On the Road Again!

I had planned my final days prior departure down to the minute. Taking off in the RV for 4 months is a big chore.  Pulling everything from the house that would be needed and packing all that up. Then loading all of the packed items into the RV (out of breath). Once all the packed items were inside the rig, it all had to be unpacked and put away. (gasping)

Plus, the house needed one last cleaning. There were items that needed to be covered for protection. All outdoor furniture needed to be put into the garage.  Things needed to be shut off. Bug traps laid out. Caretaker notified of needs. Security patrol notified . . . and the list goes on and on.

We had planned accordingly so there would be no last minute panics or frantic rushing around, mostly on my part.

However, you can’t plan for everything. Wednesday night the tooth pain came. I went into the dentist on Thursday and was advised I needed a root canal. Fortunately their root canal guy would be in on Friday, so I snagged his last appointment; what you’d call bitter sweet; Yay I could get this taken care of prior to our trip; and Boo because I’d rather birth to a litter of Great Danes than have a root canal.

Friday when I got there, they found I needed not one, but two root canals. Oh Bugger. Ended up spending 4 hours in the dental chair (there were complications) and then Saturday I was laid up in pain and drugged up with pain meds. This left me with two days to do four days of work. 

Since Monday was a holiday, I was back at the dentist first thing Tuesday morning to have my permanent crowns put on. To save time, and because I figured if there were no nerve roots; there’d be no pain, I declined nitrous and/or Novocain. Everything was going well. Tiny little drill pulling out temporary filler. Then I heard the sound of the big drill; the one I call the “Jackhammer” – before I had time to react, I could feel my body go limp and my eyes roll back in my head. Yep, I had passed out! Not my best moment. There was no pain.  Plain old fear had cold-cocked me. But . . . as my head rolled to the right I jerked, like you do when you fall asleep sitting up and revived myself. Due to the "dark splatter protection eye wear" they had me wear, the dentist thought I had simply nodded off. LOL

I came away from the experience looking super chill AND I was done a good half hour sooner than expected.

Gotta say, being back in the rig feels like we never left. Please tell me it wasn’t all a dream! We DID by a house 3 months ago, right!?!?

Don’t know if it was the weather pattern or the route we took, but it was Dorothy -Toto windy out. A couple times we were literally lifted off of the road and put down in the lane next to us. Fortunately there was no one next to us when this happened!

The poor bugs were really having a time of it as well. I have never seen so many bug-casualties in my life. Visibility was pretty low on the windshield due to their little squashed bodies piling up and we actually had to tilt our heads to see between the collecting carcasses. As we were miles from anything, we pushed on to the nearest gas station, however far it may be. Using the wiper fluid would have side-lined us for sure; merely smearing the already gooey glass.

One would have thought things could not get any worse, until a truck hauling hay flew past us. The hay stuck to the bug guts like they were glue. We looked as if we had been tarred and feathered!  When the hay finally blew away, we had lovely swirled bug guts – very artistic; rather looked like bug-gut-Spirograph. 

When we arrived at what claimed to be rated the best RV Park in New Mexico, we gave a wonder to whom had done that rating.

This was the view from the front of our rig:

We were, however, greeted by a very friendly native.  

I believe he was a Texas Horned Lizard.

According to Park Rules, we were not allowed to leave/enter the premises between 

10 pm and 6 am. Here is the sensor alarm hanging with skulls on a pole. 

Intimidation? LOL

And I can only assume that these old cop cars were also meant to deter? 

Can you see the mannequin dressed in a cop’s uniform in the driver seat? 

So scary. Heehee

Funny place.

When we went to set up for the night we discovered our power steps weren’t working. I told Mark to restart the engine and they would probably pop right out. 

He didn’t want to do this while everything was hooked up. So instead he flipped through the owner’s manual; got on-line and read articles; made a phone call to his fix-it guy; went outside and did some ‘fiddling around’ – I don’t even want to know how he managed to get battery acid in his mouth. (Oh my head)! Then he gave up, at least until after dinner, when he fiddled again until it was bedtime.

One thing I had forgotten about were freight trains running through the middle of your mind all night long. Last night, they not only rolled on through, but they blew their whistle continually as they did so. Really? Is that necessary? Do you think there is ANYONE who cannot hear them coming for miles beforehand?

By 5:30 am we were all awake. Are there volume controls on train whistles? Because I am pretty sure the train conductor turned his whistle to “deafening” on that 5:30 am pass-by. I didn’t realize Mark and Cotye had gotten up and gone into the living room (probably because I couldn’t hear anything but the train whistle). As soon as the whistle stopped, I heard loud banging that sounded like a very angry person at our door! First, my heart stopped, then when I recovered, I jumped up to see what was going on. Turns out Mark was pounding on the roof to scare off a bird that was pecking on the rig. Probably a good thing we don’t travel with a shot gun, huh? Not sure who'd have gotten the first bullet, the bird or Mark.

Before heading out for today's trip, Mark telephoned a nearby repair shop to arrange for repair of the power steps. We unhooked, unplugged, pulled up the jacks, tucked away our gear and started the rig – SURPRISE – the power steps were working again. Moral of this story; “I told you so!” Oh wait, I meant to say, "Men should try listening to their wives" . . . but it was the "I told you so" words that popped out of my mouth.  

Today we had a wind free, and fairly bug-gut free drive. It was even overcast so no sun glare. Only negative; it was a very long drive. What I don’t understand is why long travel days wipe us out so badly! All we are doing is sitting while we travel. Yet when we put in a lot of drive hours, we all three are completely buggered by the time we finally get settled in somewhere.

Here are a few pics of today’s drive:

Our first tee-pee sighting of the trip.

Some very cool rocks . . .

And I had no idea, but I think you can actually see Minnesota from New Mexico. I mean that is snow, right?!

That’s all for now.  I need to make dinner before we fall asleep for the night!