So the Days Inn about 4 miles out from downtown New Orleans is pretty strict. They charge for every stain on a towel or pillow case. They will probably charge for the wine on the cabinets….I mean when you STILL don’t have a corkscrew, the only alternative after the other night camping is to push the cork in right? Right! So cork in means wine out, whoops!!! After a few cardboard cup fulls of wine, the cork slides into the opening spewing wine everywhere! Thankfully, my cat-like reactions stop this from being a total catastrophe…

The usual sound of falling asleep to bird song, guitars and harmonicas is replaced by police sirens and the sound of people opening and closing doors a little too frequently for my liking…it is currently 12:23am, the sirens have been going probably intermittently for the last hour and a half and the doors go every 10 minutes or so….all the while I am sipping wine out a cardboard cup, FaceTiming people (some pick up some don’t, you know who you are) and channel hopping the 40 channels we have without a guide….the channels mainly consist of adverts. 😔

Good morning! Not the best night sleep after getting devoured by our friend Mike the mosquito…but I’m sure I’ll live 😊 today’s agenda is to drive to Little Rock, Arkansas. It’s about a 7 hour drive, 427 miles back up through Mississippi. 

Children are so incredibly messy. We were sat at breakfast this morning and there was a mum, a dad (I can only assume) and a kid who was probably 6/7 (I have no idea about kids age so could be well put) so should know not to put your breakfast all over the table and eat from a bowl like a normal human being right? Not like mowgli!! There were cornflakes, fruit loops, banana, apple, raisin bread, toast the whole works just spread out over the table! The parents just let him do it though which is what I found most baffling. Add the fact that I kept getting the mothers arse in my face when she’d bend over to fill her cup up with water and the three of them were just delightful!

The long journey to Arkansas began. The journey literally consisted of nothing. There were little towns consisting of about 3 houses every so often along the highways but aside from that there were just fields and fields and more fields. We came across the visitors centre where the ladies were very cheerful and the view down the river wasn’t bad eitherThe downside to this journey was that there wasn’t anywhere to eat for miles. Eventually we passed through one of these small towns, this one had about 5 houses and a Pizza Hut. We called in and ordered a large pizza as that sees us for two days worth of food, and I also got a salad 🥗. Once we were fed and watered it was back on the road for the final two hours to Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Definitely in need of a hike this evening to stop my Fitbit buzzing me to move!

Fun fact for you…Arkansas is pronounced Ark-insaw! 

Arkansas is a French variant of the Siouxian word Quapaw which was also a tribe located around the area where Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas almost meet. The word Quapaw means downstream people. Because there used to be two senators who disagreed on “Arkansas” and “Arkansaw”, the state’s General Assembly passed a resolution in 1881 that agreed the state would be spelled as Arkansas but pronounced as Arkansaw.

We arrived at Pinnacle Mountain State Park at about 630pm ready to get trekking. There was an overlook up a few flights of stairs by the visitors centre so we climbed up… The view was beautiful. We then took the rocky steps trail which led to the east quarry trail. I could see why it was called the rocky step trail…Should have swapped my Skechers for my trusty walking boots 😔. All we had were red painted trees to keep us going in the right direction. And it was worth it…The view from the top really was spectacular. You could see Pinnacle Mountain in the background and the sun was setting. We met some critters on the way…And then began our descent back down hopefully before they shut the gates. Following the red coloured trees back to the rocky steps trail which then turned yellow. What happens when you have a fork in the trail and no idea which way to go?You guess!! Somehow we ended up climbing again when we should have been descending down to the visitors centre. We weren’t deterred though as we saw people! We hadn’t seen people in over an hour and a half! Note to self…when Nathan says he has found a trail back down to the car…DON’T LISTEN!!!No matter which way we went it was a dead end. Then came the thunder and the rain and the black sky…Nothing like several claps of thunder to get you moving!! The rain came too but there was something oddly refreshing about actually being lost in the middle of this State Park, trying to find our way back to the car! We trekked back the way we came and continued straight at the fork. Eventually after about another mile we reached the car…
I was a puddle of sweat. It was so unbelievably humid in the forest and it was rather dense at times! Combine that with getting lost plus the rain and it was a pretty awesome evening trek!! 

Until later….