Back home from our short vacation!
I had full intentions of working outside today but it's too windy to drag out the plastic and work on the cold frames and too wet to work in the garlic bed!
The trip into Little Rock went okay but traffic was horrendous once we got into it proper!
Doc took his test and passed!
We thought about checking out the
Nina/Pinta Replicas but we decided to just tuck our tails, get the heck outta Dodge and head down to Hot Springs.
It was a beautiful ride, once we got away from LR, and the trees were gorgeous!!!
Before we checked in at the cabin, we did a bit of driving around Hot Springs as I needed to drop the blackberry plant packages off at the Post Office (we left home before ours was opened).
We were so busy ooohing and aaahing at all the cool buildings (cool shops, Bathhouse Row and beautiful architechture) that we totally missed the PO and ended up at a package store. Bought a bottle of Kracken Rum and Doc asked the owners for directions. One of them was headed back into town and offered to take us directly to the PO parking lot. It was awful sweet of him to do so and everyone we met in town was just as nice! Hadn't been in the area for an hour and we were already in
with it!
After we dropped off the packages, we went to the Visitor's Center for maps/brochures and then hit the grocery store and got supper fixins and headed to the cabin.
Got to the campground around 3 p.m. and Hu was just finishing cleaning up the cabin and site for our stay. We fell in love with the place instantly and felt totally at home!
Hu is an absolute sweetheart and hung around for a bit and gave us his advice on the best places for us to check out after he found out we were rockhounds. He even made sure we had some firewood. That totally messed me up as I'm so used to gathering my own!
Hu left and we got the car unpacked and got ourselves settled in. We had the campground to ourselves so we decided to do some exploring around the grounds.
The campground is small: 3 RV sites and 1 tent site plus the cabin we stayed in.
There's a neat story to the cabin but I'll tell it in the next post, when I add pix...they're on Doc's laptop which went to work with him.
We had a nice, relaxing Monday night and had planned to get up early Tuesday and hit the ground running but slept in, instead.
On Tuesday, we packed, cleaned the cabin up and called dragonlaurel and made plans to meet. Then doc and I went back into town (campground is about 6 miles outside of HS) and headed out to
Wright's Rock Shop. Did lots and lots of
but didn't buy anything.
Left there and went back into town and walked
Historic Downtown on Central Ave. Our favorite shop was
Crystal Springs Gallery. Did a lot more
and I bought a bag of Columbian Crystals. After that, we called dragonlaurel and fluid druid and went to pick them up for lunch at Picante's. Not sure just how long we hung out there but the food and service was good!
We took dl/fd back to their place and visited a bit more before heading home. We'd have visited longer but doc had to be up early for work today.
We cheated on our trip home and took 440 around Little Rock! That was a good move!
Never had a problem, weather-wise, until we got to Velvet Ridge and we hit a monsoon. We made it home by 8:30 p.m. and it was still raining (with some thunder/lightning) so we only unpacked a few necessaties, ate our Subway sammiches and were in bed by 11 p.m..
Well, I'm gonna end this and will get pix done later tonight!
) the plastic in place on the west and east ends of the frame. The tops of these ends can be let down for 
