Norfork River (Salesville, AR) — October 23, 2003

Craig and I left my house about 1pm on Thursday and arrived at campsite #10 in the Quarry Park Campground at the base of the Norfork Dam in Salesville by 6:45pm (quite a feat considering we were riding in a Toyota 4-Runner and pulling a borrowed pop-up). We were greeted by Tom Anderson and his wife from near Mammoth Spring, AR. I had met Tom this past April on a trip to the Spring River and have kept in contact with him via the internet. Tom is a wealth of knowledge, and a pleasure to share a campfire with; thus, I was pleased that he was one of our neighbors. We also arrived to running water, which was turned on around 12pm on Thursday and ran well into the evening. The major difference from this year’s trip and last year’s trip was that we had borrowed a pop-up camper (a newer 8ft pop-up camper). While Craig set up the camper, I was busy unloading the car and starting the camp fire — we were sitting around the camp fire enjoying a beer no later than 20 minutes after arriving. Another difference in this year’s trip, was that David Stinnett (a friend from the days I was a wee pup) was making the trek up from Dallas, Texas to join us. David is a new fly fisherman, and bought all his gear for this maiden voyage. He traveled over 8 hours (he left Dallas around 5pm and arrived at camp around 1am) and over 450 miles to chase trout with us for the first time — he had no idea what he was getting in to.

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