CuRVWander

Since departing Dublin, Tx we have been without an internet connection or mobile phone service so this post is coming after a few days break.   The trip from Dublin to Caprock Canyons State Park was almost a six hour drive, after a number of stops.   We did make it on just one tank of fuel, but only barely.   However our bladders just can’t go that long.   The landscape got so sparse on settlements that one time there was no option other than to pull over to the side of the road and open the rig and use our on-board facilities.   Traveling north and west for nearly 300 miles brought on a significant change in geology and climate.   We moved from the low, rolling plains and Oak and Cottonwood covered hills and ravines to the high plains with its climb of over a thousand feet in elevation, scrub mesquite, massive farm fields, three-digit temperatures and one-digit humidity.     Long, straight roads from which you can almost see the curve ...

Yesterday was a slow day, just getting everything packed up for the trip to Dublin, Tx.  And beginning at 6:00am, while it was still not hot (it never got cool), I washed the rear exterior of the camper and then washed Big Gulp top to bottom.  I can't have my bride riding around in a grungy chariot. Today I rolled out of bed at 4:30am and started doing final preparations for hitching up.  Cyndee,,, not so much.  She came along about two-and-a-half hours later.  But we still did great at getting everything together and getting connected to the new hitch.  Seeing how well this new hitch works I now realize how really old and tired my other hitch was. There was plenty of time to write posts yesterday, unfortunately I had maxed-out my data plan on the jetpack.  We have to stay off the jetpack until our service rolls over on the 26th.  Our voice minutes ran out as well.  We are text only on the phones for a few days.  But we are back onli...

With essentially everything done, today was going to be a day of leisure.  I was going to get caught up on writing my posts, this being the third one today, and do some reading.  But instead I get a call that my hitch has arrived.  Excellent!  We get in the truck and head about four miles down the road to West RV.  These are the folks that agreed to accept the motor freight for me.  As I pull in, they are lifting the pallet with the hitch on it down off the back of the eighteen-wheeler. I pulled the two clevis pins that hold the head on the old hitch and lift it off.  Then one of the mechanics and I pull the two pins each that hold the hitch to the mounting rails.  Then we lift and slide about 150 lbs of iron out to the tailgate where two other guys lift the old one down and the new one up.  Ten minutes later the new hitch is pinned in and the head is on.  I am in and out of West RV in less than thirty minutes. Old, tired hitch ...

Up and going early again today.  When does the leisurely life of retirement happen?  We are off to Lufkin so we can get into the social security office and apply for "modern" SS cards.  And that is so we can have our multiple forms of identification to get our driver licenses. I remember that in my youth Texas was a state that was rated as having the best roads in the country.  I think they have let that slip away from them.  Both the roads to Conroe and Lufkin were what I remembered about them being roomy with large, paved shoulders but they were not smooth.  They are not rough because of pot-holes or cracks or things like that.  They were just beaten down into dips and bulges that made for a less than comfortable ride in a big old stiff-suspension truck. We found our way to the SS office, took our number and waited to be called to a window.  Happily it was not long and the request for replacement cards was a breeze.  It was early s...

Three days of learning the finer points of what has to be done to become a "legal" citizen of The Great State of Texas.  It ain't pretty. Despite reading all the different state websites for vehicle registration and driver licensing over and over months in advance of returning to Texas (where we were both born and lived for 29 years), it was still a laborious and start-stop process.  And things have to be done in an exact order too. Before you can get your driver license, you have to register your vehicles.  And before you can register your vehicle you have to pass a state safety inspection, on anything you put on the highway.  That means that we had to pack up the RV for travel, pull in the slides, disconnect all the hook-ups and hitch up just as if we were going on a major trip.  But we were only going to the local auto repair shop that does inspections.  It should have been a place just a couple miles down the road we are on but on this particular Mo...

Saturday was another hot day but I got an early start and washed the bugs off of the front of the camper and did a full wash on the truck before the sun got too high.  Then we took a short road trip and explored Conroe, TX, about an hour away.  As native Texans we have always known of Conroe, we even have family that live in the area.  But we have never been there and were surprised to see how much of a city it was.  I think we saw all the national brands of shopping and most of the major chains of eateries. One of our favorites that we did not have in GA was Cavenders, a western wear store.  When we saw it, we pulled right in.  I had been looking for a specific kind of belt for months without luck, within 10 minutes of going in Cavenders I had one in my hand. The great state of Texas is one that requires a license plate on both ends of the vehicle.  Since Big Gulp was built in Tennessee and Indiana, then delivered to Georgia, where they do no...

Well, maybe not that hot but we knew coming to this part of Texas at this time of year was going to mean being exposed to some heat, and we were not wrong.  Temperatures for the two days we have been here have been in the mid-90's with the RH in the mid-80's.  The heat index has been hovering between 105° and 110°F.  I don't care who you are, that right there is hot! It may be hot but it is a nice spot.  This is a typical commercial campground with rigs spaced pretty close together. From the driveway you can see Cyndee's geranium on the picnic table (click to enlarge).  So far she has kept in good shape across five states. While we had hoped for quick resolutions to getting all the legal documents changed over to Texas paper, it is no big surprise that it is not happening that way.  The tag office is closed two days for renovation.  The place that we should be using to get our truck and trailer's safety inspection sticker (required to have i...

It was a warm and muggy start to our adventure this morning but we are on our way.  Cyndee got ready faster this morning than I have seen her do in the past several months.  We were ready to go almost 2 hours before I expected we would be.  Some of the neighbors saw us hitching up and came to see us off as did a friend of mine from work.  A very nice way to start the day. The hardest part of the day was getting through Atlanta.  It took almost two hours to get from just north of the city down to I-285, around to I-20 and just past Six Flags on the west side of the city.  And nearly 15 gallons of fuel too.  While I used the same 15 gallons in the next two hours, we traveled significantly farther.  By the time the day was over today we had used 90 gallons of fuel and made it across to Vidalia, Louisiana. We are comfortably parked in an RV park that is right on the edge of the Mississippi River.  It is gorgeous in here.  They have been ...

Cyndee's doctor visit was today and all the news was good.  We have been given the green light to travel so we will be pulling out of Georgia first thing in the morning.  We have about a 7-hour drive ahead of us that will have us pulling into Natches, Mississippi for a one night layover and then another 5 or 6 six hours of driving the next day to get us to our official domicile in east Texas. We also got a phone call from the tax assessor's office in regards to the vehicle registrations that I sent in.  Despite using exactly the papers they sent me and following the instructions they sent with the forms, it would seem that nothing is right.  Our tags will not be waiting on us when we get there.  It looks like I will have to spend some quality time at the tax office getting the registrations straightened out. Putt-Putt is gone.  We dropped her off at CarMax immediately after returning from the doctor.  Cyndee cried about giving up that car about as ...

Cyndee seems to be healing properly following her surgery.  The doctor appointment is in a couple of days and we anticipate we will get the green light to travel.  With that in mind we have been doing things to get the rig ready for travel. We also got a break in the weather so it was off to the local detailing shop to get Putt-Putt gussied up for her date at CarMax.  Everybody commented repeatedly how good she looked and in what great shape she was.  Then came the insult in the form of an offer.  Ridiculously low.  Or so I thought. I took Putt-Putt to two other dealers that advertised out-right purchases of used cars.  To my dismay they both offered exactly the same amount which was 25% less than what CarMax offered.  So, Tuesday, as soon as we return from the doctor's office we'll get Big Gulp and take Putt-Putt to CarMax.   It will be Cyndee's first time to drive since the surgery. We have had the PT Cruiser three years this week...

The green-backed winged beast has returned.  I think he (I don't know what gender it is, I am just going to go with "he" out of convenience) has gotten a little more comfortable with me sitting on the other side of the glass as he hung out a little longer affording me a little better chance at getting a clearer shot. It is still not National Geographic quality but at least it is more than just a blurry blob this time.  Shooting through the window screen and the tinted window really degrade the quality.  I held the trigger down and burned through about 15 exposures to get this one usable image. After several dips into the sugar water he decided to take a more direct interest in me.  After a distinct gaze through the window I think he decided he objected to being watched and zipped out of sight. But that was not the end of it.  I noticed some movement on top of the feeder and leaned in to take a closer look.  Awesome!  A small spider had snat...

Just hanging out, waiting for the doctor's visit next week that will hopefully release us to travel.  In the mean time we are just piddling around and fine tuning the stock in our pantry.  It's not like we are going to be somewhere that we cannot get groceries, but once we get going we are going to be very busy for several weeks.  Time to grocery shop will be limited. We are also starting to get Putt-Putt cleaned up and ready to take in to CarMax, but the weather has been uncooperative.  It has rained mud balls the last several nights and we have heavy rain predicted for the next couple more.  We'll see if we can get it in after the weekend. After trying to attract humming birds for weeks with no success and then finally taking down the feeder in preparation to leave, we put it back out after finding out we would be around a few more weeks.  It was more of something to do rather than really expecting anything but, surprise, a humming bird started s...