Caching at Lake Village Arkansas

We left Foley and traveled SR 98 up to I-10 and across the beautiful Mobile bridge.  We took the alternate route as the tunnel just past the bridge was only 11 ft. and our motorhome would not fit.  Just past Mobile we took Hwy 98 into Mississippi, Louisiana, then into Arkansas.  We were following the Arkansas Great River Road, a beautiful drive through the Missouri River Bottom.

On our way up Hwy 49 in Mississippi the skies were clear; a nice sunny day. When I looked ahead it looked like rain.  I got out my Droid Razr to check on weather.  I think that little weather cell ahead was the ONLY rain for hundreds of miles.  I can only think we are magnets for bad weather.

It was a very brief downpour, no wind or lightning so we were through it very quickly.

We had traveled 359 miles when we got to Lake Village, AR.  Tom usually does not drive that many miles, but it we found a county park right on Chicot Lake.

We came in after 5:30 and were parked in site #1 for the night.  We were planning on traveling to Branson the next day, Thursday, but this was such a nice park, there were lots of geocaches around the lake, and we added another day for a total of $30.25 for 2 nights.  Site #1 was booked for the weekend so we had to move the next morning to  another site right along the Lake.

The ‘t’ in Chicot is silent so it is pronounced just like the town, Chico, in California.  It is an Oxbow Lake and is 500 years old and averages a mile wide and 22 miles long.  It is the largest lake in Arkansas and the largest Oxbow in North America.  There are many Oxbows along the Missouri and Mississippi formed when meandering rivers twist and turn, flood, build up sand bars, become separate from the river and leaving Oxbow lakes behind.

There was an excellent museum at the Chicot Lake State Park (#3) about 20 miles from the Chicot County Park (#2) that did a great job explaining the history of the area and the formation on the lake. 

There were 2 easy geocaches at the State Park.  We loved the cache that was in plain sight.  The ranger told us the combination to the lock was the last 3 digits of the longitude.

We drove back to Lake Village, had lunch at the local Mexican restaurant and went caching.  We got several, but we had trouble getting an internet signal and we were caching with our Droids so we went back to the motorhome a little frustrated.  I downloaded the geocaches to the Delorme and we went back to town to get a few more.  We were close to 800 caches – we couldn’t resist.

Our #800 was found at a local cemetery right by the road.  There was a fresh grave, but it was not near the cache and Tom went right to the tree.  I followed with the bug spray.  There were A LOT of mosquito swarms on the way to the cache. The tree in the back was ground zero (GZ).  We had found 11 caches this day, a good number for us.

We left for Branson on Friday and traveled 250 miles to Turkey Creek RV park, an Escapee Park in Hollister, just outside of Branson.  Our time in Branson will be laid back while we rest up for our time in Kansas City helping with the SkillsUSA Job Interview contest.  We are again putting out an invitation for anyone near Kansas City next week to join us judging the gold medal winners from all the states.  You will have a very uplifting experience.  More on Branson and the tornado damage done last February 29 next blog.  Maybe we might cache too.