Coming to you from Shamrock, Texas
Sunday dawned clear and cold at St. James, Missouri. I awoke at about 3:30 a.m. local time (4:30 back home). Loretta awakened about 4.
With no way to go back to sleep, we went ahead and began the morning routine. Because we started so early, we were nearly ready before the “free continental breakfast” opened at 6 a.m. The free food wasn’t much, but we had our own food to supplement it.
As we packed the van to leave, two dogs came along. One was a brindle pit bull, the other a fawn boxer, and neither had a collar. We had the door open for the loading process, and they just walked right in. The pit bull jumped onto the bed and the boxer tried to go under it. They both appeared very friendly, wagging their tails and not barking or doing anything hostile. When Loretta told them to leave, they did so after playing with her for about half a minute.
We fueled up and drove away. The sun shone all day, but the wind continued to blow steadily from the north. We saw several trucks and RVs swaying, the drivers apparently having trouble controlling their vehicles. Handling in windy conditions will certainly affect our choice if we buy an RV. Fifth wheels seemed to have the worst problems, especially the luxury models that rise higher than any other RVs except gigantic Class A's. Even the big Class A's looked more stable than those tall 5ers. The advantage here would go to Hi-Lo travel trailers, which lower for traveling to about the height of a pickup with a cap.
Loretta has seen a total of sixty three hawks on our trip, fifty seven of them today. In the east, most of them were red-tail hawks, but once we crossed into Oklahoma, most of them were another species which has a name I can’t remember. It sounds like a person’s last name and begins with S. Since Loretta uses hawks as a totem, we take this to be a favorable sign. We saw many of the hawks in the part of Oklahoma that is mostly reservations.
Loretta saw her first armadillo today. She had to ask about that to make sure that “I was seeing what I was seeing.” That’s understandable; nothing else looks quite like an armadillo.
We have decided that we must change the mattress on our bed. The futon mattress that we are using now weighs too much, and we have trouble getting under it to use the milk crates. We are looking at the type of couch-cushion mattresses used in RV dinettes, but we will probably ask for ideas on the VanDwellers group.
As we had already guessed, the minivan is too small for the two of us to use for an extended time. We are already spending another night in a motel, not only because of the cold but also because we don’t want to go through the effort required to put every thing in its place. In a larger van, we would not need to do so much arranging.
We covered two thirds of Missouri and all of Oklahoma today, over 600 miles in all. It made a long day, but neither of us felt especially tired until about the last 50 miles. We had another good day.
With no way to go back to sleep, we went ahead and began the morning routine. Because we started so early, we were nearly ready before the “free continental breakfast” opened at 6 a.m. The free food wasn’t much, but we had our own food to supplement it.
As we packed the van to leave, two dogs came along. One was a brindle pit bull, the other a fawn boxer, and neither had a collar. We had the door open for the loading process, and they just walked right in. The pit bull jumped onto the bed and the boxer tried to go under it. They both appeared very friendly, wagging their tails and not barking or doing anything hostile. When Loretta told them to leave, they did so after playing with her for about half a minute.
We fueled up and drove away. The sun shone all day, but the wind continued to blow steadily from the north. We saw several trucks and RVs swaying, the drivers apparently having trouble controlling their vehicles. Handling in windy conditions will certainly affect our choice if we buy an RV. Fifth wheels seemed to have the worst problems, especially the luxury models that rise higher than any other RVs except gigantic Class A's. Even the big Class A's looked more stable than those tall 5ers. The advantage here would go to Hi-Lo travel trailers, which lower for traveling to about the height of a pickup with a cap.
Loretta has seen a total of sixty three hawks on our trip, fifty seven of them today. In the east, most of them were red-tail hawks, but once we crossed into Oklahoma, most of them were another species which has a name I can’t remember. It sounds like a person’s last name and begins with S. Since Loretta uses hawks as a totem, we take this to be a favorable sign. We saw many of the hawks in the part of Oklahoma that is mostly reservations.
Loretta saw her first armadillo today. She had to ask about that to make sure that “I was seeing what I was seeing.” That’s understandable; nothing else looks quite like an armadillo.
We have decided that we must change the mattress on our bed. The futon mattress that we are using now weighs too much, and we have trouble getting under it to use the milk crates. We are looking at the type of couch-cushion mattresses used in RV dinettes, but we will probably ask for ideas on the VanDwellers group.
As we had already guessed, the minivan is too small for the two of us to use for an extended time. We are already spending another night in a motel, not only because of the cold but also because we don’t want to go through the effort required to put every thing in its place. In a larger van, we would not need to do so much arranging.
We covered two thirds of Missouri and all of Oklahoma today, over 600 miles in all. It made a long day, but neither of us felt especially tired until about the last 50 miles. We had another good day.
posted by Calvin & Loretta | 6:46 AM
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