Ahhh, The fresh air of feedlots and refineries. We're home, Texas!

The feedlot is a random shot I took.  But the refinery/petro-chemical complex is a shot I took from atop a 90 ft distillation column at one of my jobs.

From August of '18 to October of '22 our rig has been in one spot on a beautiful lake working with fantastic people in north Georgia.  Between a birth of a grandson, an unreliable truck and COVID we chose to stay put for those four years.  The grandson will be four in a few months, COVID shut-downs and closings are in the rear view mirror now and that mirror is attached to a new truck.  We're back on plan and on the move.

Our first destination is home, Texas.  Livingston, to be more precise.  We're way overdue for jury duty and our timing will let us vote in person for the first time in ten years.

There was a lot of apprehension about hitching up because of sixteen years of owning a truck that spent way too much time in the shop, all of it for engine issues.  It had the last motor built by the Ford/Navistar relationship and it has become known as the worst-built motor in the history of diesel engines.  But now all that is behind us, I can say that, for at least the last 6,500 miles, the new truck has worked flawlessly.  We have not done any mountain passes while towing yet but based on how things have worked so far, I'm no longer dreading it.  We're good to go to for next summer's gig at 8,800 feet on top of a mountain in northern Utah.

But for now we are soaking up being at home.  There are cousins near us that I want to see in person.  Keeping up with each other on social media is okay but it can't compare to getting a hug and sharing a meal with them.

The trip from Allatoona Lake, GA to Rainbow's End, Livingston, TX was 800 miles.  Not exactly an epic trip, but that was not the purpose of this drive.  We're having to get through some drudgery chores before we can get to the fun stuff.

Yeah, 13 hours of driving time in a car at 70+mph. 
We spent about 15 hours driving over a 5 day period.

From our previous ten years of traveling we have learned to keep the driving days short and in full daylight.  If worse comes to worse (and it has for us) then finding roadside services are way easier in  the daytime.  And if not then we arrive at our day's destination with time to set up in the daylight and explore the local area's places to eat and get fuel.  We find that fueling without being hooked up to a trailer gives us more options to find stations with competitive pricing.  When you are fueling up with 70 or 80 gallons of diesel and 15 gallons of gasoline every penny of savings counts.

Speaking of fuel, Cyndee' little Hyundai Santa Fe, Pepe, got 20mpg with its fully loaded trailer attached.  A very nice surprise.  Not so much for the truck, Chief, he managed to squeak out 9.5mpg.  Yep, that's $411 (84.7gals @ $4.89/gal) of diesel for our little jaunt, ouch.  But with only 6,500 miles on the odometer I expect this to improve as the engine gets broke in.

All-in-all it was a nice trip across the Gulf States.  We got to stay in new-to-us campgrounds along the way and had very good driving days, with the exception of a 2 hour drive in hard rain through Alabama.  Of all the stops we have made, the RV park we are in for the next month has been the most challenging to get into and to get setup for living.

Our first back-in site this trip.  Extra challenging because of tree limbs.

What you can't see in the top picture are the utilities. 
Got as close to the power box as possible but still was forced under large, low hanging branches.

After going so long without backing a trailer of any consequence I was taking a little pressure getting into this spot.  Not only did I have to make a 90 deg back-in but also a bit of a "wiggle" to get in-between the power box and tree with low hanging branches.  Plus, I had an audience.  Neighbors and park employees are aware of the difficulties of this site and were anticipating a show.  But I've got say I was a bit pumped, I did it one stab!  It is a good thing I wore a button up shirt, if I hadn't I would have never gotten a pullover over my swelled head.  To my neighbors: sorry there was no drama.

The nearest TV station antenna is over 65 miles away.  There'll be no free OTA TV for us.  And the position under the tree totally blocks the satellite dish mounted on top of the rig.  It may take a day or two but I am going to have to break out the tripod and spare dish antenna and see if I can manually align to the satellites.  No streaming either.  Cell signal is minimal at best.  I did a couple of speed tests and never got anything above 1.0mbs.  Bummer.

Successful Launch. Whew!

 

Departure ready.  It "only" took three and a half hours to get travel ready this morning.
And that is after a solid week of getting ready before today.  But the reconfiguration is done now.
From here on out we should be able to break camp, leisurely, in an hour.

A lot of anxiety about getting the new truck to hitch up and go down the road has been tamped down.  All the effort put into designing and selecting auxiliary equipment seems to have worked out, everything did what it was supposed to do.  I'm still going to have to get the guys at the trailer's factory to help me adjust the king pin box while we are there for other work.  The trailer is still riding nose-high from the previous truck's setup.  The king pin box is a big hunk of iron and will take at least two stout fellows or one small fork lift to hold it while stabbing the bolts into the next position. 

While the mechanical stuff is working great, my insecurity of my abilities is still pretty high.  It has been so long since doing a heavy tow that I feel like a rookie again.  Having an uneventful day today has helped and having arrived at our destination without being totally wiped out is doing a lot to give me a boost.  I think something else feeding my insecurity is our new way of traveling.  For the first time since starting fulltiming ten years ago, we are traveling in separate vehicles.  Cyndee in her little SUV with an  equally little cargo trailer and me in the truck with a giant trailer.  First time I have full-time towed without a co-pilot.  Now I have to keep track of everything, Cyndee is not there to provide advance notice of a rest stop or Flying J.  I now have to actually pay attention to road signs and billboards.

In the meantime, we have arrived at a Corps of Engineers campground, Deerlick Creek, on Holt Lake, just to the northeast of Tuscaloosa, AL.  Super nice, very similar to the wooded campgrounds of where we just left in Georgia.  However, I have NEVER been in such a huge pull-thru RV pad.  We could have easily put two of our rigs end to end and have room left over for visitor's cars.  The park itself is gorgeous.  In addition to the large and widely spaced campsites, there are paved foot/bike trails.  Really nice.

I'll end this the way I started it:

What an RV pad!  So long I had to take a panorama to get it all in.  Not only was it long but wide too.
At least half again wider than what we are accustomed to.  We're going to enjoy this for a couple of days and then be on our way.

We're off!

 

After four years of being in one spot, which was never the plan, thank you covid, we are getting back on the road.  Our time in Georgia is done for awhile, we have things lined up to do west of the Mississippi for the next year.  Our time at Allatoona Lake in North Georgia has been fantastic and we are already anticipating our return but we are way behind on doing and seeing things that were planned years ago.  We're going to fix that right now.

Our intermediate goal is to get home to Livingston, Tx and take care of things that are best done in person such as vote, jury duty, vehicle inspections and so on.  But we'll take our time getting there.  We are only going to drive about 4 hours each day.  We are still trying to get our heads around our new "caravan" situation.  Cyndee in her vehicle pulling a small cargo trailer and me in the truck with our home on wheels.  We're learning as we go.  Just tonight we made sure that each of our navigation systems were on the same route.  That's never even been a thing before.  Nothing like heading down the road and getting separated then not seeing each other again until the destination.  I suppose one could do it that way but it is definitely not what we want to do.  We have been doing this long enough to know that stuff happens.  Neither of us wants to be stranded alone.

So tire pressures (all eighteen of them) have been optimized and everything is staged inside the camper for pulling in the slides in the morning.  Bird feeders, plants, camp chairs and a hundred other things have been put in the cargo trailer.  It is completely full.  In fact much fuller than we thought we could ever make it.  We have spent a solid week chipping away at getting things from a stationary mode to a travel mode.  But it is done, nothing left to do except pull in the slides, hitch up and go.

Look out Texas, here we come!