A Walmart Night

We don't stay in Walmart parking lots too often, but sometimes it just fits. Here we are at Walker, Louisiana spending a quiet night. For some reason, our Datastorm dish didn't want to connect to the Internet ... it seems to have something to do with the power provided by the generator. It's working fine now that we're back on electrical hookups. We're in Alabama now. Well - not as quiet as the Thousand Trails park the previous night! I posted some more photos of that stay on our Picasa Web Album. It was so nice! We left the Walmart at 8:30 am - that's REALLY early for us! Hey, without Internet there was nothing keeping us. So now it's early afternoon and we're already parked at our next destination - Styx River park, we've been here before. It's a Resorts of Distinction park, so no charge! And, there's a hot tub & pool here. Which is where we're going right now.

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Thousand Trails: Colorado River

We try to take advantage of our Thousand Trails membership whenever possible. The Colorado River TT Preserve is just about 80 miles south of Austin - right on our route. It's so peaceful and quiet. Lots of green. Being in the desert all winter, I've missed green! We always feel welcomed when we check in at a Thousand Trails, but the welcoming committee here was special! There are deer all over the place. Odie wants to run and play with them - but we're keeping him on a leash. Using Google Earth, we mapped out a nice 1 mile circular walk. We'll stay here a couple nights. Lots of email to catch up on.

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Austin and Frank

We only planned one specific stop in our current journey from Arizona to Florida. We had to go thru Austin and visit with Frank. Our RV travels are responsible both for creating this friendship and for giving us the means to keep it. We met Frank through our work with Wi-Fi and Frank's company, Coach Connect. Because of that work, we have spent quite a bit of time in Austin, Texas. It has become one of our favorite cities, with one of our favorite RV parks, and one of our favorite friends!

Here's our site at Oak Forest RV park:

And here's Frank with his new girlfriend, Beth. What a treat to meet her, and to get to spend some time with Frank. They came out to our motorhome and Jim cooked chicken on the grill. The weather is *perfect*. Then the next morning we met up with Frank and his parents for breakfast at the Austin famous Arkie's. This is our Austin family!

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Oasis in the Desert

What a perfectly lovely travel day. We got up early enough - 7am - to read a little email before partaking of the park's free breakfast in the clubhouse. Then a little more email before hitting the road at 11.

I drove the first 110 miles. I hardly ever drive, Jim does about 95% of the driving, but it seems I always drive thru El Paso, Texas. Geez that place is huge! Jim drove the last 120 miles, then we stopped for the night at Balmorhea State Park. We lost an hour with time zone change and still got parked by 5. What a nice place! It's one of those special finds that define why we love this lifestyle - and that gets passed on by word of mouth from one RVer to another. See the post on Andy and Diane's blog. There are about 50 RV sites - each one with it's own covered picnic table.

Then there is the pool - made to contain the 22 million gallon/day flow of Solomon Spring. What beautiful, crystal clear water. And it's a refreshing, but not cold, 75 degrees. Jim wanted to jump off the high diving board. I said, 'you're kidding, right?' But he wasn't. He even convinced me. I jumped 3 times. woo hoo More photos on the web album. Clicking on any of the photos above will take you there, then just use the arrows or click on Slide Show. Oh yea - and we got a call from Bob telling us that the next time he tried his Datastorm system, it raised, locked on to satellite and got him online in 3 minutes! Yes ... a perfect day.

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A Cosmic Plan

I love planning. Looking at a map, looking at a calendar thinking about our life goals.

BUT

I rarely follow a plan. Plans are meant to be discarded. Except the cosmic plan. Go with the flow and you'll be amazed at what happens.

Like yesterday. Bob called us in the morning because he was having some trouble with his Datastorm satellite dish and was hoping that Jim could help. I asked where they were and he said, "Benson, Arizona." Really?! Do you know where we are? I asked. He didn't. (the last time we saw each other was in Wyoming last summer)

Benson, Arizona!

Turns out we were about a mile from each other. We met and went out for a very nice Easter breakfast. We laugh a lot when the 4 of us get together.

Breakfast was great, the satellite stuff ... not so much. Jim did some standard upgrade stuff, stowed the dish and brought it back up. Nothing. Now he's kicking himself for touching it at all. It was actually online when he started ... it had taken over an hour when it should only take 10 minutes ... but it was online nonetheless. He did some work that should have improved it, now it's not online at all. AAAAaaaarrrrggghhhhh computer stuff takes so much time. We considered staying over another night and working on it again in the morning, but Bob and Polly seemed more concerned with holding us up than they did about their Internet access. I hope they're still lauging? We got on the road about 3 and headed into New Mexico, stopping at Las Cruces for the night. See the map at top right of this blog for more details. Click on 'View Larger Map.'

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