#282 Nomad Diary. 14-20 March 2026. Condo Stay Near Downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas. Renew Friendships at Hot Springs Church.

 

Good Food Truck Near Our Hot Springs Condo

Flowers for Sale at WalMart

Our Old Air Popper is Getting Donated. Our New Silocon Microwave Popper Bowl.

Saturday. 14. We had a nice time today enjoying our local Hot Springs apartment. Darrell found this one on Booking.com. It’s also on Vacasa, but we haven’t used that app yet. We did our regular morning routine: Do a DDP Yoga routine before breakfast. Today was our 40 minute, more difficult routine. We get dressed for the day and make breakfast. Darrell made buckwheat, barley, oat pancakes. I shredded a pear for his batter. I also make coffee and measure out a bowl for each of us with greek yogurt, cottage cheese, fresh fruit and nuts. Our breakfast is a feast, and we haven’t tired of it. Later after lunch we decided to walk 1 ½ miles to a Walmart. We took a daypack and a couple of shopping bags. We had quite a load of items to carry back to our place. It was close to 80 degrees and sunny today. It’s very beautiful. On our walk back to our apartment we stopped at an ice cream (gelato) shop. A single scoop was 10.99! That’s the highest price I have ever seen in the US for a scoop of ice cream. I was astounded. We decided to buy one scoop and share. The scoop was large as we expected. We walked the rest of the way to our apartment with our heavy 3 bag load. Close to our apartment we discovered a food truck selling Hibachi dishes. Later at dinner time we walked to the food truck and got our dinners. We carried our take-out less than a block back to our place and sat outside on our little deck and enjoyed dinner with some Jasmine tea we made.  

Sunday. 15. The church meets at 9am until about 11:30, maybe noon. There are a lot of visitors. We had come here around Thanksgiving for a couple of Sundays, and decided to come back again. We reintroduce ourselves. We know a few people from our last visit and eating together with them. Others, I’m learning about a little more. We enjoyed the Bible lessons and the sermons and communion with the church. A couple of the members invited us to eat lunch out with them, and we were glad to go together. We spent the afternoon reading, taking a short walk, and then having eggs and toast for dinner. 

Monday. 16. We slept until 7:45 today! That’s so late for us and so needed too. We did our morning exercise and had a very late breakfast. It is a colder day today and we plan to stay in and enjoy our inside day working on our computers. We had a short call with Eric, Owen and Esther. While on the phone with them, it began snowing at their Alabama house. Later in the morning Eric sent pictures of the outdoor play in the moderately heavy snow they got. After playing outside in the cold, Esther and Owen are always asking for hot chocolate. Mainly they want the mini marshmallows that they get alongside their cocoa. Eric said that they guilted him into more marshmallows because grandma always gives them more on a napkin! Lol. I enjoyed that! I also scrolled and sent a couple humorous gifs. I enjoyed making my final morning coffee in our apartment’s espresso machine. I IM’d Jeremy and Andrea and they are changing locations today during their Oregon coast vacation. Samuel sent me a picture of the snow in his Alabama yard. I’ve enjoyed touching base with our family today. The sun is shining with blue skies in Hot Springs, Arkansas today. 

Owen's Cute Smile Caught on Screenshot.

                                            

A Mansion in Hot Springs is Now an Exclusive Bed and Breakfast at $800 per night.

Walking in Hot Springs

Old Cemetery in Hot Springs. Great Trees!

Dinner in 30 Minutes. Start with the Meat. Add in Veg at Proper Timing. All Done Together. Delicious.

Beautiful Day for a Walk in Hot Springs.

One of My Notebooks.

Tuesday. 17. Adam, the preacher here, came for lunch at our apartment and stayed for our online Bible class with the Tunbridge Wells group. He has a long-ago friend from South Africa in England now. It was fun to see them chat online a little about their African connections and to see each other now.  Evening phone call with cruising and travel friend Tricia in Gold Coast, Australia. It’s Wednesday morning at her home.

Wednesday. 18. Morning phone call with my friend Laura in Tennessee. Long afternoon walk as the weather has begun to get warmer. We walked toward downtown Hot Springs. We didn’t go all the way downtown. We turned off the main busy street and went into the quieter neighborhoods to go back toward our apartment. We walked past a large old cemetery. We did a little shopping closer to our apartment. I fixed an earlier dinner than usual because we are going to the church at 5:30 for an hour long singing, and then stay for the 6:30 Bible class taught by Adam. 

Thursday. 19. Enjoying my time in our apartment. Morning exercise. Our satisfying morning pancake breakfast with balanced ‘macros’. Plenty of stocked food to cook good meals. Sunshine coming in and warming up for a possible after lunch walk. Mid-morning coffee and talking with Darrell. My prayer time, my journaling time. Each night we have turned on You Tube between 7-9pm. We watch some of our favorite shows in our collection. We have popcorn. I’m switching out my popcorn for a different snack before bed. I’ve made this choice before, and I’m choosing to do this again for now.

Roasted Veg.

Easy and Delicious Lunch

Hot Springs National Park Trail Above Downtown.

Friday. 20. This morning we have a 40 minute hard ‘Strength Builder’ ddp routine. We follow that up with our regular and enjoyable pancake breakfast. We spent the morning inside working on computers. I did some laundry. Around 10am I took my gift card to a Soma store to shop. I haven’t been to one of these stores for decades! I thoroughly enjoyed looking at their merch and learning about it. I enjoyed making my selections, and I can thank my sister Linda for her gift when I call her on Monday. We had a big lunch of chicken meatballs, roasted veggies and pizza bread. After lunch we drove 3 miles downtown and up the hill to the National park lookout tower. We walked on a few trails for about 30 minutes. Darrell didn’t feel like doing anymore so we drove back to the apartment for him to rest. I walked over to Kroger and did our grocery shopping. When I got back, we both sat and read for a couple of hours. At dinner I easily fixed our black bean chili bowls. It’s one of our favorite and regular meals. For the evening we are working on computers until about 7pm and then we’ll watch some tv until bedtime. 

Nomad Notes. 

On Sunday, I enjoyed our time with the church and then lunch with Adam and Shirley. In the early evening, I was getting tired and feeling unproductive. I reminded myself that is my perception of how I think I should be rather than my reality of how I am. I enjoyed my day so much! I wanted to keep going and going, but rest was sweet and Monday morning connections came in their time. Adam is coming for lunch at our place on Tuesday and staying for our online Bible class with the group in Tunbridge Wells, England. He has been there at least one time and knows some of the members. One member in particular from South Africa, where they both crossed paths years ago. 

Travel emotions: I have a split in my emotions that isn’t new for me. I love where I am and who I am with. Leaving and going to our next place is a regular event that brings goodbyes and greetings. This cycle is speeded up in our nomad way of living. I’m very familiar with the sadness of leaving those I love and the enjoyment of creating new friends wherever I go. In our current plan, we aren’t getting back to Alabama for a longer stay until mid-October. I have the emotions of missing out of many days of attention to our grandchildren. Thankfully, we can call and say hello and enjoy continuing to see their pictures and know what they are up to. I also have the emotions of relaxing with Darrell and being in our furnished rental homes with our agendas and time to spend with our church member friends where we are living now. While at lunch on Sunday with Adam and Shirley, I got Shirley’s contact. We learned that she has a son who lives about 20 minutes from Darrell’s brother, Jeff in Nebraska. She has been encouraging her son over the last year and had some trips up to see him because he’s had a stroke and been recovering. Neither she nor her son knew of the church where Jeff is minister. Now She has Jeff’s contact and feels good to move forward with someone local to check in on her son. This seems small and huge at the same time. It’s another amazing connection that we got to be a part of. I’m so happy to see where this goes. Shirley is trying to get her son to move in with her, and he is coming for a visit with her in May. So they are moving in that direction. 

Scriptures selected from Reading 1st and 2nd Peter this month since attending a gospel meeting with Chris Emerson from Texas, at Kingsport, Tennessee church of Christ. These gospel books were written by the apostle Peter, in his older years, with decades of experience and understanding about Christ and obeying Christ. 

1 Peter 1: 8-9 “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

This week I’ve been looking through my tattered small and chunky notebook that I keep in my purse. The pages in this notebook are almost full, and soon I’ll throw it away and begin another notebook for myself. I have about 2 months worth of notes in this book. It’s old school. It’s sloppy. It’s all me. As I’ve gone through my past pages, I see that most of my pages are either Bible class or sermon notes and names with some details of people I meet (usually at a church). Otherwise, there are a few pages with highlights of phone calls with friends and notes with travel info and to-do lists. These are the focus of my notes. It’s new learning for me. It is my concentric circles from myself and Darrell, with our family and our extended family closest to my heart and center. 

Throughout my life I have kept a notebook with jottings for my day and for my week. Back in 2008, when we left North Carolina after 7 years, I cleaned out all of my saved notebooks from those 7 years and from at least a decade prior. Most of my notebooks then were daily and weekly schedules with my work and client notes. Then came my Bible study and then my notes about our children’s schedules and school information. As I remember cleaning out my saved notebooks that came in all shapes and sizes, I consciously gave up all of my notes, all of my details through my years, all of these memories that I somehow believed I would review one day in my future. It was overwhelming to put these personal writings into 2 or more large black garbage bags. To feel the weight of my writings and to throw them away. 

Now, I keep one notebook at a time. I cherish my times of Bible study that are often connected to a teacher. I cherish the new people I meet and continue to remember as I am a short-timer with many. I have come up with an electronic prayer list that I am adding to and updating each month on my phone and pc. 

There was a time in my life, before having a cell phone. Everything was listed and kept in order on paper. I had a schedule book for my business. I had a notebook for every segment of my life. I had an address book. I had several address books through the years, as one became irrelevant and I found a newer one to hold our updated lists. I would keep the old address book as a back up just in case I had missed someone’s details. I also viewed myself as sloppy. This was my kind of junk drawer, all of my notebooks. 

This kind of organization that I have always felt sloppy in, began when I was about 10 years old. In 5th grade, my family had just moved from Indianapolis, Indiana to Parkersburg, West Virginia. I was enrolled into my new school. We ‘changed classes’ as 5th graders. This was a new concept for us young students. There were basic classes of reading, writing and math with one teacher each morning before lunch. So we each were expected and taught to have a three ring binder with divided sections for each class. When we changed classrooms and teachers in the afternoons at school, we were expected to keep our notes organized within our binder sections. It’s a simple concept. This organization technique was common and expected throughout my schooling and graduation from high school in 1981. Generally, I would start my school year off strong with my cleaned and ready divided binder. By a few weeks into school, my binder was messy, and unreliable for finding current assignments within the designated sections. I would resort to what I’ll call a ‘junk drawer’ method! Lol. Everything would get listed on one page during one day in school. On another day, I may actually use the divider method to enter my class notes. And this messiness would lead to my ultimate confusion somewhere down the line for me and getting my assignments completed well. 

Even though I functioned with this messy method, somehow I did pretty well through school. There were a few classes in High School that my Dad or my Mom helped me get through. In college, this messy method I used was probably my undoing and I ultimately dropped out of college before completing a full 2 years. 

Here’s what I’ve learned about myself and what’s important to me. 

Now, I have improved my organizing skills, but I still have some of the messy drawer mentality. It can be a challenge to me and to Darrell. Somehow I keep pedaling forward! It’s interesting about living with few and essential items, I can still misplace something. There are times that we or I overbuy something that doesn’t work for us. This happened when we owned a house too. Items that aren’t used come into and out of our hands much faster now. We don’t have storage closets to clean out like we did when we owned a house. The age of computers and storing so much on ‘a cloud’ and shifting away from paper copies, has been a huge challenge for me! I have learned a lot, and I continue to learn. My e-learning is about staying connected with family and friends as well as having access to shopping and finances. 

Popcorn: I love popcorn! It’s a trigger food for me. The salt and the crunch and the memories of times in my life where popcorn was significant and enjoyed. I come and go with feeling and wanting popcorn and with eating too much of it. There was a time when my mother would invite people from church over to our house after worship on Sunday nights and she would always have a big bowl of air-popped popcorn along with her other snacks. Wouldn’t you say this is a great memory to eat popcorn for? lol!