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Follow the Leader
The RV in front of me is Dan and Joyce, leading the way to Arizona. If you click on this to enlarge it, you can see the white line of fog we are heading into. Welcome to book number two of my travels around the U.S.
THE HAPPY WANDERER 2010
December 27 -- Cali and I are in Farmer's Branch (a Dallas suburb) in Danette's back yard. I had Thanksgiving and Christmas with the family here and now am ready to travel again. I am excited because my sister, Joyce, her husband Dan and I will caravan and spend the next few months traveling together. They have been full time Rvers for several years now, so they know all the ropes. Plus it will be first time in a long time that we will be together for more than a week or so. I am looking forward to everything.
I decided I needed to work a bit and recoup some of the money I have spent, so I took tax preparation courses on line. I started in early November and finally completed them a few days ago. The total course stated there was about 40 hours of training, but I can tell you I spent a lot more time than that! Whew! They were hard! Fortunately I could take the test for each segment as many times as I wanted to and review
Texas Rest Stop
I liked the teepee shaped shelters over the tables and the rustic fence over a little creek. Note the snow. just as often. Now I have to take the tax readiness test and pass it before I can go to work. My instructors have been very helpful, but were not to happy when I told them I was leaving to travel to Arizona. Also, there has been a glitch in the system and I have not been able to get into the test.
I have talked to Marilynn in Casa Grande a couple of times and she says not to worry about it, we will work it out. That's right. I already have a job in Casa Grande! The office manager has hired me sight unseen. Can life get any better?
December 28 -- We left Ward and Tarena's about mid-morning on our way to Arizona. The rain that was predicted held off, otherwise, we would have delayed out departure. I had no trouble following Dan on the road. We arrived at Aunt Lucy's in Odessa about lunchtime. She was excited to see us. We visited and naturally I had to play a hand of dominoes with her! She won, of course. We talked about her coming to the reunion in July. She will celebrate her 90th birthday
Sierra Blanca
I think this is the second highest mountain in Texas at 6894 feet. It overlooked the rest stop with the teepees. then. That will be quite a deal!
December 29/30 -We had planned to stay longer with Aunt Lucy, but there were predictions of snow coming, so we decided to move on. We were sorry to miss seeing our cousin Dave and his wife Maggie again, but knowing the west Texas weather, we thought we might get caught who knows how long in a heavy snow or blizzard. As it turned out the snow and wind did delay a couple of days, but we had good weather on the highway.
We followed I-20 until it joined with I-10. I had, of course been over part of this road last year, stopping at the Sandhills State Park near Monahans, then turning south to visit Ft. Davis. This time I followed Dan and Joy on west toward El Paso which was new territory for me. We stopped for a break at a very picturesque rest stop. The sheltered picnic tables were in the form of teepees. There was also snow on the ground there. Texas does a very nice job on their rest stops and state parks. Overlooking the park was Sierra Blanca, the last mountain we saw in Texas.
Rest Stop Shelter
A close-up of one of the shelters I liked so much. I-10 follows the Rio Grande River for a few miles, but we couldn't see it. Fog had rolled in along the river and looked like a light gray blanket up against the hills. It was strange looking to say the least. At one point, we drove down into a valley where the fog was and it was thick for several miles. Then we climbed out of the valley and were above the fog, looking back on it.
I was a little nervous about following Dan through El Paso. There was a lot of traffic and I didn't know if I would be able to keep up with him or not. We sailed right through, though, without any problems. After getting through that city, we stopped at the 0 mile marker right at the Texas/New Mexico boundary. I don't think I've ever seen a 0 miles marker before!!
After gassing up, we drove on to Deming where we stopped for the night. It had been a long driving day and I was ready to stop!!
CaliāMe, too. I get bored when we're traveling, 'cause about all I can do is sleep. Mommy wouldn't let me out when we stopped, though. Bummer!
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Please tell me you didn't get that picture of their RV in front of you while you were driving too. Because if you did, you certainly are good at multi-tasking. lol Sierra Blanca - no one ever thinks Texas has anything but flat plains. They're wrong! Those shelters are incredibly cool.