Time to Move On

March 20, 2015

Wow!  I can't believe how long it's been since the last blog.  We've had a really busy month and a half!

We attended the Escapees Rally in Tucson this year and made some really awesome friends that we intend to keep in contact with while we travel down the road. 

New friends!!

We also graduate from the Escapees Boot Camp.  This was an intense 3 days of courses for newbies on the road.  Some of the content we had found out by the school of hard knocks in our travels since we left Bend last October.  The classes I found really helpful were:  understanding your refrigerator (believe it or not, this is really important), how to escape in case of a fire and making sure your emergency exit works, tire inflation and what is required for an individual rig.  We were able to also get weighed with "Smart Weigh".  The two biggest concerns in driving a rig as big as ours is fire or tire blowout.  We had our rig weighed with Smart Weigh which checks the weight over each tire.  We were really encouraged to find out that we were underweight by 4,500 pounds.  (No that doesn't mean going on a buying spree.)  And, we were also able to look up the manufacture's recommended weight load and how much air we should have in our tires.  I know I'm starting to sound geeky here, but you don't want to have a blowout on the road (hint, if you do... speed up!)  We also discovered that it doesn't matter if your tires "look good" after 7 years.  There is a limited life for tires on big rigs and that is 5 to 7 years.  The term "use them or lose them" came up a lot.  So, depending on how much you can afford to travel, it's better to burn miles on the road.

We ended up back at Desert Trails after the Escapees event and decided to take time to plan our next moves.  Our intent is to make it to Nashville this summer and spend time with family.  My dad passed away this last month and the sibs will be getting together to have a private celebration of life for him. 

Starting on April 1st we will start on our journey eastward.  This will be a first for Mike and he's intent to work on his southern accent.  We need to make it to Livingston, TX so we can establish our Texas residency.  On our way we will spend a week each in Las Cruces, NM, Fort Stockton, TX, San Antonio, TX then finally at Rainbow's End RV Park in Livingston, TX where we have two weeks planned.  The stay there will depend on how quickly (or not) we are able to establish residency.  We also realize that since it's Spring, our travel may depend on the weather we encounter.  No tornados!

Our plan for post Texas is to make to the Natchez Trace Parkway starting in southern Mississippi and ending in Nashville.  Again, our travels will depend on the weather.  This trail has come highly recommended by a number of people, so we are really looking forward to it.

We are feeling the urge to move on from here even though we've reserved a spot here at Desert Trails for next year starting in November.  Spring has sprung here and so has the heat.  It's been in the 90's the last three days.  Time to move on to new stories and new friends!

Until later!