Kam heads home....boo hoo!

June 22- Kam wanted to leave at 7:15 and Jean volunteered to ride with me to take her to the airport for her flight home.  Jean was ready when we got to her RV and on the road we went.  There was no weather, no accidents and the traffic was fine.  We arrived in plenty of time for Kam’s flight.  It’s not a large airport so we scooted right back out to the highway.  I wanted to go to a regular grocery store and we found a Kroger’s in the direction of home.  We both got a few things to cook out so then we went home.

The guys hadn’t done much while we were gone.  Bill walked down to see Paul and they visited.  I don’t think they thought we’d be back as soon as we were.  After lunch we headed out for the afternoon.

First stop was the base of the Dam.  They were very impressed to see it from the bottom after seeing it from the top.  Next stop was the National Fish Hatchery.  Now that was impressive!  They raise brook and rainbow trout from eggs brought in from other sources.  One tank is really full grown trout, from 16- 26 or so inches and so fat!  They are

The itty bitty fish in the building

living the good life.  The other tanks contain 1 of 3 sizes from what we could tell.  The little ones were about 3-4 inches, the next size were 6 – 8 and the largest were around 12.  They looked so crowded in the tanks and some tanks they would all be at one end and leave lots of space at the other.  When you approach the tank they jump around and then settle back down.  Some of the tanks looked like there were sharks.  The visitor center has a display explaining the process and a map of all of the National Fish Hatcheries in the US.  In the back half of the building are tanks of the itty bitty trout.  They are the hatchlings and stay inside until they are big enough and can digest a full size pellet of food.  This hatchery distributes more than 200,000 pounds of rainbow and brook trout in Arkansas and Oklahoma. 

We went into town for a snack at McDonald’s followed by a visit to our awesome ACE Hardware store.  They can furnish an entire house, which is not your standard ACE.  We stopped at Auto Zone for a part Paul needed but no luck there.  Our last stop was the outlet store or Aromantique.  It’s a fragrance company that does candles, diffusers and all kinds of smelly things for the house.  The owner started making items in her home here in Heber Springs and turned it into a nationwide business.

The plan was to cook out tonight but since it was Paul’s birthday we opted to eat out tonight at Mack’s Fish & Steak House.  Bill and I had eaten here before and were not overly impressed but tonight the food was much better, although they were very busy for a Monday evening and our waitress was having trouble keeping up. 

Time to go home and rest up for another busy day tomorrow.