Road Problems Solved by Older Couple
Avoid the “D” section at Lake Chicot, campers.
The Park Ranger noticed right away. They were from a senior community. He was a short fella with a good many opinions, which he expressed in full sentences. The female smiled, and nodded, then got onto the boat, although she didn’t approve of being a senior rather than a person.
The diminutive ranger was young and didn’t know any better, so she didn’t hold it against him.
A less pompous and taller ranger wearing the same khaki and olive green uniformed named Alex steered their party barge, piloting himself and his four passengers directly into a hailstorm.
It was not Alex’s fault, because the evening had begun with a mild tinge of yellow in a pale blue sky, with a distant bruise to the north. But a half-hour and four heron sightings later, the blue-black storm clouds hovered over the barge. The boat wove through the cypress trees on this oxbow lake, and into a veil of falling water.
She didn’t care if the other couple, also seniors, got drenched. They were overly talkative about themselves in a way that discouraged follow-up questions.
The boat ride chilled the couple, as the air careened from a mellow 86 to a breezy 66. The ranger promised them a free tour should they ever venture back to the delta.
After hail, a blossoming of bugs
In the shadow of the Mississippi River, the wildlife is active in mid-May. The bugs come out early and crawl into crevices and onto shade covers, and stay up late. Some will land on your bag of pork rinds, for no discernible reason. Others will be impossible to identify, somewhere between a beetle and a spider.
The bug battle was unwinnable, even with a top brand of insect repellant. The brown and black creatures lounged in the restroom sinks, crawled boldly back onto arms after being flicked away, and formed lines on the electrical box as if they were marching off to war in the bright afternoon sun.
The couple did not complain, much. They played gin and swatted the flying pests away, and the female made a nest for about an hour inside the air conditioned teardrop trailer where she read about the excesses of the CIA in the 1960s.
Giant RVs exist because…
You’ve seen them on highways and back roads and in your neighbor’s driveway, the 35-foot behemoth road monsters with pop out sides and ludicrous names like Momentum or HummingBird II. They are the size of busses. Who can afford such things? They must be a hassle to tow.
The male did not want one, as he was not a confident highway driver and these vehicles represented a kind of gluttony to him, to boot.
After two campouts in the 10-foot teardrop, which has only a bed and an outdoor kitchen, the reason for bloated travel trailers became obvious: a bathroom of one’s own.
When you are over 50, you will awaken in the middle of the night. You will need to go now. If you are tent camping, you might get away with scurrying and squatting at a nearby tree, but not in a well-lit campground.
He did not want to get arrested for indecent exposure and be stricken with a black mark on his permanent record just because he’d gone to take a whiz.
They purchased a foldable, electric bike to bring the restroom closer, but it was impractical at 3 a.m. because it was locked and besides, dangerous in the dim, unfamiliar surroundings.
So it’s wake up groggy, don shoes, grope around for the flashlight or headlamp, and hike to the nearest bathroom, which is usually lit up like a Christmas tree.
Dead battery under mammoth oaks
Both members of this team learned to hitch the little trailer to their Ford Explorer, although she usually backed the Ford up and he wrangled the attachments. It was after 8:30 in the a.m. before the two of them got their wet canopy folded up and stowed away, and made their two cups of coffee for the road.
She nestled her bulletproof coffee in the cupholder, looking forward to the relative calm of driving, and cranked the engine, and — zilch. A little clicking sound emerged from beneath the hood.
“Battery dead,” she said to him, and he nodded.
She cranked it once more for good measure and the same anemic clatter emerged. She was not concerned.
“We can use the trailer battery,” she said.
She rooted around in the backseat, where the two chihuahuas lay in their dog bed, staring back at her. She found the red and black cables.
They couldn’t hook them up; the Ford engine was too far from the battery that rested at the trailer’s prow.
She put in the car in neutral and they both pushed, until the Ford was nearly touching the ball hitch. After they hooked up the cables, their car started right away and they climbed in. It would be a slow, bumpy exit from the park but they had solved another problem.
The golden arches of convenience
One thing about towing a little trailer is you can never, ever back-up. The process is likely to embarrass you, and could cause a minor traffic snarl or an accident. So it’s a good scheme to pull into McDonald’s for four simple reasons:
— They are easy to find and spot from a distance
— You can park a long rig next on the drive-thru side
— They’ll serve you your keto breakfast on a little plate
— The bathrooms are usually clean
It’s easier to make a McDonald’s stop when you are confident you have a healthy battery, however.
She convinced him after they’d driven a full hour it was safe to turn off the engine, but he wasn’t so sure. After they ate a total of four sausage and egg McMuffins without bread (two with cheese), the couple peeled out of the parking lot at a blazing 5 mph. The little trailer squeaked a bit, but it showed no signs of road fatigue.
She asked if he would agree to visit Cane Creek State Park outside of Star City, and maybe they could turn off the engine?
He said that would be okay.
Cane Creek near Star City
When they reached Cane Creek, the couple agreed the campground was superior to the lowly “D” section where they’d stayed the last two nights, which was quiet and shaded by old oaks but otherwise decrepit. The female went inside the visitor center and got their State Parks passport stamped, and bought a sticker.
She slapped the black and white sticker on the outside of the teardrop, next to the door. They could come back here, if they came through Star City again, he said. They walked the chihuahuas under a nearly white sky in the moist morning air.
It wouldn’t be too long, they and their spoiled pets would arrive back at their retirement village.
Since beginning her freelance writing journey in March 2019, Jean Campbell has learned oodles about humor — leading to over 7K Medium followers and hundreds of articles.
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