WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - Day 10 - Wright Patman Dam - Rocky Point

It was that time. Time to pack up and head on out of Craighead Forest in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We have been here a full week and it was time to try and move further south. We were looking for a little bit warmer weather. So Steve did all of the outside jobs and I did all of the inside jobs to get "roadworthy". Nick just sat there and looked handsome. 

We set the camera up and did our little intro for the video on YouTube. We usually start each travel day with a brief talk from the cockpit of our motorhome.

We headed on out of Jonesboro and angled our way down towards Texas. Steve spotted the lowest price of diesel he's ever seen, so we stopped and filled our tank. 2.99 a gallon--- (It's hard to read the LED lights on the right, but that is $2.49 a gallon for regular gas)

At first we were worried that the pump was out of service, but that was only the pump on the right for gasoline. They had plenty of the diesel available from the pump on the left. Yes, this is real diesel #2, not biodiesel or any other blended configuration. Our Mercedes-Benz engine requires regular diesel. We are averaging 12.8 miles per gallon. 

We also stopped in at a Walmart for a stock up of grocery items like fresh produce and milk and eggs. We needed a few things after being stationary for a whole week in Jonesboro.  

As we drove along, our eyes were adjusting to some really beautiful green grass along the sides of the road. Even some of the trees are budding out with leaves. The lower shrubbery is filling in with green deciduous leaves, and we noticed the pine trees are also having fresh new growth of green needles on all of their branch tips.

Our eyes are not accustomed to seeing this in February in Wisconsin!

We passed a lot of flat agricultural land with many channels and irrigation ditches. We know that a lot of these fields are rice fields. Arkansas is the major producer of rice in the United States. We also passed some of these huge solar farms. Amazing!

It was too busy at the gas station to take Nick out for a potty break. But not too far down the road we found an interesting rest area / wayside. It was in the middle of the meridian between both northbound and southbound routes of the interstate.  It was very, very noisy! But they did have a pet walking area so we got Nick out and about. We also noticed they had an overnight camping section. Even though it was noisy, it would be a good port in the storm if you are traveling in bad weather or needed a quick overnight stop. Good to know.

We are now in the Southwest corner of Arkansas and ready to cross the border into Northeast Texas. The roads are good, the skies are clear, and we put on a few miles.

 

We drove through the city of Texarkana about 5:00 p.m. This city is half in Arkansas and half in Texas. The middle of the city is split by a highway that is also the border. There was a lot of construction going on, and somehow we got ourselves into a temporary center "Thruway Route" instead of the right hand lane with exit ramps and on ramps.  We don't know how we got on it, but we couldn't get off! We could see the exit we needed to take to get down to our next intended campground. But we couldn't get there! 

We had to keep going further west. Exit after exit was unavailable to us because we were in this center "Thruway Route" and couldn't get off!!! Concrete barriers kept us from getting into the right hand lanes. I think it's to keep the truck traffic moving through the construction straight through without having to change any lanes. Well, we finally found our way off by the 4th or 5th exit. Now we had to double back around on side streets and side roads to make our way back to where we should have gotten off in the first place. We were miles out of our way...

Finally we worked our way down to the entrance to what we thought was Rocky Point Corps of Engineers campground at the Wright Patman Dam on the Wright Patman Lake.  We saw the sign and made our turn here.

We drove on down and we found the huge Dam. It was an amazing huge mound of grassy dirt with a road running alongside of it. Suddenly the road took a sharp incline and we were supposed to drive up on the top edge of the dam??? 

That didn't seem right to us. We stopped and double-checked the GPS and the maps. It really wasn't very clear. I guess there's another campground down here that's closed until March 1st. So we turned around and headed back out to the main highway.

Now we drove down to the next entrance off the highway also for Wright Patman lake. This one led us to the Rocky Point campground. Oh what a pretty drive into this campground...

We are really enjoying the tall pine trees. It looks a lot like the Northwoods of Wisconsin or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Not at all what we thought Texas would be looking like. In other years, we've been to the west side of Texas and down as far south as far as Big Bend. It's all desert and rolling rangeland and sagebrush.

We like the Army Corps of Engineer Parks because they accept our America the Beautiful senior access pass. It allows us to camp for half price!  The pass can be purchased on a yearly basis or you can buy the lifetime pass for $80. Ours has more than paid for itself in the first month that we had it.

For example, at this next campground, the electric sites are $26, so we got it for only $13. 

We looked up online to see that there were many sites available at Rocky Point. But there really was only one site that was available for a whole week that was considered waterfront. So that's the one we aimed for. The attendant at the gate said sure we could drive right in and check it out, and then register online. So that's what we did.

Just past the gate house, the welcoming crew made us feel right at home...

The deer in Texas are smaller in size than what we are used to up in the Northwoods. These were pretty accustomed to having people around and didn't seem to be very bothered by us at all.

We found our way to our intended campsite. Steve was just about ready to start backing in when our neighbor came over and interrupted him during the backup process. He was telling us how uneven the campsite was and that he couldn't get level on it etc etc. Well, we eyeballed it and it was pretty darn good. We aren't too picky and we have levelers to help out if it is. As soon as we got backed up onto the site, he came back again to interrupt us and tell us how glad he was that we could make it on to the site. We were busy trying to get set up and get supper going as it was getting late. This guy really wasn't leaving us alone, was he?  I think we were his "new best friends".  (set up and tear down times are the WORST time to interrupt RVers. Mistakes can be made that could be dangerous or costly).  We tried to be polite, but we had to firmly continue our setup routine and get settled in. 

Then he proceeded to go back to his site and crank his music, very loud. 

Yes, very loud! 

Ugh.

I managed to get supper started and Steve finished our hookups and getting our slides out. We were finishing up just in time to catch the most beautiful sunset ever...

Even though we were technically water side, we kind of had to look through some of the other campsites to see the sun setting.

I decided to grab my camera and walk down along the shoreline to catch some beautiful amazing sunset shots.  These are untouched and no filters. I do a little cropping to center the photo but that's about it. I don't manipulate my pictures.

The sun was going down and it was so pretty. What a great way to end a long travel day. The opposite shoreline made the perfect foreground for the sun as it was getting down near the horizon. It got bigger and bigger as it got close to the edge of the land.

As it slipped below the horizon, it made the most beautiful color striations against the clouds. Again, nothing here is manipulated or changed. It was so pretty that it was dazzling to the eyes as it sunk lower behind the trees.

This looks like an abstract watercolor painting or some crazy dyed fabric streaks of tie dye. But no, it was the actual sky!!!

As I walked back up to the motorhome, it was bathed in the same beautiful orange glowing light. I was so thankful we had a nice spot to rest for the night. Even with the loud music, we were happy to be off the road and having a spot to rest.

We decided the next morning that we would either move campsites to another site or head on further south. That's what's great about having a motor home or any RV with wheels. If you don't like your neighbors, you can move. 

Here's the YouTube that goes along with today's blog:

299 miles traveled today 

1,063 miles traveled so far