On Da Road!

(Craig/Karin) Well, we finally made it! And we're just gonna say it now....it wasn't easy :) Let's back up to several days ago. Our furniture guy rescheduled on us a few times as well as our mechanic. But we did get those knocked out last Saturday. Here's another thing: our trash day is on Fridays. We put all of it out on Friday, but come Sunday (our scheduled day of departure), we had another 15 bags!! What do we do with this? The renters will be moving in on the 1st and we didn't want to leave it for them! So Craig heard a trash truck across the street and took off....flailing his arms like a madman! He offered the driver a quick $20 if he'd come and get our bags. And just a few minutes later, the remaining trash was gone.

Going through the house and choosing what to take and what to sell or give away was very hard. Squeezing everything from our 2400 sqft home and garage into a 200 sqft trailer was tough. We had heard from seasoned RVers that this would be the hardest part of our journey. They were right! But we got it done. The house was unloaded and Craig made Karin quit cleaning. His suggestion was let the Property Manager take charge of any loose ends or dust bunnies. Whew!

Our journey began on Monday March 29, 2010 at 1:30pm, a day later than planned. At our first stop to get gas we checked the trailer to find Smokey our cat with eyes bulging out like he had seen a ghost. Princess our other cat was located beneath about twenty blankets. We knew it would take time for them to get used to it so we calmed them down and moved forward.

Our first stop for the night was Lamar, Colorado. We stayed at a small RV stop right off the highway with few parking spaces. It was good for practicing setup. We saw a beautiful sunset and a full moon rising. Sleeping was tough next to a highway full of truck traffic but we made it.

We headed out the next morning with tremendous winds across the Oklahoma panhandle and into Texas. Craig's experience driving a nuclear submarine came in handy :) Being a novice at pulling a trailer, he was quickly educated in trailer road handling in severe winds. We passed many huge wind farms, a benefit for the world getting greener.

A small town in Dumas, Texas offered us a free site next to their city park. Free electricity was included which was great. However, road construction near the entrance created some severe ruts in the driveway. We scraped the tow bar on the way in. So when we left, Craig figured out how to drive carefully. We left with no more scrapes. Even our cats remained sleeping and relaxed. No more buggy eyes. Dumas was a cattle town, with a busy main street.

With the winds just as gusty the next day we left for Lake Meridith. Lake Meridith is located about an hour north of Amarillo, Texas. This was our first "boondock", with no services at all. When we arrived we found a beautiful lake with hardly anyone camping there. Although it is beautiful, it seems like the water was at one time 30 feet higher or more. We camped on a cliff overlooking the lake and again enjoyed a wonderful sunset. While cooking burgers on the grill Craig heard a strange buzzing noise. Walking into the noise we found a "humming bush". We discovered the humming bush was loaded with a fresh crop of mosquitoes!! We immediately stopped our investigation preferring to keep our distance from these pesky blood suckers. After that we finished our burgers, enjoyed seeing stars and constellations without city light glare. We enjoyed a quiet night and our most restful sleep.

Our next stop will be in Aubrey Texas, just north of Dallas. We will visit Scott Brown and his family. Scott and Craig worked together at a skating rink in Tucson, Arizona, over thirty years ago and will be meeting for the first time since then. We will share the details of this reunion in our next post. See you then.