Not Bad for a GIRL!

Most of our friends know that Terry and I share the driving duties for Phaeton Place. Well, since we left Tucson, I have done all the driving and Terry has been navigating. He knows the Delorme program better than I and when we are in certain areas, I prefer to have him navigating.

We left Deming on Friday after Thanksgiving. It was really a bittersweet exit because we met several couples at the Thanksgiving dinner that I would have loved to spend more time with. Ross and Dorothy are planning on making it to the valley later this winter, so hopefully we may see them again. Dan and Rita are new fulltimers and really excited about traveling. They have done a lot of planning and are getting set up to do some serious boondocking as well. We wish all our friends safe travels and plan to see them on down the road.

Our plan was to take four days to drive to the Rio Grande Valley and our lot in Mission, Texas. The first day was such an easy drive, but rather boring across I-10. I didn't mind putting that leg of our journey behind us, so I suggested we travel on to Fort Stockton, a few more miles than we had planned. The park Terry had chosen for us to stay turned out to be a real dump and neither of us wanted to spend a night there. Instead of driving back to one of the other parks, we decided to drive on to Sanderson. We have stayed at the park there before and knew we would be comfortable. So after 409 miles, we got parked and hooked up for the night.

Leaving Sanderson the next day, we drove on to Eagle Pass. This was an easy drive, but finding the casino was not so easy. But we did make it and found an empty spot in their RV park. What a joke that is. I hope the next improvement they make is that park. We paid to park and then were never able to get the electric to work. We have a surge protector to save us from damaging equipment in the coach. It showed we had unreliable low voltage and would not allow power into the coach. We tried two different sites and decided after that to forget trying to get any resolutioin to the problem. It wasn't as cold in Eagle Pass, so we just boondocked. I had noticed one of our friends in Arizona had made an early move back to home base because of the impending winter storm. So I looked that up. I really need to be a little more diligent there because we had a storm heading for us.

Today was to be a short hop to Laredo, then on in to Mission on Monday. But Monday is supposed to be wintry weather in the high elevations of Arizona and Texas with snow appearing even at the valley floors. A slushy mixture is possible, and no one in a 40' diesel pusher wants to push slush and snow along the road. Today, however, was a beautiful day with sunshine and warm weather. So the choice as I see it was this: (1) lay over in Laredo and run tomorrow in rain and wind all the way to Mission where we set up in the same. . . OR (2) make the run to Mission today in the sunshine and warm weather setting up in the same. Hmmmmm, you guessed it. . . no brainer there.

So we arrived here at our lot in Mission at 2:30 after an uneventful drive. Those are the best kind. Mom and Dad were excited to see us and even fixed us supper. We just did minimum setup as we were tired from our three day/900 mile journey with me behind the wheel. NOT BAD FOR A GIRL!

Now we will see if the weatherman was right!

Till next time. . .

Dale