Week 3 of hiatus

Monday, 20 through Sunday, 26 of April 2020

Spring weather
Most days this week, the temp's been in the 80's which, when it's also humid and you don't have AC, can be pretty warm.  Sometimes when I think about my Momma with 3 kids, 2 still in (non-disposable) diapers, living through Texas summers without AC, I wonder about the Nobel Prize committee's selection process.

We had some variety on Wednesday, though - a serious tornado threat to our area.  David said Anna was monitoring various weather outlets and they'd let me know if anything got close.  He wanted to be sure Lily's carrying case was handy (behind the driver's seat) and said he'd come over and help me get the critters across the street if it was time.  We had some rain in the morning, but the threatened tornadoes and hail both skipped right over us and landed in East Texas instead.  I'm very sorry for them, but I'm also very relieved my little RV wasn't put to that test.  Then all the clouds cleared up and we got up to 88° by 6:00.

The temp got back up to 88° again on Friday and seems to be aiming for that level again today (Sunday).  I'm assuming it'll be even warmer next month, giving me so much to look forward to.

This week's activities
The tornado non-event day I spent working on my unfinished post about the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  I've had enough trouble with my computer freezing up that I've finally learned to save my work in progress, but this time that wasn't good enough.  Google itself ate every bit of work I did during the afternoon and all I was left with was the morning's work.  The blog is on Google's platform and the error message I got was a Google error message, which is why I'm blaming Google.  And no matter what I could think of to do, all that work was gone gone gone.  To keep from being in complete despair all evening, I watched Walk, Don't Run - Cary Grant's last movie, also starring beautiful Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton (aka Ellery Queen), who I thought was brilliant in this film.  Both very sweet and likeable.  It's impossible to watch this movie without coming away feeling the world's not such a bad place (despite Google).

The next day I redid all my work that had gotten lost and - ta-da! - have finally published a completed account of my visit to the National Civil Rights Museum.  If you want to take a look at it, it's right after the Day 22 - Memphis post in the Tennessee section.

I also added in the great photos Anna took when she and David came to spend Christmas with me.  Some she took in the town of Ozark, others are of the dogs.  They're in the post for Days 24 & 25 in the Alabama section.

I spent most of a day sorting through and packing the notebooks of the 24 states I've visited so far and storing them in the space I freed up in my basement storage after visiting the rented storage unit (see below).  That was actually a lot more work than it sounds and I was pooped after I got it done.

I took advantage of these sunny, hot days to clean all the windows in the RV - even the little one by the upper bunk that's used exclusively by Lily.  I discovered that the screens over the windows slide, but they slide only where the window slides and can't be removed, as far as I can tell.  That means the screens can't really be cleaned and the windows can't be completely cleaned unless I want to start removing a lot of screws.  Not happening.  At least, not right now.

And I discovered I'll have to remove the screws holding in the window covering to take down the venetian blinds in the little window over the kitchen sink.  As far as I'm concerned, the only reasonable way to wash those blinds is by taking them down and laying them on the grass somewhere and washing them that way, drying them in the sun.  Trying to do it while they're hanging is more of a nuisance than it's worth.  So maybe next month I'll think about taking down these window coverings and meanwhile I did a quick wipe-down of the blinds.

Now that I've gotten the RV's state inspection, I was eligible to renew the registration online, which I did.  Very exciting.  I felt like a real resident.

I spent almost a full day on the simple chores of taking a shower across the street and doing 3 weeks worth of laundry, also across the street.  Anna and David are really generous to allow me to plug in my RV and use their facilities and pat my dogs when we're all outside at the same time and get me some milk on their grocery run and just generally be good neighbors.  I'm a very lucky camper.  Without them, I'd be spending this quarantine period in near terror.  Instead, I've got 2 very sensible, level-headed relatives who are absolutely doing their share not to catch and pass on this virus.

Plans
I saw in a Carolyn Hax column the idea that someone who really likes to make plans and is very frustrated with this uncertain situation we're all in might actually be able to make plans anyway.  They just can't be the kind of plans with dates attached.  You can plan on taking a trip to France (for instance) and start researching places to visit and start taking French lessons and plan routes - for when the world's no longer under a death threat.

I thought that was a great idea because it allows room for hope.  For someone like me, goals and plans for the future carry hope.  No ideas/no plans carry a sense of hopelessness.  Sensible or stupid - that's the way it feels to me.

So I pulled out my ancient wooden puzzle of the United States and took a look at where I've been and all the states I haven't yet visited and came up with a new idea.  Instead of planning the sort of route I had before, based on avoiding northern states in the winter and southern ones in the summer, and based on moving from one state to another that was geographically next to the first, I grouped the remaining states in clumps of 3 or 4 or 5.

My thought was that I may be able to travel only a few months at a time, depending on whether the virus does increase in the fall during flu season, and depending on whether states open up too fast and we have a resurgence in cases before flu season ever comes, and depending on whether those who've been infected once develop immunity (which WHO says isn't looking likely, I'm sorry to see), and so forth.

I can tell I'll be here until at least June 1st, maybe even July 1st (though living in a metal box in Texas in July without AC isn't my first choice).  But whenever things seem to be settling down enough that I won't feel I'm risking my life by going back on the road, then I can see how many months I might have of travel time.  Maybe I'd just plan to go to - say - the clump of Missouri and Iowa and Minnesota.  And if it looked safe to stay out longer, I can add on some or all of the clump consisting of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.  Like that.  I've got one clump that's just Texas and Oklahoma, in case traveling seems safe but the experts are cautious.

Anyway, I feel better with a plan that's flexible and can be adapted to different and changing conditions.  It makes the future seem more possible and less improbable.

Errands
For this week's Cleanliness Trip on Tuesday I picked out a Love's Travel Stop in the small town of Anna, north of McKinney, for dumping my waste tanks.  I'd intended to run by the Recycling Dropoff Center to offload both my and David/Anna's weekly accumulations and then run up the highway, aka US 75, aka Central Expressway.

Groceries
Well, then I remembered there's a Kroger just around the corner from the Recycling Dropoff and, because they've designated early mornings for seniors to shop, there aren't many folks shopping then.  So I stopped off there.  By the time I got out of the Kroger, it was almost 10:00 and I'd made an 11:30 appointment for Lily to get her claws clipped.  Driving up to the Love's was more than a half-hour's drive for regular drivers (meaning much longer for me) so I'd almost certainly be late for the appointment.

Instead, I rearranged all my stops, upending my carefully planned itinerary.  Fine, no problem, but for someone trying desperately to feel even a modicum of control over life in these uncontrolled times, it was very unsettling.

Frig power
Even more unsettling was my refrigerator.  After I'd put in things like milk and eggs I'd bought at the store, I noticed the indicator light for power to the frig was off.  There's a switch at the top of it that can be set for power from propane or electricity, and when I unplug from a power source the propane comes on automatically.  Except it wasn't on.  We were already feeling the temp creeping up to the seriously hot level forecast today and the last thing I needed was a nonfunctioning frig/freezer.  So my mind started scrambling to figure out where I could get it repaired and was I going to have to cut my errands short so I could dump food off at David/Anna's extra frig/freezer to keep it from spoiling and was I going to have to cancel Lily's appointment and so forth.

Storage
Still, I decided to keep on keeping on until I could come up with a Plan C and went from the grocery store up to a UHaul to buy some book boxes, and then on to the storage unit I've been renting for the last 2+ years.  Their security procedures are pretty good and the only reason I got in and back out is that I was able to dredge up memories from when I was here in February 2018 - how to get through the gate, where the storage unit was, how to get it unlocked, how to transfer stuff in and out, how to lock it back up, how to get back out through the gate - procedures at every turn that weren't obvious on their face.

But now I've got much more room in the basement storage space and even more room in the cabin after moving out things I brought with me that I've never used.  And there'll be even more stuff moved out in a week or two because of those boxes of notebooks I packed.

Pets
By then I'd thankfully noticed that the frig's power light was back on, so that was one less thing I'd have to worry about, and it was almost time for Lily's appointment.  Except I made several wrong turns getting there because I wasn't coming from any direction I'd planned for.  Still, we made it.  One of the few vet offices in the area that was accepting non-emergency patients - and the length of Lily's claws constituting an emergency for my furnishings didn't quite make that grade.

Meanwhile, the dogs had been becoming increasingly insistent that they should have a walk, but I'd been so focused on the frig and Lily's claws and wise use of time (storing stuff because the storage place was sort of on the way) that I hadn't been able to bring myself to take time out for the dogs, poor things.

So while we waited for Lily, I took them across the busiest street in Plano to the only green grass I could see and walked them around a parking lot for a bit.  Then we went back and got the kitty and then, finally, we went on up to the City of Anna (pop. 14,200) to the Love's.

Love's
I've been noticing that most of these convenience stores are providing fairly strict adherence to CDC guidelines and employee protection: stickers on the floor showing safe distancing, plexiglass shields at the counter, employees wearing masks and/or gloves.  It's a far cry from what I saw last month in Arkansas and I'm guessing most of it indicates the change in public attitudes about the deadliness of the coronavirus.  I always wear a mask when I run these errands, and sometimes I wear gloves too - especially in grocery stores and places where I might touch things other people have touched.  And I welcome any precautions I see others taking, especially in this state with an unofficial motto of "You Can't Tell Me What To Do."  You'd think Texas was your basic idiotic 15 year old.

Sights while driving around
While we were driving around, I saw a sign at a church that said, "Jesus washes away all sins, but you still have to wash your hands."  Definitely a sign of the times.

I passed a business called Windmill Stables in Richardson near Dallas.  The thing about this place is that it's in the middle of a residential neighborhood but it's a real functioning horse stable, complete with plenty of horses.  I've assumed it was grandfathered in to the neighborhood - how else would a horse stable get into the middle of a bunch of houses - and finally got around to looking it up.  And in fact it was opened in the 1980's, at which time those houses weren't even a gleam in a developer's eye, so yes, they did get grandfathered in.

(I have mentioned, haven't I?, that grandfathering something in is a phrase that grew out of Jim Crow laws post-slavery.  Ruling whites tried to make it impossible for blacks to vote so they established literacy tests; well, poor whites couldn't pass those any more than the blacks could so they came up with an exception for those whose grandfather had been eligible to vote.  That took in the poor whites but left out the blacks who had all had grandfathers who were enslaved and were, therefore, ineligible to vote.)

I passed a church named Asian American Baptist Church.  Asian Americans are a really varied group, I'd have thought.  In fact, I looked it up and learned that, as of 2018, almost 25% of Richardson residents are foreign-born.  Only 68% of residents speak English at home; 12% speak Spanish (which is a surprise to me only because of how low a percentage it is), but 4% speak Chinese at home, more than 2% speak Vietnamese, almost 1% speak Korean, and 1.6% speak other Asian languages in the home.  So I wondered how on earth a church could cater to such a broad category of folks, and I looked them up.  What I learned was that it's a fairly new church that tries to fill an ethnic need that more conventional churches aren't but still bridge the Asian cultural differences by using English in the church.

I passed a (temporarily closed) business called Condom Sense and of course had to look it up.  They say they were established in 1990 in response to the AIDS epidemic, after Magic Johnson had announced he was HIV+.  They claim status as Dallas's oldest adult product store.

Shakespeare and the Bubonic Plague
I heard on the radio that the Bubonic Plague was a serious threat during Shakespeare's time and that he'd written Macbeth and King Lear while in quarantine.  So I looked that up and got some conflicting reports - some websites agreed with this and said he'd also written Antony and Cleopatra in that same year (1606) while stuck at home, while others said he'd left London where theaters had been closed because of the plague, was touring the provinces with his plays, and he was bored out in the boondocks, which is why he'd had time to write.  Whichever is right, they all agree that the Plague had an enormous effect on him and references can be found throughout most of his plays.

The Bubonic Plague, aka the Black Death, arose in the 1300s and was rampant in London especially but throughout England from at least 1563, when 20,000 died in London alone, 80,000 in England.  There were outbreaks periodically throughout Shakespeare's life (he was born in 1564) and it wasn't finally conquered until the Great Fire of London in 1666.  That fire killed the rats that infested the city; the rats carried fleas that carried the virus, which arose from the raw sewage dumped straight into the Thames.  In 1665 alone, the Plague killed 16% of London's population.

The Plague killed Shakespeare's 3 sisters and 3 brothers, his grandson and, most tragically, his only son.  It was so greatly to be feared and so little was known about it and went on intermittently for so long that it's no wonder Shakespeare's plays are filled with references to it.

It's hard for me to imagine it now, when we live in a time of such great scientific knowledge and people are impatient when a vaccine can't be discovered this month (i.e. instantly) for our own plague.  The people then were literally living in their own sewage, which was killing them with a horrible and excruciating illness, and that situation went on for more than 100 years.

Back at the ranch
It was hot
The official temperature today seems to have only gotten to 84° but it seemed about 10° hotter than that, especially in this metal box I'm living in.  I opened all the windows, the door and all the skylights and turned on the ceiling fan and 2 small fans that I put on the floor for the dogs.  By 5:00 Wednesday morning, the cabin temperature had still only gotten down to 75° which was only just starting to be comfortable.  We were plenty warm during the night, but there just wasn't anything I could do about it.

Holocaust Remembrance Day
I heard on the radio that Tuesday is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and when I looked it up I learned that yes, it started at sundown Monday until sundown Tuesday.  Well, sundown in Richardson these days is after 8:00, so by the time I found out, I still had time to remember.  I decided to rewatch Denial, the movie about the libel trial of an author who was sued by a Holocaust denier when she wrote that he was a Holocaust denier.  She won.  The judge in London's High Court agreed that he had lied and manipulated historical facts to promote his ideas of anti-Semitism and favoring Hitler.

She's among the many who are very concerned that, like so many of the WWII generation, Holocaust survivors are beginning to die, leaving a world that is increasingly unable to believe that wholesale slaughter of people for being who they are occurred.  Maybe they're the same people who think enslaved Africans were happy working on plantations.

Correction
Actually, it's not really a correction, but somebody wrote in and asked about a post I did when I was in Delaware about Barratt's Methodist Chapel.  I've added the comment and clarifying information to that webpage, if anyone's interested in taking a look.

Week 2 of hiatus

Monday, 13 through Sunday, 19 April 2020

What I've been doing
This week has been a series of activities that would normally be called Spring Cleaning, but in this context it's called Sorting Out the Things I Don't Need on Future Travels.  During this process I've found a few things I've been looking for for the entire 24 months I've been on the road - I had put them in a very safe place, obviously.  And in the sorting this time, I've realized how much I've learned about what I truly need and how I truly live, as opposed to what I thought I'd need for the life I thought I'd have.

I've not only paid this month's bills but also straightened out some financial confusion I haven't had time to sort out before.  As an example, I finally responded to a letter from Social Security they sent me last October saying I might be able to increase my benefits.  I've been drawing survivor's benefits from my former husband's social security for 5 years or so.  Social Security tells me that the benefits I qualify for now that I've turned 70, using my own income rather than Pete's, gets me to an extra $150 a month, and they'll give me retroactive benefits at that level for the last 6 months.  I was practically incoherent with gratitude.  But a small part of me knows that Pete was such a competitive person that, in a way, he'd have hated to know that my benefits get me more money than his.  One of the ironies of life.

My usual way of doing things would have meant I'd have taken several trips to the storage unit to clear out the RV as I've sorted through various batches of things.  The hitch in that plan was that one of the things I'd put in that very safe (unfindable) place was the key to the storage unit.  I'd been smart enough right in the very beginning to leave extras with David, but it was knowing that I had one here some place that kept me sorting and looking instead of making trips.  And finally - ta-da! - I did find it.  Along with the business cards for all my medical providers in Austin and a few other important items.  But now enough time has passed that I'll just keep on with the sorting until Tuesday, when I'll need to leave anyway to dump my waste tanks again.

Weekly Cleanliness Trips
What else can you call a trip that has a primary purpose of getting rid of waste products.

Rockwall
The trip last week to Rockwall included Anna and David and didn't work all that well for them.  Anna sat at the dining table and couldn't hear much of anything David and I were talking about just a few feet away, thanks to the non-acoustics in here.  David sat in the shotgun seat and spent half his time convincing Dexter that the seat would only hold 1 at a time.  Also the passenger side door doesn't open because of that displaced molding around the outside that's barely being held in place by duct tape - it hangs down enough to block the door.  So each time he got in and out, David had to shoehorn his way into the passenger seat while trying to deal with the dog beds taking up all the floor space between the 2 front seats, as well as the console that juts out from the dashboard between the seats.  He nearly got stuck once.  Much easier for me because I'm used to all of it, but not so easy on my guests.

In Rockwall we passed an enormous building that Anna said was the county courthouse (I didn't recognize it as such because it was just sitting on a plot of land like a regular building instead of at a town square).

Rockwall County Courthouse

At that point, I was still thinking of Rockwall as being a small rural community, forgetting that it's now likely considered a suburb of Dallas and Richardson and Plano - that whole growing tech/industrial area.

Rockwall County has an estimated population (in 2017) of 96,788.  This building was built in 2011.  And rural or not, this still looks pretty fancy sitting out in a field on its own.

I walked the dogs around one of the fields and got a couple of photos with the wildflowers.

Dexter

Gracie

Gracie never wants to look at the camera.  Dexter was just oblivious.

Driving through Garland, we passed a building labeled International Leadership of Texas.  D&A told me it's a charter school and that there are several of this particular brand around the area.  I thought the name seemed a little weird so I looked them up.  They claim to work on building leaders for tomorrow by offering classes in English, Spanish and Chinese and that 100% of their students take at least 1 AP qualifying test.  All very well, but they rank as #81 among the 427 private schools in Texas, which doesn't seem very lofty to me.

I looked up Garland High School and it ranks #377 among the 2,813 public high schools in Texas.  Using very creaky old long-division without a calculator, I work that out as the private school ranking 19% and the public school ranking 13%.  Maybe I figured it out wrong, but that's what I got.  Both schools claim 60%+ minority students and 50%+ "economically disadvantaged."  So why should someone be paying for the private school?  Especially why should the State of Texas be paying for it, which I think they are.  Some economist or researcher with time on their hands during this quarantine might want to take a look at these figures statewide, and the source of their funding (and maybe the political connections of those sources).  Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of full funding for public schools and a zillion years ago was a very poorly paid teacher in the Texas public school system.

The trees and plants are noticeably green, which I commented on, but both Anna and David said it'd been like this for many weeks.  To my eyes, though, the well-advanced green was stunning.  I'd seen nothing like this in any state I've visited since last fall.

We passed the Milano Hat Company, also in Garland, and I was surprised to see the Justin brand on the building so looked it up.  Milano Hats was founded in 1983 and was very successful, and a few years ago began getting the rights to produce hats for other brands - most notably Justin® Hats, Larry Mahan® Hats, and Tony Lama® Hats.  I had no idea Garland had become the center of the Western hat universe.

We passed a building labeled Mission of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was a church I hadn't heard of so I looked it up.  Turns out to be a branch of Catholicism that focuses on missionary work.   The depiction of Jesus at right is theirs.

That same image is in a front yard in the next street over from here, and every time I walk the dogs by there, I think it's an odd choice for a portrait claiming to be Jesus.  He would have been a Middle Eastern Jew and, granted, people undoubtedly looked different 2,000 years ago than they do now, but at a minimum I'm confident no one living in that region had skin this pale, and I'm pretty sure those features are much more northern European too.  But it was a long time ago and cameras didn't work so well then.

Speaking of cameras, we also passed a very large warehouse-y building labeled Shutterfly.  I'd always thought this was an online company, not a manufacturing concern and couldn't figure out what they'd need a big building like this for.  I still don't know.  They say online that they are indeed an online tech company and don't manufacture any products that aren't already on your computers.  And this building didn't look like someplace a bunch of computer programmers or techs would be sitting around in.  It looked like a warehouse or, at most, a factory building.  No windows.  Odd.

We passed a bridge that was labeled as prohibited to any vehicle "over 3 axles or more."  It still strikes me as funny.  Did they really need to say no more than 3 axles twice in one sign?

Caddo Mills
This past week for variety I drove to a place called Holiday Road Travel Center at Caddo Mills, which is a few miles beyond Farmersville and is just as rural an area as it sounds.  This place turned out to be an RV park with multiple RV services, including a repair shop.  So I was able not only to dump my waste tanks there, but also dump my garbage and fill my water tank.  And then they let me take my dogs to their enclosed dog park (which the dogs immediately misused by eating grass instead of running around and enjoying being off leash).  They were very nice about everything, but the RV park didn't seem very hospitable to me - the land had been completely cleared and the nearest trees were quite a ways away, so it's probably fiercely hot when the sun shines.

On the way there I passed a Raytheon plant.  Turns out they've already got plants in Dallas, Richardson and Plano and are building one in McKinney and claim more rapid growth in North Texas than anywhere else in the US.

I passed through the town of Murphy, pop. about 20,000, that David tells me was there when I was in high school but I sure don't remember it.  Still, that was in the '60s and even as recently as 2000 its population was only 3,100, so it was probably tiny back then and surrounded by fields.  Now it's an actual town and bleeds into other surrounding areas.

I saw lots of bluebonnets and paintbrush along the road.  Anna said the peak was weeks ago, but it still looks good to me.  I also passed huge fields full of yellow flowers.  Very sunny on this non-sunny day.

I passed through Farmersville, pop. 3,301, with the slogan "Discover a Texas Treasure."  Maybe next time I go out that way I'll stop for a look at the town.  This trip I just stopped at the Dairy Queen for a malt, and found they'd stopped answering their phone so I had to go to the drive-up machine and place my order that way and they brought it out the (locked) door to me.  Odd experiences these days are bringing.  Nothing wrong with the malt, though.

I passed through Princeton, pop. 6,807, which I've also never heard of.  But it's been around for a while because there was once a POW camp there briefly during WWII.  I found a one-page entry that seems to say a migratory labor camp was converted to hold German POWs, who were actually held 5 months after the end of the war.  It's the "migratory labor camp" bit that's interesting to me.  Take a look for yourselves at this link.   https://www.collincountyhistory.com/pow-camp

I heard on the radio that Cook Political Report has designated Wichita Falls as the most conservative congressional district in the United States.  Which is saying something, when you think about it.  We lived in Wichita Falls for 2 years - Pres. Kennedy was assassinated while we were living there - and I don't remember anything about that time that made me think it was so very right-wing.  Either I was too young, or my parents insulated me, or things have changed.  Or all 3.

I drove through McKinney, current pop. 195,342 (where Raytheon is going in).  McKinney is considered an exurb of the DFW metroplex and is reaping the population benefits.  From 2000 to 2003, and again in 2006, it was the fastest-growing city in the US among cities of more than 50,000.  In 2007, it was the 2nd fastest growing city in the US among those of more than 100,000, and in 2008, and again in 2017, it was the 3rd fastest in the same group.   The 2010 census put it at 131,117; the estimate for 2018 is 191,645.  And in 2014, Money magazine named it the #1 Best Place to Live in America.

All that for little old McKinney.  Who'd've thunk it?

Plano - Allison Autocare
I'd stopped here last week to get the RV officially inspected (now that I'm back in the state of Texas), only to discover that I couldn't lay my hands on a copy of my current insurance policy.  That policy is one of the many valuable things I unearthed during my Spring Cleaning this last week, so this time when I stopped, they were glad to help me out.

It's been a while since I've had to get a vehicle inspected, and I remember the days of putting it on a machine to test vehicle emissions and other exciting things.  No longer.  Those days are past.  This guy checked all my equipment, including my tires, and asked some questions and that was pretty much it.  But he sends in a report to the state about how road-worthy I am, so this time I can get the registration done without arguing about getting the inspection done in another state.

In fact, my registration is due in May, and my driver's license expires in September, so I've put both on my list of things to do during this hiatus.  But at least I now know where my insurance proof is and I now have my inspection done.

Future plans
Earlier in the week, I got the impression from the news that maybe if I stayed here through May, I'd be able to get back on the road in June.  I really miss it - the traveling around and seeing new things and learning about new places and people.  Then I started to do a little research.

I discarded my original travel plan, which would have me postpone Missouri (April) and Iowa (May) for a later time, and instead go to Minnesota in June, North Dakota in July and South Dakota in August, and possibly even Nebraska in September.  My thinking was that some of the medical people are hoping the virus will die down during the summer, and possibly kick back into gear in the fall, which might give me some travel time.

But all those states except Minnesota have governments that have refused to institute statewide stay-home orders, making me very very nervous about traveling there.  Just because the virus may not be spreading as fast doesn't mean it isn't spreading at all.  And with my asthma and my age group, I feel pretty vulnerable.

Instead I thought I might head west to New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada.  I looked them up to see what kinds of measures their governments were instituting and found that even in those states where the governors were being very cautious, they were being subverted by the state legislatures and by protesters among the general population.

And when I look east to the states I missed in the beginning - Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina - I'm seeing the same sort of trouble recognizing reality.  I'm getting pretty sick of listening to elected officials saying saving lives is less important than saving the economy.  Like the illustrious lieutenant governor of Texas did a month ago - this article is a funny version of that ghastly pronouncement.   https://news.yahoo.com/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick  I still don't understand why it's an either/or proposition.

Anyway, after all that discouraging research, I concluded I can't make plans right now.  I can hope - but I'm with those who think adequate testing is a bare minimum for opening things back up, and we sure ain't there yet.  But who knows.  Maybe in a month things'll be different.

Meanwhile I'm taking comfort from the advice I noted last week from that elderly survivor of other worldwide disasters - forget about planning into the future and instead make a daily to-do list.  So every morning, I sit down and make a list for the day.  And I do my very best to get through my list each day.  That's where I focus my attention.  It really does help.  I can control the little things.  The rest is up to somebody else and there's no point in wasting energy thinking about it.

Week 1 of hiatus

Monday, 6 through Sunday, 12 April 2020

As I'm sure everyone else is experiencing, my week seemed very strange on several levels.

* One was the progress of Spring.  The Dallas area is farther south than I've been in a while and Spring is much farther along than I've been seeing it.  Here all the plants are completely leafed out, and it's easy to see which ones survived the winter, which are sick, and which didn't make it.  Many of the flowers and flowering trees I saw in Arkansas, for instance, are well past their blooming time here, and we've moved on to Bearded Iris, which seem to be blooming everywhere.  Also Anna tells me the Bluebonnets are way past their prime, though I still see some here and there.  What's up now are Oriental Poppies and Bachelor Buttons - often together, and their striking blue and red together are just gorgeous.

* Another (and related) area of strangeness was the weather.  This past week we had days where the high barely got to the mid-60s, and others that were downright hot.  On Wednesday, Dallas set a record high temp for the date of 97°, with a high of 88° the day before.  I'm plugged into a 20 amp power cord from David and Anna's house so can't turn on the AC, just the fan.  So for a couple of nights, I had all the windows and the door and the skylights wide open all night.  This meant not closing the shades, because they'd block off the breeze.  I think it was hardest on the dogs - especially Gracie.  One evening I found her panting and heaving, and I finally took a chance and wiped both the dogs down with an ice cube.  I've heard that may not be good for dogs, but neither is Gracie's double coat in an indoor temp of 85°.  It seemed to help her.  Actually, I did the same for me and it felt great.

We've also had intermittent rain, with occasional serious thunderstorms.  Gracie was already well under the table at that point and, when Dexter came to me and looked worried, I encouraged him to go join her, which he did.  Pretty well the gamut of spring weather this week.

* Still another different situation for me is that this is not only not a campground, with the usual campground amenities available (think dump station), but also it's a residential neighborhood that's under an HOA situation.  It's certainly obvious to the neighbors that I'm actually living in this RV, but so far no one's raised any concerns.  I try to keep a low profile, but I'm still taking up one of only 4 extra parking spaces for this little cul-de-sac we're on.  On the other hand, another one is always occupied by the mom of a resident, working here at least temporarily from Louisiana; another one is also always occupied by a nearly unemployed neighbor, so it's not like I'm the only long-term parker.  I'm hoping people will avoid pushing on this issue because of not wanting to be in close contact with a stranger during these weird communicable-virus times.  And anyone can see I'm sheltering in place, which may ease what might otherwise be trouble.

This HOA seems typical of what I've heard of others, where at least one person is a stickler for compliance with the rules.  Anna told me there was a huge fuss when a homeowner on the next street wanted to take advantage of major tax rebates and cover his roof with solar panels.  Common sense won, but I guess it was a struggle with some HOA bigshots.  But it's that sort of thing that worries me and doesn't want me to get my family into some kind of conflict just because I'm sitting here in front of their house, scared of getting this virus.

* Speaking of campground amenities, I took the RV out on Tuesday to do some errands.  I drove over to Rockwall (smallish suburb of Dallas) to a TA Travel Center on the interstate where, for $10, they let me dump my tanks.  I found them on a website called www.rvdumps.com, which I hadn't known existed.  Very helpful.  Showed available dump sites both on a map and in a list.  Then I went to The Propane Station in Plano, which was basically a fancy name for a regular gas station that also sold propane.  I still wasn't down to a quarter tank but thought I'd better get it while I was out in case the predicted cold front blew through.  (It did, but not right away and it wasn't all that cold.)  I can usually wait 7 or 8 days to dump my tanks, but it'll still be a once-a-week thing.  Now that I have that website, though, I can check out different places in this area.

* Another thing that's different is that I'm not usually too concerned about my health, other than the aches and pains from the most recent dog-dragging incident - that sort of thing.  Yet now I'm taking my temp several times a day and continually mindful of possible symptoms.  Then at some point this week I learned that asymptomatic can mean the person can have the virus but never show symptoms.  I had thought it meant that it might take several days of having the virus before the symptoms showed and hadn't realized a person could have it and never show symptoms.  That thought really shook me. 

I've seen that my usual temp is 97._° but this week I've seen it go up as high as 99°, which really worried me.  That was the first day, though, of the heat wave and I realized later my temp was up because I was hot.  It went back down again later.  Easy to become a hypochondriac in these weird circumstances.

Anna is as cautious as I am when we go to the grocery store and other errands.  We always wear a mask outside our vehicle.  Yesterday I also started wearing gloves partly to protect me from all the dopes who still aren't taking this seriously, but also because of not wanting to infect someone else, in case I'm one of those asymptomatic people.  Such a strange world we're living in now.

And I just learned this morning that the virus is creepier than I'd suspected.  Scientists don't yet know exactly what its properties are.  If it behaves like the 1918 flu pandemic, it could abate during the summer and then come roaring back in the fall.  They're also discovering that even those who recover from having the virus aren't recovering fully - people's organs aren't regaining their former strength.  The virus seems to be leaving a trail of damage through the body, leaving a weakened heart or liver or other organs.  There are no long-term survivors yet, since the first case only happened a few months ago, so they don't have any way of knowing the long-term effects of this virus.  This information would certainly argue against those who think we should just all get infected, with most of us surviving, and then we'd have antibodies.  In fact, scientists think the weakened organs of survivors may make them more susceptible to catching the virus again with possibly worse consequences.

Then this morning I saw an interview with a well-respected vaccine researcher at Baylor Medical College in Houston who said scientists are very unlikely to come up with a vaccine by the end of the year, because the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed was the mumps vaccine, which took 4 years.

He also said the 1918 flu pandemic actually came in several waves that lasted 3 years, from early 1918 until late 1920.  He said everybody's working around the clock on this so it's at least possible they'll get a vaccine sooner, but people shouldn't be counting on it.

He was worried about what might happen when they relax the quarantine rules, only to need to reimplement them a few months later when the next wave comes along.  He was afraid people wouldn't take it seriously the 2nd time around, since so many are having trouble taking the 1st round seriously.    If you want to look him up, this is Dr. Peter Hotez, who's been appearing on many networks to get information out to people.  Smart man.

I saw an interview with a woman who is 102.  She was born during the flu epidemic in 1918 and lived through the Great Depression and WWII.  Her advice on making it through this: To cope with this virus, don't get stressed about planning far ahead.  You can't do it.  She said long ago she learned that when life started to feel out of her control because of war or pestilence, she would to start each morning by making a to-do list.  That was the only thing she could control, and she stuck to working her way through her list each day.  She said to keep in mind that this, like everything else, will pass.  

I find her advice helpful.  Like everyone else, my life is on hold and my plans are shattered.  Almost everything about the future seems uncertain and potential hazardous.  I can't plan ahead with any certainty at all, and it makes me feel uneasy.  But simply accepting that that lack of control isn't my fault, that I can't do anything to bring it back, that I just have to wait for events to unfold and see where we are then - that's an attitude that brings me a small sense of peace.  And I love to-do lists anyway.

I've noticed that "Stay safe" is the new way to say goodbye to people.  It makes me, and I think others, feel like we all care about each other, that we're all in this together.  What strange times we're living in.

Beginning of hiatus

Friday, 3 and Saturday, 4 and Sunday, 5 April 2020

By the time I got to town on Thursday I was feeling a little jet lagged, after driving much faster for much longer than I've been used to.

When I woke up Friday morning, my first thought was the same as I've had every morning for 2 years: where am I going today.  Some mornings my answer is a grateful "I'm staying in the campground today."  Today for the first time in 26 months I realized I was not only not going anywhere today, but I won't be going anywhere for a long time.  That's a very disconcerting thought and may take me some time to assimilate.

For the time being, I've decided to stay in the RV across the street from Anna and David's house.  With their electric power I can do everything except turn on the air conditioner; though since I can run the fan, I should be okay for a while.  I need to solve the problem of dumping my waste tanks, which is my next hurdle, and after the chilly weather forecast, I'll likely be needing more propane (much easier to find).  So at least for the near future, I've got a pretty comfortable situation, as long as the neighbors don't mind.

It's so hard to plan very far ahead because so much is unknown about this virus.  As I was driving down here, I was assuming this hiatus would likely last only a month, and I could get back on the road in time for May in Iowa or at least June in Minnesota.  But with the current news reports, I'm now beginning to think I'll have to wait even longer.  I can see how much depends on everybody having patience, not trying to go back to normal too soon, and that includes me. 

South Korea is now reporting that they'd been sure they were on the mend, with their daily cases plummeting from 900 down below 100.  They started to loosen restrictions, and now their case rate is shooting up again.  Given the reluctance among many in the US to stay away from large gatherings in church or at funerals or at bars or on the beaches, and our president's impatience to reopen the economy as soon as possible, I have no trouble at all envisioning something similar happening here - only on a much larger scale because of our much larger population.

I'm also worried about Dr. Fauci's recent statement that the virus may show a seasonal variation and die down during the summer, only to come roaring back in the fall.

In other words, I'm still wanting to plan ahead and beginning to understand that's impossible right now.  A hard concept for me to grasp.

Meanwhile, I have a long list of things I've been wanting to do for ages but haven't had the time for, and now time is exactly what I've got.  Some of these things are still trip-related, such as finally finishing the posts for the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  I'll be working on those in the coming days.

I also need to organize my finances, which I haven't done in months, and file my income tax return (and I'm grateful for the extended filing period).

Some things I can't do, such as get the annual inspection done on the RV, which didn't get done a year ago because I was nowhere near Texas.  It's also time for an oil change.  Both of those things won't be available for some months, I suppose.

One place I can go is the storage unit, since that doesn't involve being around any people at all.  I've got lots of things stored in my RV's basement that can go into real storage - help lighten the load for when I can start driving again.

Because I can't imagine my daily life could be interesting when I'm not traveling, I'll begin publishing blog posts once a week from now until I get closer to being able to get back on my trip.

I hope everybody's staying safe.

From Joplin to Dallas

Thursday, 2 April 2020

Because Google said this drive would take just under 6 hours, I assumed it'd take me at least 10.  That thought got me out of bed by about 2:30 this morning - not able to stop my mind from thinking about the drive.  As a result, we were on the road by 7:00.

I did my best to go as fast as the speed limits, knowing the projected driving time was based on that assumption, but almost the whole drive was across Oklahoma, and I discovered their roads are underfunded.  I had to go at least 50 mph to make the bumps easier to take, but when I tried to go 70 mph we'd all get shaken to pieces.

Despite that, we still made the trip in 7 hours, including a 1-hour stop for lunch in a church parking lot in Atoka.  That was our 2nd stop.  The first was in Wagoner, just north of Muskogee, for about 20 minutes in another church parking lot to get a little exercise and relieve ourselves.  Each stop was 2 hours from each other, so we never drove more than about 2 hours, which seemed to be the limit for all of us - at least on bumpy roads like these.

I heard someone on the radio say this all seemed like it was in a dream and that she can't believe all this is really happening.  That echoed something Anna'd said to me yesterday when I told her how weird it felt not knowing whether anyone might be an unknowing carrier of this virus, or even a knowing but uncaring one.  Anna said it made the world seem a little creepy to be in, and that pretty well sums it up for me.  Fighting something none of us can see or has ever known; something that can kill almost before we know we've got it; something that you can have for even 2 weeks before you start showing symptoms of it - and spreading those germs that whole time.  Very creepy, eerie.

I'm starting to realize how isolated I've been, living as I have.  I have no concept of what the shelter-in-place order has actually meant to people in real life who've been living this way for weeks.  Maybe I'm about to find out.

On the road

Google wanted me to go for nearly an hour on a toll road and, since I didn't want to do that, I found an alternate route on some lesser roads.  This route first took me through the town of Seneca, pop. 2,239, which seemed to be a nice old town - one with an attractive downtown that was clearly built about 100 years ago or more and lots of houses from the same era.

Seneca sits right on the Missouri/Oklahoma border, and I was shortly in the Wyandotte Nation.

I passed several casino/hotel combos during today's drive, including the River Bend Casino right here.  They were all completely empty and their enormous parking lots looked like ghost towns.  Very strange look - a little Twilight Zone-ish.

I passed many fields with cows today, and the first one came here.  I saw lots of young cows gathering at a gate, obviously expecting something, though I couldn't figure out what.

I was on US Route 60 most of the day, and most of that route is extremely bumpy.  Combined with the very strong winds that hadn't abated from yesterday, it all gave me a very difficult drive all day long.

I heard a couple of stories on NPR about ventilators.  One was an interview of the owner of a company that made one of the valves that's among the 70 parts in a ventilator.  The small business owner hadn't had access to the supply chain necessary to get the parts to make his valve, and even when he didn't have work to give them was paying his employees out of his own pocket so they wouldn't be out of work.  But when GM was retooling their plant to produce ventilators, they put out a call for these parts, which gave this small business owner access to GM's vast network of suppliers, which got him the supplies he needed to produce his valves.  And his own plant retooled to produce these valves at far greater speed and numbers than they ever had before.  He was proud of what his workers were able to accomplish.

The other story was about the shortage of respiratory therapists, who are the only ones trained to run the ventilators.  The therapist they were interviewing said recent news stories frustrated him because you'd never know from those stories that it took a trained specialist to run the machines.  Even if we could catch up on the backlog of machines that are needed but don't yet exist, there wouldn't be a qualified person to run them.  They were encouraging folks to get the training needed to do the job.

I had no idea this was all so complicated, though since it's medical stuff, I guess that figures.

I passed the Miller Pecan Company.  They advertise themselves as a family company that's produced farm-fresh pecans since 1988.  We had so many pecan trees in our yard in Austin that the idea of "farm-fresh" in connection with pecans seems odd.

I passed a house with a small pasture right next to the house.  What caught my eye was that one of the cows in the pasture was no longer in the pasture - it got loose as I watched.  I was driving down the road past this scene and saw out of the corner of my eye that the farmer himself was coming out of his house onto his porch, but by then the cow was free and running - actually galloping along between the pasture fence and the road.  I never saw a cow gallop, but that's what it was doing.  I have no idea how that farmer's going to catch the cow.  It was making tracks!

I heard Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition report that a semi had a one-vehicle accident just north of Dallas, that the driver and his dog had gotten out safely but that his cargo had burned.  Steve said the tragic part was that the truck was loaded with toilet paper, and it got burned before it could get flushed.

I started seeing Phillips 66 gas stations in Missouri and am still seeing them here, along with Sinclair stations.  I haven't seen either of those brands in a long time.

OK has a town named Pensacola, and one named Pryor, "A Town For All Seasons," they proclaim.  They have a museum in the Old Katy Depot.  I connect the Katy railroad with Texas, probably because of the town of Katy near Houston, but I see it ran as far north as Kansas and Missouri and was originally called the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT - hence Katy).

There was a radio report that oil price drops had contributed to the virus-induced slowdown of the economy to produce a severe budget shortfall in OK this year.  OK has a balanced budget requirement, so they'll have some hard decisions to make, once this is all over.

I saw a billboard warning folks against E. coli.  My, how times change.

I heard an interview with the governor of Arkansas where he was justifying not issuing a statewide stay-at-home order by saying that people weren't following those orders anyway and there were too many loopholes in them to make them effective, ignoring he could issue whatever order he wanted including one with no loopholes and could order law enforcement to enforce his rule.  As far as I can tell, those chief executives who are claiming they don't have authority to do things to combat this public health emergency are actually saying they don't believe there is an emergency.  I feel confident they'd find the authority fast enough if they believed it was real.

Anyway.  One of the things the AR governor said was that Arkansas state campgrounds are now closed, which surprised me because they weren't a few days ago.  But I've looked it up and he's right - they are indeed closed now.  I spent most of last month staying in Ark. state campgrounds and, except for a prevalent lack of wifi connectivity, they were great.  Some people live in them full-time (despite rules saying they can't), and I wonder what they've had to do now.

We came through the city of Muskogee, and I will never hear that name for the rest of my life without thinking of that Merle Haggard song called Okie from Muskogee.

The road spent a lot of its miles crossing Lake Eufaula.  OK's largest lake, it has 600 miles of shoreline, winding around and on and on.  And the road kept crossing it for miles.

While we were doing that, we came to 2 signs: one announced the Muskogee (Creek) Nation and the other, about 3' from the first, announced the Choctaw Nation.

In McAlester, I passed an Exxon station (usually the most expensive) advertising gas for $1.19/gallon, and a Phillips 66 station with a $1.15/gallon price.  I never thought I'd see it this low again in my lifetime.

I passed an entrance to the Indian Nation Turnpike (OK seems to love toll roads), which was also the exit for the US Army Ammunition Plant.  This is apparently just what its name says: a weapons manufacturing facility for the US Dept. of Defense.  McAlester didn't have a population sign, but online it says they've got around 18,000 folks.  I'll bet that arms plant provides lots of jobs.

The countryside seems much more green down here than it did in the northern part of OK, which doesn't seem plausible, given that the state is only a little more than 200 miles from north to south.  But the trees seemed much more thoroughly leafed out down here and there were more bushes and lawns that were green.

I saw a sign saying, "Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates."  That's the first time I've seen it worded that way and it's much more graphic than the usual ones that just say it's a prison area and don't pick up hitchhikers.

Near Atoka I started seeing some flocks of sheep along with the continuing herds of cows.

At a church I saw a sign that said, "Be encouraged - God is in control."  Given the number of people who might die before this ghastly nightmare is over, I'd hate to believe that all this is God's will.  But I guess some people find comfort in that thought.

Indian paintbrush

I started seeing a few Indian paintbrush along the roadside.  I know different people call these wildflowers different names, but this online photo is what I mean with that name.

I've seen several iterations of Boggy Creek today.  Earlier I crossed Muddy Boggy Creek.  Here I crossed Clear Boggy Creek.  It did look clearer than the muddy one did.

I came to the Caddo Indian Territory Museum and the town of Caddo - "The Antique Town on a Buffalo Trail."  That nickname seemed odd to me - a buffalo trail?  But when I looked it up to see what they meant, I found the website is no longer available.

A little farther down the road is Durant, "Magnolia Capital of Oklahoma."

At the Choctaw Nation Casino (another empty space), I saw a message on their electronic sign out front saying the COVID-19 OK Call Center could be reached toll free at a number they supplied.  Seeing as how OK is another of the states where the governor has refused to issue a mandatory stay-at-home order, I'm surprised they've done as much as having a call center.

I saw lots of homemade signs along the road today saying one version or another of "Thank You Truckers."

Then I crossed the Red River and saw a sign: "Welcome to Texas - Drive Friendly - The Texas Way."  Friendly driving isn't the way I remember Texas drivers, but maybe they've changed.

bluebonnets

They also had electronic highway signs warning folks to keep a 6' distance from each other.  What they said was, "No Close Encounters of Any Kind."

Down here I started seeing big patches of bluebonnets along the road.  In that sense I'm a true Texan, and we love our bluebonnets.  Enough to stir the soul.

I got a warm welcome from David and Anna, who found a nearby parking spot for the RV, plugged in several lengths of extension cord to give me electric power, helped me walk the dogs and let them into their back yard, fed me supper and were just generally very hospitable to this refugee.  They wanted me to stay in their house, but I was too tired to try to figure out how to transplant Lily so decided we were better off in the RV as we were used to, at least for right now.

Missouri - Day 1 - getting there

Joplin KOA, Joplin
Wednesday, 1 April 2020

On the road
Surprisingly, I don't have a current map of Missouri so can't show the route I took today.  If you have a map to follow along on, then what I did was go straight north from Harrison, AR, through Branson, MO, to just east of Nixa, then west from there to Joplin.

As I went north through Branson, it was clear that I was driving through the Ozark Mountains - the roads were very steep and quite clearly carved out of mountains.  I came to a graduated series of hills where I could see the top of the 3rd hill ahead as the road descended, then rose, several times before we got there.  I thought about taking a photo or video of it but wanted both hands to hang onto the steering wheel - there wasn't a shoulder, there was a lot of other traffic and a very stiff breeze, and the road wasn't sheltered from any of it.  So yes, 2 hands.

At Saddlebrooke I passed a small waterfall that had once been a mountain stream across a hill.  Then that hill got chopped apart to let the highway come through, so now the mountain stream doesn't meander over the hill but instead rises to the top and then just spills itself straight down over the edge of the cut.

Near Branson, I saw a sign for the National Tiger Sanctuary, which I'd never heard of.  They say they're a 501(c)3 that's dedicated to rescuing and providing permanent homes to tigers and other big cats, and to promoting environmental education and awareness.

On a pickup truck, I saw a bumper sticker that said:
   "Rite is still rite
    Even when no one is doing it
    Wrong is still wrong"
(spelling as in the original)

I saw a sign for Lambert's Cafe with "Throwed Rolls."  That sounded really familiar to me, so I looked it up and found I'd run across it in Alabama too.  There's a second one in Ozark, MO.

I turned west to pass through Nixa because that's the (fictional) hometown of David Webb, aka Jason Bourne.  What I found was a modern city hall and an incredible string of national chain stores and franchises along the road.  Since it has 19,000 residents, I'm guessing there's a real town on one side of the road or other, I just didn't see it.

I saw acres of solar array not too far out of town.

The country I was driving through reminded me of West Virginia.  I recognize the Ozarks aren't in the same league with the Appalachians, but that's still what it made me think of.  Thank goodness West Virginia got me used to driving in mountainous terrain because otherwise, today would have been much harder on me.

I passed through a town called Clever.

Just outside of town I passed a street named That Place, with the next one named Nice Place.

All day I passed cows, hay in bales in fields, green fields, many small groups of houses, with small towns of 2,500 or fewer here and there.  I saw huge fields of purple wildflowers.

In one of those small towns, Marionville (est. 1854), I passed Herndon Orchard with a faded picture of a piece of fruit that might have been a peach.  On the other hand, Marionville hosts an annual Apple Fest in September.

I saw a sign advertising Hog Tide Barbecue.

I saw another sign advertising (I swear) Christ-Powered Construction, with a drawing of a person with a halo - presumably Christ though not looking like any picture of Jesus I've ever seen - looking down at some building plans drawn on papers he was holding.  (I'm not making this up.)

The town of Monett, pop. 8,873, has a very fancy new hospital under construction.  It's also the home of Big Baldy Bac [sic] Woods Texas Style Barbecue (whatever that is).

According to the trees I'm passing, the amount of wind around isn't any big deal.  According to me, trying to drive in it, the amount of wind is exceedingly difficult to drive in.  When semis go by, I have to grip the steering wheel with both hands.  Once, the backwash from a semi was so strong it actually stopped us for half a second.  Very scary.  And very hard to drive in.

The town of Granby, pop. 2,134 and founded in 1850, calls itself the Oldest Mining Town in the Southwest.  (Presumably meaning southwest Missouri, because nobody would describe Missouri as being in the southwest US.)

Tree blooms aren't as far along up here as in Arkansas - redbuds seem to be just starting, the trees with the beautiful white blooms are only about halfway changed to green leaves, and most trees are still bare or are just starting to show green buds of leaves.

I saw a couple of official highway signs that read, "Road Rage Gives You Wrinkles."  (I'm not making this up either.  But I'm beginning to feel like Dave Barry, saying that so often.)

I passed the turn for the George Washington Carver National Monument and then found myself driving on the George Washington Carver Memorial Highway.  These memorials are here because he was born in Diamond, a small town about halfway between the monument and the highway.

I'd intended to go to the Joplin State Welcome Center to pick up a map and tourist information.  But I had the foresight to call ahead, and I'd found out all state welcome centers are closed due to the virus, and lots of local ones as well.  And the AAA offices are closed.  So not having anything better to do, I decided to go straight to the campground, where they had plenty of vacant spaces.

My decision
Not only had I called ahead about the welcome center, but I also checked on recycling locations.  The official website in Springfield, MO, says their center is closed "in an effort to control the spread of COVID-19 and in accordance with the recent ordinance prohibiting gatherings of 10 or more."  The official website in Joplin says they're closed "in compliance with the President's Coronavirus Guidelines for America."  And the official website in Branson says simply that their recycling center is closed.

This doesn't make sense to me.  I've gone to recycling centers in every state I've been in and have never seen more than 10 people there at a time.  Perhaps when they claim they're preventing large gatherings they're including employees, but that's not what they're saying and at most of the drop-off locations I've seen, there's no staff present at all.  If they're still providing home pickup of recycling materials (and they are), then the problem seems to be that they think average citizens will flock to recycle things, or that we can't count to 10 on our fingers.  Infuriating.

But since it took me 5 hours to drive from Harrison to Joplin, and since the scenery was of the sort I've seen before (though it was lovely and I enjoyed it), I needed to occupy my mind.  And what finally penetrated my little pea brain is that I've been selfish and stupid and stubborn, all in one fell swoop.

Selfish because, although I continue to show none of the symptoms of the virus and am fairly careful about my interactions with others, I could still be an asymptomatic carrier and unwittingly infect someone else.

Stupid because others could be unwitting carriers who infect me or idiots who still believe this virus is overblown and not their problem in any case, and as a result be even more dangerous than the unwitting carrier.

And stubborn because I was acting like I had to adhere to my travel plans in the teeth of a global pandemic, which isn't something I could foresee 2 years ago when I started this trip.  And even if I stubbornly tried to keep going, I'd be wasting much of my time.  Almost all I'd be able to see of a state is Nature.  Which is great and one of the reasons I wanted to make the trip - to see what this country looks like.  But with most government campgrounds and other facilities closed for at least the rest of this month, I'd have a hard time finding a place to stay, an impossible time to visit museums, and even a difficult time finding supplies.  Where's the point in that, I asked myself.

So when I got to the campground, I called Anna to see if she still felt okay about that invitation they'd extended me to come stay.  She said sure, come on down (or words to that effect), and I decided I'd go straight to Dallas tomorrow.

I couldn't help but think of that quote: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  (I had to look it up.)  It's from one of Robert Frost's gems, "The Death of the Hired Man."  If you want to reread it, here's a link.   https://www.bartleby.com/frost

In my case, I'm very lucky to have family that volunteer to take me in, rather than do it grudgingly.  An act of love, rather than charity.  (Those 2 words are often used interchangeably, but I think this demonstrates the difference between them.)

So I decided to put my trip on hold, to postpone April in Missouri and pick it up later.  I'm hoping April will see the country over the hump and I can restart with May in Iowa.  Though I hear the governors of both Missouri and Iowa (and North and South Dakota and Nebraska, for that matter) haven't yet agreed to declare statewide stay-at-home orders.  Since those were all my next states (minus Minnesota, whose governor is being more sensible), I'll have to play this by ear.

Google told me I could drive from Joplin to Dallas in 5 hours, 48 minutes, and that's what I'll do tomorrow.  It makes more sense to shelter in place with people who understand the purpose of it, than in campgrounds with at least some who don't.