Going to be a long travel day today.
Google Maps say 4 hours which mean 5 hours in real time.
The caravan takes off – Davey
driving in the lead as normal. We have a little game we play where
we try to one-up each other about our respective motor coaches.
Davey and Lou have a Monaco Diplomat which is quite a fancy diesel
coach whereas mine is more of a Middle-Class gas coach. I love to
find things to needle Davey about and I finally found one thing to
boast about – mine is better on hills. Of course, the fact that
Davey has his coach in economy mode, well, we just won't mention
that.
The country is rather pretty –
pretty flat but hills off in the distance. Occasionally we have to
go over them but they are rather mild. We stop for gas in Sanderson,
TX because we were thinking that it would get more and more expensive
the closer we got to Big Bend. I paid $2.09 a gallon which
considering how much I was paying last year was a bargain. All the
towns here sort of have a dusty hardscrabble feel to them. No big
box malls around here at all.
Me trying to keep up with the Joneses:
We headed south from Marathon and
drove about thirty miles to the Big Bend National Park entrance. It
was another sixty miles, traveling in the park to get to our
campground which is on the Rio Grande. As we drove through those
sixty miles, I was just amazed at the scenery – sparse, but rather
majestic. At one point, we came across mountains. I don't know what
I was expecting – I guess I always think of Texas as flat, flat,
flat and it continually surprises me with all the hills here. But
directly ahead were mountains. Real live mountains! With snow on
them. Come on now – I'm in Texas – what is this snow stuff?
These are the type of rough craggy mountains – the harsh looking
ones.
The Joneses Trying To Keep Up With Me:
We pull into the campground – we
were hoping to get into the full hookup side of the campground but
they were full. We ended up in the National Park campground which
has no water or electricity. This is going to be my first dry
camping experience. I'm a little worried because I think I have a
malfunctioning CO2 alarm. It seems as soon as the coach batteries
get to the point of not being fully charged, the alarm starts going
off. But, we will see how it goes.
Lou and Davey and I are starting to
get a few rituals going. It seems that at the end of travel days
such as today, we tend to congregate at one of our coaches and
indulge in lots of cheese, crackers and wine. Lots of wine. I'm not
sure I brought enough wine for the trip. Either I'm going to have to
buy some more wine or quit traveling so much. We sat in my coach in
the dark with just a small candle glowing because I was afraid to use
any electricity and run down my house batteries. Finally they got
tired of sitting in the dark and also being cold (I had turned the
furnace down really low – again, didn't want to use electricity) so
they left and went home.
I was tired so I was asleep by 9:00.
At 10:30, the CO2 alarm went off – my batteries were just a little
less than full so of course it goes off. I hit the reset button
which shut the alarm off and went back to bed. Fifteen minutes later
the alarm is going off again. I shut off the main battery switch
which finally shut the alarm off but shutting off that switch means
no lights (ok, no problem – I'm sleeping) and no heat. I put
another blanket on the bed and got some socks on and decided to tough
it out. By 5:00, it was 32 degrees in the coach. The campground
rules say that there should be no generators run before 8:00 in the
morning so I would have to wait to start that up to recharge the
batteries and get heat.
All I can say is Miko and I survived.
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