Back Home...And Warm!

I completely avoided winter this year! (Maybe I shouldn't gloat; this is Minnesota after all...we could still get more!) I arrived home yesterday and the only snow I've seen was in the ditches in Iowa. It's in the 50s here and should get to the 60s today. The dogs are really happy to be home; Rave has been lying outside in the sun for over an hour, Pacer is lying in the sun in the living room, and Wink of course has to be on my lap wherever I sit. I'm surrounded by a mountain of mail, and all the clothes, food, and other supplies unloaded from the MUTT. No hurry to clean it up...I'm retired!

I left Amarillo Wednesday morning and fought cross winds from the south all the way to OK City. My arms and shoulders ached from fighting the wheel all the way. When I headed north on I-35, it became a tail wind and no more problems. I stayed in Emporia that night and other than a thunder storm during the night while I was in bed, all the threatened bad weather was already to the east. Sunshine all the way home!

One very scary event during the drive: As those of you that have been reading this from the beginning may recall, my first day on the road I saw a serious accident when a pickup pulling a large trailer sideswiped a car, then went in the ditch and flipped the trailer before running into some trees. That happened about a half-mile in front of me and I got there right after it happened. This time, I saw a similar accident, but this one happened right in front of me! There was a semi in front of me and all of a sudden, I saw the pickup in front of him speed into the ditch, hit a guardrail, go airborne, flip over, and land on its side about 10 feet from the side of the road. The semi and I both pulled over and ran back. In no time, there were a bunch of other trucks and cars stopped. The truck drivers pulled the driver's door, which was on top, open and managed to get the driver out. It took quite a lot longer to get the passenger out, and then I decided there was nothing I could do, so I left. I'll skip the injury details. My hands were shaking for a long time afterwards! The pickup had had a blowout of one of his rear tires, and I couldn't help thinking about the state of my tires the rest of the way home. It seems eerily coincidental that the two accidents were on the first and last days of my journey. My friends that believe that everything happens for a reason might say I witnessed the first accident to caution me to be careful, and the last to remind me how fortunate I was to make it safely home.

I want to thank all of you who have followed my journey and stuck with it regardless of my rambling on at times. Thanks, too, for the emails and comments some of you have sent. I'm writing for myself as a record as well as for others, but it's nice to know that people have been following along. Until May, when I take off for North Carolina, I'll sign off...take care and travel carefully!

Homeward Bound...Really This Time!

I spent three great days in Laughlin, except for the heat. It was in the upper 90s every day and the poor dogs had to spend all their time in the air-conditioned RV, except for a morning and evening walk. It cools off a lot at night, so that makes it more bearable. Also, there's no humidity, so it's much cooler in the shade. I didn't lose TOO much in the casinos, and the entertainment value was worth it.

I left yesterday morning and spent last night in Gallup, NM. An extreme temperature change...the temp was 30 degrees this morning! I drove across northern NM today; east of Albuquerque, it's not nearly as pretty as the rest of NM that I've visited.

I'm in Amarillo, TX now and it's the first time I've had an internet connection in almost a week, so thought I'd give everyone a quick update. I may be home by Thursday night, but should make it by Friday for sure. Hope the MN weather takes a turn for the better by the time I get home!

A Change of Plans

Well, I saw snow and pine trees today, but it wasn’t Minnesota, it was Arizona. The Whim and Weather took over…

First the weather: I watched the forecast for MN and saw that the coming weekend was going to dip down in the low 20s again. As the MUTT isn’t winterized, I didn’t want to drive into that, so I decided to stay south for another week. As I said, the park by Canyon Lake, TX was really nice, but the weather was pretty nasty the last two days and the forecast for the next 3-4 days was for more of the same. The weather map on TV was really pretty with all the red, orange, and yellow colors swirled all over TX, but not very inviting.

The Whim part took over… I talked to my friends Barb and Lisa, who live in San Diego, and they were looking for a weekend getaway, so we decided to meet in Laughlin, NV for a long weekend. So I headed west towards El Paso. The first two hours after leaving Canyon Lake, I drove through thunder storms and heavy rain. Once I got through that, though, the skies turned blue and it was a great drive. Western Texas looks like every cowboy movie I’ve seen: Very hilly with gray-brown soil polka-dotted with sagebrush and mesquite. In my mind I could almost see wagon trains crossing and Indians riding and hunting.

New Mexico was a change of scenery and a pleasant surprise…it’s a very pretty state! The prevailing color changed from gray-brown to red, and the hills changed to mesas and buttes. I intended to head straight across I-10 into Arizona, then head north to Laughlin, but I saw the weather forecast calling for record-breaking high temps, so decided to take the northern route, through Albuquerque and Flagstaff. Again, a lot of really beautiful scenery.

I stayed in eastern AZ, then started off in the morning before sunrise. As I drove west, I saw a fantastic sunrise in my rear-view mirror, and the mountains rising from the plains ahead of me. The mountains were snow-capped, and the sunrise turned the snow pink…I started humming “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Along the way I took a detour leading to the big crater in Arizona, but after driving there, decided $15 was too much money to spend to see a big hole in the ground. If you’re ever traveling I-40 through AZ, I highly recommend the rest area just west of Flagstaff, between mile posts 182 and 183. It’s in the largest Ponderosa Pine forest in America. There’s a path circling from the rest area through the trees, complete with plaques along the way educating the reader about the forest.

Well, weather-wise, I’ve traded the icebox for the frying pan, to badly muddle a metaphor. True, the northern route through AZ was much cooler than the southern would have been, but here in Laughlin, they are setting record highs. My thermometer today hit 101! I’m afraid I won’t be doing much gambling in the casinos during the day, because I can’t take a chance on the air conditioner quitting in the RV with the dogs in there. Since AZ doesn’t observe daylight savings time, it’s dark by 6:30, so I’ll get a chance to lose some money after dark. I'm here until Monday, then it's homeward bound regardless of the weather!

The Last Texas Post?

Well, we cut our week in the vacuum to three days. One can take only so much desolation, isolation, and monotony. The resort was “on the shores of Lake Medina” – the only catch was that the lake was dried up in the area of the resort. In fact, it had been dry for so long that farmers had put fences up on the lake bed and were grazing cattle out there! One fascinating thing we saw was a herd of zebras grazing on a reserve close to the resort. There were also some very large bovines that we think were Cape Buffalo and some antelopes with long, spiraled horns that were familiar from African safari movies. We later saw another small herd of zebras closer to New Braunfels, and Sally had told me about yet another herd close to Boerne. Who would have thought Texas was the Zebra breeding capital of North America?

One correction: In my last post, I called Bandera the “Cowboy Capital of America.” That should have been the “Cowboy Capital of the World,” so I’ve corrected it. Sorry, Bandera.

We’re now at a very nice RV Park near Sattler, TX. It’s a big park with lots of amenities for families (two pools, three spas, a large lounge with a very large screen TV, and much more). Only problem is that it’s so spread out that you need to drive to everything. We’re in the “back 40” and even the rest room/shower building is a long walk. The office is on the other side of the highway by the clubhouse and cabins. There is no WiFi access on the camping side of the highway, so I don’t know when this will get posted. It’s raining today, so I’m spending the time in the RV to type this up so I’ll have it ready to send when I get the chance. This is Spring Break week for all of Texas, so the resort is hopping with lots of families. Considering the all-day rain, I feel sorry for the ones camping in tents with a bunch of kids!

We took a trip around the area yesterday to guess where? Fredericksburg and Luckenbach! Yep, that’s the third time for me in less than a month! Mike and Shirley hadn’t been there, so I was happy to accompany them. We hit Luckenbach on a Saturday and it was a completely different experience from my previous two visits, which were both on Mondays. There were about 30-40 motorcycles, about as many cars, and two buses. The stage was open, with continuous live music, there were two outside bars open as well as the one inside, and there was a small store selling cowboy hats. The line at the cash register in the souvenir store was at least 10 people long all the time. I guess that the first experience, with many fewer people and a few guys informally jamming in the bar was a more quaint, unique experience, but this was fun, too.

Just lived through a terrific storm last night! There were tornado warnings along with large hail flash flood, and damaging wind warnings. We managed to avoid all those, but the rains were incredible. The little pond in our resort is now a lake, and is running over the earthen dam into the previously dry creek bed. No damage, but some pretty wet, dirty dogs.

Well, I think it’s time to head for home after this stop. I hear the snow is melting pretty fast and I sure miss the grandkids! It’ll be almost time for baseball and soccer by the time I get home. Since my next trip will be the Class B Rally in No. Carolina in May, I need time to regroup, clean the MUTT, and let the dogs have the freedom to roam the house instead of having only a 2 x 10-foot hall to walk in. But, hey, at least they haven’t had to walk through snow this winter!

Yee-Haw...I'm in Cowboy Country!

It’s been a fairly quiet time since the last post; I’ve stayed within about a 60-mile circle and have actually made a circle route. I left the RV Resort near Bourne and headed up to Fredericksburg again, visiting the National Museum of the Pacific War. I had stopped by there with Ron and Sally the first time around, but the Admiral Nimitz Museum was closed for renovation and was scheduled for reopening by the time I got back there. It was fascinating to this WW II buff. My interest started when I had to take a History class in college and chose WW II History. If you ever get the chance to visit the museum, allow several hours to really do it justice.

Leaving Fredericksburg, I drove up to Llano for a BBQ lunch at the highly-recommended Cooper’s BBQ Restaurant. The beef brisket was incredible! (Thanks for the tip, OTBiker!)

Since it was right on the way, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to visit Luckenbach again. It was much quieter this time…no singin’ cowboys! The chickens were the real entertainment. The chickens flew up in the trees, followed by the roosters, who chased each other until one of them was pushed off. They repeated this several times and then the three roosters had a crowing contest. They took positions about 20 feet apart, then took turns puffing up their throat feathers and letting loose with some really fowl yodels! This entire show played out within a few feet of the fascinated tourists…quite a show!

After Luckenbach, I went on to San Antonio to meet up with Mike and Shirley. We went into town the first evening to take the boat tour of the river and walk past the lit-up Alamo. The second day, we went out to breakfast to celebrate Shirley’s first Social Security check, then returned to the campground for a relaxing day and some very pleasant dog walks. The weather has been great the last couple weeks and as a result, the dogs are getting a lot of exercise and then lounging in their kennel outside. The third day in San Antonio we visited the Mexican Marketplace, doing some shopping then having lunch at a restaurant there. We next returned to the Alamo and this time toured the inside. It’s very moving to be standing on the site where so many people died. The same feeling I had when I visited Gettysburg.

I left San Antonio yesterday, following Mike and Shirley, and we are now camped at a campground in the dead center of nowhere. We went through the town of Bandera (the Cowboy Capital of the World), then drove for what seemed like hours through the kind of scenery you see in old westerns…you know, the guy crawling past cactus and tumbleweeds, calling out, “Water, water…” before collapsing. Anyway, we finally made it to the campground and probably won’t do much touring the next week, since the scenery is pretty monotonous. (And monochromatic, too.) If anything exciting happens, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, I’ll write again when I get back to civilization!