Our Last Day "at Camp"

Today is our last day in Rockport and although I’m looking forward to some time back at our home base and doing pet therapy at OU Medical Center, it’s a bit sad to be leaving.  I would compare it to when we were kids and summer camp had come to an end and you had to say goodbye to all the new friends you made.  Many of them have already pulled out, but there are a few stragglers still here.  I’ve figured out that even though many of us were scheduled to pull out April 1^st, it’s all about watching the weather and picking your ‘real’ travel dates.  Some are still returning to cold weather and maybe even snow.  We are watching for storms and tornados as Oklahoma is our destination.  After watching the weather forecasts for days, it appears that we have a 2-day window with no storms along our drive to zip home so we pull out tomorrow – 2 days early.  Yes, we have a storm cellar on our RV lot.

Yesterday we started to pack up things.  After sitting for four months you tend to spread out a bit.  We took the weather station down and, of course, we had probably the highest winds we’ve had the entire time here and no way for me to see how bad it was.  I'm afraid of high winds.  My guess is we had 20+ mph winds hitting us.  We were rocking and John slept through it all!  I probably fell asleep about 2 am.

John thought he might caulk the roof, which needs to be done at least annually, but when he got up there to check it out it was covered in greenish-yellow pollen.  Since it wasn't Thursday, we couldn’t wash it off (a city rule) so we had to let that job go for now.  These live oaks shed these hard, small leaves all winter and then comes these fuzzy looking things and tons of pollen.  It’s all over everything.  The good news is my allergies slowed way down when that switch was made.  I would have thought the pollen would have done me in.

This morning the rain finally started in but I think it will clear up late morning and we could end up with high heat and humidity the rest of the day.  At least things should dry out.  We will finish packing up the things that go in the Jeep and on the cargo hauler this afternoon so getting out of here in the morning should only take about a half an hour.  John and I have this down to a fine art because we’ve done it so often that it doesn’t take us much time. We will head to the gas station first and fuel up the RV then to a shopping mall lot across the street to hook up the Jeep and check that everything works and the steering wheel really doesn’t lock up when it’s turned off as we’ve been told.  Since we bought this Jeep here, we’ve not had a chance to test it out behind the RV so we are praying all goes smoothly.

I found a new route to head home.  Rather than head up through the Ft. Worth area and then up I-35 to Sulphur, we are going to head north and east to Palestine, TX for the first night, which is north and east of Houston.  We will completely miss Houston – Yea!!!  Then stay on state highways east of Dallas up to Lake Texoma and to Cedar Blue and completely avoid Dallas – Yea!!  I hate traveling through big cities.  If this works well, we will stick with this route.

We’ve had a great winter here at Wilderness Oaks RV Resort and Rockport, TX and look forward to returning in about 8 months.  After 10 weeks in Sulphur, we will be heading out on our next big adventure - 6,000+ miles through the NW quadrant of the country and Banff.  Yep, there will be lots more photos coming on Facebook.  Please keep us in your prayers for safe travels.