Summerdale, AL to Memphis, TN
West Memphis, AR - Events of Thursday, June 12 to Saturday, June 14, 2014
We pulled out of Rainbow Plantation around 9:00 a.m. on Thursday and had about a 5 hour drive to our overnight stop at Movietown RV Park in Canton, MS. We stayed there once before back in 2010.
Movietown RV is a nice RV park. It has gravel roads and pads with full hookups and 50/30 amp electric. Sites are mostly pull-throughs and are fairly wide with grass between. Even though the campground is conveniently located near the interstate, there is surprisingly little traffic noise - and there are NO trains!
On this stop at Movietown RV, there were lots and lots of construction workers staying in the park. Most of their trailers were older, and there are quite a few unmarked trailers that look like the ones they used for temporary housing following Hurricane Katrina. However, most of the sites were fairly neat.
View of some of the other sites at Movietown RV
Apparently, the name of the RV park comes from the fact that quite a few movies have been filmed in the Canton area. Canton even has a movie office and a couple of movie museums.
We headed out again on Friday morning with a drive of about three hours to Tom Sawyer's RV Park in West Memphis, AR. West Memphis is located right across the Mississippi from Memphis, TN, and the RV park is located right on the river.
There are three groups of sites - one away from the river that has mostly pull-throughs with a few back-ins, one right on the river that has all pull-throughs where the front of the sites face the river (intended primarily for motor homes), and another right on the river that has all pull-throughs where the rear of the sites face the river (intended for 5th wheels).
The sites all have full hookups and 30/50-amp electric. Some of the sites are paved, but most are gravel. The paved sites right on the river cost $39 a night with a $4 discount for Good Sam, FMCA and Escapees. We got the weekly rate of $234 for our front-row, paved site.
Our front-row site at Tom Sawyer's RV Park
The roads at Tom Sawyer are somewhat dusty gravel. This year, they were coming around a couple of times a day and sprinkling water onto the roads which really helped immensely in keeping the dust down.
There is free Wi-Fi, but the signal where we were was pretty weak, and we got dumped off-line frequently. When the Wi-Fi did work, it was pretty slow. We used the campground Wi-Fi part of the time to save on our own data usage, but there was a strong Verizon 4G signal so we used that when the campground system bogged down in the late afternoon and early evening.
One of the reasons we like to stay at Tom Sawyer is the great view it has of the Mississippi River. The photo below is the view looking upriver toward Memphis from our site.
View from our site looking upriver toward Memphis
We occasionally like to sit on one of the benches they have along the riverbank and watch the barge traffic go by. The other great thing about a front row site is we can see the river right out the front window of the motor home. The photo at the top of the post and the one below give you an idea of what some of the river traffic looks like.
One of the other reasons we like to come to the Memphis area is barbecue. We have tried numerous barbecue joints in Memphis, and our favorite for pulled/chopped pork in Memphis, or just about anywhere for that matter, is the Bar-B-Q Shop. We normally hang around the rig on weekends; but we couldn't wait to get some good, Memphis barbecue, so we headed to the Bar-B-Q Shop in Memphis for lupper on Saturday. The website for the Bar-B-Q Shop is a little confusing. As of this writing, it is actually the site where they sell their Dancing Pigs brand of barbecue sauce and dry rub. They are supposedly working on a new website that will give more info about the restaurant itself, including the menu.
The pork at the Bar-B-Q Shop isn't real smoky, but it is always very moist and tender. Their sauce is a little on the tart side, and their cole slaw is a little on the sweet side. Together, they make a great combo. The crunch of the cole slaw also provides a nice contrast for the tender pork.
We both had chopped pork dinner plates ($10) with cole slaw. Margery had potato salad for her second side and Paul had barbecued beans. Everything was outstanding.
Ready to dig into our chopped pork dinners
We headed back to the motor home and spent the rest of Saturday watching barges go up and down the river. On Sunday, Paul got a nice Father's Day Skype call from Lora and J. Michael.
We headed out sightseeing on Monday. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.