Tag: Oklahoma City

On the road again

I said last time I have been in a blogging funk, so nothing has been written. I have been slowly recovering from my shoulder surgery, but it has been slow. I think the soreness is one of the reasons I haven’t been doing as much. We have been doing a few things though! We had Thanksgiving dinner with three of our kids and all six of the grandkids, something that hasn’t happened before! We went a bit non-traditional with a smoked turkey and sous vide sirloin. It was a much more relaxing approach, and I think I will repeat it in the future. We also had Christmas with all four kids, spouses, a girlfriend, and five of the grandkids. Even nicer was the meal was mostly made by my oldest son and his wife, both great cooks. It is time to start transferring host duties.

I have also been in a quilting funk. I have only finished one quilt for my daughter. I was lucky to get time with each of the older two granddaughters, 12, to do some sewing. They each got to pick out fabric for a pillowcase, and then they sewed it by themselves. They were appropriately pretty proud of themselves.

We couldn’t leave right after Christmas because I needed to get a laser treatment on my eye. Nothing critical, just clearing out some film behind the cataract lens. Then we had snow and ice, so we didn’t leave until 30 December. We made it only to Lakeside Casino Campground in Osceola, IA to get the rig dewinterized and filled up with water. The campground has definitely had better days, but it is open all year and in a convenient location for getting things set for the trip.

Bad weather was dogging us, so instead of the two days we planned on to Oklahoma City, we pushed through the 500+ miles in one day. We decided we would much rather be stuck two or three days there rather than somewhere along the road. Good thing because we made it just before very cold weather with sleet and ice! And guess what else we found wrong with the rig? The thermostatically controlled outlet for the wet bay stopped working, and we didn’t have good luck with temps going to mid single digits. Kevin tried some other options like an incandescent trouble light and a heating pad, but we had frozen water by the morning of 2 January. Sigh. I looked at Kevin and said “I want to go south!” So we did. We chose to leave OKC and headed to Abilene, TX. By noon we had water again, and by 3:00 or so we were set up at the KOA. Nice place. While we aren’t far off I-20, I don’t hear the traffic.

We decided to stay 2 nights in Abilene to throughly warm ourselves up. Today we went to the Frontier Texas Museum, and it was fabulous! It has multi-media interpretive displays showing the viewpoints and experiences of the natives and the Anglos. Lots of fascinating immersive exhibits, and I highly, highly recommend it. I also got a bunch of equilateral triangles cut with my Accuquilt for use as what I call “mindless sewing”, an easy way to sew while traveling. I also have a 4” Drunkard’s Path die along with a bunch of fat quarters of fabric to cut. I will use the scraps from that to make more triangles later. The DP definitely isn’t mindless, but I do really like the design. Hopefully I can get two lap quilts done by the time we get to the FMCA rally at the end of the March. They always collect quilts for a local charity in the area of the rally.

Tomorrow we are heading farther down the road, but only 200 miles so we stop ahead of some heavy winds. I promise to post more!

Flexibility is the key to winter travel

We made it to Oklahoma City without any more weather-related issues. We had planned on staying two nights to see family and do some last minute shopping, but the weather gods didn’t agree. It turns out there is a huge storm bringing lots of snow heading to southwestern Texas right along I-10, our original planned route. There is another weather system with lots of snow heading through Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. However I-40 runs through the middle of those, and it is clear! We haven’t ever been to travel this route at this time of year because it is usually stormy, but we re-routed to travel along that instead of I-10. You have to be flexible when traveling in the winter in a 32,000 pound motorhome! I just won’t travel in the snow, though rain and cold don’t bother me.

With the storm coming in, we cut our planned two day trip short and spent just a few minutes with my sister. I dropped off her presents and that was about it. We have both been isolating seriously, she because her son is special needs and there isn’t a safe alternate caregiver, us because we are heading into what is effectively a medical desert as well as a physical desert. I am pretty pleased with the towels. They are actually from one of my sons, but I did the embroidery. My son has a cabin on Lake Volney in Minnesota, and my sister and nephew have spent time there. Of course she got some of my standard hand made presents this year – bowl cozies. I posted pictures of those two posts back.

We spent the night at Mustang Run RV Park. It is great as a simple overnight stop because the sites are long enough, the roads are wide enough, and they have full hookups available in the winter. Not exactly a garden spot, but it is an easily accessed spot. We were heading west by 6:30 this morning in a heavy fog. Basically I-40 followed the same path as the front, and we stayed in a heavy fog for 300 miles! The advantage of fog is that there is no wind, so I was able to drive at a steady 62 mph the entire day unless we were going through construction zones. I like 62 because that is the sweet spot for our rig in efficiency. After all, we are retired so why hurry!

As we closed in on the New Mexico border, we finally left the fog to find brilliant sun gleaming in partly cloudy skies. It was a very abrupt change and let us get the first glimpses of the lovely mess country. Tonight we are in Tucumcari, NM at a KOA. Nice place with some long sites and easy access. As you have probably noticed by now, we value convenience over beauty when traveling to a destination. How do you like this picture of a scary tree?

We are less than 200 miles from our planned next spot in Albuquerque. We intend on staying there a couple of nights, buying some last minute things we didn’t have time to get before we left. I need some coordinating fabric for some quilt tops I have planned, and Kevin is replacing our busted water softener. Arizona has such hard water, we really need a softener. We will do our last big grocery shopping trip before hitting the desert too.

A few posts ago I mentioned our new slide toppers, but I didn’t have pictures. Here are a couple showing the color. After all, slide toppers are not terribly photogenic.