This morning we left Kentucky, drove through a corner of Illinois, along southern Missouri, and then dipped down into Arkansas, ending up at Bull Shoals State Park for our penultimate night of camping on our westward journey.

Along the way we stopped at Mammoth Springs State Park in Arkansas. This is the largest spring in Arkansas, flowing at just under 10 million gallons/hour. There’s a nice small lake behind the dam (which used to power a grain mill), a restored train depot, lots of picnic areas and a trail around the lake. It was the perfect spot for our lunch stop.

Our home for the night is at the Lakeview Campground at Bull Shoals. This is a very nice campground. The sites are wooded, so it’s nice and shady, and each site has a covered picnic table. There were a few other campers there, and most of them had boats with them. There’s a public boat launch, and the lake is popular for fishing.  

We bought an odd stovetop “pot” that works more like on oven. It’s called an Omnia Stovetop Oven, and it’s made in Sweden so it must be good. It’s a donut shaped pan with a double layer bottom (to keep the food from being directly over the heat source) and a full lid to trap the heat. It even has a thermometer so you can adjust the oven temp. I tried it out at home first and it worked pretty good. Tonight was my first “camper test”. I put a layer of chunky carrot sticks on the bottom, set 2 pork chops on top, and seasoned with salt and pepper. I used the silicone insert to make cleanup easier for John. 😁 I got the oven temp up to 300^o and let them cook for 25 minutes. It worked great!

The Omnia also has a silicone insert with 6 muffin cups and I came prepared with a scratch mix for chocolate chip muffins. Again, it took about 25 minutes and we have muffins for breakfast tomorrow!