Today was the day we have all been waiting for (and the purpose of our trip to Arkansas, which may not have been our first choice of destination for sightseeing in July, otherwise)! Introducing Penny Pickle Rose, our new brown beauty Portuguese Water Dog. We have been waiting several months for her to be born and ready to join our family, and we welcome her to the mayhem. So far she is super sweet and the girls are excited to have a new playmate that can actually play (as opposed to sack-of-potatoes-that-cries Orly). She is so cute! (Note: we ripped off our masks only momentarily for this picture with her breeder/mom’s owner Diane. Kaya didn’t even hear me say it, apparently). PS – it was also my birthday!

We rented a pontoon boat and a tube today and spent it on Lake Oauchita (supposedly one of the cleanest lakes in the US – apparently the thing to do is rent a houseboat, but we have a housebus so didn’t need that). The kids had a great time, although there was some squabbling over order of tubing rides at first. The highlight was finally hitting the waves right to throw Mila and Alex out of the tube. I also managed to simul-nap both Maggie and Orly on the boat = mom win.

Next stop: Arkansas! We have headed to the Mountain Harbor Resort on Lake Ouachita in Arkansas – we chose this stop mainly because of its proximity to our soon-to-be new puppy. But as a bonus, the Gangsteads from Texas drove up and RV’ed with us for the weekend. Our girls (and us) were super excited to get to play with other kids (and adults) and the 5 older girls played with every toy we brought within a few hours. Here’s a nice picture of our behemoth RV with their firstborn in the foreground.

I debated extensively about the COVID risk for every stop on this trip – for this reason, we have skipped Ashville, Pigeon Forge, Dollywood, Gatlinburg, Nashville, and any museums/playgrounds, etc along the way. But, today we decided to go the Memphis Zoo. They impressively publicize the live/real-time numbers of visitors and I have been watching the numbers for a few weeks (as well as the video cams in the popular exhibits) to get a sense of best time of day and day of week for social distancing. So, we arrived before opening and stayed until early afternoon – and it was great! It was scorching hot, so there was barely anyone there, and the zoo was actually enforcing masks for any indoor exhibit. The bonobos were super fun and they had a great selection of animals – including pandas!

On day 7 we headed all the way to the end of Tennessee and stayed at a very interesting campground right on the west bank of the Mississippi River. There was little shade, and it was HOT, but the kids like seeing the big shipping barges. I was a little disappointed, since I had been hoping for grandiose riverboats with jazz music and people dancing on the decks, but there was none of that. Mila was convinced there were “animals” in the river that kept coming up to the surface, but I am pretty sure it was just trash.

We stayed at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch today, which was a nice quiet campground near what is basically a fairgrounds that hosts things like motorcross races at times. There is a small museum, store, and pool – all of which were closed. People in this part of Tennessee do not seem to care about the ‘Rona – we stopped at Walmart on the way to pick up supplies/groceries. I went in alone while the family had lunch – maybe 15% of shoppers wore masks, there were entire families clearly just shopping for fun, and I felt COVID dirty the whole time. I also spent much of the time at the campground awkwardly yelling at the kids to avoid the other campground kids, who kept coming straight up to them. Our kids completely understand not to approach others and to stay 6 feet apart, but don’t know how to handle it when they are approached – and neither do I, apparently.  On the plus side, I did buy some Lysol wipes at Walmart, which I have not been able to get in Chapel Hill.

I didn’t take any pictures today, so instead I introduce you to our carb cabinet – any real RV family has a carb cabinet.

Next stop was Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee – it rained for the first few hours of the day so we got all decked out to go for a wet hike, and then the sun came out as soon as we set off. We hiked a couple miles to the Fall Creek Falls overlook, and had a nice picnic lunch. Kaya and Mila hiked on to the base of the falls and the rest of us went back for a rest and some air conditioning. Most impressively, we managed a selfie with all 6 of us family members and a tiny bit of the waterfall in the background. And yes, I am 2 weeks post-partum and carrying two babies on a hike, which felt way easier than any day from 28-39 weeks pregnant.

Kaya, Laney, Mila and Tommy hit the Pigeon River for some whitewater rafting fun – the water is let out of the dam upstream a few days a week, creating some fun rapids. Orly, Maggie and I stayed behind for naptime (which was also great) and Kaya and Laney came back SO EXCITED. It was pretty cute and I’m sorry I didn’t get to see them in action. The activity was not conducive to picture taking, so instead I give you a picture of super cool Laney.

We left Cades Cove today and drove to the picnic area at Metcalfe Bottoms – where we parked the RV and had eggs and bacon by the river. Then the girls all played in the shallow river for a few hours before we had lunch and made our way back closer to the highway for the night. Kaya had a lot of fun catching the little fish in the river, and Maggie and Laney loved to jump off the rocks. I sat in the shade with Orly as I am not yet river worthy, but it was really fun watching them play. Apparently the thing to do is bring inner tubes to float, but we missed that memo.

We are spending the first two nights at Cades Cove in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park – this was pretty much the only campground inside the park that would take an RV this size, which I refer to as the behemoth. You see, we rented a reasonable 26 ft RV from Outdoorsy, which is essentially the AirBnB of RVs. Then, a few weeks before the trip, we got a message from the owners that they sold their old RV and “upgraded” to this gigantic 36ft Class A Bus RV and that the cost would stay the same for our new “upgraded” RV. So, I had to rebook a bunch of our campsites (after already rebooking the entire trip from east to west coast) to accommodate the behemoth.

Cades Cove was very pretty, although we spent most of the day at the stables waiting for Kaya’s turn to take a trail ride. They have a ridiculous system for trail rides, where you sign up on a list and they take you in order, but refuse to give any sort of estimate of waiting time or how many people are in front of you. Kaya and Tommy eventually had a great time on the trail ride, Mila biked 5 miles to the the Abrams Falls trailhead and then hiked the 5.6 mile trail to/from the falls, then biked back, and I took Laney and Maggie (and Orly) on a carriage ride. Mila claims to have seen a bear, although could not provide photo proof so I am skeptical.