Harrowing Turns and Steep Slopes

If I had to choose a word to describe today, I would choose ‘harrowing.’ 

Harrowing (adj) acutely distressing. 

Ex: Driving 6 hours through up and down twisting mountain roads when you have only three days of experience
driving an RV is harrowing. 

We knew going in that today was going to be rough. Our plan is to make it to Michigan in a relatively quick amount
of time, so we can enjoy the cooler temps and take our time on the way back down. A solid plan, I hope, except it
involved frontloading the trip with a couple of long-ish days. 

I’m sure there’s people out there that think six hours of hauling is nothing. Previous to this trip, the most I ever
hauled was my kid and a watermelon on a trailer on my bicycle. Yesterday we drove three hours, and that was alright,
but it was nothing like today. 

I have driven through both Oklahoma and Arkansas before, so perhaps some of the blame lays on me. I associate
Oklahoma with cropland and Arkansas with… the woods? I guess? 

Now I associate them both with stunning vistas, thick pine and oak forests, and oh so many turns. 
We stopped at Beaver Bend State Park, and what a stop it was. We had to park the truck and RV on a steep grade,
engage the parking brake and chock it up before we (I) dared venture inside to see if we could in fact leave it where
I had left it, taking up ten spaces. 

We enjoyed our lunch, PBJ sandwiches my darling Raquelita had made that morning, on hand carved tables.
Surrounded by carvings of bears, faces and beautiful women, each made from a single piece of wood. It was a
lovely lunch, and though I would have liked to see more than a single turkey vulture in Oklahoma, it was still nice
to add another state to my list of places I’ve seen birds. 

And then the claxons began to blare. Leo—never one to like loud noises—promptly clamped his hands on his ears
and declared that he did not like this place, and that it sounded like the aliens were ‘Ub-duck-ting, ab-ducting,
obducking someone’ (he knew the word, but didn’t quite know how to say it). 

I whipped out my binoculars and read the sign “If siren sounds, beware high water.”

Well, shit. 

We were about to drive across a bridge. Did that mean that it would be flooded out? Were we about to be stopped
here while the state of Oklahoma averted a natural catastrophe? 

I dashed back inside to ask the park ranger. She assured me that no, the park was not in danger of being washed away,
and yes, I could still drive across that bridge. 
“Then why the klaxon?” I dared not ask aloud, but she saw it on my face all the same.
That just means to get out of the water, cuz the current might pick up.
Right. Of course it does. 

We got back in the car, relieved (except for Leo, who still thought turning around might be the wisest course
of action) and proceeded. The road was not washed away, but by the end of the day, I wished it would have been. 

We found ourselves descending steep slopes on sharp angles. The speed limit rarely went above 30. Despite me
never touching the accelerator, the truck continued to inch above that number. I could feel the trailer wanting to keep
going straight. I could see us spilling over the edge of this tiny road, and wrapping ourselves around a tree or six.
So could the truck. It realized that we were descending too rapidly, and downshifted automatically. Beyond
impressed, I barely braked as the truck did its thing, and slowed us itself, just like the manual said it was
supposed to. 

We finally made it off Beaver Bend only to find ourselves in Ouachita National Forest. It was not the slopes that
troubled me in Ouachita but how close the trees were to the road. I felt like I was  driving a bullet through a gun
made of nature, the trees were so close. Nothing ever actually hit the RV, but not for lack of trying. 

Still, the scenery was so beautiful, I almost missed the sign that read: ‘Pull over and rest your brakes!’ Pull over I did,
and prepared myself for a stretch of highway so treacherous that it had its own road sign.
Rested (and after 2/4 Mitchells went poop in the RV) we set out on the most harrowing road of all. 

The turns were so tight, that at twenty miles an hour (the speed limit) I feared rolling over. There were pull offs
every hundred feet or so, and they looked well used. With white knuckles and a prayer that my brakes wouldn’t
light on fire, I kept it slow, watched the engine do its thing, and got us to the bottom of that hill safely. 

Exhausted, and with a long flat stretch of highway in front of us, I politely asked (rudely demanded) my wife drive
for a bit. 

The next fifty or so miles were the most picturesque part of the trip yet. We would come around a bend, then launch
out onto a bridge that was hundreds of feet up, with nothing-nothing but forest down below us, perhaps a thread of a stream in the very center of the valleys. It was gorgeous,
and breathtaking, and there was even a tunnel so awesome that Xander declared ‘nice tunnel!’

At that point, my wife’s chicken-sense must have tingled for she asked me to take over. Not ten minutes later,
I was driving through the tight streets of Fayetteville, trying not to hit a hydrant or snag a telephone pole. It was
not easy. 

And then, somehow, it got worse!

Our last leg to Eureka Springs took us through absolutely beautiful landscape. Rolling hills—some of which had
been cleared for grazing horses, others still thick with trees—were dotted with farmhouses and barns. It was a
portrait of agrarian beauty, a place where I could see growing old. 

Or dying young on a blind turn. I don’t know how there weren’t more corpses littered in those picturesque fields,
really. Every turn I took was a blind turn. Every hill I ascended blocked everything on the other side. Hell, some of
the hills I couldn’t even see the bottom from the top. 

As I drove the speed limit, the line of cars behind the RV grew longer and longer. I think it topped out at six. I didn’t
so much fear rolling over as I feared launching into the sky and careening into one of those idyllic farms. 

In a word? Harrowing. 

But we made it, and have a day of no driving ahead (there’s even a trolley here in Eureka Springs!) 

Bird of the Day:

I saw a couple of eastern kingbirds in Camp Texas, flying from the tops of pine trees to snag insects out of the air while my sons splashed in the mud. 

Today I Learned: 

Modern Ford F150s are smart enough to downshift automatically while towing downhill.