OK Boat Trip, Day 31, 05/25/2008

Today was a very nice and easy day. We had to delay for a while early in the morning due to fog - you never want to be in the fog if possible, especially in unfamiliar territory. When we left, we fired up the radar just in case. We still had current keeping us down around 7.5 mph for the 1st half of the day but that was OK - the scenery was beautiful. Here's Petit Jean Mountain as the fog is lifting.

As we approached the Dardanelle L&D (#10), the city of Dardanelle was on the port side as well as Lookout Mountain, a lookout post in the early days overseeing the AR River Valley.

The shoreline in front of Dardanelle is solid sandy beach for a couple of miles with lots of 4-wheelers taking advantage of it.

And finally a L&D that raises us more than a couple of feet. This one was 45.

As we left the lock, everything changed. Instead of relatively narrow river channels, Lake Dardanelle is a huge expanse of water in all directions. Also, there was minimal current and we were back close to our normal cruise speed of 9 to 10 mph.

Here's Mount Nebo and the entrance to Dardanelle State Park and Marina.

We would like to have stopped here but felt we should press on – strong thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon and we need to get to Muskogee - this extra 20 miles to Spadra will make lots of difference tomorrow for our run to Van Buren. Russellville State Park is also located on Dardanelle - we'll just have to check these two out by car. As we near our destination for the night, Rhonda liked the cattails along the shoreline.

We are at Spadra Marina in Clarksville, AR. It's a perfect setting for a marina other than the fact that a railroad trestle prevents anything taller than about 20 feet from reaching it. Our clearance is 16. The docks are a bit run down but Larry has received a $100K grant for new docks. It will be next year before they are finished.

How about a walk down memory lane? This boat in the parking lot is almost an exact duplicate of our first boat purchased 30 years ago. Ours was a Newman and had an outdrive but same color, accent stripe, and other features. Adam and Scott, remember that boat?

And several places we have lived have had a Goat Island, Spadra does as well. Notice the two goats in the picture. In our early dating days, I took Rhonda to Goat Island on the Catawba River near my hometown in Lancaster, SC. My best friend, Mark Cauthen, and I had built a sailboat out of two airplane fuel tanks welded to a square metal frame. We used a shower curtain for a sail (honest) and had a trolling motor as our backup. We just pulled the battery out of the truck when we got to the river to power the motor. Lots of fun and here we are all these years later still enjoying Goat Islands wherever.

HMR docked at Spadra.

They have 2 small goldfish ponds.

Nice view from the ship's store.

And a view from the parking lot.

As I said previously, this was a nice easy day, 52 miles and 1 lock. Tomorrow is 70 miles and 2 locks which will take us to Fort Smith, AR. The marina is actually across the river from Fort Smith in Van Buren, AR.