It's morning at Hot Springs National Park and I still have a couple hours to kill before the various museums and coffee shops and bathhouses open up in town. So here I am not just writing, but actually typing this entry from the convenience of my campground picnic table, using my newly acquired netbook! Now that it's going to be getting dark even earlier, I think it will be helpful if I can ride by day and blog by night.

Stagecoach Road was the old route used to transport tourists and sick people en masse from Little Rock to the therapeutic bathhouses of Hot Springs in the 1800's, and I deemed it the perfect bike ride, easily one of the prettiest and most fun days' rides I've had thus far. Despite my attempts to stay a little bit ahead of fall by heading south, the spectacular reds, oranges, and golds finally caught up with me, leaving every view from every rolling hilltop awash in color made even more vibrant by THE SUN! The summery weather could not have been a nicer treat after so many rainy days holed up inside. 

I was also pleased to find a peaceful, totally secluded campsite next to a river here at the campground last night, that is until a park ranger interrupted my cozy reading time in my tent to inform me I was not actually in the campground, but the picnic area. Oops! I felt a little silly carrying my erected tent down the road to the campground, but I wasn't about to take it all down and put it back up again, nor pack up all my stuff which I carried over in three or four armloads. Oh well, it passed the time.

And it momentarily distracted me from pitying myself a bit for not having a Halloween party to go to. I'd even thought up the perfect, very convenient and inexpensive costume in case I did end up at a party: the lady from the Snuggie commercial. It would be so easy! I'd just get a Snuggie from Target and walk around with the booklight clipped onto a book. And old lady wig, if I could find one, would add to the costume but would not be strictly necessary.

But it wasn't meant to be. I'd sent off a few CouchSurfing requests to the few CouchSurfers in Hot Springs asking for not only a place to stay, but a costume party, and the only person who got back to me wasn't going to be in town. As I rode into town at dusk I kept my eyes peeled for signs of a party, but all I saw were a group of bikers (the Harley Davidson kind, not the bicycle kind) in a dive bar and a witch getting into a pickup truck. Besides, by then it would be too late to go out and get the Snuggie.

So I tried to talk myself into having a good time all alone at my newly relocated campsite, reminding myself of all the lame Halloween parties I've been to and trying to block the really fun ones out of my memory, telling myself that I'll have plenty of years ahead to dress up but now I get to have the once in a lifetime experience of. . . eating broccoli & cheese flavored rice at a picnic table in the cold. Oh yeah, and biking across the country. I should have at least bought some candy corn, for God's sake.

But I am really thankful for my friends. My friend Maura called me last week and said she was going to throw me a welcome home party in January, and that she'd make it a costume party since she knows how much I love Halloween. And my friend Becca drunk dialed me at midnight to tell me that party wasn't the same without me. I don't think I've ever appreciated being drunk dialed more.