Denby Point - Lake Ouachita - August 2007

I left Thursday night for Lake Ouachita with the two dogs. Mom and Dad had to work Carole's estate sale so I only had the dogs for companionship. I left about 4:30 PM from work and went by the house to pick up Little Bit and Missy. They were all excited. They love road trips.

I was between Prescot and Arkadelphia and heard a strange noise from the back of the car. I pulled off the highway (hoping I would not be blown over by a big truck going by) and checked everything. It all looked ok. I got back on the road, but was still troubled by the noise (flap, flap, flap...), so I pulled in to the next rest stop, got out and did a better inspection of the trailer and car. I found that the passenger side tire on the trailer had shredded and was coming apart! I had prayed before I ever left for God to protect me from my own ignorance! Thank God he did! I walked the dogs and put them back in the car and started getting the tire and jack out of the car. But an 18 wheeler pulled in next to me, so I asked him to help me change the tire, and he was very nice to do just that. I tried to pay him, but he considered it his good deed for the day.

So after an hour of downtime at the rest stop we were back on the road. We finally got up to Denby Point on Lake Ouachita at 9 PM. This was the first time for me to try camping without a direct water hookup, so I had to find the water spigot to fill my fresh water tank. Did that and got backed in to the site (VERY HARD TO DO IN THE DARK). Got everything set up, turned on the AC in the trailer and we went for a nice walk around our part of the park. The next morning dawned bright and a wee bit hot, but it was still a beautiful day.

Friday morning I got the kayak down and put it in the Lake. After breakfast we went out for a while. It was pretty hot so I did a lot of stopping to swim. Little Bit did too. Everytime I turned around he was jumping out of the yak! And Missy made the journey quite a trip too...as she moved her considerable 25 lbs from one side of the yak to the other we leaned precariously close to the water several times.

After a while I saw a blue heron dive into the lake.

It was pretty neat to see it make off with it's lunch!

Site #34 was a great one. It was right on the water and we had a lot of room between us and any other camper. I could let the dogs wander around and chase squirrels...which both are really good at! I got lots of pictures of them looking/chasing the squirrels. So if you want to see more like the one below you can go to my webshots page.

The sunset wasn't really anything great, but I like the picture with the skier going by.

Saturday morning we are awakend by a huge gust of wind at 7:45 AM. I jumped up got dressed and got everything tied down a bit better. After the little windstorm, the day turned out beautiful. It never got above 80 degrees and the breeze was blowing all day. I really enjoyed being outside. We took lots of short walks (still a bit crippled from the knee injury). And I sat outside and read while looking out at the water. We got out in the kayak once, but the wind was so high that I was afraid that between it and Missy we were sure to end up in the drink... So I decided to just relax the rest of the day.

Missy looked quite cute, so I had to take a picture of her sitting on the chair. She doesn't like sitting on the ground...

I got a cute one of Little Bit just looking at me as he was trying to find a squirrel to chase.

Sunday morning we got up and I started packing up. Little Bit and Missy watched me from the trailer.

We had a nice drive home with no more incidents. We had a great time...the dogs got to run around and chase a lot of varmits and I got to relax and enjoy the downtime.

Because my boss has a daughter who plays soccer at Rhodes, we won't get to go anywhere until the last weekend in September. He will be out of town every weekend to watch her play...so I will just have to make do with going kayaking close to home. But until next time...

Love to all...Cathy