off without it. It guided us a questionable route. After it tried to send us down a road that didn’t allow for thru trucks, we decided to follow our own path. We got to US-65. After that, it was a nice, straight, smooth road, but it was rainy and gusty. I preferred the mountains to the rain at highway speed.
We encountered rain again in Sedalia, where we stayed at the state fairgrounds. We got unhooked and settled in before storms rolled through during the night, so the only issue there was our scared dog who needed to share the bed with us for a while.
The next day we were out for lunch when the rain came again, this time with bonus hail! I was concerned for the truck, so we looked for a place with cover to pull in to, such as a gas station or car wash. Clearly, we weren’t the first people with this idea; everywhere we tried was full. Luckily the hail never got bigger than about pea-sized, so the truck made it though without a scratch (or dent). I had been worried, because the last time I got caught in a hailstorm, it dimpled my Saturn Vue like a golf ball.
The next morning, we broke camp and started to head out. Well, the ground had gotten quite soft and mushy from all the rain, and gravel road surface was raised over the camping area. Our two-wheel drive truck couldn’t make the climb. Its back tires just spun and spun. I wasn’t worried; the road behind us was level with the site, I’ll just back up. Nope. Trying to go backwards was only succeeding in jackknifing the trailer. We finally got out by putting leveling blocks under our drive tires and going forward. We threw up so much mud, the front of the camper looked like it was in a tractor pull!
Once we got underway we had a pleasant, uneventful trip other than high winds forcing us to keep our speed down a bit. That is until nearly the last mile.
When we pulled onto the road that led to the park, we saw a road closed sign on the side of the road proclaiming the road closed about three miles ahead and no thru traffic. The park was less than three miles away, so we figured we were good. We weren’t. We found where the road was gone and no turn around. Oh no!
I got out of the truck to look around for a way out. There was a driveway about 200 yards away that was long enough to back into. So, with LeeAnn walking beside me checking for approaching traffic (which luckily never came) we backed up to the driveway and got turned around. After that, it took a while and many dirt roads, but we found an alternate path and arrived safe and sound at Geode State Park.