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.
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.
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.