Mike Goad on December 24th, 2008
Lake Fort Smith State Park, Arkansas, October 20, 2008

Lake Fort Smith State Park, Arkansas, October 20, 2008

Continue reading about Camping at Lake Fort Smith

Mike Goad on November 20th, 2008
Petit Jean State Park Camground, Arkansas, July 27, 2008

Petit Jean State Park Camground, Arkansas, July 27, 2008

Continue reading about Petit Jean Camping

Mike Goad on November 10th, 2008

campfire
September 15, 2007

Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Continue reading about Campfire at Pottawatomie State Park, Wisconsin

Mike Goad on November 3rd, 2008

Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, October 2006
Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, October 2006

From the campground

Camera: Kodak DX4530 Zoom
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/4.8
Focal Length: 8 mm

Continue reading about Morning on Lake Bailey

Mike Goad on October 26th, 2008

A fifthe wheel at Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, October 2006
Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, October 1, 2006

Camera: Kodak DX4530 Zoom
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/4.1
Focal Length: 18.7 mm

Continue reading about A Fifth Wheel at Petit Jean

Mike Goad on August 26th, 2008

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View from Spring Lake Campground near Halstead, Kansas
August 13, 2007 at 7.12pm CDT

Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/180)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 45 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Continue reading about A Sunset in Kansas

Mike Goad on July 29th, 2008

We took our new camper out for its first camping trip over the weekend. Overall it was quite a success.

Our new 2008 Navion IQ

We had reservations for the campground at  Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas. (see my Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain page.)  We have camped there several times in the past.  It is a good place for setting up and checking everything out.  There is also a decent climb with curves on the way up from the west, which allowed us to see how it handled climbing as well as a curving descent on the east for checking out how it handles going down hill.

The western approach to Petit Jean was via Dardanelle and Arkansas Highways 155 and 154. This goes through flat bottom lands from the west until just before you get to the mountain. We were at the visitors center by a little after 7 PM on Friday evening and set up on our campsite by 7:30.

2709223768 a37af74783We knew that the weekend was going to be very hot and that most of the time we would either be sitting inside our little motorhome in the air conditioning or sitting outside sweltering. We did take several walks, but it was before air temperatures rose into the high 90s or after they had started dropping for the evening.

Our intention was to do this weekend without an additional vehicle. For most trips, we plan to tow a small car. If we were traveling day to day and stopping in a new place almost every day, we might be willing to do without the small car. However, our style of RVing is to travel to some point and then park the camper for several days while we do things in that area. With a small car, we can leave the camper at the campground while we explore.

One of the tasks to be accomplished this week or next is to get the car set up so that we can tow it. Unfortunately, it looks like that will be a bit more expensive than I thought it would be.

One thing that I did get done while we were there was to re-read a book that I thought I had left unread last summer. It had been long enough, though, since I read it, that it was still a good read. We also managed to watch two movies that we had taken along. We don’t watch television very much.

2708410343 431b9c85dbI don’t know what the outside temperature got up to on Saturday, but it got up to the high 80s in the front of the camper before I figured out that I could improve the airflow at the front by shutting off some of the airflow at the back. In our last RV, the registers at the end of the ducting couldn’t be closed to allow that, but they can be closed in this one.

Other than a speaker wire, we didn’t find any real problems with the camper, which is actually pretty unusual. Even though this is much smaller than our fifth wheel, we are finding that there are many RV features that we like better in this camper than the equivalent in the old one.

One thing that isn’t better than the old camper is shower space. I’m a big guy and the shower space as it stands now is inadequate, but I have a modification in the works that should alleviate that problem.

Continue reading about Shake-down camping weekend a success.

Mike Goad on June 10th, 2008

Now there are two.

The second page I’ve completed since getting back to work developing content for Haw Creek is the page for Woolly Hollow State Park.

Woolly Hollow is a nice little state park in Faulkner County north of Conway and near Greenbriar. The centerpiece of the park is a 40 acre reservoir, Lake Bennett, constructed in the early 30s by the Work Projects Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) as a watershed project built for scientific studies of the effect of run-off, silt and erosion control in a specific watershed. See my Woolly Hollow State Park web page for more information.

Administrivia details:

I’ve had the page on Haw Creek for quite some time in a different location. However, I’m moving all of my places and images pages and changing their format. I’ve decided to concentrate on optimizing the pages for search engines as well as adding new, accurate content. A lot of the content will be available in other places on the web, but, generally, not all on one site and, in many instances, the information is sketchy and often inaccurate. My intent is to provide useful and interesting material as well as valuable links that should be viable for a reasonable period of time.

Continue reading about Another park page — Woolly State Park, Arkansas

Mike Goad on May 19th, 2008

Lake Ogallala campground, Nebraska
Campground at Lake Ogallala

Nebraska State Park System

August 17, 2007 at 8.18am MDT; Pentax K10D; Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60); Aperture: f/4.5; Focal Length: 45 mm; ISO Speed: 100

Continue reading about Ogallala Camping

Mike Goad on January 14th, 2008

Tent Camping - Wooley Hollow State Park

 

 Woolley Hollow State Park — Located in the rolling hills just to the south of the Ozarks and 50 miles north of Little Rock, the 370 acre Wooly Hollow area was established as a state park in 1973. (read more)

Continue reading about Tent Camping - Woolley Hollow State Park