Camping on the Buffalo River

We just got back from a camping trip in Arkansas. What peaceful, quiet, unrivaled fun! Dh doesn't like to camp, he's a homebody and his arthritis makes him so stiff that he couldn't possibly enjoy sleeping under the stars. I have bugged him to take us camping for quite some time without success so when my friend (I'll call her "K") and her daughter, "Z" (4 years old) asked us to join them on a trip, we answered with a resounding "Yes"!.

K, who had Z, her only child, when she was 43 has camped and hiked around the globe. I, on the other hand, haven't been camping since I was a child so I was a little naive. We debated on whether to go to the Lake or to the river and when K asked sisterwho which she would rather do, sis answered "I'm scared of lakes, let's go to the river". So the river it was.

Packing for the camping trip was a major challenge. Since we've never been camping as a family, we had no camping supplies. I had to buy a tent, sleeping bags, lanterns, a life jacket for littlewho, and a cooler. Bass Pro saw me coming a mile away! I started packing a week ahead and ended up with a carload of stuff that would have gotten us through a few weeks in Alaska. Heck, when you don't know what the weather is going to do, you have to be ready for anything. I had everything from swimsuits to hats and gloves.

Food preparation was also a huge undertaking. I was not about to undo the wonderful benefits of spending several days in the open air by eating a bunch of potato chips and bologna sandwiches so I toiled over the hot stove for days, baking bread, making tortillas, chopping vegetables and cooking soups. K brought chicken salad, hummus, boiled eggs, carrot and celery sticks, dates and nuts. We ate well!

I arrived at K's house Monday a little embarassed. I was afraid that she, being the experienced camper that she was, would surely laugh at my car packed to the ceiling with stuff. I almost lost it when I saw her car loaded with things which Z "needed" for camping such as a plastic doll highchair and a stuffed rabbit bigger that her!

We chose to go to a campground with a few amenities like toilets and showers. Neither of us had ever been there and apparently had envisioned a campground situated right on the river with the water in full view. We arrived at "Tyler Bend", a national park, around 2:30pm. K was following me and I pulled into the park and drove around searching for a campsite on the river. The river was nowhere in sight. K got out of her car and walked over to the edge of the woods hoping to see water rushing but it was not to be. She walked back toward me with her hands up in the air and said, "Where's the river?". We were a little disillusioned so decided to drive back up to the visitor center to be directed to the closest campsight with a river view.

I walked in the door of the visitor center and there was a lady behind the desk. I said, "We're here to camp but really wanted a site next to the river". I was sure I could hear her snickering to herself as she said, "We can't put the campsites right on the river, they would wash away with every rain". I almost expected her to end her comment with "you fool". She explained that there was a trail leading to the river so we could just walk to it whenever we pleased. We asked if there was any way to camp ON THE RIVER and she showed us the way to a campground that was primitive--we would be camping on a gravel bar and there were no facilities. We weighed our desire to be able to see water with our longing for flushing toilets and the toilets won out. We drove back to the campground and started setting up camp.

I am the type of person who reads the directions thoroughly before putting anything together; probably has something to do with having a dh who dives in first and asks questions later. It's excrutiating to think about the number of items we have put together only to find, hours later, a crucial, missing part that had been forgotten. After unloading the car, I started taking the tent out of it's bag and sat down to read. Sisterwho had brought a friend with her and they wanted their own tent so I forgot to mention I had purchased a small, 2 man tent for them. They chose a spot for their tent several feet away from the campsite, next to the woods. I had my back turned to them and K as I was reading the novel that was to show me how to erect a tent.

I finally had all of my tent parts layed out in order on the ground and was ready to start putting it together. I turned around to see if I could offer the girls any assistance and was shocked to find they had their tent up, complete with bedding inside and they were moving in! K also had her tent put up and offered to help me but I was determined to do it myself. Once I got started, it actually went up quite easily and turned out to be very comfortable with my queen sized air bed inside (it's what you call "roughing" it).

The kids were eager to start exploring so littlewho and the girls took off down a path that led into the woods. Minutes later littlewho came running back to the campsite yelling "my legs are itching and they won't stop!" He looked quite miserable but I couldn't see anything. I poured cold water on them and within seconds he had little whelps coming up all over his lower legs. I hollered at K to come look (she's a physician). At first I thought it must be poison ivy but K said it takes a couple of days for someone to react to that. She asked me if I had brought any Benadryl and fortunately I had (but neither of us--a doctor and a nurse--remembered bandaids, go figure) so I gave littlewho one to chew. It didn't take long for the whelps and the stinging to subside and we eventually determined it must have been stinging nettles that caused it. Whew! Poor little guy, he was really suffering and that was the first time I had ever encounted such a thing!

It wasn't long before the camp host (aka the "camp nazi") drove up in her golfcart to welcome us to the Buffalo National Park. She was listing the rules of the campground and warned us about "critters"; skunks in particular had been quite a nuisance and someone's dog had recently been sprayed. As she was telling us this, Z's eyes were becoming wider, unnoticed by us and before long she was crying and clinging to K, terrified of the skunks. Who knows what kind of vision she had in her little mind regarding skunks but she was in such a state that she wouldn't let K put her down for hours and there was nothing we could say to alleviate her fears. K eventually put her in the car where she felt safe. I told littlewho to go talk to her and explain what skunks were and pretty soon they both came bouncing back to the campsite without a care in the world. I wish I could have been a fly on the window and heard exactly what it was that a 5 year old could say to his little friend that made her forget about a vicious kid-eating skunk.

We started a campfire and made "Hobo pockets". I chopped potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini and sweet potatoes ahead of time and let everyone choose what they wanted in their pocket. I put a tablespoon of butter on top, wrapped it in foil and threw the pockets in the coals of the fire. They cooked surprisingly fast and were incredibly tasty. Even the kids gobbled them up!

At night, it was cold but we all had fleece clothing. I'm not inclined to wearing polyester ANYTHING but I realize now that synthetic materials have their place. K taught me that fleece will hold the heat in, unlike cotton. That, along with our sleeping bags rated for 25 degrees kept us very warm at night. In fact, I was too warm, even when the temperature got down to 44. K even has fleece socks which are on my wish-list, something you don't want to camp without in the cooler weather.

K has a portable, one-burner propane stove that we used the next morning to make hot water for coffee and hot chocolate and pancakes. There's nothing quite like waking up and emerging from your tent on a cool morning to the birds singing, the sun gently warming your face, and pancakes.

We lugged our lawnchairs and coolers down to the river so the kids could play all day. They swam, caught crawdads and tadpoles, collected rocks and built sandcastles. The Buffalo river is particularly beautiful with it's high bluffs and clear water. The kids played on the sand bar most of the day and we are still crunching sand between our teeth, just like a day at the beach! In the evening we made another fire and had burritos for supper. K had brought avocados, black olives and refried beans and I had the homemade tortillas, cheese and salsa and we had another wonderful meal. Afterwards, we roasted marshmallows (our one indulgence) and made s'mores, YUM! Littlewho kept repeating "I am having so much fun!".

At night, we loaded all of the food into our cars because of the animals who wait for unsuspecting campers to go to sleep so they can raid your coolers and baskets. Unbeknownst to me, sisterwho and her friend had their own stash of junk food in their duffel bags. Their tent was only large enough for the 2 of them so that night they put their bags outside the tent. When we woke up in the morning, one of their bags had been dragged into the woods and a trail of candy wrappers, slimJims and pudding cups led us right to it. None of us heard anything during the night; I suspect it was raccoons who can be pretty creative little "bandits". I only hope it wasn't a bear!

I went on a run while we were there. I didn't really know where to go but decided to take off on one of the hiking trails. I assumed (wrongly) that the trails would be like the ones at our local nature center. YIKES! The trail was little more than a cow-path and I was running along the edge of embankments, dodging huge boulders and tree roots. The trail went down for quite some distance and then started going up and up until I came out on the top of one of the bluffs looking down at the river. It was beautiful but quite dizzying and I kept imagining myself falling so I quickly took off again on the trail that was marked "return trail". Well, turns out the return trail returns you to a spot about 2 miles up from the campground and I had already run at least 4 miles on rough terrain. When I finally arrived back at the camp, I had been gone an hour and my knees were a little worse for the wear. I was not at all winded, though; training on these hills where I live has really increased my stamina.

We spent our final day enjoying the river. We found another spot on the river with a shallow area that had a pretty strong current so the kids and K rode the rapids. I am a wimp when it comes to being cold AND wet and the water was really, really cold so I opted out. K had a fleece shirt on in the water and said it even keeps you warm when wet. I'm not convinced!

The kids and I are eager to go camping again, soon! Sitting around a campfire at night and looking up to see gazillions of stars, playing in the tent with the kids while waiting for the rain to pass, the peaceful sound of rushing water, food cooked and eaten out-of-doors and the uninterrupted quiet that comes from having no TV or radio is, in my opinion, the best vacation there is. At one point K said "I am in such leisure mode, I haven't thought about anything but being here". It was the most relaxed I've been in quite some time.

Things that I wouldn't go camping without are: a saw to cut firewood, fleece if it's cool weather, Teva sandals (they dry fast, stay on your feet, and are indestructable), a rope to fashion a clothesline, buckets, shovels and nets for the kids to catch and store their treasures, and a good cooler that keeps ice frozen for days.