All Gave Some. Some Gave All.
While Jan’s staying up at Brandi’s, I’ve been fighting the Toilet Wars once again.
The last battle was back in 2021, but it seems the enemy has regrouped and is on the attack once again.
The last time the problem was that the original toilet flange, the part that bolts the toilet to the floor, had deteriorated and cracked, a known problem in older RV’s. This made things loose. So all I had to do was unbolt the old flange from the floor and replace it with a new one, right?
Well, not quite, it seems.
Turns out that the old flange was not bolted to the floor, but epoxied. And the only way to get it up was to chisel it up. Which according to a lot of articles on RV.Net, can be a real mess. So my solution back in 2021 was to bolt a new flange on top of the old one. Which seems to have worked for over 3 years.
However it seems that the old flange has continued to deteriorate underneath the newer flange causing it to shift and also crack. So this time I’m shimming up the old flange and using a new metal flange instead of the old PVC one.
I picked up a bunch of parts at Home Depot this afternoon, covering every possible fix. Then I’ll return what I don’t need or use.
So tomorrow it’s back into the trenches once again.
Thought For The Day:
I Have Questions.
Your Retro-Preview Highlights –
2009 – Palm Beach and Banyan Trees
2010 – Gillette, WY and the American Coach Rally
2021 – A New Phone
And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™
May 27, 2009
El Rushbo & Banyan Trees…
Today Jan and I drove around sightseeing in the ritzy areas of Palm Beach.
One of the places we wanted to drive by was Rush Limbaugh’s compound.
You can’t see much from the road…
But the satellite view shows there’s a lot behind that gate…
Seems like I remember reading he paid $25 million for it.
While we were driving around, the thunderstorms were still rolling in, with the rain coming down in sheets.
One of the neat things around here are the banyan trees. Although normally associated with Africa and India, they seem to do real well around here.
We also drove by the famous Breakers Resort .
We had heard that they have a fabulous Sunday Brunch so we inquired about the price.
It was almost $100.00 per person!
For that price it had better be gold-plated and come with someone to hand-feed you.
For lunch, we ate at a Mexican restaurant called Amigos.
It was great. So great, in fact, we went back for supper.
Tomorrow we head north to Titusville for a few days.
May 27, 2010
Gillette, WY and the ACA…
Well, we made it out of Billings without getting snowed in this time.
We left Billings a little before 8 am heading for Gillette, WY about 240 miles away. We are going to spend the next four days at the American Coach Association (ACA) National Rally.
It was a pretty uneventful trip, though we did see some pronghorn antelope along the way.
We got into Gillette about 12:30 pm and drove over to the Cam-Plex, a large fairgrounds/meeting complex, and were led to our parking spot by a rally helper.
There are about 120 American Coaches here, and 9 vendors.
What was really a surprise for me is that about 3 coaches down from us is someone with the exact same coach as ours in the exact same 4 colors.
At 3:30 pm Jan and I sat in on a seminar given by a representative of Cummins Engines, the make of our 350 ISC Cummins engine. Dale Eddy discussed the maintenance and upkeep of our engines.
Then at 4:30 we attended a meeting for newcomers to the American Coach Association and got welcomed into the club. We also joined the Happy Wanderers, the ACA chapter for full-timers.
The rest of the afternoon was various social get-togethers, culminating in a hors d’oeuvres hour, followed by a presentation of the history of American Coaches.
We got back to our rig a little after 8 pm and settled in for the night.
May 27, 2011
Flat Irons and Ribeye’s . . .
My day started about 10:30 with hot coffee and some warm lemon braid bread. A great start, let me tell you.
A little after noon, our daughter Brandi called to say hi. She had gotten off early and was on her way home to start the long holiday weekend. She said that our grandson Landon who just turned 9 months a week ago, is now wearing 18-month clothes because he’s so tall.
My grandson, the NBA star!
About 1 Jan headed into Coarsegold to the Peddler’s Fair and Flea Market at the Coarsegold Historic Village, after making a stop at the bank and the Radio Shack in Oakhurst.
While she was gone I got back to work on the tail light problem. Picking up where I left off yesterday, I found that the problem with intermittent lights from the coach was caused by
a defective 3M Scotchlok inline splice that supplies 12 volts to the 5 wire to 4 wire converter box. The splice had come apart inside so that it looked OK, but caused the power to come and go. I replaced it with a new one and now I was good to go on the coach end.
To do a final test and check the brake light signal requires the coach to be running so the brake system is aired up and working. But I decided to wait until tomorrow to do this
A little further inspection quickly found two problems. A loose screw connection in the plug that connects the rig and the toad, and a bad crimp splice inside the left tail light housing.
Both of these were quickly repaired, so about 4:30 we headed into Oakhurst, and, after a lot of discussion, ended up at the Sweetwater Steakhouse.
We had passed by this place a number of times and it was always busy. And now we know why.
Jan had the Flat Iron steak and I had my usual Ribeye. And we both agreed they were great. I know mine was the best steak I’ve had in a long time. The place is not cheap, but it’s highly recommended.
And what would a great meal be, without a good cappuccino to top it off. So we did that too.
May 27, 2013
To all our Veterans . . .
Well, we had a little bit of rain today, just sprinkling on and off most of the day. It’s been staying in the 50’s and 60’s all the time we’ve been here, but by Friday it’s going to start getting into the 70’s. So it’s time to move north again.
Thursday morning we’ll leave here at South Lake Tahoe and head about 215 miles north to Likely, CA for one night and then another 235 miles up to the Bend/Sunriver Thousand Trails park on Friday. We stayed here a couple of years ago and are really looking forward to getting back for a couple of weeks.
I had originally planned to do some stuff outside today but the rain discouraged me from that, so I did inside stuff. One thing I did was finish up adding a 3rd 12v socket on the dashboard. Two is just never enough, and using one of those splitters just leaves too many cables laying around.
After a quiet afternoon, we decided to have dinner at the Lake Tahoe Pizza Company right outside the park entrance, and right across the street from Passaretti’s Italian Restaurant where we ate last night. The reviews were very good, and so was the food.
They make pretty much everything from scratch; their pizza dough, their pizza sauce, their salad dressings, everything. Really good. But unfortunately, we probably won’t have a chance to go back this trip.
Jan and I watched Rock My RV with Bret Michaels last night and thought it was pretty decent. It’s two 30-minute episodes together, each one a different project. The first one was a family’s 1998 Southwind Storm gasser, and the next was a T-shirt company’s tour bus.
The first episode was my favorite because I could relate to it more, although with all the stuff they did to it, I think it would have been cheaper to just buy the family a new RV. They pretty much stripped it down completely on the inside, and built it out from scratch. They even added living room and bedroom slides and a complete Power Gear leveler system. And then to top it off, a new paint job.
My question was after they added all this stuff, how much carry capacity did they still have?
The thing about the 2nd remodel that I found interesting was the fact that, rather than repaint the tour bus, they did a complete vinyl wrap. Since I’ve had the thought in my head about getting our coach repainted someday, I was interested in the cost of the two methods, because I had wondered about using a wrap instead of repainting.
On the first episode, they mentioned that a complete paint job runs between $15,000 and $30,000, which matches up with what I’ve heard. But I’d never heard any prices for a complete RV wrap job.
Well, on the 2nd episode, they quoted a complete RV vinyl warp at between $5,000 and $7,000. A much nicer amount. Sounds like it might be worth looking at further.
We like the show and have set our DVR to record all the episodes. I hope they continue to do some private RV’s, because if it becomes “All Tour Buses, All The Time”, it’ll just be a new version of “Extreme RV’s”, and we’ll stop watching.
Tomorrow we’re going to take another trip up to Virginia City to ride the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, and see some of the other attractions that didn’t open until the Memorial Day weekend. But, so we see some different scenery, we’ll take a new route and take the Carson City route into Virginia City.
May 27, 2014
Twice-Baked . . .
I didn’t finally get to bed until about 3 this morning, so I slept in until about 11. Then Jan and I headed out for our walk about 11:30. It was really nice this morning, mostly cloudy with a nice breeze.
About 2pm Jan and I headed out for some shopping. We are looking for a small shelf unit or cart to go at the end of the kitchen part of the slide. But it has to be moveable so the slide can come in. I think I’ve found something on Amazon, but thought we’d check locally before we ordered it.
But our stops at Lowe’s and Menard’s didn’t yield anything we liked, so I’ll order it online when we get home. Should be here Thursday.
On the way home we made a quick stop at Martin’s for a few things for our get-together tonight. Then it was back to the rig so Jan could prepare her Twice-Baked Potato Casserole and Garlic French Bread for tonight’s meal.
She was also nice enough to tell me to go take a nap, but I think it was just to get me out of her hair for a while. ‘Me time’, she calls it.
I don’t care what she calls it. I got a nap.
Joining us tonight was Al Hasselbart, the official Historian of the RV Museum here in Elkhart. We’ve known Al for a number of years, and it’s always fun to get together.
And along with Jan’s Twice-Baked Potato Casserole and Garlic French Bread, we ate until we hurt. In fact so much that no one wanted ‘dessert, or even asked about it.
Finishing up for today, I found a new toy. It’s a set of 3 remote controllable AC outlets, and two remotes. Each remote can control any switch and it has about a 60 foot ranges.
Super Switch Indoor Wireless Remote Control
Each outlet can handle 1000 Watts so it should be pretty reliable. I’ve got some ideas about how I want to use them, so I’ll let you know how they work.
Tomorrow, Shipshewana, maybe? We’ll see.
May 27, 2015
Almost As Good . . .
This blog covers the first day of our trip back to Prescott, on Tuesday, the 27th of May.
(I know, I know. I’ll get caught up eventually.)
I’m going to get back on schedule with today’s trip and then catch up with our weekend reunion after we’re back in Prescott tomorrow.
Today was the long run of our two-day trip back to Arizona and our rig. With our stops, the 826 miles normally takes us about 14 hours, so we were up at 5am to leave at 6. Last night after we got back to the hotel from our day on the Mississippi, I went back out and filled up, and also picked up a couple of roast beef sandwiches from the Arby’s across the street, a little change from our usual breakfast sandwiches.
We pulled out of the motel parking lot a few minutes after 6, so pretty much right on schedule, and headed west on I-70. We had thought about staying an extra day, or even taking 3 days to get back to the rig rather than 2, but it looked like we’d miss our window of opportunity.
Like when we came up here last week, the weather forecast showed Partly Cloudy all along our trip. But if we left a day or two later, or took longer, than the forecast was for Heavy Thunderstorms all along the way.
So today was the day.
But as would happen, as we were traveling around the south of St. Louis, the forecasted “Partly Cloudy” started coming down in sheets, but luckily only for about 20 minutes, and then it cleared up.
When our daughter Brandi called about 7:15, we were hoping it was to say they were back in Houston. They were scheduled on a 5:40am flight from St. Louis back to Houston, but as it turned out, because of all the flooding in Houston, Hobby Airport was not letting anyone land. They finally got off the ground about 8:45 after sitting on the plane for three hours. But they made it home safely so it all worked out.
We stopped for lunch in Tulsa at the same Raisin’ Cane’s Chicken Fingers we ate at on our trip up to Illinois. Still great. Cane’s has become our new favorite chicken place.
Although long, the rest of the trip went smoothly, getting us into Amarillo a little before 9pm. We wanted to eat before we got to the motel, but had been debating where. We had thought about the Big Texas Steakhouse, but it was really too late for a big steak.
Friends had been recommending the Coyote Bluff Café as a great hamburger place, and finding it was only one exit from our motel, we decided to give it a try.
Jan thinks it’s as good as Stomp’s down in Kemah, TX. Don’t know if I’d go quite that far but it’s close. Very close.
But you sure wouldn’t know it from the building. From the outside, it looks like a dump.
And the inside kind of is too.
But the burgers were anything but. Plump 1/2 lb. burgers, juicy and perfectly grilled and just delicious.
But unfortunately, after that great meal, it was on to the Motel from Hell.
But more about that tomorrow.
May 27, 2016
Email From The Dead . . .
Today started wet and dreary and then went downhill from there. It was raining when I got up at 11 and that continued all the rest of time until we left for Clear Lake around 2pm.
And then as soon as we got out on I-10 it just POURED down, slowing everyone until we were doing about 25 mph, in a 75 mph area. And then one person, just one, decided to put their emergency flashers on. And then almost everyone else did.
And suddenly, what had been a easy to track and separate group of vehicles in front of us became a swirling, flashing mass of orange and red lights, with no way to really tell who was stopped and who was moving. A bunch of maroons.
We made a pit stop at Brandi’s, and also picked up a couple of packages waiting for us. Then it was back on the road to Clear Lake. And then the real slow down began to appear.
Based on the live traffic data on our Garmin GPS, our 1 hour trip down to League City was going to take an additional 2 hours and 59 minutes, for a total of 4 hours. Bummer. But as we slowly got closer, the delay whittled down until the trip only took 2 and a half hours. Better than 4 hours, I guess.
We had originally planned to drop off my client’s laptop at their home in the Brittany Bay area of League City, but due to our delay, we didn’t have time before we had to meet our friends for dinner at 6pm. So our first stop was at our son Chris’ for a potty break, as well as to pick up our mail and drop off one of our Captain’s Chair’s armrests. Or rather just the insides without the foam or the leather cover.
I wanted to see if he could make me six new armrests to replace the ones I have now,. The original ones were made from two different pieces of OSB (Oriented Strand Board), or particle board. These two pieces were glued together around a steel armature that mounted the pivot rod at one end.
But over the years the glue has deteriorated and the arms have started to come apart. I put a couple of them of them back together using screws, but the screws just wallowed and came loose after a while.
So my idea is to see if Chris can cut six new armrest wooden frames out of 2×4’s. Then I’ll install the armatures in each new frame and mount them back on the chairs. BTW if you wondered how to get the armrests off the chairs, it’s really pretty easy.
Fold the armrest up until it’s vertical and parallel to the chair back. Then push in on the arm pivot point and rotate the arm on further back until it is again horizontal. At this point pull out on the arm as you rotate it back and forth slightly. Then just pull it completely free. Easy Peazy.
We meet our friends, Bob & Beth Young at Barcenas Mexican Restaurant. Right outside our subdivision, we have eaten here for 20 years or more, and it’s always great.
We’ve known Bob and Beth for a long time, and have watched their five kids grow up, and we always have a great time catching up.
Good food and great friends. It doesn’t get much better.
Finally saying our goodbyes a little after 7:30 we headed down to League City to drop the client’s laptop before turning around and heading back to Columbus. And after a pit stop at the Flying J in Brookshire, we finally got home about 10:30pm.
And although we didn’t see any problems when we came through, we did see three cars parked back up the hill from the low-lying bridge at the park entrance.
Don’t know if it was this bad,
or even this bad.
But I’m glad we weren’t trapped outside the park and had to wade in.]
I got an email a couple of days ago that really gave me a start. It was from a friend of ours . . . a dead friend of ours.
Our long-time friend Gina Ellis died a little over 3 years ago, and the SPAM email I received had the right (kind of unusual) name, but not the right ISP address. It was obviously one of those emails that want you to click the enclosed link, but strangely, it referred to me as ‘Greg’, while most of these are to ‘Gregory’.
Gina, we miss you.
And finishing up on a departed friend’s note, this past Wednesday we lost two more long-time friends, Richard Horner and Ron Walters.
They too will be missed.
May 27, 2017
What the Fudd?
It was really nice to sleep in this morning, snuggled in with our heated mattress pad. We both sleep a lot better when the bedroom is really cool, which works well with 40°-50° nights we’ve been having.
A number of other rigs starting moving in yesterday, I guess for the holiday weekend. There were only about six rigs when we got here, but a bunch more now.
And there are more rigs here than what you can see in these photos.
In addition, when we got home we found a note on our wipers from Dave and Joanne, a couple who were parked next to us a week or so ago when we overnighted at the Pioneer RV Park in Hermiston, OR. They’re here in the park so we’ll try to hook up with them tomorrow.
A little after 3pm Jan and I headed into RC to have linner at local Fuddruckers. We did stop off at the park office to re-up for our second week here. Then it was on to the Fuddruckers in Rushmore Mall. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve eaten at Fudd’s. Don’t know why it’s been so long, since it’s always good.
My favorite is their 8 oz. Ribeye Sandwich, a tender, juicy cut of meat. I got mine with bacon, and then added mayo, tomatoes, sliced onions, and pickles. And we split an order of potato wedges.
Jan went with a 1/2 pound burger, with grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, and guacamole, as well as other fixing’s.
Very good, but the service was a lot slower than we’ve experienced in the past.
Our next stop was a nearby Books-A-Million so Jan could look for a couple of magazines she wanted, but no luck. Our next stop was supposed to be Lowe’s, but we decided to save it for another day, and head on over to Wal-Mart for some groceries.
Then it was home for the night.
One thing I noticed kind of funny is that there is only a Lowe’s here in RC, but no Home Depot. Seems like usually they’re located within sight of each other.
Tomorrow we’ll stay home and try to avoid all the holiday hoorah. Jan fixed up a big batch of her famous chili so we’ll have that tomorrow and maybe Monday,
May 27, 2018
Oh My Gosh, That Smell!
I spent most of the day building a new website for a client. It was a pretty basic site with just seven pages of information and not much else.
So I decided to try out the new GoCentral website builder from Godaddy. Supposedly not nearly as powerful as their full-blown Website Builder 7, but it’s a lot cheaper.
GoCentral was dumbed down so that pretty much anyone can put together a nice-looking website and put it online. But it does this by limiting your choices and forcing you to use templates.
So next time, unless it’s a very simple site, I probably won’t use it again. It’s just too crippled. I think it might have been easier to just code it in good, old fashioned HTML.
FWIW it’s what its worth, here’s the site. http://huntsvillebigstorage.com/
A little before 2pm Jan and I headed up to Webster to have lunch at Rudy’s BBQ. Getting out of the truck, Jan said, “Oh My Gosh. That Smell.” And she was right. My mouth was watering before we even got in the door.
Although they were pretty busy we only had to wait in line for a couple of minutes before we were ordering our food.
Jan got the Baked Potato with Lean Brisket and a serving of their Three Bean Salad, while I got 8oz of Moist Brisket and a serving of their Green Chile Stew. All just as delicious as usual.
As I’ve mentioned before, Rudy’s is one of our three favorite BBQ chains, along with Famous Dave’s BBQ and Sonny’s BBQ. And Jim & Nick’s BBQ is a close 4th.
And as far as single locations, it’s Charlie Vergos Rendezvous in Memphis, TN, Golden Rule BBQ in Birmingham, AL, and of course Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ in Decatur, AL.
Big Bob’s is listed as one of the Top Ten BBQ in the US, and Golden Rule first opened in 1891, and is the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the state of Alabama.
And wouldn’t you know it, we’ll be eating at most of these on our upcoming trip next month. Then, following up on the ‘oldest’ restaurant theme, we’ll also be eating at Weidman’s in Meridian, MS on our way home, which has been around since 1870.
YUM!
Now you see why our blog Title is Our RV Adventures or Eating Our Way Across the USA.
On another note, on my way to the restroom at Rudy’s, I noticed this large poster on the wall.
I assume that it was someone who doesn’t want to survive an ‘Active Shooter’ who erased the date of the seminar, though it looks like it’s this Wednesday, the 30th.
But this being Texas, and the fact that one guy was open carrying in the parking lot, and that I noticed 3 or 4 suspicious bulges under people’s light summer clothing, I would imagine that it would be the ‘Active Shooter’ who wouldn’t survive very long. Good.
After Rudy’s we stopped by my client’s so I could pick up something, and also find out why the Shipping computer went offline. Again. When I tried to remote in last night to start a system image backup, I couldn’t connect because it was offline.
I finally got it working again, but I don’t know what happened to it. Hope it’s not something to do with the MS update problem from the other day.
Then coming back down to the Dickinson area, we dropped some more stuff off at the storage room. Slowly, but surely.
The Headline of the Day:
From the U.K. – Knives are too sharp and filing them down is the solution to soaring violent crime, judge says.
Wait. You mean taking away all the guns didn’t stop the killing? Who knew?
May 27, 2019
No Getup, Or Go . . .
Today, being Memorial Day, my client’s office was closed, but I’m not sure I could have made it in anyway.
Neither one of us wanted to even get out of bed, much less actually do anything, you know like unpack the four big suitcases littering the living room and the kitchen. But after getting some coffee into our veins, we were able to kind of move about. But neither of us felt like doing any unpacking, so mostly we just sat and talked about our trip and the fantastic time we had.
While we were still in London, I ordered a 10” digital photo frame from Amazon so it would be here when we got home. We already have one that displays family and RV travel photos, but I thought I would get a separate one just for our trip. So I did start going through the 2447 photos that I made along the way to decide which ones I want to load into it. But even that turned out to be more work than I wanted to do.
Our son Chris was in town for the day, so about 3:30 I called an Uber to take us up to Webster to meet him for lunch at King Food, and also give him the presents we had brought home for him, Linda, and Miss Piper.
Readers will remember that right before we left on our trip the radiator on our truck started leaking, but we had so much going on that I decided not to fool with it until we got back. I was thinking I’d just have a rental car waiting for us this morning but then discovered that the local Enterprise office wasn’t open due to the holiday. So I ordered for tomorrow morning.
Getting back to the rig, we did start making some inroads into the whole suitcase thing, at least enough to get some laundry going and putting away some things, but our hearts, and bodies, weren’t really into it.
Part of the problem is that we’re both still jet-lagged, more so than when we flew over to Europe. That, coupled with exhaustion, I guess.
Jan fell asleep on the sofa about 6pm, then came to bed when I did about midnight. But then she was up about 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.
Finishing up, a teaser from our visit to Versailles –The Hall of Mirrors.
May 27, 2021
Phones, Old and New . . .
Jan and I were on our way up to Clear Lake about 12:30 this afternoon, a little earlier than usual because I got a text saying that my new S21 Ultra phone had been delivered at the office, so we wanted to pick it up first before we had lunch at Snooze.
Not only was I impatient to get my hands on it, but I wanted to get it charging while we were eating breakfast so I brought one of my power bank chargers with me.
Then while we were waiting for our food, I opened the box and then let Jan help me pull off the protective film on the screen (Big Bang joke).
But when I tried to use the included USB cable to charge the phone, I ran into a problem. The cable had a USC-C connector on both ends, not just one. Normally there’s a USB 3.0 connector that plugs into charging ports and the USB-C on the other end.
But with the same ‘C’ connector on both ends it wouldn’t plug into my power bank, so I went back out to the car to get my cable from there.
While I was sitting there I went online and ordered a USB 2.0 to USB adapter like this so I can plug the cable into standard charger ports.
And I also ordered a second wireless charger so we’ll both have one.
Before we just had one, since only my S8+ could use one, and not Jan’s S5.
Turns out it was already about 60% charged, but it was 100% by the time we finished our meal. I did at least turn it on to watch it boot up but then turned it off when it asked to start the initialization.
Since I’m going to have the phone number switched from my S8+ to the S21, I thought I’d just let Verizon do it all, because after that they’ll need to switch Jan’s number on her S5 over to the S8+.
But I did download the User Guide so I could check out all the new features, which is where I discovered the possible use for the USB ‘C’ to ‘C’ connector.
It can be used to transfer all the data from the old phone to the new phone.
Then it was back down to the NTB to get the new tires for our Jeep. With that done, it was a quick HEB stop, a quick Cowboy Coffee stop, and then home for the night.
May 27, 2022
Since 1870 . . .
After grabbing a quick light breakfast at our La Quinta, we were on the way up I-59 by 9:30 with our first stop at Weidmann’s Restaurant in downtown Meridian MS.
Weidmann’s has been around since 1870 and is well-known throughout the South. We’ve eaten here a number of times over the years, and it’s a must-stop when we’re in the area.
One thing unique about Weidmann’s is the handmade crock filled with homemade Peanut Butter on every table, along with a basket of assorted crackers. The crocks date from WWII when there was a shortage of butter, so someone suggested that the owner substitute peanut butter. And a legend was born.
Jan got the Muffuletta with their homemade BBQ potato chips,
while I went with my usual 6 oz. New York Strip Po’boy, also with the BBQ chips.
Normally we would have started off with an order of their Fried Green Tomatoes, but we decided instead to finish up by sharing an order of their Praline Cheesecake Ala Mode.
And as it turned out, we both had half of our entrees left over anyway. So leftovers for later.
We got into Athens about 5pm, and got settled in. We’ll be here until Wednesday when we head down to Birmingham for more old friend get-togethers,
Tomorrow we’re getting together with my cousin Marjorie for lunch down at Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ in Decatur.
May 27, 2023
Home At Last . . .
After a so-so breakfast where they kept running out hot food at our Sleep Inn here in Baton Rouge we were loaded up and on our way home by about 9am. And the ‘loading up’ consisted of Jan and myself lugging all our stuff down the hallway and out to the Jeep because the one luggage cart they have had just disappeared.
So after our stay at the Sleep Inn in Pearl, MS two weeks ago at the beginning of our trip, and then this one at the end, Sleep Inn is now off our list.
After getting gas we were on our way over the Mississippi River bridge with no slow-downs, unlike Saturday weeks when there was bumper-to-bumper traffic for 3 or 4 miles from the bridge.
But we did lose almost 20 minutes due to the bumper-to-bumper traffic leading up the Lake Charles bridge, so I guess it all evened out.
After a bathroom break at the TX border rest area, we stopped for gas about 100 miles later at the Buc-ee’s in Baytown, and also to meet up with long-time friend’s Rudy and Caroline Legget who stopped off to welcome us back to Texas and to talk for a bit.
Now only about 45 miles from home, the end was in sight.
And getting back in our area we decided to have linner at Los Ramirez before going home.
Delicious. Glad to have Tex-Mex again.
Finally home afterwards, I turned the water back on, and then set the A/C back from 82° down to our usual 76.
Luckily it didn’t take too long to cool down.
We didn’t unpack much, but just took a nap.
There’s always tomorrow.
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