Galina YoungEasy day as it is Monday and a first official work-on-the-road day for me. I set up shop on a picnic chair near the river and only move to follow a shady spot. For the day’s meetings my background is Arkansas River and no, it is not MS Teams new fake background.
The camp has nothing exciting to offer but it is pretty and has one valuable feature. There is a water hook up at a site (!) which means laundry day. I rub-a-dub-dab and Sol hangs in between my meetings and his catch up emails.
Girls are nowhere to be seen and are quiet. I look over my computer screen in slight panic. I spot them at a river bank with their fishing rod in a water…where they remain (quietly and cooperatively) for the next couple of hours. Bliss of a working parent on the road.
Later in the day I am back in the meetings and Sol and the girls hit the local Kroger’s for some wares and a bank for a roll of quarters for each girl. The rule is: they each get $10 roll of quarters to keep but every time they whine about (“are we there yeeeet?”) or start a physical fight they pay us a quarter. They are both determined to arrive in CA with full $10 in their possession.
I am off my last call at 3pm and we have to move out of our site pronto as the next rig is waiting to anchor for the night. I relocate to my car office and am busy posting a job requisition for a potential hire as Sol drives on.
Easy drive to the next site for the night of only about 2 hours (perspective really changes in a cross country road trip).
Around 6 pm we pull into Aux Arch Dam national park (near Ozarks) and, once again, we have a site that backs up to the waters of, once again, Arkansas River.
I anticipate a relaxing night where I catch up with my writing while resting my feet in a warm water with a glass of wine. Girls, however, ‘fall’ into the river right before dinner and are in need of a fundamental bath.
During the fire pit marshmallow time Jack from neighboring site walks over with some firewood for us. He hangs for some neighborly conversation and relays his remarkable life story to Sol (I bow out hallway through it to get the girls washed up and into bed). I slightly consider rescuing Sol after they are asleep but he appears to be enamored with conversation. He tells me that Jack was a sharp shooter for the Navy and was stationed in CA around Morro Bay. They find quite a few connection points and I encourage Sol to write a story about the meeting.
At dinner we offer girls a choice: to stick around the site for the day and Sol take them for a hike in Ozarks or go check out the Crater of Diamonds state park and dig for some diamonds (at the only live diamond site in this hemisphere). They get all excited about the diamond hunt as Tamara wants to purchase a black throat monitor lizard and Sasha wants to now buy an RV bus for our travels and a puppy. Our littlest human with the personality that does not always fit in our 19 foot retro.
We quickly realize that diamond hunting place is 3 hours due south and will cost us some travel time. But we don’t want to take girls’ decision from them. We agree to put up sail early in the morning and go diamonds hunting.
