Temperature 4 below zero F. Sunny, bright, little wind, but COLD! The slides move slow, and stop once while moving them in, wait a moment, start them in again, they are IN!
Warm the truck a bit for the “kids”, load them in, and we are off, time 8:45 AM.
We have let the GPS unit pick the “fastest” route from Tipton to Donna, Texas. US 12 to I 69, south to Indianapolis, to 70 West to Effingham, Illinois, 57 south. We drive 390 miles today, which is 140 more than we like to travel. But, we know the routine, pack the trailer at the last moment, as quickly as possible, for us that is a 2 day event. Then drive as far as we can the first couple of days, heading as far south as we can, the goal being warm enough weather to put water in the unit.
We stop for the night in a little town called Watson, Illinois, at the Percival Springs Airport/Campground/Restaurant/Driving Range. Not much to look at as far as a scenic campground, but the owners could not have been nicer, we drove up and he was waiting for us at the road! We had dinner in their restaurant and watched the weather reports. We had very limited TV on board, as we could not get the antenna up, it was still frozen to the roof! It is still below freezing, about 19 tonight, brrrr!! Weather is cold here, but shaky further south, there is mumbling (OK, forecasting) of ice and freezing rain. YUCK! If necessary, we will stay here over driving in freezing rain.
Note: Virgin Olive Oil congeals and turns a funny cloudy consistency when it is semi frozen! It is cold enough all day, that gallon containers of drinking water stored UNDER the kitchen sink has ice at the top when we open a jug. We sleep with all the doors and drawers open in the rig! By morning the olive oil is clear again.
January 28, 2005
COLD, again, or rather still. Oh, brrrrrr!!
Well, we watch the weather, and decide to GO FOR IT! We are almost out of propane, after heating the rig for 2 days before we left. We are also low on fuel for truck and fuel for the humans. We travel about 30 miles, stopping in Salem Illinois. We fuel the truck at Walmart, the humans at Denny’s and find a propane business, all in a area of less than 1/4 mile. All fueled up, we head out, turning south once again on 57. After we cross into Missouri we find some pretty bad roads, reminding us of I 10 in Mississippi and Louisiana. 57 turns into 55 and when we cross into Arkansas the road gets WORSE. About 20 miles of nasty nasty roads. We figure this is a good acid test of the changes made in the Montana and the truck late last fall, changes made, that we hope will result in a smoother ride for the passengers and the gear in the back of Montana. The passengers are still commenting, “UGHA, this road is horrible!” We pull into the left lane, a trick we learned last year on I 10, and like I 10, it is a much smoother ride. As far as we are concerned, anyone wanting to get around us, can pass on the right. We discover later, when we reach our stop for the night, that indeed the changes made last fall are working, as not ONE cup or glass had fallen over, the dishes were all exactly where they were in the morning, NOTHING had moved in the kitchen! This is a first, and we are celebrating with small whoops of joy and little happy dances around the rig!
We drive hard again today, doing 380 miles. We stop for the night at Brinkley, Arkansas, in a campground behind a Super 8 Motel. We decide to get cable TV, which also gives us full hookups. After just a few minutes of thought we decide it is indeed warm enough for water! This is always a great thing!
We do discover tho, that we have somehow managed to kill the TV in the front room of the Montana. The night before we had somehow managed to leave the remote control near one of the electric heaters and Al suspects we burned it up. I remember shutting the TV off with the remote, but it will not come back on 8 hours later. When we get to Texas we will pull the TV, see if there are any fuses that need replacing, and then decide what to do next if we find none. Irritating, but nothing to do now, but try and figure out what is wrong. SIGH
January 29, 2005
We have coffee, orange juice and sweets at the motel continental breakfast. On the way back to the rig, we decide we are gonna stay put for 24 hours. It is raining hard, we are both a bit wounded, Al’s virus cough is worse again, we just need to lay low and rest.
We surf, play with the computers, he reads more about the TV, cannot find anything in the literature on a quick fix, and we both take naps. I do some stitching and work on some cemetery projects. I do the corrections found during proof reading, I get 3 projects corrected. Not bad for a licking the wounds day!
January 30, 2005
Today we drive to Dallas Texas. It is another LONG day, 410 miles. The campground we end up in is OK for overnight, but has small lots, crowded, they want us to unhook, which we DO NOT do as they gave us a site where we could just manage to get into. It is cold, it is raining, and wind blowing, rather nasty all the way around. Carol drove today, and was reminded how wonderful this Montana pulls.
January 31, 2005
Dallas to George West, Texas, did not record the mileage, exactly, something like 300 to 350?? It is still cool, rainy and frankly nasty. The campground we pick for tonight has HUGE lots, pull throughs that run alongside the road. Concrete pads, nice little covered picnic area on each site. Bad side of the coin, the access roads are all dirt, it is raining, so the access roads are all a slimy slippery mud. Both of us are starting to feel bad, ok, worse, again. Nasty colds! SIGH
February 1, 2005
Arrive Mercedes Texas, staying at the Llano Grande Resort. Victoria Palms was full, so we are in a sister park. We arrive it is about 45 degrees, cloudy, breezy, and raining. We will set up in this nastiness. Or, partially set up, we only do what is strictly necessary, as we both feel so bad and this weather is so nasty we don’t want to be out in it. We are in a brand new section of the park, the electric meter reads 00000. We have signed up for 1 month, then we will see, maybe we will move on, maybe not.
February 2 to 10, 2005
Well, we have been very sick, nasty cold, cough, slight fevers, just generally crummy. We mostly stayed in the Montana, nursing our wounds! A few trips out for groceries, gas, and not much else. Some days we even managed to take the yorks for short walks. No fun being sick, but we were warm, safe, comfy in Montana. Carol read a LOT of books. We had trouble getting the cable modem to work, went back to the office for 4 different modems, only to find that they had a filter on the line, which we were told was NOT there, and that one of the poles had some missing equipment. Once the cable company was called about the missing part it was less than an hour and we were up and surfing. Al now has both laptops hooked together, network style, via a cord, (cord goes into the LAN connections) and we are surfing the net at the same time with our cable modem. VERY COOL!
Our TV is kaput. Al opened it up, found a blown fuse, went out, purchased new fuse, replaced fuse, plugged TV in, and FLASH! Lit up the whole Montana. What a blast! Took the TV into a local repair shop, where it was pronounced unfixable. So, we are surfing the net looking for a new one. Constrained by the size of the cabinet, this is turning into quite the search.
The weather has been, well, lets put it this way, has not been the best. We were here several days before the temperature got above 50. It has been mostly gray and icky and spitting rain here and there. The temps finally climbed out of the dungeon, and we had a couple of days of 70 and 80's. It is now back in the 50's for a day or so.
We did splurge on ourselves and had one of the local guys wash and wax the truck and wash down the sides (not the roof) of the Montana. With all the road dirt off, they both look better.
Nothing very exciting to report on our first couple of weeks out. Sometimes it just is like that.
