Tucson, Arizona

After leaving our new friends Andy & Laura's house, we arrived at our friends, Dan and Roxanne’s house in Tucson in the late afternoon and got the RV parked just as it was getting dark.  We were parked under a big structure in the back of their property.  Roxanne was away in New York on business so the we went to dinner with Dan and got caught up on life.

The next day we did a hike with Dan and his friend, Tim, in Saguaro National Park on the Douglas Spring Trail.  It was a beautiful day and a great hike!

We love the saguaro cactus so it was fun seeing all the different shapes!

We hiked to a waterfall (Arizona style)!  It's called Bridal Wreath Falls.

After the hike we went out to dinner for ribs with Dan.  Al and I split one rack and Dan ate the other rack!  Those of you that know Dan will not be surprised by this!

The next morning we had to leave early.  We said a quick hello to Roxanne who returned from her business trip late the night before and we drove to Surprise, Arizona to drop off our RV for some minor repairs.  The dealer will keep our RV over the holidays.  

We spent the night in a hotel on the border of Arizona and California to break up the long road trip.  The next day we drove to Al’s mom’s house where we are staying for the holidays. 

Note:  I'm planning to do a Q&A blog entry so click on the title (if you're reading this entry in email) and then on our blog page there is a place to send me a note (in the right side column).  Put any questions you have for us there and we'll try to answer them in an upcoming entry.  I won't include your name so don't worry about "stupid" questions.  I'm sure others have the same questions too but are afraid to ask!   

First Impressions and Running out of Diesel in the New Truck!

So we left Pecos after just one night in the campground and headed north west.  We drove on roads through the west Texas oil fields where there are no services (gas or food).  We got to one highway (62) and saw a sign stating no services for the next 110 miles.  The new Ford truck has so many gadgets and it said it had fuel for 130 more miles so we hoped it would make it.  Unfortunately, that gauge didn’t realize the Ford was towing a trailer so the actual miles remaining in the truck was much less.  Eventually the gauge got down to one mile left in the tank so Al found a good place to pull over.

Ok, it's not too bad.  We have two trucks so I took the Chevy another 30 miles in to El Paso, bought a canister and some diesel fuel and drove back to meet Al.  The spout on the canister wasn’t long enough to open the line to allow the diesel to enter the truck.  Around the same time as Al was trying to figure how to get the diesel into the truck, two guys pulled over in their pick up.  They had a big fuel tank in the truck bed with a nozzle.

Work truck with diesel tank

They offered to give us some diesel.  I was very nervous about these guys because of their look.  They had lots of tattoos and I think one had an ankle “bracelet”.  They got their truck lined up so the nozzle would reach our truck tank and Al started pumping fuel in to our tank.  The guys were all talking and not paying attention so when Al checked our gauge, he had pumped in about 20 gallons of diesel.  The guys must have been workers who service the oil trucks because the diesel they had was “red” diesel in their tank.  It’s the same diesel as the gas stations sell but it has a red dye to mark it since there are no taxes paid on this fuel.  If we got caught with this diesel in our truck, we could get in trouble and fined.  Anyway, after the 20 gallons, the guys left and wouldn’t take any money.  I got a lesson in first impressions!

Our Diesel Angels

We finally made it to our destination for the night, Hueco Tanks State Park and luckily, they had a campsite open for us.  We got settled in and relaxed after the stressful day.  It was cold outside but we kept nice and toasty in our RV.

Hueco is a Spanish word meaning hollows and refers to the many water-holding depressions in the boulders and rock faces throughout the region.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hueco_Tanks

The next morning we went for a hike and saw pictographs.  We climbed up the rock mountain where some parts were very steep and a chain was supplied to help with stability.  It didn't help that it was very, very windy!

One of many pictographs

Some "modern" graffiti over top the ancient pictographs from 1884!

We didn't have to check out of our campsite until 2PM so that allowed us time to hike around in the area and take showers before we hit the road.

Cotton Field near La Mesa, New Mexico
(looks like snow!)

We then drove to another Boondockers Welcome member’s house in La Mesa, New Mexico.  Andy and Laura were there waiting for us.  Al got the trailer parked in their long driveway and we went inside for some hot tea and to meet our new hosts.

Our trailer in Andy & Laura's driveway

Laura, Andy, and Nancy

Our hosts, Laura and Andy with Nancy, and Al

We had great conversations with Andy and Laura and ended up having dinner with them at their house.  We talked for hours and finally called it a night. The next morning the conversations picked right back up and we finally had to leave in order to get to our next destination of Tucson, Arizona before dark. 

We're Now Texas Residents

We drove from San Antonio, to Livingston, Texas to the Escapees Rainbows End park where we now have our new address.  This is the Escapees headquarters and we got to tour their facility and mail room.  Many people who live full-time in their RV’s use the Escapees for their mail and other club benefits.  The mail room was quite an operation and they are so large they have their own zip code!

Community Center

Headquarters

A very small section of their mail room!

Our campsite for the week

While waiting for our tour of their headquarters to start, we ran in to a couple that was at the San Antonio Grand Design Rally too!

The reason for going to Livingston was to get Texas driver’s licenses and register our RV.  The new Ford truck will already be registered in Texas since we bought it in Ft. Worth.  It’s easier to get this accomplished in this area because they are more familiar with people who live the full-time RV life style.  We had some county government hoops to jump through to complete the process and it was like a marathon visiting the correct agencies in the right order and getting all the correct papers needed but we accomplished it in 3 days.  One big hurdle for us was we didn’t bring our SSN cards with us so we needed to drive about an hour to Conroe to the SSN office to get a form proving our SSN belongs to us and then drive back the hour to their Department of Public Safety (DMV) and wait four hours in line to get our driver’s licenses. 

Texas State Flag

Finally, all the paperwork was completed and we could go have some fun! 

We’re trying to become Elks club members so we can use their RV benefits so we visited a local club in Huntsville for their Steak Dinner night.  Oh my, that was the best rib eye steak we’ve ever had!  The process of becoming an Elks member takes a couple of months and we don’t stand still that long so we’ll see how this works out. 

Another day we went to Lake Livingston.  They had a junior ranger program so we worked on earning another badge.  The lake was huge and it was a very wind day but provided a nice place to walk. 

Another part of establishing our residence in Livingston was visiting a local dentist for teeth cleanings.  We had appointments at an office that was more like an assembly line and nothing like the experience we have with our dentist in Irvine.  We got our teeth cleaned but we'll be looking for another dentist for future cleanings.  

After our stay in our new “home town” of Livingston, we drove to Ft. Worth with a stop over night at a Love’s truck stop south of Dallas to break up the trip.  With the purchase of the new truck, we’re watching our pennies even more so we wanted to try out a truck stop as a free place to stay.  Ok, we won’t be doing that again.  There were over 100 semi’s parked there and running their engines all night long.  With so much noise and activity we didn’t get much sleep that night!  Lesson learned!

Look how small we look next to that 18 wheeler!

After not getting much sleep at the Love's truck stop, we drove back to Sam and Sarah’s farm in Azle to spend the next 2 nights.  We loved staying on their farm and it’s close to the dealer where we purchased the Ford.  We got set up and off we went to pick up our new truck!

  

King Kong!

Next, we needed to get the hitch adjusted for the difference in height between the old Chevy and the new Ford.  That took longer than expected but we were able to find a place to do the work. 

I planned for an extra day in the area in case we couldn’t get everything done that we needed to the truck so we had a free day.  A cold front was coming and so we helped Sarah harvest the remaining peppers and vegetables from her garden before the frost killed the plants. 

Sarah's Canning Cabinet!

From Azle, we drove south west and spent the night in Pecos, Texas on our way back to California for the holidays.  We took turns driving the new Ford towing the trailer and the Chevy.  Pecos is an oil town and not much else.  We planned to spend two nights there but the campground was full of oil workers and their rigs so we decided to move along after just one night.

Next time I'll tell you how we ran out of diesel in the new truck!  

San Antonio, TX and Grand Design Rally

While we were in Azle, Texas, we bought a new truck!  After lots of research and visiting Chevy and Ford dealers along our route, we settled on a Ford 250 Lariat Diesel 4x4 long bed in Silver Spruce!  This thing is a monster!  We signed the papers but we didn’t want to drive two trucks further east with us so we left the new truck at the dealer to be picked up in a few weeks on our return trip west.  OMG, what did we just do?  (Photos coming!)

We left Sam & Sarah's farm and drove to San Antonio, Texas for the Grand Design Owners Rally.  Grand Design is the maker of our RV and I saw they were having a rally in San Antonio, a place I've always wanted to visit, so we added that to our itinerary.  The rally was held at the KOA so we got settled in and attended the events.  

We stayed in 2 different campsites during our stay.  Here is #1.

And here is #2. 

The campground was having some electrical work done after the rally so we needed to move to a different section of the campground to avoid any interruptions.

A fellow RVer taking their turtle for a walk!

The rally was held in a real nice facility and there were 103 Grand Design rigs present.

Here is the welcome ceremony with the wagon master, Terry.

One fun activity was playing corn hole with bean bags.  We found some other players and learned how to play.

As beginners luck, I managed to get all 3 bean bags in the hole during one of my turns so Al and I won the game!  Our opponents thought we were sand bagging them!

RV people know how to put on a pot luck!!! 

It was almost Halloween time so some people really got in to the spirit of decorating.

Funny Halloween decorations on an RV just like ours! (See the witches legs?)

We met nice people, learned a lot, ate really well, and picked up some good ideas at the rally!

After the rally we stayed some extra nights so we finally went downtown to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk. 

We took a bus from the campground and first stopped at the Alamo.

A very large tree in the courtyard.

My cousin told me there is a street we needed to visit behind the Alamo so we went searching for Blum (my maiden name) street.

Then we walked over to the Riverwalk.  The Riverwalk was more beautiful than I expected.  It helped that it was a beautiful fall day with comfortable temperatures!  The Riverwalk is long and windy and we walked a good distance and up and over different foot bridges.

Along the river walk there is a theatre and many restaurants and shops.  

The seating is on one side, 

and the stage on the other side.

 It was set up for Halloween and the Day of the Dead holidays.

Al taking a breather.

Marriage Island where many wedding ceremonies take place.

The landscaping along the river was just beautiful and very well maintained.

View from atop on of the foot bridges.  

While walking around, we ran in to a couple we met at the rally.  They had 2 tickets for a river cruise they weren’t using and gave them to us.  The boat ride was better than we expected!

At night the boats were lit by LED lights.

On our way back to the bus stop, we passed the Alamo again and it looked nice all lit up.

One highlight of driving in Texas is Buc-ees.  They are a gas station and convenience store on steroids!  They must have about 50+ gas pumps at each location and lots of food items inside with freshly prepared items.  The store is super clean too.  A must stop at any of the 40 Buc-ees along the freeways. 

Freshly made beef sandwiches and potato chips!

A little hint of fall!

Next we’re headed to Livingston, Texas to get our Texas driver’s licenses and register the RV.  We're becoming Texas residents!