Wednesday, 26 January 2022
Abilene KOA, Abilene
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| Dallas to Abilene |
Loop 12 is a very busy 4-lane road normally, and there was still some leftover rush hour traffic to boot. Since I couldn't turn right, I turned left the first chance I had, which turned out to be a mandatory entrance to the Dallas North Tollway. And the first exit off that was all the way down to Mockingbird Lane, even more in the heart of town - and the old part of town, heavily residential with narrow streets and lots of old trees. (Trees are hard for me to negotiate because my sides are taller than they're usually pruned.) I still couldn't turn right, so I turned left when I got off the tollway and took the first left turn I could find that was on a street wide enough for my RV. And from there I turned left again onto a residential street to get out of traffic and - finally - was able to stop and readjust my mirror.
It actually took me 2 more days before I finally got it back to its original position, but at least I could see some of what was on my right side. Very scary situation. Back in the old days, when I drove a passenger car that had windows all around, I had no idea how luxurious all that range of vision was.
The only other thing of note from today's drive was a billboard I saw between Cisco and Abilene. It said:
Stop Gun Violence
Protect Yourself
Get A Concealed Gun Permit
The lack of logic in that message is breathtaking.
That drive, that Google said would take me just over 3 hours, actually took me 6 hours. But that's because most of it was on an interstate, and I don't like going faster than 65 mph, while Google's calibrated to the 75 mph speed limit I guess.
Thursday, 27 January 2022
Lubbock KOA, Lubbock
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| Abilene to Lubbock |
The route I actually took that's shown on the map isn't the one I was supposed to take. I missed a turn in Abilene and ended up on a road I wasn't supposed to be on. Fortunately, I figured it out after not every long, stopped to look at my trusty AAA map, and turned onto an alternate road that likely didn't result in many extra miles. That's what I get for not paying attention to my directions.
During my (4) month(s) in Texas, I somehow didn't get to Abilene, so this whole area was new to me, as you can see from the blue line. Not that I saw anything different. This area is still West Texas and, let's face it, West Texas looks like itself pretty much all over.
Driving through the town of Post, pop. 5,376, I passed the Garza County Courthouse and was surprised to see a statue in front showing a man sitting in a chair. People in statues are usually shown standing so I was curious about this one. I didn't stop but found this information online. http://texasescapes.com/Garza-County-Courthouse-Post-TX That statue turns out to be C. W. Post, of breakfast cereal fame. The town was named after him because he helped organize it.
I remember seeing information about Mr. Post when I was in Michigan (see my post from July 12, 2019) and started to wonder what was he doing down here in West Texas if he was busy manufacturing cereal in Michigan. I found the Wikipedia page about him and learned that he lived a fairly bizarre life, treating many other people in a fairly despicable fashion. https://en.wikipedia.org/C.W.-Post Not the sort of person who would these days get a statue (2 statues actually, 1 in MI and 1 in TX) erected without a lot of public controversy.
This whole area is resource-based: farming, ranching, wind, oil. There are of course a few decent-sized cities out here - Lubbock, for instance, has 264,544 residents - but it's still very sparsely populated. And I guess that's because there's just so dadgummed much land out here.
Friday, 28 January through Monday, 31 January 2022
Lubbock KOA, Lubbock
I planned to stay the extra nights here mainly because I wanted to go next to Tucumcari, which I didn't get to during my month in New Mexico. The Tucumcari KOA was closed for the month of January, so I decided to wait until February 1st so I could stay there. Besides, I thought I might need some extra time to get us all used to the idea of being back on the road again, and we've stayed here before and found it comfortable.
I heard on the radio that the National Butterfly Center, that I passed in McAllen but didn't make time for, has closed for the weekend. Some QAnon folks are having a conference nearby and claim that this Center is part of an operation that traffics kids across the border with Mexico. The Center director heard about threats against the Center and against her personally. In fact, the friend who alerted her suggested she carry a gun or leave town - pretty alarming suggestions for someone who spends her life protecting butterflies. So they decided to close the Center temporarily.
This didn't make sense to me (a lot of QAnon stuff doesn't) so I looked it up and learned 2 things. One is that Trump's border wall was supposed to go right through the Center's grounds, cutting it in pieces, so they've been resisting it, which made the QAnon folks suspicious and actually believing they were ferrying kids across the Rio Grande on boats at their property. The other is that there's a project in the Philippines rescuing trafficked kids, who are called "butterflies." That information came up on Bing immediately under the first article about the Butterfly Center closing, so I wondered if a few weeks ago someone had done a similar search for the Center and decided this Philippines stuff was related. You know, butterflies = trafficked kids, making the McAllen Center a front for child trafficking, if you have a brain that rejects logic.
[I've since heard the Center's closed indefinitely, until they can figure out how to provide adequate security for the staff and grounds. I found this NY Times article about it, if you're interested. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/butterfly-center-tx]
Gracie is still falling over from time to time, but at least she's starting to get in and out of the RV on her own. That might be the glucosamine at work on her joints.
The window over the sink came apart while I was here. I was able to put it back together, but I'm no longer able to prop it open. I only have 3 windows that open (not counting those in the cab that don't have screens): the big one by the table, the medium one by the bed, and the small one by the kitchen sink. Losing that one makes getting a cross-breeze much harder, and also makes it hard to vent cooking odors. One of these days I'll get an RV place to fix it properly.
I hadn't used the laundry facilities when I'd been here before, so I was dismayed during this visit to discover that they operated only by credit card. There wasn't even an option for using actual money or for getting some kind of pass card at the office. It was a credit card or don't do laundry. I was really peeved, especially because they hadn't warned us even on the door to the laundry room, let alone in their instructions for guests. So my VISA bill for that period includes 4 charges of $1.75 each.
The Tucumcari KOA had told me to check the weather before calling them for a reservation, because the interstate is sometimes closed in the winter, they said. I ended up spending a lot of time trying to figure out whether I'd be able to beat the winter weather that was forecast for early February. The Tucumcari folks told me to come on ahead, that they'd be open, but I could see that there was weather coming up.
Tuesday, 1 February 2022
Tucumcari KOA, Tucumcari
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| Tucumcari NM. . . |
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| . . . from Lubbock TX |
I took a route from Lubbock that I hadn't taken before, heading into the Panhandle (which the AAA map separates from the rest of the state for lack of room), and then west into New Mexico.
Today begins the Lunar New Year, and this year is the Year of the Tiger. Apparently it's the equivalent to the astrological sign of Aquarius and shares many characteristics.
I passed cows, grassland, cotton, crops, hay bales in fields. Lots of dairies and dairy cows. Twice I saw a whole herd of cows grazing in fields by the road - and the fields weren't fenced. The town of Springlake (pop. 108) is proud of Springlake Potatoes. I don't think of potatoes being a Texas crop, somehow.
Near Amarillo, I started picking up an NPR station that called itself High Plains Public Radio - they were broadcasting from Kansas. I'd forgotten that up in the TX Panhandle I was closer to Kansas than to most of Texas.
And when that reception stopped coming, I found lots of religious stations.
As I crossed the NM border, I saw a sign so large it completely crossed the interstate, and it said, "Welcome to New Mexico - Land of Enchantment."
A little way farther along I saw a billboard that said:
#1 in Nuclear Weapons
Child Welfare - #49
New Mexico Leadership Failure
I'd forgotten how much I don't care for NM road conditions. Even on the interstate the road surface was lousy and, combined with a strong wind, it made driving hard.
I really wanted to push on to Albuquerque, which was less than 3 hours farther along the road. The weather forecast was for snow to begin overnight, and I figured it'd be easier to make the trip today. But this was only my 3rd day for wearing my contact lenses since my eye appointments and I didn't want to push it. Plus I needed groceries and propane and needed to dump my waste tanks, and I didn't want to be doing all that tonight in ABQ. I was now on Mountain Time and farther north, so sunset was an hour earlier than it'd been in Lubbock. So, for better or worse, I stopped in Tucumcari.
I stopped at a tire shop because I'd been hearing a noise from my right rear tires. They told me the repair job someone did on it long ago to keep the mud flap from interfering with the tires had stopped being repaired. The mud flap had worn down so far from rubbing up against the tires that it was just a nubbin. They took it off for me. And I got groceries and filled up with gasoline. The entrance ramps to businesses in Tucumcari were so steep that, even when I tried hard to find the best ramp, I still dragged bottom over and over. Do they think everybody has a high clearance vehicle?
There weren't many folks in the campground overnight besides some long-term campers.
Wednesday, 2 February 2022
Albuquerque North/Bernalillo KOA, Bernalillo
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| Tucumcari to Bernalillo |
I had trouble sleeping during the night and finally got up at 2:00, only to realize hours later that I was then on Mountain Time and I'd gotten up at 1:00. But by then it was too late to go back to bed. You'd think that'd be a drawback for this drive, but I got so much adrenaline from the driving conditions it worked out fine.
The overnight snow wasn't much, and I don't worry about driving in snow anyway (just ice). Still, there was a strong crosswind, so instead of going 75 mph I went 60 mph and turned on my emergency flashers. As the day went on, I saw that I wasn't the only doing that. Conditions went from not so bad to pretty terrible.
Many of the bridges had been sanded, which was a relief to me. And although it continued to snow, it wasn't always heavy. But I ran into a problem when my windshield wipers developed a coating of ice, so they couldn't be very effective at clearing my windshield. And water kept streaming across my field of view that I couldn't deal with. On top of which, I found my windshield washer fluid wouldn't squirt. I thought the guys hadn't topped it off at my last oil change like they said they did, though I learned later the squirter or something had just frozen.
Around Santa Rosa, not quite halfway to ABQ, all traffic started going between 30 mph and 40 mph. At first I thought there was a snowplow ahead, but I never saw one and the snow didn't seem to be cleared from the road. It was just that even the semi drivers didn't want to go very fast. By then, the roads were getting a little slushy and the snow accumulation was getting deeper, while the road became more winding and hilly. Maybe that's all it was.
I passed a car that was upside down and way off the road. Two other cars had stopped by the side of the road with their flashers on, and 4 people were walking back to the car, including a woman who had a blanket slung around her shoulders, but no coat. I didn't see anyone in the upturned car and wondered why these folks had stopped.
Farther on I passed 2 semis on the shoulder with one of them almost jackknifed.
I learned later that today there were 2 serious accidents on the other side of the highway in this general area. One was a multi-vehicle crash that resulted in at least 1 death, and the other started with 2 semis colliding that likely caused the multi-car pile-up behind them, and that resulted in 2 more deaths. Traffic ended up being diverted into Santa Rosa. I didn't see any of this and maybe it hadn't happened when I went through the area. But I could sure see how it might have happened, given the conditions on my side of the road. The state patrol kept begging people to stay home, and I'd've been glad to if I had a home I could stay in. As it was, I kept going in my slow careful way to tonight's campground.
We stopped in Moriarty to take a much-needed break, and the dogs got to run around in the snow in the park there. Then it started snowing again, so we kept on heading west. Oddly, by the time we got in the vicinity of Bernalillo, the roads were completely clear. Either it hadn't snowed there at all or it had all melted by about 12:30.
It may not have snowed earlier, but once we got settled in the campground, it started up. By 2:45 I noticed an accumulation had started, and by 5:00 it was snowing heavily.
Today was Groundhog's Day. I understand Punxsutawney Phil predicted 6 more weeks of winter. Today sure looked like that was reasonable.
Thursday, 3 February through Friday, 4 February 2022
Albuquerque North/Bernalillo KOA, Bernalillo
I'd intended these 2 days would be spent getting to Grants, and then to Holbrook, but that didn't happen.
When I got up this morning, there was 4" to 5" of snow on the picnic tables with a heavy layer of ice underneath. I checked NM's website about road conditions and learned that the last place I wanted to be was out on I-40, thanks to lots of ice coating the road for miles.
So I called the next 3 campgrounds to change my reservations, first to move them over one day, and then on Friday calling back to move them over still another day because the ice situation hadn't improved much. The Grants KOA told me that when their FedEx guy brought their delivery, he reported he'd driven to ABQ this morning to pick up his delivery load and, on the way, he'd seen more than 20 semis that had slid off the road. I was sure glad I'd decided to stay over.
On Thursday, Dexter decided to liven things up first by vomiting twice on the passenger seat (fortunately covered with a towel) and on all 3 beds that were stacked between the seats - while I was still cleaning up one of the beds, he threw up on the next one down, and when I picked that up to clean it, he threw up on the bottom bed. It took me a long time to clean it all up, though I actually couldn't really clean it up because I couldn't take the beds outside because everything was covered with snow. It was an awful experience, because of course it smelled bad and I'm overweight now and I was wearing extra clothes because of the cold weather so it was hard to bend over, plus my asthma/coughing was extra bad all day. Then I had to take the trash out because the contents smelled so bad, only to find that I was out of trash bags. One of those days.
Of course, vomiting wasn't Dext's only trick. He also had several big liquid bowel movements that were really hard to clean up - I mean all I could do was try to scoop up the snow and that didn't always take care of it. What an incredible mess. He'd obviously eaten something he shouldn't have, and he never wants to listen to me tell him not to eat whatever he's found on our walks.
Speaking of walks, it was taking me at least 10 minutes to get dressed for them. I was wearing long underwear under my jeans and I put on long heavy socks over them but under my rubber boots. Then over my t-shirt I wore a thin insulated vest Anna gave me, then a heavy flannel shirt, then a heavy sweatshirt, plus a wool scarf, then a fleece jacket topped by a heavy vest I bought in Connecticut when it got really cold during my month there, and then a hat and mittens. I had trouble moving after I got dressed, making me think of those old cartoons showing a little kid all bundled up and not being able to move. It seemed to take as long to get dressed/undressed as it did to walk.
The internet kept going down or being ultra-slow or not being available at all. I guess it was the weather but it sure made things harder.
My skin has gotten so dry that on Thursday the skin next to the nail on my right index finger split open so it looks like I sliced it with a knife. I finally had to bandage it up because it kept splitting open and bleeding. The humidity these days is in the neighborhood of zero, despite all that precipitation sitting outside. And on Friday my cuticles and knuckles started breaking open, just because they were dry and not because I'd touched them or anything. Weird.
Also on Friday my water stopped working. My pump was trying and the tank was full, but nothing was coming out. It reminded me of having no water a year ago during that Deep Freeze that Texas (and I) lived through. What a mess.
The good news was that, even though the air temps were near freezing, the sun was warm and helped to thaw things during the day. I figured it'd be safe for me to get back on the road again on Saturday, as long as I didn't leave the campground too early in the morning.
Saturday, 5 February 2022
Grants KOA, Grants
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| Bernalillo to Grants |
The KOA sits 14 miles north of I-40 just off I-25. As I drove south on I-25 - relieved to notice that the road was completely clear despite all the snow and ice we'd had - I saw a very large windowless building off to the right labeled "I-25 Studios." Turns out it belongs to NBC and they're offering it for use in filming projects. Not sure why ABQ was a good location for this but I'm sure they had a plan.
I'd originally planned some sightseeing on the way to Grants - places I'd missed during my month in NM because I didn't make it out to Grants or Gallup. A few miles east of Grants is the Malpais National Monument, and down their scenic drive is access to La Ventana Natural Arch ("la ventana" meaning the window in Spanish), one of the largest natural arches in NM. The drive from Bernalillo to Grants is such a short one that I figured I could usefully spend some time on a side trip. But even though the main highway turned out to be completely clear of snow and ice, I was pretty sure the side roads into the national monument wouldn't be so great. A shame to have to miss it a second time, but I'll be sure to make the third time the charm.
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| an internet photo of La Ventana Natural Arch |
I left Bernalillo at 9:40 and didn't get to the Grants KOA until 4 hours later, including a stop at a grocery store. There wasn't anything wrong with the roads; I just wanted to take the drive carefully.
And good news - by the time I'd gotten into the campground, I found my water had thawed again! Such an event, running water. We've gotten so spoiled.
When I was getting groceries, I heard a couple of women talking who had both been waitresses before the pandemic. One was the check-out clerk at the grocery store and the other a customer, and both agreed decidedly that they were happy to no longer be waiting tables and wouldn't go back to it willingly. Sometimes I think the people who moan about all the jobs going unfilled are the same ones who haven't done those kinds of jobs and have no idea what incredibly hard work they are for not a lot of money. I've waitressed before, and I'd do it again if I was hungry but not before that.
I learned a couple of things during our stay here. One is that the town was named for 3 Canadian brothers named Grant, who had a contract to build part of the Atlantic and Pacific railway line through here.
The other is that the KOA is home to what was once a volcanic bubble, and there's still a large mound of volcanic rubble at the site, fenced off from the rest of the campground. All of these photos were taken at my eyesight level, which I hope will show you how tall they are.
The campground's rules include one that says to please not take these rocks home - they already have a home here.
Another of their rules says open campfires, fireworks and gunshots must be kept inside your RV or tent, which is an interesting way of pointing out that nobody wants these activities near them.
Sunday, 6th February 2022
Holbrook KOA, Holbrook
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| Grants NM to Holbrook, AZ |
The Grants KOA still had some snow (as you could see in one of the photos above) and ice around the campground. My water froze again overnight, and all I could do was hope it thawed out again after a few hours in the sun. In case there was still some on the roads as well, I didn't leave town until after 10:00 this morning.
A short way along the road the frig started beeping again. I guess it's just the rough NM roadways that's doing it.
I stopped in Gallup again, this time doing a better job of finding a place for us to stop and walk and eat lunch. Where I parked was near a bank building that was closed for Sunday. I saw a young woman and her dog sitting on the sidewalk there and I'm pretty sure the young woman was on some kind of serious drugs from the way she was acting, her coordination and so forth. She had some food from somewhere and ate, though her dog didn't. When I left she was sleeping on the sun-warmed sidewalk, as was the dog, and there was litter all over from her lunch. I worried about both of them a lot but couldn't figure out what I could do to help.
As I was leaving town, I couldn't find any signs telling me where to turn to get on I-40 W. Once again I ended up going several miles out of the way, turning around only with great difficulty, before heading back to the highway. There really weren't any signs - I looked for them specifically.
Then Welcome to Arizona - The Grand Canyon State. I got to Holbrook, elev. 5,000', where I'd stopped when I was last in AZ in December.
Monday, 7 February 2022
Flagstaff KOA, Flagstaff
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| Holbrook to Flagstaff |
I stopped at Fry's Foods, but this time found a jam-packed parking lot and store and a lot missing from the shelves. This is a Kroger store, and most of what I found available were Kroger branded items. My general rule is to avoid such items as much as possible, mainly because these stores so often refuse to carry national brands - or any other brands than their own - and claim they offer lower prices so their customers are happy with it. I'm never happy with a lack of choice - and since that goes for choice of religion and choice over my own body, it certainly goes for choice in the foods I eat. Anyway, I couldn't find a lot of what I wanted.
I went from there to Bushmaster Park where the dogs and I could walk around a bit before going to the campground.
I had water all morning! Despite last night's sub-freezing temperature. It gave me hope for the upcoming days when it's forecast to be quite cold but not as bad as it was.
And 2 months later, we were back in Flagstaff to pick up my month in Arizona where I left off.
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