The Wright Patman Lake area was created by damming a river to create a huge manmade lake. Where there have been projects of this type undertaken by the Corps Of Engineers( COE )they often set up areas for public use, which include picnic areas and camp grounds. They all have amenities, shower block, power, water, sewer hookup, at more than competitive prices. They are a gem, perhaps a hidden secret. It was then time to cross the border and enter Arkansas pronounced Ar Kansas by our good friend Ed in Albuquerque. Drove though beautiful lush green countryside until we came across Doddridge, there we found a small area that is used for an annual fair, consequently all the little stall shelters etc had power in them, which for us was fantastic considering the extreme heat that we were experiencing, this made for an enjoyable stay.
The next morning I telephoned HP to try again to resolve the computer problems. Because I only have the mobile phone and to talk to somebody, you have to go through a long and tedious menu for about 10/15 minutes, then you get through to India at a call rate of 15cent per minute and you can be on the line for an excess of an hour. We had to go to the Post Office that morning, I explained my situation, and asked if I could use their telephone as it was a toll free number from a land line. This was ok, however my problem was not resolved, the support person in India said, he wanted to see the computer connected to the internet and speak to me on the phone at the same time. Big challenge!! We headed towards Texarkana for fuel and called into a McDonalds to send out a newsletter, because of the number of recipients, I send them in three batches. After the first batch was sent the computer froze, it would not respond at all. I did the usual restart procedure without any luck. We then tried to find a Best Buy to see if the “Geek Squad” could help to resolve the problem. Once again with no GPS and a fairly large town the task was somewhat difficult. When we did finally find them, their first thoughts was how much to charge us to retrieve our data, fortunately we managed to talk them out of that and they did retrieve some of the data. The difficult one was all my email contacts; they assured me that if they backed up the entire program, they would be able to retrieve the contacts later. After about four hours they completed a system restore, so far so good, of course all the programs were gone, they then tried to restore my email contracts list, you have probably guessed by now, another hour or so, time for a shift change and there will be a “super geek “ here tomorrow. We spent the night in the Target parking lot close by to Best buy, for an early start.
During the night we experienced a storm with large hail stones, torrential rain and thunderstorms etc. We did have television reception that night and programs were continually interrupted with warnings of storms. Next morning after surviving the ordeals of the weather we went back to “super Geek” at Best Buys, another hour and a half later and much sweating from the geek informed me that they must be in there some ware, but he can’t find them, we decided to cut our losses and head out of town, and reinstall programs myself,and get the computer up and running again.
We crossed the border back into Arkansas. We found a great over nighter on a huge river system at a boat ramp car park, the only disconcerting issue was the sign at the water’s edge saying “beware of the alligators. After reading this notice ,when I walked by the long grass and heard a rustle it made me a little nervous. The next day we continued along the 71 , we drove through Dequeen,managed to picked up wifi at the rear of a local restaurant. We drove out to Dequeen Lake where we had lunch; this is another COE recreation area. That night we stayed at Vandervoort,a very friendly small town. The area includes their local ball park and recreation reserve. There was power and water here also. Made the most of some time out from driving and finished the wiring of the van to improve the coach battery charge, and also made the job easier being parked on nice green grass. During the night we were sitting outside and mystified by flashes of light all around us and in the trees, we figured that they must have been fireflies, which we had never seen before.We are so far behind with the news because of the computer problems and being a tourist as well so i will include where we currently are, at the bottom of each update.
At present we are in a National forest park just outside Taos NM on our way to Colorado.
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