On the morning of November 30th, we said good-bye
to Cedar Blue and headed south for the winter.
It was a sunny and very cool morning and great driving weather. We stopped in Ardmore for gas (about 40 miles
from Cedar Blue) and John smelled hot brakes on the Jeep. In checking the braking system, we had in it,
it seemed that he had set the system a bit too far forward and it had been
pressing on the brake the entire way!
Yikes. It hadn’t registered on
the readout in the motorhome so we knew it was all about where he had the
system located since it wasn’t engaging the brake. Oh well, not much we could do at that point
but get the system setup right and keep going.
The drive on I-35 and I-35W was stress-free until we got to
Ft. Worth and the highway construction was beyond crazy. I had hoped to take a bypass around the city
but all the construction chaos started well before that exit. By the time we reached the exit for that
bypass it wasn’t even worth the time as we were almost through all of it. Traffic moved slowly through all of it so it
wasn’t that stressful driving our rig.
We just had to make sure we stayed on the right road, which we did.
Once we were south of the construction we wanted to stop for
lunch and change drivers. John found a
Loves Truck Stop on his phone so we got off the highway and headed that
way. We cannot back the motorhome since
we are towing a vehicle so we always must find a pull-through parking space. Now you would think that wouldn’t be a
problem in a truck stop but not this place.
Every parking space for trucks was back in! Amazing.
So back onto the highway to find someplace else. A short distance down the road we saw signs
for several eating places and decided to try again so off we went in search of
parking and found a shopping center with lots of open space.
We spent our first night at the South Forty RV Park just
south of Giddings, TX on Hwy 77. This
was a nice small park in a wooded area.
As we were driving along the exterior of the park to our space we saw a
herd of Texas Longhorns on the other side of the fence. They had the longest horns I’ve ever
seen. There was one very large longhorn
standing so still and with such long horns that I thought it was fake but then
I saw it move slightly! How do they hold their heads up? Those horns must be very heavy. While there for the night we met a nice
couple next to us that were full-timers from South Dakota heading to Houston
for a visit and then onto Arizona for the winter. They had a friendly, large spaniel-looking
dog. As dog owners, we have found that
dogs are what bring so many people we meet together.
On December 1st we arrived at our destination in
Rockport, TX. We are staying at the
Wilderness Oaks RV Park and we were greeted with lots of smiles and helping
hands. This is a large park with some
permanent residents and lots of winter Texans.
It didn’t take long at check-in to be informed that ‘snowbirds’ are in
Florida and we are ‘winter Texans’.
After showering me with lots of information about the park we headed
into the park to get our rig parked. I
always park the rig and John directs me which seems to work well but when I got
to the space we were assigned and looked at the narrowness of the street I was
very thankful for the two guys that came to help us park. These guys are awesome because they know
exactly how to move the rigs around to get them into place. I think they had me backed in in about 5
minutes.
When John got the Jeep unhooked before parking the RV it was
a nice surprise to realize that we did still have brakes. After getting the RV setup we took the girls
and headed to a local auto repair shop we found online with high ratings to see
if they could look at the brakes the next day.
John said they were extremely helpful and gave us an appointment with no
problem. In talking to the young lady
helping him, John found out that she used to live in Ardmore, OK – just 35
miles from our place in Cedar Blue.
Small world.
Today I’m planning to work on some Christmas decorations
while John is having the brakes checked out in the Jeep. It looks like there could be at least 3” of
rain headed this way over the next four days so we will need to be looking at
indoor activities. This will be a time
to check out the workout center. We were
expecting an outdoor pool with a dome over it but since we were here two years
ago they have changed the outdoor pool to a saltwater pool and it’s now heated
and no dome. Apparently, the dome was a
liability of some sort. I hope to try
out the pool later in the week when the rain is gone. More to come about swimming in an outdoor,
saltwater pool in the winter!
So, it’s time to sign-off and go bathe the girls before
starting on Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment