Day 34-38, 04/02-06/2022 Saturday-Wednesday: After a delicious chili Mac dinner the night before we got on the road Saturday with beautiful weather. We stopped for an early lunch at the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian, TX. This is the exact midpoint of the Mother Road, old Route 66. The cafe was the model for Flo’s Diner in the animated movie, Cars. They serve a great burger!
We stopped for the night at the Rocking A RV park off Highway 287 in Vernon, TX. Good place. We went to Walmart for a bit of shopping.
Sunday found us traveling on down 287 toward Dallas, but to avoid traveling through Dallas I had mapped our route to take highway 380 east and around to highway 69 south to pick up I-20 well east of Dallas. I picked a bad route! Very very congested heavy traffic for miles! Then to top it off we decided to stop for lunch in an area not conducive to towing a big fifth wheel trailer in. While Jeri went in to get us something to eat at a Burger King (the Popeyes was not serving inside) I had to slowly navigate our rig around in tight quarters because there was simply nowhere to park it. We finally made it out of the heavy traffic and enjoyed a fairly pleasant drive through the country down to I-20 East.
Jeri found us a overnight campsite at the TA Travel Center RV park in Greenwood, LA. It was okay, but nothing great.
Monday found us getting on I-49 south toward Lafayette, LA where we headed east on I-10. Our trailer brake problem had reoccurred, so we stopped at a rest area on I-49 and I cut the leads going to the driver side rear axle wheel and we got at least partial braking back and came home that way (no problem). We made it well over 400 miles to Biloxi, MS. Jet tried repeatedly to get us a reservation at the Boomtown Casino RV Park where we have stayed several times, but their phone system was messed up, so we made the decision to just pull into the casino so she could go inside and book us. Big mistake!
I inadvertently pulled the wrong way into a dead end one way part of the parking lot. There was only one way to extricate ourselves from this situation, back back out into a fairly busy street. A security guard noticed us and came over in his golf cart and exclaimed, “in 25 years here I’ve never seen this.” He was laughing, but helped us get backed out and over to the RV park. I tried to tip him a twenty, but he said he was not allowed to take tips. He got us a couple of other phone numbers and we got a campsite. Jeri, who normally gets a bit flustered when we get into the mostly rare difficult situations with the trailer handled this one very well. Me, I don’t get anxious or flustered because if you tow a big rig often and all over the Country, well, it’s just going to happen once in a while, so you just figure out what needs to be done and calmly do it and let the onlookers get a laugh. LOL
After unhooking the trailer I ran Jeri back over to the casino where she had a good run and won a few hundred dollars! I was so happy for her. She treated us to dinner again.
I observed the people overnighting next to us in a travel trailer hooking up and the woman told me bad weather was expected so they were getting a jump on pulling out the next morning. I checked the weather and yep, storms were predicted for that night and the next morning, so after dinner I hooked the trailer back up and disconnected shore power and water and stowed the stuff. We dry camped for the night. Fortunately it was not hot, so we didn’t suffer much. And of course no storm came! Only a light rain and it was not raining in the morning when we left.
Tuesday morning we continued toward home on I-10. We stopped at a Popeyes for lunch and almost got into another tight spot, but it ended up not being difficult. We had just got into Florida when Jeri checked the weather radar and said we are about to get hit with red (bad storm). Luckily we were very close to a rest area, so we ducked into it next to a row of small trees and napped through it, but it wasn’t all that severe. She got us the last available campsite at Falling Waters SP near Chipley, FL and we arrived and set up in the rain. I only connected to power.
Wednesday morning I dumped the tanks before leaving the park and we had a fairly easy run of a bit over 300 miles, arriving home around 4:00 PM or so. We pulled the trailer up in front of the house and parked in the street while we unloaded the fridge and some necessary things, then I took the trailer to storage. I will make several trips there over the next few days to get stuff and open everything out to dry completely.
Epilogue later.
Bill & Jeri RV Travels 