Keep on Travelin' - Eureka Springs and Broken Bow

Thorncrown Chapel, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, an architectural wonder encased in clear glass

Tuesday, September 29^th, marked our departure date from Iowa and our little family that now lives there.  We had a great time with Sara, Drew, Jonah and Isaac during our two stays (July and September), but it was time to head South and once again inhabit our new home away from “home” in Tempe, AZ.  We woke up early Tuesday morning to a driving rainstorm; NOT the best way to start out a long travel day.  But the rain had largely cleared by the time we made it out of the greater Des Moines area, and it was pretty smooth sailing down I35 through Kansas City, then Joplin, Missouri, finally leaving the freeway and heading East up into the Ozarks of NW Arkansas. 

Soon we were passing through a medium sized city called Bentonville that seemed to have kind of a Walmart feel to it.  Then, it occurred to us, well to Lanie at least, that Bentonville was where it all started for Sam Walton and family, the Walmart Empire growing from humble beginnings in this modest little Arkansas town to what it is today; that is a huge conglomerate with its own cultural icons, aka “the Walmart aisle clogging shoppers”, not to mention a handful of billionaire Waltons populating the Most Wealthy Lists in this Country. 

Downtown Eureka Springs, clinging to the canyons and wooded hills of the Arkansas Ozarks

From there it was on to a truly quaint, charming little town called Eureka Springs, with Victorian style homes and ancient town buildings squeezed into the “hollers” of the woodsy Ozarks.  The road in from the bigger towns like Bentonville and Rogers was picturesque, if also a little curvy and just a bit challenging, especially hauling the 34 foot, 10,000 pound gorilla (the 5^th) through those curves.  But we made it to our RV park for the next two nights, a KOA tucked right into the woodsy surroundings. And next day, the final day of September, we explored the town and the surrounding hills of the truly beautiful Ozarks. 

Our KOA campground site in Eureka Springs

With this kind of connection to nature, I could become a regular churchgoer again! InsideThorncrown Chapel, Eureka Springs, AR

We would have liked to have stayed longer, and were already planning to visit and explore this area more on a future trip; but on Thursday, October 1^st, we were off again on a relatively short jaunt to a little town down in the SE Corner of Oklahoma called Broken Bow,  Lanie has ancestors buried there, and we’d briefly visited the town 17 years earlier during a family history trek (hauling our then teenage daughters and our first RV, a Palomino Tent Trailer) that went from Eugene as far East as Mississippi, covering many states and towns in between, including Broken Bow, in the process.

Our trip down to Broken Bow this time was quite scenic, continuing on I35 to Fort Smith Arkansas, then going off the freeway and down on two lane highways through surprisingly hilly, wooded country in SE Oklahoma to our destination.  It was less than 250 miles driving distance from Eureka Springs to Broken Bow… piece of cake… UNTIL we drove into Beavers Dam State Park, our campground for the next two nights.

Broken Bow Lake

We checked in at the Park Office, then started down the short blacktop road to our campground, which had lots of empty sites.  On our first pass through the campground, we noticed another camper towing a little white trailer and kind of driving parallel to us.  We turned a corner and he was right in front of us, wanting to chat it appears.  I rolled down the window, and in a developing scene that sometime down the line (but not now!) will probably seem comical to us, this gentleman informed me I was “missing a wheel”.  WHAT? I got out of Bertha, walked right to the back of the 5^th, and checked on our spare.  It was still in place, bolted to its holder on the back bumper.  “No, NOT that one”… or something to that effect, this gentleman said, then pointed to a wheel that looked suspiciously like one of ours that was riding on his trailer’s front hitch assembly, and told me to look on the other side of our trailer. 

Uh Oh, NO WHEEL!

I did so, and, lo and behold, we were missing an entire wheel, with only part of the brake housing and just one brake pad remaining on the end of the axle.  Insert any expletive here, as I promptly did, but silently mind you… really I was just thinking various expletives, not bursting out in full voice with my… uh dismay!   I went back to Lanie’s window, confirmed that, YES, indeed, we had lost a wheel.  Since our 5^th has dual axles, we really didn’t notice it dropping off when it happened, which thankfully was at very slow Park speeds, just a quarter mile up the road as it turned out. 

NOW WHAT?  We were in a very isolated spot in a sparsely populated part of Oklahoma, we were only planning to stay two nights, and we had just 3 wheels on axles that needed 4 for a complete set.  To compound our problems, we had no WiFi or Cellphone service at our campsite; so sitting down and locating and calling various auto/trailer repair shops was not an option; at least not in the comforts of our now three-legged 5^th Wheel, which we did manage to back into a site and prop up on jacks.

Woodsy beauty at Beavers Dam State Park near Broken Bow, OK

The WHAT that we quickly found was a whole lot of kind, good hearted decency and helpfulness in the people from that part of Oklahoma, starting with the gentleman who had retrieved our tire, matched it with our 3 legged 5^th Wheel and flagged us down.  He not only flagged us down, but insisted he drive it to our campsite and help me unload it; and he was supposed to be checking out, and heading on with his own trailer.

So his helpfulness got the whole thing rolling, and it kept rolling from there.  Unhitched, we drove Bertha back up to the Park Office, paid for our planned two night stay, while informing the very nice Lady who checked us in that our… uh… two night stay might have to be a bit longer, depending on how long it took to get our 5^th Wheel repaired.  She asked what was wrong… I told her; and, without another word, she was on the phone (good old fashioned wired phone, working where our Smartphones were rendered useless).  First guy she got on the line was service manager for a local RV dealership.  I talked to him; unfortunately he could not help us, said they were super busy; and what we needed, that is someone to come out to our campsite and assess, then repair the damage, could not be done, not by "ANYBODY IN THESE PARTS AT LEAST"! (his direct quote)

I hung up, silent expletives rising within me yet again.  Julie… by this time we were on a first name basis… promptly was on the phone again, this time talking to a guy named Mike, explaining our predicament.  She put me on the phone with him.  Mike got the basics from me, thought he could help; said he could probably get a guy out to look at the trailer and wheel that very afternoon; and he did.  I found out from Julie, after thanking Mike profusely and hanging up,  that Mike was manager of Discount Wheel and Tire in downtown Broken Bow.  Turns out that there was an “Anybody In These Parts” that could help us out.  Mike’s guy, a young fellow named Daniel, indeed came out that same afternoon, while we were away, having headed to a nearby restaurant for a late (3 PM or so) lunch and cellphone access. 

Another nice soul, our waitress named Donna, asked what we would like.  First thing out of my mouth was, “Don’t suppose you serve alcohol here”?   Her polite answer was NO.  Then we proceeded to explain that it had been a bit of a trying afternoon.  She asked why, and we filled her in; and she offered that maybe her husband could help us out, that he was pretty good with that kind of work.  We told her about Mike, whose promise to help was, at that time, just a promise as far as we knew; she took our order, then a short time later was back with a phone to her ear and some guy jabbering loudly on speaker phone.  It was her husband, Paul, who wanted to talk to me, asked what I’d seen with the wheel and tire, then immediately offered his opinion about what happened; that is that probably the bearings in that wheel were bad and had caused the wheel to twist and loosen and eventually break away from the axle and brake rotor. 

Our "Anybody in These Parts' answer in Broken Bow, OK (consider this a shameless plug for a great company and crew)

Turns out he was exactly right, as we found out the next morning from Mike and his guy, Daniel.  The next astounding act of generosity and helpfulness unfolded in the following minutes as Paul, still talking loudly on the speaker phone, told me, that, while he lived 30 miles north of there, he could come down that very afternoon to look at our trailer.  I told him I thought Mike and his crew were going to help us, but took Paul’s number down just in case.  Donna came back then with our orders, and added lightly, “ I think he just wants an excuse to come pay me a visit”, “while also stating the obvious, “He likes to talk”; and then she informed me that Paul had worked as an RV Service Technician for many years. Great backup resource, I thought.

To try to shorten a longer than expected little story, Daniel did come out (footnote here, he ended up making three trips to and from our campground, a round trip of 24 miles each time, and was unfailingly polite, always answering “yes, Sir” or “no Sir” to my various queries), I actually met with him and Mike at the Discount Tire office a couple times Thursday afternoon and Friday, as well as seeing him at work at our campsite Friday on two occasions; and, as of Friday afternoon we looked good to go, a few hundred dollars poorer, but richer for the experience of dealing with a handful of very fine and generous folks (start counting, Guy in the campground, name unknown, who retrieved our tire, Julie, Mike, Donna, Paul, Daniel, and I’m sure there are others)  down here in SE Oklahoma.  Broken Bow was good for our Broken Wheel (Silly pun, but deal with it!)

Next stop: San Marcos, Texas.