Category: texas

We’ve Been Through the Desert

America - A Horse With No Name+Lyrics

We made it out of Texas and into the desert. Our “horse” does have a name, though. A couple. We sometimes call it Big Blue Truck, since it is bigger than Little Blue Truck, the titular children’s book character (thanks for the books, Uncle Ken!). Other times, Izzy will call it the Cat Car, as its blue color matches that of the vehicle driven by Catboy from the children’s cartoon PJ Masks.

Whatever you call it, our 2019 Ford F-350 Lariat with the 6.7L diesel PowerStroke engine, crew cab, 8-foot long bed, and 4-wheel drive, has been a great tow vehicle so far. It has plenty of power to get the trailer up and moving and strong brakes to slow it back down. We gave it its first real test through some grades north of Phoenix and it did great. We didn’t have any trouble passing the semis doing 45 while climbing the grades, and more importantly, the engine compression and fancy turbos kept the trailer from pushing us too fast as we went back down.

It’s pretty comfortable to drive as well, with heated and cooled seats, a heated steering wheel, Apple Car Play, adaptive cruise, tons of outlets, cameras everywhere, and the ability to keep track of tire pressure on both the truck and trailer.

The biggest downside is that it is huge. At over 22 feet, it is too long for a standard parking space. Combining that with a turning radius more comparable to a boat than a car, makes navigating parking lots, or any kind of slow-speed maneuvering no fun.The fuel consumption isn’t that great either. We’re lucky if our miles per gallon break into double digits while we’re towing, but we can get as high as 17 on the highway with just the truck. At least the 48-gallon fuel tank means we don’t have to stop too often.

All in all, we’re very happy with our truck. It gets us where we need to go in comfort and safety, we’re getting used to driving such a huge vehicle, and it will pull our house and all our belongings whenever we need it to.

After leaving Texas, our Big Blue Truck took us all the way to Cottonwood, Arizona. On the way, we spent three nights in Deming, New Mexico and one outside of Tucson.

Upon leaving Texas we realized we’ll miss a few things about it, including:

  • small town donut shops (seemingly always run by friendly Korean people who tell you to have a blessed day)
  • never being more than 30 minutes from a Walmart
  • Buc-ee’s
  • spotting cowboy churches

After spending so much time in a single state, it felt like we positively sped through New Mexico. We only stopped in one city, and only spent three nights there. We did find a few things to do, though.

Izzy and I found some dinosaurs and toured a museum.

And we were all able to visit a local winery. There was live music, a charcuterie board, and Charlotte and I tasted a flight of wines. (all pretty good, but I can’t recommend the green chile wine). The winery was a nice place, but it really wasn’t a great spot for a three-year-old who would much prefer a play place and a Happy Meal. I had even called ahead to see if it was okay to bring small children and was given the green light. Ah well, some things you gotta find out on your own.

After leaving New Mexico, we had a quick one night stop just outside of Tucson. On the way there, Google Maps kept giving us alerts. A bad accident had shut down all of the westbound lanes of Interstate 10. Rather than sit in traffic, we decided to pull off. We managed to drive completely around and successfully park at a big outdoor shopping mall with our trailer.

Taking the rig into any parking lot is always a risky proposition.

I called the RV park to see if they had any suggestions on how to get there. The lady who answered was incredibly grumpy and claimed to not even have our reservation (I distinctly remember talking to her to make it, though). She begrudgingly reserved us a spot, and we found an alternate route that only involved sitting in an extra 20 minutes of traffic. The grumpy lady was for some reason very nice in person, and we only paid $13 for the stay, so it all worked out okay.

From there, we headed north into Phoenix, the biggest city we’ve ever driven our trailer though. We had struggled with the route planning, unsure if we should drive through the mountains or through the city. When you’re towing a 36-foot trailer, narrow lanes, steep grades, and tight turns are no fun, but neither is trying to get through three lanes of traffic to make your exit. Ultimately, we decided to take our chances in the city. Luckily, we drove through Phoenix on Sunday morning, so there weren’t too many cars to deal with. Once past Phoenix, we climbed into the high desert, past a ton of saguaros, up and down a few decent grades, and into Cottonwood.

We reserved 9 days in Cottonwood, to give ourselves a chance to relax a bit from our hectic driving schedule, but this didn’t quite work out. The RV park we stayed at was large and spread out. The parking spot we found was at the bottom of a valley, with almost no cellular reception. With no internet in the trailer, Charlotte had to commute into town, finding a table at Starbucks or the local library on the days she needed to work.

We were also very excited to get to spend some time with Daniel and Rhodora, Charlotte’s brother and sister-in-law. We were able to meet up with them a couple of times to share a few meals and a gorgeous hike in Sedona. Since they don’t live too far from the campground, they were also able to help us out by providing an all-important address where we could send our packages and mail.

Another day, we ventured down to Phoenix. We got in some shopping and found a really cool playground for Izzy to enjoy.

The playground was supported by Wells Fargo.

That evening, we were able to grab dinner and catch up with one of my old friends that I haven’t seen in over a decade. (Zach and Ashley, we should have taken a quick photo!)

After that, we packed our bags, prepped the trailer for storage, and got ready for a big adventure. I’ll save that story for next time (or the next few times). Until then, see you down the road.

Categories: arizona new mexico texas

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Westward Ho!

When we first made it down to Texas at the start of November, we didn’t have a particular destination in mind. We were looking for warmer weather, trying to learn how to live the full-time RV lifestyle, and trying not to get too far away from Nebraska since we knew we’d be headed back that way for Christmas. We finally found that nice weather at Lake Conroe, north of Houston.

After enjoying some time in the sun, we put the RV in storage and took the truck north. It was a long two-day trip each way, but driving is much easier when you’re not pulling a 12,000-pound trailer. It was great being able to spend the holidays with family and meet up with some friends, but we had to head back south on New Year’s Day to get out of the cold and because we don’t have time for meandering anymore. We’re now traveling on a deadline.

Back in November, we were lucky enough to book an amazing deal on flights to New Zealand using American Airlines frequent-flier miles. For fewer miles than a typical award flight from Omaha to Dallas, we’re flying from Los Angeles to Auckland. Specials like this have popped up in the past, but we’ve never had the freedom to make them work until now. We’re all very excited about the trip.

By the time we made it back to the RV from Nebraska, we were 25 days and 1,600 miles away from our departure in Los Angeles. This is a lot of ground to cover in not much time, so we decided to make things a bit easier on ourselves and booked a positioning flight to Los Angeles from Phoenix. So now we only need to cover 1,200 miles, but it still feels like a long way to go with a short time to get there.

We’re in the middle of that journey now, writing this post from the small town of Van Horn, TX. Our strategy is to drive up to 4 hours on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, leaving other days to rest and do some work. It’s much faster than we’d like but will give us over a week to relax and visit family in Cottonwood, Arizona before we put the RV in storage and fly overseas.

Texas is big!

The fast pace of our journey has necessitated some new firsts for us. Last Saturday we spent just a single night at an RV park and didn’t unhitch the truck and trailer. With another long drive ahead of us, we needed to fuel up the truck, which is difficult while hooked up. We first attempted to use the big pumps for semi-trucks at a travel center, since we had plenty of room to maneuver. Now we are probably mistaken, but the pumps appeared to only have diesel exhaust fluid on the driver side and actual diesel fuel on the passenger side, which is the wrong side for our truck. So we took the trailer through the regular auto side, which was thankfully not very busy. We managed not to hit anything, and only blocked two pumps while we fueled up.

In another first, Charlotte took a turn behind the wheel while pulling the trailer! We’re traveling down Interstate 10, which is wide, pretty smooth, and doesn’t have too much traffic out here in western Texas, so it made for a good spot to learn to tow. She even drove into town and pulled into the RV park.

With so much driving, packing, and setting up/breaking down camp, we haven’t had too much time for seeing the sites and adventuring. But one day, Izzy and I managed to visit the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge and tried to find some of the funny looking chickens that live there. The birds eluded us, but we did enjoy our time at the refuge.

Finally had a reason to dig out the binoculars.

We’ll be out of Texas soon, but it’s been a great visit. I’m sure we’ll be back. So until next time, see you on down the road.

Categories: rv adventures texas

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RV Tour

Greetings from just outside Fairfield, Texas. We’ve been traveling slowly in a wide arc around the Dallas metro over the past few weeks, and are now an hour-and-a-half southeast of the city. After a few nights that got down into the 20s, we’re crossing our fingers that we’ve finally caught up with some decent weather as high temperatures here are projected to be in the 60s and 70s with overnight lows staying above freezing.

We stopped by a cool site outside of Mineral Wells. This park used to be a landfill but has since been excavated. The digging exposed old layers of earth including some loose dirt and rock that contain fossils. These aren’t dinosaur bones, but tiny ancient sea life. You can potentially find shark teeth, but we didn’t come across any. We had some fun digging, and Charlotte was able to make a bracelet out of some of the bead-like fossils.

It was basically a big, shallow sandpit…
…with lots of little things on the surface…
…which made it pretty to spot the items which were once organic. Kind of like a real-life Where’s Waldo search.
The spoils of the dig.

Our big adventure in November involved leaving the RV entirely. I flew to Las Vegas to meet some friends for a long weekend of fun, while Charlotte and Izzy stayed at a hotel and had fun exploring the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

With just a couple of adventures to report on, we thought this update might be a good time to give a little tour of our new home.

Our RV is a Reflection 31MB, manufactured by Grand Design. It is a fifth-wheel trailer, which means it hooks up to the bed of our truck, as opposed to a trailer that is being pulled behind the bumper. It is about 36 feet long and isn’t supposed to weigh more than 12,000 pounds. (I haven’t weighed our rig yet, so it is possible we have it overloaded.) It has 3 slides, that we can open up to expand the living area when we are parked.

Let’s start out in the biggest room, which is our kitchen/dining/living room. It takes up the rear third of the trailer and is to the left as you step through the front door. It has a slide on both sides, a tall ceiling, and plenty of large windows, so it feels pretty big and open. It has our coat hooks, pantry closet, reclining couch with heat and “massage”, dinette, electric fireplace, TV, kitchen island with under-mount sink, plenty of cabinets, three-burner propane stove, propane oven, microwave/convection oven, and fridge/freezer.

If we’re at home this is where we spend most of our time. Eating meals, washing dishes, watching TV, drying dishes, reading stories, putting away dishes, cooking, coloring, washing more dishes, and making crafts are some of the activities we do here.

The mid-bunk room is the distinguishing feature of our floorplan, hence the “MB” in the model name of 31MB. (The 31 is supposed to be the length, but the trailer is actually 36 feet long. Vanity sizing isn’t just for women’s jeans, I guess.) It is accessible through a pocket door directly across from the front door and from a sliding barn door from the kitchen.

The sliding “barn door”. So trendy!

This room was the selling point of this RV for us. We knew we were going to be working from the road, and wanted a spot that could serve as an office and separate bedroom for Izzy. There are two sliding doors that help to close off the room, even is sound isolation is minimal. We mounted a large ultra-wide monitor to the wall between the cabinets and added a chair and a small desk for a keyboard and mouse.

Keyboard, mouse, and laptop not pictured as they were stowed for travel.
The ultra-wide curved monitor is mounted to the wall. Productivity++

So far it has made a better office than bedroom. Isabel is going through some sort of sleep regression which started before we hit the road. She seems to be afraid of sleeping alone in a room. Given the two beds to pick from, she has rejected them both, electing to sleep on some cushions on the floor of the master bedroom. We’re hoping this phase passes soon! The mid-bunk room at least does a good job of housing all her clothes, books, toys, and craft supplies, along with plenty of other items.

Turning right from the front door is a hallway, which has our RV control panel, and two rooms at the end.

Through the pocket door on the left is our bathroom, with a large-for-an-RV shower, a toilet without a tank that flushes with a foot pedal, a small sink, and a couple of cabinets. It’s small, but it works and has much more storage than the bathroom at our old house which was several times larger.

Funny terlet.
We’ve come a long way in bathroom storage technology since 1941.

At the end of the hall, through another sliding door, is the master bedroom. Charlotte has already done some decorating here, recovering the headboard and adding some bright patterned wallpaper to the area above it. We bought a memory foam mattress to replace the thin spring mattress that was included with the RV. The mattress and bed platform lift up on gas springs to allow for storage underneath the bed. We have managed to pare down our wardrobes enough to fit into all the cabinets and drawers.

A bed, some closets and drawers for your clothes, and a place to charge your phone. What else do you need?

Welp, that about does her, wraps her all up. I’ll spare y’all (been in Texas for over a month now, I’ve earned it) from photos and tortured descriptions of outside storage compartments, air conditioning units, and pin boxes and such. So until next time, see you on down the road.

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Categories: rv adventures texas

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Early Adventures (and dishwashing)

We’re doing it! We’ve been living full time in our RV for almost a month now. We’ve towed the trailer from Papillion, Nebraska through two states, and all the way down to Gordonville, Texas. We’re starting to get settled into this new lifestyle, but we know we’ve got a lot left to learn.

One of the biggest surprises for us so far is how little free time we end up with. We’re working less, don’t have a commute, no social commitments or scheduled activities, so we should have tons of time, right? We had all sorts of big ideas about how we would use this newfound time to have fun and better ourselves. Going on walks or hikes, cooking new things, reading more, keeping the truck and trailer sparkling clean and well maintained, exercising, blogging, and catching up on movies/TV shows/video games on rainy days. You know, the kind of things you promise yourself you’ll do when you have one of those rare weekday days off with no commitments. Well, just like those days off, the hours of daylight disappear quickly and most of the items remain on the checklist undone.

Working remotely on the computer, childcare, and meal prep take up most of our days. Also, doing the dishes. We don’t have a dishwasher in our RV so everything has to be washed by hand. And while we do have a decently sized sink, we don’t have very much counter space. This means there isn’t much room to pile up dirty dishes, and there’s not much room to set clean dishes to dry. So we have to wash, dry and put away dishes at least three times a day; a truly Sisyphean task.

Hopefully, as we continue to get settled in, figure out a routine, and really get the hang of life on the road we’ll manage to maximize our time for more fun activities. We have managed to squeeze in a few adventures so far, though.

There was a fishing pond at our first stop at an RV park in Seneca, Kansas. We don’t trust her with hooks yet, but Isabel had fun casting a little plastic fish out into the pond and reeling it back in. While in the area we also found a pumpkin patch and stopped by for some fall festivities.

One morning while we were staying in Altamont, Kansas, Charlotte had to present a meeting over the phone and preferred to not have a rambunctious 3-year old just outside the door to the office. So Izzy and I went to go see Big Brutus, a 160 foot tall, 10 million pound coal shovel. It was a cold, rainy morning, and Izzy wasn’t too impressed, so we didn’t stay long. Later that weekend we were able to attend a fantastic Halloween party. Izzy was excited to find another little girl dressed up as Gecko from PJ Masks, just like her.

Big Brutus
Boo Bash in Altamont, Kansas

Just yesterday, we finally caught up with the nice weather we headed south for. Izzy and I went exploring and found a little sandy beach on the shore of Lake Texoma right next to the park where we’re staying. She had fun digging around and dipping her toes in the water, although she was disappointed she couldn’t go swimming.

Lake Texoma

We have some big adventures planned for next year, but so far they involve putting the RV in storage and getting on a plane. For the next few weeks, we’ll continue to learn what we’re doing while hopping around Texas and hopefully finding a few adventures along the way.

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Categories: kansas rv adventures texas

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