Easter Sunday was a quiet, reflective day for us, and an opportunity to rejoice in the wonderful, blessed, life that we have. Our family and friends, both those scattered across the country and those at home, are truly a great joy and comfort to us. Irrespective of ones moral philosophy, its important to be thankful for the blessings that have been given to us. This rainbow was an afternoon blessing.
Sunday was also a rainy day in Tucson, and we were able to do a bit of cleaning and maintenance after a week of traveling. Monday was a bit nicer, so we spent some quality time at the CoinLess Laundry on 6th Street. This is one of those places where the washers and dryers only accept proprietary cards that must be purchased from a vending machine. The idea here is to convince you to put a large value on the card, and then return to the laundry if you don’t use it all. No refunds are allowed. We finished our laundry and left a card on the counter with $0.17 remaining value. That’s cutting it pretty close!
Tuesday morning we left the Tucson KOA and arrived at Bob Moses Ceramic Coating on 44th Street. The guys there had applied a ceramic coating to our trailer last year, and we were due for an inspection and tune-up. They washed the trailer and touched up a few questionable areas, cleaned the windows and wheels, all at no charge. Beside the fact that the coating works like a champ, the after sale service is phenomenal as well. Highly recommend them.
Late in the afternoon, we drove a bit north to the town of Marana and set up dry camp in the parking lot of Vroom Slides, Inc.
Vroom is a machine shop that is owned by Brian Vroom (yeah, it’s true!). Years ago, he owned an rv with slide out rooms, as most have these days. In a vast majority of these slideouts, the mechanism that operates the slide is marginal at best, and Vroom developed an upgrade to solve operational problems and make the slideout more reliable, quiet, and safe. Now he has made his patented system available to the public and does three upgrades a day. An adjacent service bay in his building is where the crew fabricates the parts.
The crew starts work at 5am and puts in a 12 hour day. We picked up our trailer at 5:30 pm, set up in the parking lot again, and prepared to leave the next morning. Two hundred and ninety six miles later that day we pulled into Hacienda RV Resort in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A great meal at the Double Eagle in old town Messilla, New Mexico capped our first day of eastward travel. The Double Eagle is in a hundred plus year old building on one side of the old town square. It’s name comes from having two restaurants in one building: a steakhouse and a mexican restaurant. We felt like mexican and ate in the courtyard of the old house.
The next day, an identical two hundred ninety six miles found us in Monahans, Texas, at the Out West RV Resort. This is a minimal but clean and newer park that primarily caters to transient workers in the local oil fields. That was not a problem in any way.
The wind was blowing at 20 to 30 mph all day, making for a white knuckle drive at times. Gusts at a recorded 40 mph through the night didn’t allow for a good nights sleep.
The wind continued all the next day, and as we pulled into Eastland, Texas, we really needed to relax, and found Wandering Oaks RV Park, which fit perfectly! The drive east on I 20 was one of the easiest we have had in years. The weather reports continued to forecast high wind, but we didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary as we were driving. Of course, Texas highways are beautiful in their own way, but after a few hours we began to make a game of “what’s over the next hill?” Seemed to be much the same each time.
Wandering Oaks is a large park, but with dusty gravel roads, it is home to mostly people who work in the oil patch hereabouts, called the Permian Basin. We were able to score one of the few open sites in the park.
We took Sasha for her evening walk about 8 and caught a beautiful sunset.
A great end to a nice travel day!
We’re getting a little tired of driving every day, but the next day brought us to Shady Creek RV Resort in Aubrey, Texas.
The highlight of the days drive was the areas of Bluebonnets and other wildflowers.
Aubrey is just north of Savannah, which is a little bit above Little Elm, and not far from Frisco. Got it?
We’re in the area to visit old friends Roger and Mary. R and M were among the first wave to escape California years ago, and have established a great life in Texas. There is, however, one other important factor in our visit……
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