The Old Mill (seen in Gone with the Wind), Homeless Trip to Fayetteville

Next time you watch Gone with the Wind, look at the very opening scenes, where the music is playing and a buggy is driving along in the deep south.  For just two or three seconds the buggy drives by this mill.  That portion of the motion picture was filmed in North Little Rock at T. R. Pugh Memorial Park, better known as "The Old Mill".

Today, as you can see by the pictures, it is a very picturesque place.  It is the site of some 200 weddings each year, and countless senior girl pictures, and wedding announcement pictures.  I have been the Old Mill numerous times, and today is like most...full of people, many kids from a local school today.  But I have been to the old mill in the winter when I was the only person there, and it is so nice despite the lack of leaves and flowers.

If you want to see more information about the Old Mill, visit this North Little Rock City webpage which tells all about it.  If you are in the area, it is well worth the stop...but you I would not try driving any large RV to it, the streets are narrow, and parking a large RV just won't work on most days. 

Which brings us to the important topic of driving large RV's.  We arrived at the Cummins Mid-South shop around 10:30 am, saw our motor home moved out into the back parking lot, and we thought "oh good, they are nearly done with it!"  Just to go inside and find out that they did get it started, got it out on the street, and it immediately died on them.  We waited around until noon and they had not made any progress figuring out the problem....so we loaded more stuff up into our HHR and drove off to the Fayetteville area.  We will figure out what to do next on Monday when we get back to Little Rock....but it is hard to leave the home in Little Rock, that is for sure.  And it sure gives us a lot to consider...but that will have to wait.

My youngest son Ryan called us when we were about an hour from our motel....yep, another La Quinta.  He did not have plans for the night, so I offered to take him to dinner with us.  When we picked him up from work around 6:30, we headed to Rogers Arkansas to eat at Carrabba's where I knew the cutest little waitress would be just love to wait on us.  So when we got to Carrabba's I asked the hostess if Stephanie was working, and she said "Yes."  "Well", I said, "I am her father, and she does not know we are here...is there any way we can sit in her area?"  After a good 45 minute wait, we were headed to her table and she finally saw us.  Oh, what a hug dad got, and Marcia got a good one too.  We had a delightful dinner, and had GREAT service, and when she got off just after 10 pm, she drove the one exit down to Bentonville where we are staying and picked up her brother.  Tomorrow is Graduation Day, my oldest son Michael, the kids' mother and grandfather arrived around 9 pm, and we plan to visit the new Crystal Bridges Museum that Alice Walton, daughter of the founder of WalMart, built.  It is free to park, free admission, and everything I have seen gives it a big "thumbs up".  Tomorrow night I will try to post a blog on the museum, and the graduation.