The week started with a ton of laundry after work. This was made more difficult by the campground only having 3 washers and 3 dryers and another camper who sadly left a bunch of clothes outside the night before when there was a downpour all night. She had far more than we did and she got there first and was nice enough to not take up all 3 machines so I did our laundry 1 machine at a time, just like in a house but with a much longer walk to the machines. The other lady doing laundry has lived in the area for a few years and gave us some advice about it. She let us know that woodpeckers like to poke holes in the siding of houses and because the area is growing so rapidly, contractors have raised their prices on everything recently so getting work done costs a lot more than it used to. It was good advice. We got to help her with some RVing questions like how not to burn everything in the tiny oven (the secret is a pizza stone, our friends told us that one), and how to store everything you need in a small space.
Tuesday Dom lost his job due to Covid unexpectedly. It was a pretty rough day and to top it off I also had a late shift. While we took in the news, we also had to come to terms with now not being able to buy the house. We called the bank and let them know what happened. The man we'd been working with was so sweet, he was blown away that this would happen with the excellent work history that Dom has and so he offered to call some of his friends to see if they had any jobs that might fit. The realtor also said that the seller was willing to hold the house for us for 30 days to see if we could make it work. It was pretty amazing and unexpected in a good way.
Wednesday morning we got a treat. 3 deer were right behind our camper when we took the dogs out in the morning. Tripp tried to fight them and won because they ran away. Great job Tripp! We also got a dusting of snow in the morning. After work we walked the off road trails around the campground. It was very cold but we needed the movement and time in nature to think and talk.
Thursday after work it was a little warmer so we took the puppies for a walk. We went down the Razorback trail to the veterans memorial and around the school and back to the campground. They had fun stretching their little feet. Friday we took the puppies for another walk up the through the campground and back on the Blowing Springs trail while the Instapot cooked us some Korean flavored chicken for dinner. We watched some movies at night while it rained outside. It was time to relax after a tough week, mentally.
Saturday morning it was still raining so we slept in and had bacon and pancakes for breakfast. When the rain stopped we went out to find the Coler trail system which is also very new to the area. We found the trailhead and scoped out the trails to see if we were ready to ride them. We then headed into Bentonville for groceries and supplies. Coming out of the grocery store we got a tornado warning on our phones. It had warmed up from the 30s in the morning to 60 in the afternoon and apparently that is not allowed. So the sun went down and cooled everything back down to the 20s and the tornado missed us.
Sunday morning we had more bacon and I cooked the pancakes in the bacon grease because it's the right thing to do. We put on 3 sets of clothes layered to withstand the 20 degree weather and hopped on the bikes. This was our coldest ride yet! We rode out of the campground onto the Blowing Springs trail. We rode that to the Cooper Elementary Connector which brought us to Sally. Sally had us climbing up to the Wonderland trail system where we jumped on the Rabbit Hole Loop. That brought us back to the Cooper Elementary Connector which we took back to the Blowing Springs trail and followed that halfway around to the top of the campground. We barreled down the campground road as once we were out of the woods and in the open, the wind was brutally cold. Five sites away from our RV Dom's chain fell off and he was forced to coast the rest of the way back. We unpacked everything and put the muddy bikes in the rack before going inside for some hot chocolate and coffee. Once we were warmed up we settled in to work on the video we took of the day's trails and writing blogs.  Another week down and we are only 3 weeks away from our first nomadaversery! It appears that we will be continuing our life on the road and now more able to move about freely, except for that pesky pandemic. We will continue to make the best of our situation. We plan to stay in Bella Vista for another week then heading back to Texas to pick up and drop off a few things before departing for a new state, possibly. Stay tuned for next week's adventure of life in 84 square feet during a pandemic.