We continue our trek west to our summer workamping job in Utah this month.
 

Our next destination was the SKP park in Summerdale, AL.  This is one of our favorite parks.  Not only is the area really neat, I can do maintenance on the car and motorhome there.  We pulled the rig into the barn that is available to us and I changed the oil, oil filter and both fuel filters.  I also did the oil change in our Tracker at the same time.  This sure cuts down expenses.  I did the oil change for about $50.  The cheapest commercial oil change we have had done cost us $110.

One of the really wonderful things about our lifestyle is what we see of Americana as we travel the U.S.  In Robertsdale, AL we ran across an outpouring of patriotism.  These flags and yellow ribbons were prevalent all over town. 

After Summerdale, we headed west on infamous I-10.  The road is much improved.  We have traveled I-10 each year for five years now and more and more of it is being resurfaced.  Only a few miles in LA was still the bumpy concrete we all know and love.

We got caught out on the interstate in a vicious storm as we traveled through LA.  The weather alert radio went off with a tornado warning, we ran into hail and horizontal rain.  We finally got to an exit and got off the interstate to wait for the weather to settle down.  After it calmed a bit, we went on to the KOA in Lafayette, LA.  We booked in for two days and watched it rain both days.

We drove the Tracker to Avery Island to tour the Tabasco plant.  It was sort of a disappointment, but at least we got to see the plant.  This has always been on our to do list.  When we arrived, the tabasco aroma cleared out the sinuses in the parking lot!
The tour itself was a little movie about the history of the Island and Tabasco and then a short, very short, walk along a glass wall to watch folks and machines fill bottles with Tabasco. 

After leaving Lafayette, we rolled on in to Livingston, TX and the Escapees headquarters to collect our mail and avoid the interstates around Houston.  We stayed in Livingston two days and then headed out on the red roads for a special visit with our friends the Wise's in Georgetown, TX and my long lost foster brother, Mark Perry, in Austin. 

A little background is in order here.  When I was in Jr. High and High School, my parents were foster parents for a serious of boys who had some problems with family etc.  Mark was the last of these guys to live with us. He came to our house just before my freshman year of high school and stayed with us until adulthood.  My parents became his legal guardians and he is as close to a brother as I have ever had.  Mark and I are the same age, actually, he is six months older than me, but due to his home life, he was a couple of years behind me in school.  Mark and I became very close in those years.  When I went off to school and he was still in High School, we didn't see each other often.  In fact, the last time I saw him was at my parents house in 1970, just before my oldest son, Sean was born.

Mark and I went our separate ways during our college years and never saw each other or spoke again.  We each had been searching for the other for many years.  I am registered with the two high schools I attended, Lebanon HS in Indiana and Orange Glen HS in California.  Mark found me on the classmates website on the internet.  He sent me an email while we were in Okeechobee in March and we called him on the phone.  We made plans to get together as Libby and I were heading west.

      On Saturday, we drove to his house and for the first time in 33 years, Mark and I got to hug and talk!  We had a great day with Mark and his wife Jane.  The really ironic part of this story is that Jane knows a lady who used to work for me in Ft. Lauderdale.  What a small world.  In fact, Mark and Jane lived about a mile from our office when we worked for BellSouth in Ft. Lauderdale, but Libby and I had already been transferred to Atlanta when they moved there.

We had lunch with Mark and Jane at The Oasis in Austin.  A really neat place and two of Mark's daughters work there.  We got to meet them and visit for a little bit during their breaks.  We also got to meet Jane's daughter Hillary and all the cats that she and her mother take care of! 

After two days in Sarah and Larry's driveway, we headed out again through the Texas hill country, one of our favorite driving places.    Of course, just before we picked up I-10 again at Junction, TX, we ran through a swarm of bees.   In that part of Texas, we always seem to manage a run in with a swarm of some kind of bug!

We spent the night at Ozona, TX in a park right on the interstate with lots of sand and wind.   The next day,  we meandered on to Ft. Stockton and turned north toward The Ranch.

As we rolled north on U.S. 285 from Ft. Stockton towards Carlsbad, NM, of course, our APRS system was sending out our position report every three minutes.  We stopped in Pecos, TX to eat lunch in the parking lot of the Flying J at the intersection of 285 in I 20.  Just after lunch as we were just north of Pecos, our cell phone rang.  It was our good friend Sally Stribling calling to tell us that they had been following us along 285 on our weblink to findu.com.  Sally wanted to know why we stopped in Pecos!  They had been watching the APRS website as we traveled north.  We really have a lot of fun with APRS and our friends and family following us as we travel around the country.

        In any case, we crossed the cattle guard at The Ranch in the early afternoon and Dave and Sally were waiting at the office for us.   The park bell was rung and many of our old friends came out to great us as they do with all arrivals at The Ranch.  It had been 14 months since we were last at The Ranch.  It felt like coming home.

We spent about 10 days at The Ranch visiting with friends, eating out and waiting for the sand storms and winds to subside.  The Striblings were scheduled to leave on Saturday after we arrived, but the wind was blowing pretty hard, so they delayed until Sunday.

We were trying to leave shortly after the Striblings, but our mail took six days to come from Livingston, TX to Lakewood, NM via Priority Mail.  Unbelievable!  We were three days late in leaving due to the slow mail service.  Normally, the mail comes to us in three days max when we call for it.  we usually call for mail to leave Livingston on Friday and it almost always gets to us by Monday.  Why Priority Mail took six days this time is a mystery.

While we were at The Ranch, we had a nice sandstorm.  One day the wind was blowing at 50 mph sustained and 70 mph gusts.  Traffic out on 285 was pretty sparse and you couldn't see very far at all.  After it was all over after almost 24 hours, we spent a lot of time trying to get the sand out of the rig.  At least our delay offered us the opportunity to see some cacti bloom! 

We finally left The Ranch on Thursday, taking the route through Cloudcroft where there was still snow on the ground and coming down the long steep grade into Alamagordo.  We fueled up in Alamagordo, pulled off the road at White Sands National Monument for lunch and then crossed the next mountain range to Las Cruces on our way to Elephant Butte.

Elephant Butte is just north of Truth or Consequences, NM.  Our friends Dave and Pat Armstrong manage the Lakeside RV park in Elephant Butte and our friends the Holders are volunteering at an animal refuge in T or C, so we got to visit with both of them for a couple of days.  We stayed at the Lakeside RV park and on Friday, we drove over to T or C to see the Holders.  We had lunch with them and then went out to the animal refuge where they are volunteering.  It was fun to see the the animals they are caring for.

On Saturday, we left Elephant Butte and traveled north on I 25 toward Albuquerque.  We cut off the interstate just south of I 40 and followed route 6 to a point west of the city, where we picked up I 40 and headed west.

We spent the night in Grants, NM but not in the same park as the last time we were there.  The last time, we stayed at the Bar S, which gives a SKP discount and is a nice park for an overnight stay except that it is sandwiched between I 40 and a very busy railroad track.  In addition to the frequent trains, there is a crossing right next to the park, so all those trains blow their whistles as they go through.  This time we went to the south side of town and stayed at the KOA. Nice park right in the middle of a lava field.

The next day, we headed further west and turned off of I 40 at Gallup.  We drove up route 666 from Gallup to Cortez, CO where we attempted to stay at the Elks lodge.  The Elks camping booklet states that they have three sites, but only one power pole.  Power is not a big deal to us, but since two other rigs were already there, the place simply did not have the room for three big rigs.  So, instead of a $10 a night donation to the Elks, we went to the local KOA and spent $25 a night.

This is one of the nicest KOA parks we have been in.  Very friendly owners and convenient to Mesa Verde NP.  In fact, the park is only 8 miles from the entrance to Mesa Verde.

On Monday, we drove the Tracker to Doris, CO and then on up to Telluride, over the 10,200 foot high Lizard Head Pass.  Our youngest son, Taylor lives in Telluride. It had been over two years since we last saw Ty, so we were anxious to get up there to see him.   The pass was still covered in snow and it was cold and windy up on top, not to mention that we had a difficult time breathing at that altitude!  On the way up, we saw two coyotes and three Elk out in the wilderness.

We spent the day with Ty and walked around in Telluride.  Of course, he had no trouble walking at 9,000 feet, but we huffed and puffed and had to stop frequently.    There was a nice mound of snow just outside of his apartment.  Too cold for us!

We spent the next two days at Mesa Verde National Park wandering around the cliff dwelling and other artifacts that exist there.  Mesa Verde is such an amazing place.  While Libby had not visited this park, it was my second trip there.  It still is an incredible look at the past civilization that flourished while the Europeans were mired in the the dark ages.

We left Mesa Verde and took a little side trip to four corner monument.  It was fun to stand in four states at once and we even stayed a little longer there so we could watch the President arrive on the USS Abraham Lincoln on the news, but all of that is the subject of our May update!
 
 
 

Camping for April        $347
Diesel Fuel for April     $335.57
LP for April                  $0