Spring 2017 Western Loop Archives - Page 7 of 7

Oak Glen RV park, near Chandler, OK was an older looking park. Gravel pads, lots of mature trees. There were other amenities, but since we got in at dusk and left at dawn, we really saw little of the park. We did see and hear however a dog running loose and barking in the middle of the night.

The next morning we headed out early for another long day. Longer than we had any idea. We were heading from Oklahoma through Texas in the general direction of Albuquerque.

La Familia, Seymore TX — La Familia, Seymore T

For lunch we stopped at a great little family restaurant called Mi Familia in Seymore, TX. When we are on the road, we do everything we can to avoid the chain restaurants, especially the ones we visit back home. Most of the time, it works out just fine – as this one did.

There are great stretches of nothing in western Texas and it seems, they roll up the sidewalks and turn off the lights at 5pm. In much of the country, you can count on there being a gas station every 50 or so miles at the most. We knew this wouldn’t be the case out west, but it seems we forgot. We drove past a station with a bit over a ¼ tank left thinking we‘d hit the next station and that would get us the rest of the way to Lubbock. Lubbock wasn’t our original spot for the night but we had redirected a couple of times during this day because of storms. It wasn’t that we were avoiding rain – though that is always a good thing to do. It was the high front winds and the large hail that can follow we didn’t want to expose the trailers too.

Twenty or so miles later we started looking for a station and there wasn’t one to be found within 50 miles. Down to 1/8^th of a tank and we are all searching our apps for the nearest station. It was getting late (9pm plus) My daughter’s van has a bigger tank, so they was probably going to make the next station. Our truck, which has a small tank was not going to make it to the next city we could verify would have a station open. We sent them on ahead with the hope they could at least fill up and come back with a can of gas if we needed it. . We slowed down to 40mph to make the most of the gas we had. That 20 mph or so takes us from 9ish mpg to around 15. We stopped in one dark town after finding no open station there to pour the 2.5 gallon generator gas can into the truck. That and crawling along got us into Crosbyton, TX after 10pm (the only station closed at 11). Our daughter arrived there ahead of us, shortly after her gas warning light came on. (I now carry extra gas in the truck.)

We both filled up (and I refilled the generator can). While we were making rounds to the bathrooms, my wife took up a conversation with a local peace officer who was taking a break inside. He asked us where we were headed and we said we hoped to boondock in Lubbock (still an hour away).

He offered that the town of Crosbyton had a city park with full hookups and we could stay for free. Thank god for that! He directed us back a few blocks, where we picked a spot, parked, plugged in – and wait….. their power plug didn’t work. We had installed a Progressive Industries Power Monitor device in both trailers. Theirs said the power was mis-wired. Fortunately, their pedestal had two connections and the other wasn’t being used (only one other RV in the whole lot). We tried it and all was well, and all went to bed quite tired.

The park was your basic gravel lot with full hookups, trash, a playground. No shade, but when you pull in after 10PM, litterally in the middle of nowhere, it’s was a wonderful find.

Continued next post.

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Well, it was an interesting trip, for some definitions of interesting. Three weeks, two families, two travel trailers. 5 adults, 4 children, all girls, ages 1-6 and two small dogs. This trip had two different goals – one vacation, the other a trial for eventual full time living on the road. Six thousand plus miles, 4 national parks, 10 campgrounds, 2 boondocks in 26 and 35 ft travel trailers.

My goal? To get everyone home in one piece.

Things I learned on this trip:

The weather this time of year is unpredictable more than a day in advance.
Don’t go to popular places during spring break.
RV’s made today are junk. (I already knew this, but was reminded multiple times).
No matter how bleak things are, wonderful serendipity can happen.
There is no grass west of the Rockies and east of California. Some doggies simply do not know where to “go”, when there is no grass.
Most people you meet are really nice and want to be helpful but some are just plain incompetent.
Late March, early April – even in the southwest – its COLD! Only a couple of times on the entire trip were we pleasantly warm. We also froze a water pump on an unexpectedly cold morning.

My expectations for this trip were pretty low. It’s not that I don’t love to travel, I do. It’s that I simply can’t forget how complicated it can be. Keeping everything running, on the road and safe is, at least in my mind, largely my responsibility. I know things rarely go as we plan, so I’m always waiting for the next “thing” to happen, whether it is something broken or an over–heated interpersonal relationship. On the way out, we had plenty of issues to deal with, from re-routing to avoid high winds and storms to mechanical failures and simply getting used to caravaning such a group.

We had picked a pretty aggressive route: Illinois to the Grand Canyon, via Texas and New Mexico, up to the Moab area via Monument Valley and back, all in about three weeks. That alone was enough hike the tension level.

Yet for me it came together, the highlight of the trip, was walking hand in hand with one of my grand daughters on a trail. I never had this kind of time with my grand parents. What little time we spent together, they were always busy and seemed to barely tolerate the presence of children. Of course there were 8 of us kids, so sometimes we were barely tolerable. Our grand daughters hopefully will remember this trip fondly for the rest of their lives. We were traveling in separate cars, sleeping in separate trailers, but much of the rest of the time, we were all together. Every gas stop, most meals, most trail hikes – we divided up the girls so every little one had an adult hand to hold. They tended to pick a favorite person to walk with. I belonged to AJ. Deb (my wife) belonged to JC. EJ belonged to Sylvia (cousin). GG belonged to no one if she could help it. Having recently learned to walk, she was happiest, toddling down the sidewalk between us, totally independent, walking on her own. If you tried to reach for her hand, she’d push it away. It didn’t matter that she fell down every 10 feet or so – she got right back up, squealing with excitement tottering down the sidewalk. Just for good measure, every once in a while, she’d turn around and head the other direction to demonstrate her independence. Despite all the distractions, the girls often ended up the center of things and rightly so. I am using just their initials throughout this blog.

The “fun” started before we left. Watching the weather, it seemed the logical thing to do was to leave a day early as no one wanted to start out driving through thunderstorms.. That compressed two days of planning and packing into one, which mathematically means 5 things would be forgotten to be packed. Well we managed without them anyway. Some things we thought we didn’t pack were discovered when the trip was nearly over. In the rush, we simply forgot where they were put. Many other things were packed that were never used. We always take too much for this kind of trip. I’m sure on a slower paced trip, we might get to use most things we packed. The plan was to pull one trailer out of storage – to our house to finish loading and partially fill the fresh water tank. Then go hang out at Walmart while we pull the second trailer out and do the same thing. We underestimated by a couple of hours how long that would take – and the lock on my trailer storage “basement” broke while packing. Fortunately I had a spare lock that was originally on the trailer to swap it out with. We finally left town at 3pm, not noon.

We headed south out of central Illinois – aiming to pass into Missouri well south of St Louis. We like parts of St Louis, but pulling two trailers through it when we had no time to stop was not on our top 10 list. We got as far as Dexter, MO and boondocked in a Walmart there. We pulled in well after dark – parked and went to bed. I heard there was too much parking lot light, too much traffic noise and too much train noise – but I didn’t notice; I slept.

We woke up early, loaded up and hit the road. Half an hour later, we stopped for breakfast at Huddle House in Poplar Bluff (Rolla?), Missouri. Another 8 hours or so on the road and we pulled into Oak Glen RV just outside of Chandler, OK.

continued in next post.

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Category: Spring 2017 Western Loop

The 201703 trip – day two – Serendipity

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The 201703 Trip And so it begins, by the numbers.

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