In the words of Willie Nelson, we are "on the road again!" We left Mission about 10:00 AM after having breakfast at our favorite little Mexican food restaurant, Las Canteras. While tooling up U.S. 281, we hit a turkey that was walking across the road. They say turkeys are dumb birds, and I guess that must be true, because he (she?) was not even half way across the road (coming toward us from the left) when he decided to out run us...he lost! Guess we should have stopped and picked him up...we could have had roast turkey!
We stopped in Alice to have lunch at the Kettle Restaurant and then made our way to Smith's Trailer Village and RV Park in George West, a trip of 169 miles. We had stopped here on two different occasions last year...once when we went down to Mission, and again coming back. Last year, however, the price was only $12...this year it is $15 (weekly rates are only $80, though). It's not a fancy park, but it's nice...all the spaces are pull thrus which run parallel to the road and there is a lot of room between spaces.
Rig at Smith's Trailer Village:
Tuesday, April 2
We drove 149 miles to the Wildflower Inn in Johnson City, Texas. This park used to be called Pedernales Hills Resort and is a Coast to Coast (C2C) park. This is, it USED to be a C2C park...as we found out when we arrived, it isn't one any longer. Too bad. It's a nice park with lots of room to walk Maxx. The spaces have only water and electric, but the person who checked us in said that the owners were planning on putting in sewer next year.
View from our space at Wildflower Inn:
Wednesday, April 3 thru Monday, April 8
We drove 180 miles to our home C2C park in Whitney, Texas, Suncountry Resort on Wednesday. We like this park and the little town of Whitney. There's a brand new grocery store and medical clinic just down the road from the park and the park itself has lots of places to walk Maxx (always a consideration when we're looking for a place to stay).
On Thursday, we drove into Waco to do shopping...picked up some new filters for our Pur water pitcher at Home Depot, bought a new laptop computer at Circuit City, filled up with fuel at the Flying J, and had lunch at the Olive Garden.
Friday night, we went to dinner at Tres Hermanos, one of the local Mexican food restaurants. This restaurant has very good food...just as good as Las Canteras in Mission.
We did grocery shopping over the weekend at the new grocery store in Whitney, Brookshire's. It's a really nice store...a great improvement over the other two stores in town.
When our mail from Sioux Falls didn't arrive on Monday (we'd received our mail from the Escapees on Thursday), I gave Alternative Resources a call. It hadn't been sent out! This makes the second time in a row that they've screwed up and not sent our mail out when I've requested them to. I was absolutely livid! The Escapees mail forwarding service has NEVER made a mistake with our mail...not even once, let alone twice! I wrote an e-mail to Paul, who I'm assuming is the owner of Alternative Resources, and told him how very unhappy we were about the service we'd received to date. I've also written an e-mail to the Escapees' Boomers BOF (Birds of a Feather) to see if anyone knows of a mail forwarding service in western South Dakota around the Rapid City area. As much as I hate to send out ANOTHER set of changes of address, I've lost all confidence in AR.
Tuesday, April 9
Since our mail from Sioux Falls wasn't going to be arriving, we left Whitney and drove 155 miles to another C2C park...Indian Nation RV Resort in Thackerville, Oklahoma. We first stopped in Denton, Texas, to have a late lunch/early dinner at the Cracker Barrel and do some shopping at Camping World...we found the foot stool I've been looking for to use in the truck.
Interesting tree at rest stop:
Maxx in tree:
Wednesday, April 10 thru Thursday, April 11
Today we drove 205 miles to the Elks Club in Perry, Oklahoma. We stayed here last year on our way north. This Elks Club has 6 spaces with water and electric, plus a dump. We were planning on spending only one night here, but when we got up Thursday morning, the weather report showed strong thunderstorms in the area we would be traveling, so we decided to wait another day. We drove into town and filled up with diesel and then that evening we had hamburgers at the Club.
Friday, April 12 thru Sunday, April 14
We drove 189 miles to the Cottonwood Point campground at Marion Lake near Marion, Kansas, stopping along the way to have lunch at a Subway. This is another Corps of Engineers campground and we had a space right next to the lake...great! We decided to stay here three nights and drive into Junction City on Monday morning. We drove into Marion a couple of times to do grocery shopping and pick up the Sunday paper.
Sunset at Marion Lake:
Monday, April 15
We drove the 80 miles to Junction City, arriving at Horizons about 11:30 and found the parking spaces completely filled (we'd arrived unannounced). Ken said that they'd probably have space on Wednesday, so we unhooked, had lunch at the Cracker Barrel, then took the fifth wheel out to the West Rolling Hills COE park at Milford Lake where we spent a quiet couple of days (except for the thunderstorms!).
Wednesday, April 17 thru Thursday, April 18
We arrived at Horizons at about 9:00 and parked. There was another couple there that were at Horizons last spring at the same time we were there, so it was like old home week. We gave Harold our plans for the new trailer and then, since they weren't going to be able to start work until Thursday, we drove into town to do shopping at the WalMart Supercenter. That evening, we had dinner at El Cazador, a Mexican food restaurant. They have good food...not as good as Las Canteras in Mission or Tres Hermanos in Whitney, however.
The Horizons employees started work on our rig Thursday morning. We had several small items taken care of: a new black tank sprayer installed; the metal strip between the carpet and linoleum in the kitchen replaced (which had broken); the grates and two burners on the stove replaced (the grates had become warped and the burners had all the shiny black burned off); three whole new light fixtures put in the kitchen (we'd just wanted new plastic covers replaced on a couple of them because the light bulbs had burned holes in them); the broken day/night shade over the table was replaced; and, a cable was run from the satellite dish to the second receiver in the bedroom (we'd been running the cable thru the bedroom window).
Friday, April 19
We drove 186 miles to Fairground Park in Higginsville, Missouri. This is a nice little park located between the fairgrounds and the city park. Each site has electricity and water is available. The best part is the price...$7 per night. We stopped along the way and had lunch at Hardee's.
Saturday, April 20 thru Sunday, April 21
We arrived at Ron and Donna Monroe's place in Columbia, Missouri about 2:30 in the afternoon. Donna fixed a delicious casserole that evening...and a wonderful coconut/banana cream pie and a cheesecake!
Sunday, Earl and I went shopping at Sam's Club and had a nice visit with Ron and Donna. That evening, Ron barbecued some to-die-for pork chops and we had more of Donna's great desserts.
Monday, April 22
All too soon, we had to leave Ron's and Donna's. We stopped at a Country Kitchen to have breakfast...they had a breakfast special of 1 pound of ham with 2 eggs, hash browns, and toast for about $5.00. We had enough ham left over from our two breakfasts for ham sandwiches.
We drove 175 miles to the Island View campground at Rathbun Lake near Centerville, Iowa (another COE park). Camping at this park is free from late September thru April...no water is available at this time, but the sites do have electrical hookups.
Rig at Rathbun Lake:
View from our site:
Tuesday, April 23
We drove 266 miles to Woodland Camp in Little Sioux, Iowa, a Coast to Coast park. We stopped in Decatur City to fuel the truck and at the Flying J in Des Moines to have lunch.
Wednesday, April 24 thru Tuesday, April 30
We fought a strong head wind all the way from Little Sioux to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a distance of 132 miles. Earl drove at 55 MPH in fifth gear the entire distance.
We arrived at the Red Barn RV Park, which is actually in the town of Tea, a suburb of Sioux Falls, early in the afternoon. Decided to have dinner out at the Cracker Barrel.
On Thursday, we went by Alternative Resources, our mail forwarder, to pick up our mail and meet the personnel there. Then we went by the Verizon store where we tried to change our cell phone number to a Sioux Falls number. However, we were not able to do so without losing our 3,350 weekend minutes, since that promotion is no longer running. We could have changed to the America's Choice and received 4,000 anytime minutes, but that plan has roaming charges in certain non-Verizon areas. We were also given a new phone since we were having problems with the one we had. We then stopped at Schlotsky's for lunch.
Friday found us downtown getting our driver's licenses. We didn't have to take any written tests...just walked in, gave them our Texas licenses, had our pictures taken, and voila, we are now full fledged South Dakotans! Afterwards, we did grocery shopping and filled up a propane tank. Propane is expensive here...it cost us about $23 to fill up a 40 pound tank compared to the usual cost of $14 - $16.
It's been cold here at nights...below freezing! We've unhooked the water and drained all the hoses before going to bed, using the water from the fresh water tank during the night. One day, it rained the entire day and the wind really blew...we spent most of the day holed up inside the RV (at least it didn't snow!).
On Monday, Earl took the truck in to get an oil change and lube job. He stopped by the grocery store on his way back and did grocery shopping.
Tuesday we went to Carlos O'Kelly's for lunch (a Mexican food chain...good food, but nothing to write home about). We stopped at a truck stop on the way back to put diesel in the truck in preparation for our departure tomorrow.
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