Where we are! We're number 2003 on the mapWednesday November 30th, 2005We did some shopping today with Mickey and Patti as they were drueling over new motorhomes at a Campging World just over the border in Texas. We did get a free lunch from the dealership though that was quite good. Slow roasted beef and salad with chocolate cake to top it all off. They did not buy but we had a great time looking and dreaming.
We took the second half of the afternoon going to White Sands Missile Range and Museum. Below are some pictures from there. Interestingly the only president to visit White Sands was President Kennedy. This is where the first Nuclear bomb was tested back during the war and just prior to dropping the bomb on Japan. Hmmmmm makes you wonder about he notice we saw hanging in the office of the park here that warned of some wells containing amounts of uranium over the allowable amount. I asked about it and he said what notice! Hmmm Maybe we can be our own night light! Anyway, we had a great time visiting the museum and reading all the info on tests done there. The Range is on the opposite side of the mountain range shown below. What a fantastic sight in these mountains. WE are REALLY enjoying this. Tomorrow we leave headed for Arizona, will write more then.
Tuesday November 29th, 2005Las Cruces New Mexico is the setting for tonight. This is about 250 miles from our Pecos campground. The drive was incredible! Elevation changed from 2500' to 4700' and back down again. The scenery was STUNNING! To see the mountains in real is soooo much better than any picture can portray. The Guadalupe Mountain Range and Quitman Mountains is absolutely fantastic, but then I have never traveled any where to see such sights. I can not fathom what the Grand Canyon will be like. Even after taking some pictures of the mountains and looking at them, it does not reproduce the sight. There are some small mountains just to the east of the campground here. Tomorrow we will get out and do some driving and may take a trek over to White Sands Missile Range Museum.
Going through El Paso was not much of a joy. Lots of traffic and not much to see unless you like to stare at builings and houses and it seemed to go on forever! Plus now we are on Mountain time. That makes everything another hour off! It's kind of cool having that happen as you set time back, but think it will suck going the other way and losing time. There is something I love about being in a strange place I have never been before that I love. I can't explain it but it is thrilling.
Sunday November 27th, 2005Tonight we are setting in Pecos Texas at an Escapee park. Nice rate of $12.50 a night. Last night we stayed in Baird Tx. kind of a run down park but an ok place to stop for the night. Today the wind was TERRIBLE, blowing at times up to 50 mph. Our truck did not do to bad but Mickey and Patti's Rv was being tossed all over. We did good till the last 10 miles before stopping here. The wind was beginning to toss us around so it certainly was a good time to rest. The milage on the truck went down hill fast today. I installed a chip programmer for performance on the truck a couple days ago and it makes a huge difference. Our first tank of fuel we got an extra 1 mpg. May not sound like much but when you're only getting 8mpg it is a big plus! The other difference was the transmission wasn't shifting back and forth between gears going up hills.
We were beat from driving today so we decided to go out and eat. Well seems about everything in Pecos is closed on Sunday so we ended up eating at the Flying J resturant, if you ever decide you might just grab a meal while there make sure you order it and don't get the buffet. Hot food cold and cold food warm pretty much describes it. But we didn't have to fix it and we were hungry so it hit the spot.
Was interesting to watch the landscape change coming thru Texas. It started out everything was brown and dead and some hills. We then progressed to more scenic landscape scattered with rock formations and tumble weeds and lots of cactus. Speaking of tumble weeds, we had a HUGE one blow in front of us WOW they make a big noise when you hit them! Don't want to do that again. Anyway the land then transistioned into sandy dunes and cactus and 50 miles farther changed again to hills in the distance and green beginning to cover the fields that were previously cotton strewn. The wind created hugh dust clouds that looked like stormy weather. Hopefully Tuesday when we leave the wind will be minimal. Next stop will probably be in New Mexico. I have included a couple of pics on the road and one of Major after a long day of driving.
Friday November 25th, 2005
Evening Update:
Well we did it again and ate out! Pizza tonight, it's a rule with Patti that Friday is Pizza night. So off we go the the local Pizza place Mazzio's (must be a chain as we saw some of them in Tulsa) we each get the 2 pizza deal so we can go back to Mae and Terry's to feed them. While we are waiting on the pizza's we get bread sticks and drinks. Hell me and Mickey are damn near full already and we still have pizza coming! Well we go back and eat it and now we are bloated like heck! Swore we weren't going to do it again but we did!
So we get back and decide it is time for Major to get a bath as he has been digging a lot so I con him into the bedroom and put him in the shower with me and BOY OH BOY was that fun! He is such a sissy. Cried the whole time plus by the time I am done with him I have to get in and take a shower. But hopefully tomorrow he will smell better and quit digging.
Well Thanksgiving is over and we got stuffed as expected. Mickey and Patti joined us at Mae and Terry's for dinner and Mae's youngest son Jimmy. We took the dogs with us so they would not be alone and Mae was kind enough to put her's outside so ours could come inside. With a great feast of Turkey, smoked ham, potatoes, dressing, corn, fruit salad, cheese, cranberry sauce, buns and a load of different pies, Apple, Pumkin, German Chocolate, Lime. WOW we were so stuffed within 15 minutes and still a ton of food left over. Later in the evening Mae's oldest son and wife with kids came over to visit. Tom, Stacy, Cody and Cannon. Was great to see them again. Tommy and his oldest son are deer hunting today.
Well tomorrow morning we take off for Arizona, we will take probably about 5 days to get to the campground we will stay at for the month of December. Won't be much time to sightsee on the way but maybe we can squeeze in a little.
Tuesday November 22nd, 2006Today we went to check out Turner Falls which is a scenic overlook of some falls that are used during the summer for an day type park with swimming and such. Below is a pic of the falls. Warm today at almost 70*, sorry you guys are so cold back home! :) Looks like some snow showers for you guys. More later.
Monday November 21st, 2005We went to the National Park here just down the road and visited the Nature Center and took a hike. Trail was about 2 miles long round trip and we got to see some small waterfalls and a couple of Armadillos foraging for food.
Sunday November 20th, 2005Update 8pm central
HOLY COW! What a feed. Smoked county ribs, potato wedges, homemade corn bread, homemade cole slaw, beans (YUK) and corn. Way toooo much food but sure was good! Mae's the best! Just topped it off with a nice glass of milk and Chocolate cup cake. SWWEEEEEETTTTT!
Well we got moved today to a very nice park
Arbuckle Rv Resort. This is a nice setting out in thte country with 2 fishing ponds and fantastic hookups. It's a little chilly today 54* but suppose to be in the 70's by mid week. That will be nice. I think I see some fishing in my future! In a little bit we are going to the sister-in-laws to have smoked ribs, that sounds good doesn't it! HMMMMM. Got the satellite setup with my new roof mount. Makes for a nicer setup without the tripod on the ground and safer. Getting the signal was a breeze and had it locked in within about a minute. Tomorrow we will do some tourist stuff and will write more.
Saturday November 19th, 2005We arrived in Davis, Oklamoha this afternoon about 1:30. We are currently at a park called Canyon Breeze but to tell you the truth we are not too crazy about it. We get this weird feeling about how safe it is to leave all our stuff here while we are gone. We checked out several parks after setting up here and found another one 20 miles away we are going to move to tomorrow morning. One park was so far back into the boonies that the Buffalo took flashlites and guns with em! This is more of a stop overnight type park right on the highway and REALLY outdated. All the full hookup sites have the sewer at the back of the site as would have been fine 20 years ago when all rv's had tanks at the back. So we are parked sideways taking up 4 spots to get our sewer to hook up. $16.50 a night is an ok price but like I say not crazy about the area. We did stop to see some Bison that were at a State Park along the way. I say Buffalo and Mickey say Bison...........WHATEEEEEEVER!!
We made it over to visit Deanna's sister for a while and had dinner with them. Mickey and Patti went back to their RV as Mickey was pretty beat from driving. We came back ourselves after hitting the store for some grocery's about 7:30. Distance traveled today was about 200 miles. We will be here till next Saturday in Davis. Hope to get lots of sight seeing done this week.
Thursday November 17th, 2005We left Ohio a week ago Wednesday and arrived at the KOA in Terre Haute Indiana later that day. One of the biggest changes for us was we traded our dually pickup for a larger C4500 Chevy Medium Duty Truck as our Dodge was just overloaded with weight. This truck does not get the milage as the Dodge but has the capability to safely pull the trailer without overloading it. So far we are averaging about 8.5mpg in fuel and thankfully diesel is coming down in price. We paid $2.25 a gallon today. Much better than the $3.40 we were paying a week ago in St. Paris. Anyway we only stayed in Terre Haute for a day as our intention was to visit our friends Keith and Mary who own the campground and also our friends from Bemidji Bob and Jane who were down for a day. We were going to spend a couple of days there but Keith and Mary had to leave for a meeting in Nashville and Bob and Jane had to transport a minature horse in their VAN back to Minneapolis! Since all of our friends were gone we decided to move on to Branson where our other friends Mickey and Patti were patiently waiting for us since the first of October. We left Thursday morning and drove straight to Branson that day arriving about 6pm that night. That was a total of about 400 miles. More than we like to travel in a day but were anxious to get there. Was great to see them again and we have had a great time since arriving. We also got a chance to meet up again with our other friends from Bemidji KoA that live in Hollister just outside of Branson. Gunnard and Virginia. Was fantastic to see them again and they showed us a great time! Gunnard always knows the best places to eat. We had lunch at a place called Lamberts which was MORE than enough food. The neat thing is they THROW the rolls to you from across the room! Sometimes fast pitch! Lots of what they call pass arounds which is a bowl of something they just offer, maybe macroni or peas, fried potatoes or slaw. Can't go hungry there for sure. Then we all went to the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield which is more than a store. It is like taking a hike. SOOO much stuff to see, inside aquariums, ponds animal displays etc. Fortunately we made it out without being broke! Mickey spent some money buying a CB radio with weather channels. That was a great trip. Then Wednesday Gunnard and Virginia took us to lunch at a Cafe called Hard Luck, super burgers and all the waiters and waitress's sing between taking orders. Was great and Gunnard got some pictues of me with a couple of the girls and Deanna with one of the guys. Hopefully we will get copies of the pics and will post them.
Wednesday night we had dinner with my cousin Becky and her family. Becky and Roger took us to dinner at a Mexican resturant last week that was fantastic but maybe not as good as the Japaneese place that was just to packed to get into. But it sure smelled GREAT! Their boys Todd and Dane have a business called Explosive Contractors Inc. which is a pretty good description of what they do. Their main thing is clearing rock along the highway for new roads. This would be when you are driving down the road and wonder how they put the road thru with the shear rock walls, well they drill down thru the rock and fill the holes with explosives and blow it up! They also do a lot of work at Quarrys. On the average now they are using almost a Million pounds of explosives a week! Their largest job was a total of over 1100 holes and blew up 3-1/2 acres at once! We watched a video of some of their work and it was pretty impressive. Will make it back that way again and will spend some time to watch them in action.
We left Branson on Thursday morning headed to the sister in laws south of Oklahoma. We are currently in Tulsa now and will probably leave on Saturday to our destination there. Tomorrow we are going to do a little sight seeing and maybe catch a museum while here. Weater is fairly cold. Got down to 18 last night but fortunately here in Tulsa is only suppose to get down to about 30. Mickey and Patti are traveling with us. We like to only travel about 200 miles a day, by the time we get up and get moving by 10 am the 200 miles puts us about 2-3pm which is a good time to get off the road before traffic picks up.
Truck is doing pretty well though seems a little underpowered on hills so I am adding a power chip to the computer to try and compensate for that. Overall it makes a good tow vehicle except the ride is terrible. Another reason to only travel 200 miles a day as it will beat you up pretty bad.
Major is doing pretty well without Keesh traveling with us. He always has travelled well but we were concerned about him being all alone now and expecially when we leave him in the trailer alone. Seems he is adjusting and that is comforting. Till next time................
