Things That Go Bump In The Night

We had a leisurely morning, sharing breakfast with the West’s and made ready to move on. It was now time to fulfil one of our major goals – Graceland. We drove along the I40 and found a nice State Park called Shelby Forest. We arrived and set up, beating off the myriads of mosquitoes. Not a brilliant campground, but it is convenient.
One amusing incident happened during the evening. Sally was sitting in the dinette area working on the laptop, when suddenly she heard a scrabbling noise underneath the trailer. Could it be raccoons, skunk, or possum? The noise was quite loud above our music. Could it be squirrels trying to get back in through the slide out? Could it be a bear (not very likely, but you do think of that sort of thing when it is very close and very dark outside. Nothing for it, I would have to go and look, and scare it away (unless it scared me away). So I collected my trusty jack handle and with a powerful flashlight bravely went out through the door into the night to confront this grizzly bear, or poisonous snake which was wrapping itself round the underside of our trailer. On looking, tentatively at first, then more closely, nothing was to be seen!! Yet the noise continued. Had it eaten its way through the walls! There was now definitely nothing under the trailer. I had looked in all the dark and nasty places. I came back in, the noise was still there. There was only one place left - under the dinette seats. Perhaps it was a big rattler got in somehow!!! Bravely (again) I carefully lifted the cushions off, then the seat, to be confronted with …….. The Printer! It had developed an error, thinking it had seated the ink cartridges, but it hadn’t so it was clacking away, making the printer vibrate and bang around, sounding just like an animal ferreting about under the trailer. It’s a good job I know how to capture a wild and cornered scanner and printer, otherwise we could have been terrorised.
In the middle of the night it started raining and did not stop for most of Friday, so this seemed like a good day to visit the local IHOP for a pancake breakfast. It was a good idea, but the food was not up to IHOP’s usual standard. Never mind, 7 hours later I still feel full. (oh, we did have to deviate this afternoon and have an excellent donut and coffee in a little café). This was followed by retail therapy in Walmart. By then, the rain was clearing, so we returned to the State park and followed the road out across the bayou (a stretch of flat land about 3 miles wide, which is regularly flooded by the Mississippi, to find the Mighty Mississippi. We parked beside it and wondered at the size of it. I wandered down to the edge, dabbled my fingers in it and collected some sand (yes Sandy for you). We looked across it, to the other bank which is in Arkansas, at which point I uttered the words which are to become burned in my brain as possibly one of my best and funniest quotes (my opinion, not necessarily reflected by others). “Hey Arkansee Arkansas!”. Which of course I had to then modify as we drove back to the campsite to “Hey, Ardunsaw Arkansas”, which, like some many brilliant and pithy quotes I have created, sounded better from a poetic standpoint but had actually lost something by the time I thought of it.

Tomorrow Graceland.