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Published: November 29th 2019
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We left Florida on November 7 and as much as we hated to leave the beach, Mother Nature helped with the push as it was raining pretty good. We drove through Perdido Beach along 98 through Orange Beach Alabama up to I-10...so if you are counting, 3rd time to Alabama😊 We looked at a Jeep that day but it didn't fit the bill for us so on to the local Goodwill to park for lunch and look for a book and Hawaiian shirt. Successful! It's like a magnet when we see one.
Our trip took us through Mobile and over some bridges that were very long over delta areas. We saw some shipping ports as well. We landed in Mississippi that night just outside of Biloxi in Gautier. We found a state park and by that time sun was setting and it was pretty muggy. Settling in that night was not as smooth as we had been used to.
I made our reservation online and in this case it makes you pick a site. So we got there and it was after-hours. There was a camper set up on our site. Rather than approach them, we decided to go
on and pick another vacant site and figure it out in the morning. In the process, we had trouble getting the RV to level as the site option we were left with was not very level. After several tries our jacks stopped working. We had one bar on the cellphone, not enough to do some internet trouble shooting after Mike checked the 2 breakers for the system so we spent the night sloped and hoped for the best with putting out the slides and running both the AC and fridge.
The next morning the one bar of service allowed me to find RV services in the area on Google maps, so we were....you guessed it, BACK to ALABAMA...4th time! (Maybe we should've spent at least one night there😊 ).
We were told by the first place we went to they wouldn't look at it because we didn't buy it there. They did give us a number of an independent place, they couldn't take a look for a week. We ended up parking at a nearby truck stop to try to find another service center maybe on the way to Texas and they couldn't see us for 2 weeks!
By then Mike decided to call the company that made the jacks. They told him of a 3rd breaker connected directly to the coach battery and that breaker had tripped! We were so glad that was all it was and that we couldn't get service because we would have had to pay for such a simple fix. PHEW! We headed back to Mississippi, found a laundromat and went to the movies! We saw Midway, if you haven't seen it and it's still playing, it was great! Especially after having toured the Aviation Museum at the Pensacola Air Base, it really brought all of that to life for us again.
We were able to get our reserved site for our second night in MS when we got back to the campground....I have to back up. When Mike walked around the RV after we went to the movies he noticed one of our lounge chairs and the chair rack they were hanging on the ladder of the back of the RV were gone! one was left hanging by the bungie cord. We have no idea where or when we lost it...we had it when we left Florida. We just hope that
no one was hurt when it came off and decided we don't want to get another rack if it isn't reliable.
Saturday morning we were listening to the radio while getting ready to continue west to Houston. We heard that Joe Walsh was having a concert in Houston called VetsAid on Sunday night. We looked at each other and Mike said, "can we get to Houston by tomorrow night?" I said I thought we could if he didn't mind a couple days of long driving. We bought tickets in the nosebleed section (dead center to the stage though so that was good😊 ). It was a gorgeous sunny day so we headed out on I-10 and drove until sunset. We drove through New Orleans and saw the Mercedes Benz Stadium from the highway and the city skyline. We crossed Lake Pontchatrain and the Mississippi River. The highway also had a couple of areas that were through swamp land that had us on a very long bridge each time. It was cool. By sunset we were at the Texas border and found a place in Orange to rest our heads. I called the campground to ask about availability and the
woman was so pleasant, she sounded just like Mike's mom. She was about to leave and because we were only a few miles down the road she waited for us to arrive. When we got there, she may have sounded like Mike's mom but she reminded me so much of my Grampa Phil's wife Maxine. I am tearing again thinking about it. She was the sweetest! She took our info, and escorted us to our site in the dark.
Sunday we had another beautiful driving day and made it to Houston by early afternoon. I took a lot of pictures from "the cockpit" I can't remember where all of them were but have done my best to label them. We were able to get a campground in Houston pretty close to the downtown for 3 nights so that made it easier to get an Uber to the concert and then we drove down to the space center when we visited there.
The Concert was awesome! They opened with a Military Color Guard and the University of Texas Band played the National Anthem. Then we saw, Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, Jason Isball and the 400 unit (we are not
familiar with him but he plays a great guitar), ZZ Top, Doobie Brothers, and Joe Walsh! All of them were incredible guitarists! Each played about 45 min. In between, when the artists' stages were being set, they would have different organizations recognized for the work they do with area Veterans. Drew Carey came out and talked to some of those folks. Everyone was awesome and they looked like they were really enjoying performing and they sounded so great! Joe came on last and he was so funny! He shared a story. He first talked about how great it was having his friend Drew Carey there. Then he said, "One time Drew and I were out at a Karaoke Bar and it came to be my turn. They had 'Life is Good' on there so I decided to sing that. When I got done I sat down at the bar and some guy sitting next to me told me I didn't do it very well and 'Only Joe Walsh can sing that song'"! OMG we laughed so hard!! Can you imagine!! UNREAL!
The day after the concert Houston had a really windy rain storm. The campground lost power and we
ended up frying our transfer switch. As I understand it, it's the electrical box that reads whether we are getting our power from the "shore"(plugging into the campground) or the generator. Mike thinks that once the power went out it tried to flicker on and the switch that has to engage burnt out from trying too many times to do so. His electrical knowledge and skills came in very handy as he was able to wire around it, order a new one and replace it. This was our first experience with using Amazon on the road. We had issues but eventually got our part 2 days later than the "2 day guarantee" but before we were scheduled to roll again.
We visited the Houston Space Center and saw a replica of the Space Shuttle on the actual 747 they used to transport it to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for take off after it would land in the West. I can't remember if that was California or not. We saw a space rock and some moon rocks, watched a great movie about the control center narrated and with scenes from the people who used to work the control
center during the space program in the 60s and 70s and some of the people who were portrayed in Apollo 13.
When we left Houston we had another Jeep we wanted to look at north of Houston and then we went to Austin....We LOVED Austin, and it's going to get it's own blog entry😊
Thank you for reading along. I hope you are enjoying our stories and pictures of this beautiful country we live in. I am enjoying sharing it with you.
Take Care and Happy Thanksgiving!
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