WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - Day 4 - Getting Settled In at Craighead Forest Park in Jonesboro AR

Ahhhhh waking up in this peaceful little campground in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The forefathers of this city really were to be commended for setting aside such wonderful grounds to become a city park for everyone to enjoy.  The park contains 692 acres! There isn't even a fee to come and spend time here in any of the picnic or athletic areas or to just come and walk the paths. 

There is a charge for the camping of course, but is so reasonable that I can see why it is a popular place. Although this time of year, on all the 10 sites around us, only one other site is occupied. There are 41 sites in all. Really peaceful and quiet.

Everywhere we look from all three angles on this peninsula is a gorgeous view. That's why we pulled in nose first so we could look around from the front and the side and the bedroom windows. We are facing somewhat East so we are having sun all afternoon along the passenger side of the motorhome. Then we are treated with sunsets out the back bedroom window to the West. Pretty good positioning...

We walked down by the water to enjoy the sunset

During the evening hours, the birds are still singing from every direction. It's music to our ears.

There's an abundance of Canadian geese, beautiful ducks, and even some white swans floating around on the lake. 

Earlier in the morning I heard some loons. But I don't know exactly where they are. We haven't seen them yet. I think they are more elusive.

It is so calm and peaceful here, I'm glad we are staying for a week.  There's no particular place we want to go. We are just looking for warmer weather, that's it.

Now that we are in warm enough weather, we were able to dewinterize the rig! Yeah! That means we can have fresh running water in our faucets and the toilet and the shower. 

Although there is a water spigot at the site, we don't leave the hose hooked up all of the while. We only use it to fill our tank and then we disconnect the hose.  They asked if it gets too cold at night to please disconnect all of the hoses. That's okay for us, we're from the North. We know how that works. 

We poured enough water through all of our faucets to get rid of the pink RV antifreeze. 

We double check and triple check all of the fittings underneath the sinks to make sure that there are no leaks from over the winter. Even with the drainage pipes, sometimes the freezing temps can make the screwed on connections back off. We'd experienced that every once in awhile with our previous rvs. It's a good idea to check that every single joint is tight and secure.

It was so good to have running water again! Washing our hands after the bathroom with real water is not just a convenience, it is also better than using the waterless hand cleaner that we have on board. Anything you touch after using that tastes kind of metallic. You wonder what the funny taste is on the sandwich or a piece of fruit it's because it was the chemical on your hands. Ugh. 

The next task at hand was to move the Bluetti power station. We needed to move it from where it was riding inside of the motorhome for the last 3 days. Although the Bluetti will function below freezing temperatures, putting out power, it is not suggested to charge it up if it's below freezing. That can damage the lithium iron phosphate battery inside. And we sure don't want to risk that. 

It rode safely inside behind my seat during the southbound journey. But it's kind of in the way. It's time now that the temperatures were warm enough that we could put it where it really belongs.

It rides securely in the passenger side compartment in the motorhome. It actually has three different jobs to do and that is the best location possible. 

If you don't know what a power station is, it's actually a lithium battery bank along with a combined inverter unit that will allow you to run various items off of it with power cords. 

It's also a charge controller for the power source coming in from solar panels. It can take all of the power from any external attached solar panel and charge up the battery housed within its unit. We have a large 320 watt solar panel on the roof of the cargo trailer. We also have a foldable solar blanket that is 400 watts, and two flexible 100 watt panels that we can set out anywhere or clip to the awning to collect the sun. That is almost 1,000 watts of solar.

The Bluetti can also be charged by plugging it in with a cord to an outlet or power post on regular household current.  

It can also be charged from the generator. We have an Onan propane generator on board mounted inside of the motorhome that we could use to charge it up if we needed.

The fourth way of charging the Bluetti is actually using a special DC to DC charger unit that charges it from our engine's alternator as we drive down the road.

So this "Blue Eddie" (as we fondly refer to it) becomes pretty important to us.

We can plug in our motorhome to it when we are boondocking somewhere. It allows all of our outlets to work as well as the refrigerator or microwave or water heater etc. Most motorhomes just have what's called an inverter. It only allows some of the outlets to work, and never the refrigerator or microwave or water heater. So using the Blue Eddie gives us options. The best option is it allows us to use the electric mattress pad heaters at night if we want to. LOL

It's much more versatile than just upgrading the lead acid batteries that are stored under the stairs in our motorhome. If we upgraded those to lithium we would have to do a lot of expensive changes on our particular model of motorhome. We would have to swap out the control panel, swap out the inverter, change the charge controller unit, as well as the alternator from the engine. Even something as simple as the little charging device that keeps our engine batteries charged when parked would no longer function if we upgraded the main house batteries to lithium. Using our Blue Eddie really makes sense for us, and it's very versatile. 

We can take it into our main house if the power ever goes out----  it can keep our large household refrigerator running or the Starlink or the basement sump pump if necessary.

Okay, enough about Blue Eddie. 

Here is something else we took from home. A total convenience and luxury splurge to take along with us. We had upgraded our home's air fryer to a larger unit. We had this older one that I really like, and we decided to make room underneath the sink to take this along with us on our travels. Although we have the stove and oven on board, as well as a microwave convection oven, nothing can beat an air fryer in our estimation. We have adapted a lot of our recipes to use the air fryer. So of course, we were delighted when we figured out a way that we could take it along.

(It doesn't ride here when we are in in motion, it tucks away nicely underneath the sink when not in use)

Actually, our first night on the road we used it to reheat some perch fillets from a fish fry and cook up some 5-minute McCaines french fries. No grease, and a quick meal in no time.

Well, I think that's enough for this blog. It's time now to grab our gear and head up to take some nice long hot showers in the clean shower building here at the campground. We could take them right in the motor home but we are only a few sites down from the shower building. A little more room there to shower, shave and get dressed.

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

No miles traveled today. 

764 miles so far