Tuesday April 18th, 2022
What a treat to get a decent shower in a clean facility before we hit the road. I will say the signage on every door in the bath house was fairly amazing. After spending so much time on the road, I can personally attest to the fact that people don’t flush the toilet after use. Seriously? Seriously!
On one of our trips to Texas I distinctly remember stopping in Fort Smith. We were on the motorcycle and there was a very cool old town with some cute shops and a coffee shop. That is why we headed in that direction on this Tuesday morning. I had found a park in Ft Smith where there were a number of bike trails and wanted to get a ride in that afternoon. We got side tracked when we stopped at the chamber of commerce in Mena Arkansas. It was a gorgeous day and the gal recommended that we drive the scenic route through the Oachita Mountains. I wanted to check out the camping at the Queen Wilhelmina resort at the top of this mountain range. This added about an hour to our trip and we decided that camping at the top of the mountain would be beautiful but the only activity that we could do was biking and the terrain was not conducive to our cycling preferences. Hiking was not an option as Mikes knee is really bothering him. So we continued on to Ft Smith.
Oachita Mts 
It became pretty obvious once we hit Fort Smith that we had not been here before. It was huge and there were no obvious landmarks that I remembered. We skipped the planned bike ride and made our way to the Corp of Engineers Springhill Campground. These type of facilities can vary quite a bit from campground to campground. Springhill gets 5 stars. Clean and warm bath facilities (shower was pretty close to hot) well laid out sites and was large enough we got in a good bike ride. It is situated along the banks of the Arkansas River next to one of many lock and dams. Loop A had 14 sites that lined a small river that ran parallel to the Arkansas River. Very lovely. Upon closer examination of our road atlas, we had previously been through Fort Scott, not Fort Smith. A bit of adult onset dyslexia on my part!
lock and dam 
view from campsite
Our camp neighbors were a bit chatty. Turns out the guy was the manager of a Budweiser mobile macro bar. He drives these to all kinds of national and professional events all over the country. He has been to Faster Horses at the MIS in Brooklyn MI.
Even though we weren’t at Fort Scott, Fort Smith turned out to be a good stop.