Mouse Loose in the Motorhome

As we were getting ready to leave this morning around 7:30, Marcia had us looking for a mouse which she swears she had seen.  Of course Bubba is just no help with this at all, but perhaps if Skruffy was still alive she could have smelled it out.  No luck in catching the mouse, and we leave.  But I am so rattled, I take a left out of the RV Park instead of a right.  A mile down the road I find an area to make a U-Turn, and a few minutes later we are entering US 287 headed for Amarillo, Texas.  I HATE it when I make a wrong turn like that, it just isn't me...must have needed more coffee.  Found out later that the GPS would have lead me right to the Highway had I turned left on Highway 101...but I decided to make a U-Turn...but we got to the highway.

I went to left coming out of park...should be a right.

We get down the highway about 3 miles, and come upon a wreck which had just happened.  No emergency vehicles on site as we go through, did not appear anyone was hurt, and until I saw the pickup's front passenger's side all messed up, and debris on the road, I thought it was just someone with a flat tire.  Less than a mile later we see emergency vehicles on the way headed south (we are headed north).  It then dawns on me...  "Marcia, had we not been looking for that mouse, and I had not made the wrong turn, that could have been "US" in that wreck back there!"  What a way to start the day, huh???

Seeing this little beauty driving along the frontage road to our right was a bit of a highlight of our day.  The roads veered off from each other, so we did not get a better picture than this.

About 30 miles down the road we pulled over at a picnic area (Texas has a bunch of these picnic areas) and we grabbed some breakfast...and looked for the mouse a bit more.  In fact, every time we stopped we both instinctively looked for that mouse.

This is much of what we were looking at most of the ride, along with a half dozen little towns that we had to slow down going through.  If you look closely, you can see a few electric producing windmills along this area.

One thing we did see were a number of RVs traveling along the road, most of them 5th Wheels and Trailers, but there was one or two motorhomes.  At our second stop, I found the mouse...

... Yep, the mouse loose in the Motorhome was Marcia's Computer Mouse.  And I DID not find her mouse, I had a spare mouse, brand new, which she is currently using.  The old mouse was still on the loose.

We decided that the 280+ miles we drove to get to Amarillo was enough.  Got gas at a Flying J, and headed over to AOK RV Park, another Passport America park at $14 per night.  Nothing fancy, but have a nice view out our front windows.

Well, ok, it is a golden field with UFO's flying over it.  WELL, ok, not a UFO, but an Airplane.  Good news, I finally found the lost mouse wedged between Marcia's chair and her door jam support.  Had I not used my little flashlight, I would have missed it as it blended in with the door jam area.  It never hit the floor, so when I looked earlier (at a rest stop) I did not see it.

Yep, it looks like a storm is brewing up.  Out here in the upper panhandle of Texas in June means that the Thunder Storm just might include ...

HAIL!!!!

Thought that large one was hail, but it was a rock.

My shoe gives you a better idea of how large the hail was.  It was all over in about 5 minutes.  Until 15 minutes later more hail, along with rain, came...and that hail was even larger, but melted before the rain let up for me to get pictures.  And then, another round of hail came.  The last two storms lasted twice as long as the first.  It was SO LOUD as it hit the roof of the motorhome.  Thank goodness I did not see any damage to the motorhome or the car.  The winds gusts were up to 60 mph, but were short lived.  As a result..the temps dropped from near 90 down to the mid-60's.  I think we will both have a good sleep tonight, no need for running the AC all night long.  Oh, and here comes round four...hope this doesn't have hail.

Only HAIL!!!!!

At Camron Bluff Campground, Mount Magazine State Park, AR

I watched the weather radar closely last night, along with watching a local TV station which showed warnings.  Around midnight the warning went out that Mount Magazine was right in the path of a Thunder Storm Warning with localized HAIL...oh no, I hate hail.  Hail breaks windows, puts dents in cars and motorhomes, and 'can' knock down limbs.  All the sudden I hear very loud thunder clap with only a second from the flash, repeating and repeating.  I pull in the slide and just before I finish that, hail starts.  It lasts for a long, long time...well, ok, maybe 5 minutes.  Some of the hits sound like huge hail balls like in this picture above that I got off the Internet.

Well, maybe they were more like this picture above...again a picture I got off the net.  Those can break windows, and make dents, but probably not.  I look outside just after they pass...and I see....NOTHING.  So much water on the ground that what ice fell, melted right away.

It was PROBABLY more like the hail above...taken off a Fort Smith News site this morning.  But when you are in your motorhome and it hails...it sounds like every hit is a softball hitting your ceiling.

This is the radar map late morning today...we are out of it, Mississippi is in for it, then Alabama...even Florida probably tomorrow.  This storm went through Northern California a few days ago, but when it hit the humid gulf air, which thank goodness has not heated up enough yet to cause tornadoes in Arkansas, gave us the Thunderstorms.  Although we will have more rain this weekend, it appears to not be as severe of weather as what we have gone through...and the week we are in the Kansas City area right now looks good...but this time of year, you always have to be aware.

 

And here are pictures of Skruffy (above) and Bubba (below) this morning showing off their new haircuts.  I transitioned from the number 4 blade to the number 7 blade to give them a little less fur to deal with as hotter weather is coming soon.  I use to cut Bubba down to a number 10 blade...but he has so many skin tags now that is just too hard to do.  Bubba turns 16 this year...sleeps a lot, and at breakfast wants "breakfast served in (near) bed" to him...at dinner, he is up and dancing and prancing and can't wait for me to dish it out.  Skruffy, now that we have left the confines of the condo where she 'needs to be quiet', barks as I dish out the food and serve it to her.  The first two weeks it was hard to get her to jump up the stairs leading to the inside of the motorhome...her eyes are so bad.  Now that she is use to it, she is jumping up those stairs just about every time now.  She has been with me for nearly 10 years, and we can only guess that she was around 1 1/2 years old when I saved her off the streets of Pine Bluff....so she will be 12 this year, if she isn't 12 already.  Diabetes is under control...just wish she was not losing her eyesight along with it.

Grants New Mexico, A Hail of a Drive

So after our exciting night last night at Santa Rosa Lake State Park, I was hoping for a nice, easy drive to western New Mexico…so much for that.  As we left the park at 9:30, there was a light rain, no big deal.  The front right tire was down 9 psi this morning.  I have determined the spare (old) extender that I had them put on in Little Rock because they accidently broke the one on there, is the cause of a slow leak.  But I cannot have the tire pressure sensor on without an extender…  At Cline’s Corner I was able to boost the tire back up to 68 psi.  The front tires, according to the driver’s door label, are suppose to be at 60, while the back are at 80.  But I find it drives better if the front are at 65.  Of course, tire pressure changes as you drive, and also with overnight temps and elevation when you park at night.  So starting out at 58 was not a huge thing, but I wanted to correct it as soon as I could.

But our precipitation was not over in New Mexico.  In fact, it was going to change to hail shortly after we left Cline’s Corner.  In fact, as we were driving in a light rain and you see a good inch of hail along the sides of the highway…you realize that had you not stopped at Cline’s Corner, that is what you would have been driving through!  Yes, we did have some hail a bit later, but nothing like the poor folks in front of us faced.  We even came upon a small wreck, no injuries, of a truck and two cars which had passed us earlier.  We finally made it to Albuquerque, and the weather cleared up for a bit. 

As we get close to Grants New Mexico, I see a sign similar to this one, which provides the name of the RV Park (Blue Spruce) and the exit number.  Already expecting to stop at Love’s just a few miles beyond exit 81 where the RV Park is, I wonder if we should consider stopping here because we would have TV for weather problems should the pop up again.  So I decide that we will stop short of Bluewater State Park, which is around 20 miles beyond this point, and we forked out $19 instead of $14 and called the day’s travel done before 1:30.

    

It is now after 7 pm, and no one else has pulled in.  The park has a number of people who live her long term.  But the area near where we are parked is for the traveler…and most are pull through, some have 50 amp, and “full hookup” does not mean sewer, but a dump station is available.  Cable has over 50 channels, but like many parks, it is a bit snowy, but we have had worse.  This part of the park is far enough off I-40 that we see nor hear any I-40 traffic, but New Mexico Highway 53 also goes along the park, but not much traffic.  So far the storms have missed us here…we will have to see how our luck holds up on that.

Note:  I took the tire pressure and extender off the tire, and the extender has a bad seal for sure.  I have another older extender, but I am hoping Love’s might have one that I can purchase.  If not, I will just have to take off the tire pressure after each drive, or drive without it.  Already driving without one on the car…drat!

Hail-elujah–Back in Arkansas

Having lived in Arkansas for 23 years, I have seen all sorts of weather.  Yes, it has hailed when I lived here, but not very much, and I did not have to drive through hard hail the entire 23 years.  Our route today took us west into Louisiana, north on Highway 65 at Tallulah right up into Arkansas.  The first town in Arkansas along this route is Eudora, a sleepy little town of just over 2,000 people, a largely Black population with a median income for a household of roughly $17,000.  From nearly the moment we entered the town, and for a good mile after we left town, we had hail, hard pea size to small marble size hail.  Do you stop and sit through it for who knows how long…or continue to drive, slow and steady, until you get out of it???  I picked the latter.   Luckily, no damage…no dents, no broken windows, all was well.

Which leads me to a funny thing…at least I think it is funny…one would have to ask my wife what she thinks, because it has to do with my sense of humor.  The first place I could safely pull over was in the town of Dumas in a Walmart Parking Lot so I could check out if there was any hail damage. The first rest area, which has a small parking lot, was too full.  The second rest area was closed.  This always happens after I have been driving while drinking a 24 oz cup of coffee…which means, yes, nature was calling.  So as I am getting out of the driver’s seat and stepping outside, Marcia says, “I thought you needed to ‘use the bathroom’, which is the polite way of saying it.   I said, “I do.”, and I shut the door, walked up to the front left tire, reached down and “acted” like I was relieving myself…looking into the front window at her…while she puts her hand over her forehead, shakes her head, and burst out laughing.

I don’t know why I get these urges…not the urge of nature calling, I know it is the coffee doing that…but the urge to spontaneously commit a mischievous act…or blurt out something funny.  It has been five years of doing this type of thing and Marcia still loves me to death.  Of course, my Mom is saying to herself, "If I can only tell everyone of the MANY times when David was small that he really would 'whip it out and go' ... at parks, front yards, playgrounds....the entire outdoors was his bathroom!"

Fort Smith was our goal, so Pine Bluff was a quick drive through along the Interstate.  All was well, traffic a bit thick from Little Rock on along I-40.  Shortly after getting on I-40, I decided to call Spring Hill COE park to be sure they were open.  The guy assured me they were, but they had only one spot left!  What!!!! in mid-March!!!!   And he could not hold it, it was first come, first serve.  So we hurried along I-40, and as I got close to Alma, mile marker 13 (13 miles from Oklahoma) I called and he said he still had the spot open, and another opened up.  So we went on to Springhill, a US Army Corps of Engineers park.  With National Park Pass, it was $9 for the night.

We like COE parks, and this one, which we have been to a few times now, is really nice. 

With all the rain, the water is real high.  I doubt we will hear any barge traffic along the river with this high water and fast current. 

After so many miles in the past 50 hours, the dogs were ready for a stay in a park. What they did not like was that we were only parked for 90 minutes before Marcia and I left to go visit her cousin Sophie (92 years old) and have dinner with her, her son Jim and his wife Pat.  Since our plans in the Pine Bluff area fell through, we came to Fort Smith a day early, which is allowing us to drive the RV up to just south of Kansas City for a two night stay where we will be taking my son Ryan out to dinner Saturday night, and visit my Aunt and cousins on Sunday. 

    

When we know we will be gone for a few hours, we always try to give them a nice chew treat…in this case, some Healthy Hide, Good 'n' Fun, Triple Flavor Chews.  It keeps them occupied for the first 10-15 minutes that we are gone, and they seem to settle down quickly after that.   (look at Bubba’s new collar!)

We had a nice dinner at an Italian Restaurant that recently opened…good food at a decent price, but I failed to get the name of it.  We always enjoy our visit with Sophie and Jim and Pat...and hope to see them again when we pass through again in October.

Hail, Snow Beads, Cold, but Laundry is Done

We left for the laundry mat around 10:30, perhaps 11:00 am.  Figured it would get a bit warmer, and was hoping that the laundry mat was going to be slow and empty.  As we left Fort Bridger and headed to Lyman, it started to snow little snow beads.  But not far out of town it started to hail.  As we got to Lyman, it was back to light snow beads again, so I hurried Marcia into the laundry mat…and by the time I got all the laundry stuff in the hail was hurting my uncovered legs.  (yes, I had short pants on, it is May for goodness sakes, and I love shorts!)  Above is the results of the snow/hail.  By the time we got done, it was all melted.

  

After we got back with the laundry, I went for a quick, short ride.  To the left was the weather to the east, on the right was the weather to the west.  There are “large hills” hidden behind those clouds on the right.

With weather like this, and temps in the high thirties, this is all we saw of Fort Bridger.  Perhaps another time.  According to Wikipedia, Fort Bridger was originally a Fur Trading Post, established back in 1842, established by Mountain Man Jim Bridger.  It was a supply point for the Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, and a major Pony Express station, and eventually it was an Army Fort.

There are some authentic buildings, a museum, and they hold the yearly Fort Bridger Rendezvous (since the 1970’s), a celebration of the fur-trade era that existed in the 19th century. 

   

The ominous skies around the RV Park meant we were staying inside for the rest of the day…. unless we decide to go back to the Mexican Restaurant we went to last night…..that sure was good.