"It's a small world after all...."

7:13 am - Friday - January 18th - Dallas, TX - 46º F, 94% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the southeast....cloudy today with a chance of rain this afternoon, however, we roll our wheels in a little over 2 hours!

On January 17th, 4 years ago, my beautiful daughter Sharon was married To Rod....she was such a beautiful bride!

My daughter Sharon's wedding day 4 years ago......left to right: Meredith, Katharine, Sharon, Chris and Tim

Thursday dawned clear and cool, but the operative word is 'clear'....no heavy cloud cover for a change!  In fact, it was quite sunny for most of the day!  I had several maintenance projects on which to focus my attention Thursday: 1) Clean the solar panels, 2) Apply 'Rain-X' to the windshield, and to both of the side windows in the 'cockpit', and 3) Fill up our 5 gallon gas can for our Predator generator.  'Rain-X' helps rain run off your windshield more quickly, and also prevents fogging.  I haven't applied it for some time, but with all the rain we have had lately it was time.

In between chores TLE and I walked for a mile along Northwest HWY, which borders the Elks Lodge here in Dallas.  On our walk we checked out the local Kroger Fuel Station for easy ingress and egress (their diesel price is $2.39/gallon).  Even though we have over half a tank of diesel, we cannot pass up this great price.  Diesel only seems to be more costly the further west we progress.

Upon our return to the Elks Lodge we retrieved the VW and drove over to the Kroger supermarket to do some shopping....the pantry shelves are getting a little empty.  After shopping we headed over to the Kroger station to fill up my 5 gallon gas can for the generator (Regular unleaded $1.79!).

A few months ago I was contacted on Facebook by a cousin I did not know I had.  Her mother was a Hockwald.  The father of her mother was Lewis Hockwald who was a brother to Lionel and Sigmund who founded Hockwald Chemical Company.  Both brothers were chemical engineers, and graduated from Stanford.  Together they developed formulas for household products still in wide use today such as 'Tide', Borax Soap, Lava Soap, Palmolive, and many others which do not come immediately to mind as I write.  I had seen the name 'Hockwald Chemical Company' in the L.A. phone book for years, but had no idea we were related.  At one time they were one of the largest landholders in the San Francisco area....amazing!

We knew we were coming through Dallas on our way west, and so I arranged with Cathy to meet for dinner Thursday night, which was our primary reason for stopping in Dallas for two days......

 Cousins Harry and Cathy to my right

....we met at 6 pm at Mi Cocina, a TexMex restaurant, for dinner and were joined by Cathy, her husband Wayne, and Cathy's brother, Harry.  We talked non-stop for over 2 hours about family history.  It was an amazing evening!  And the world gets smaller......by the by, the food was amazing....I had their brisket tacos.....yum!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Play it again, Sam.....

8:16 am - Thursday - January 17th - Dallas, TX - 53º F, 86% humidity, wind 9 mph out of the west.......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 58º F.

We awoke once again to leaden skies, and cold temperatures....a very familiar theme.  Our modest goal for the day was to make it to an Elks Lodge near Dallas, TX where we will drop our anchor for a couple of days before continuing our ever westward trek.  Our travel distance this day was just 147 miles.  Once again the Interstate was flat and straight most of our drive.  About 80 miles into our day we took advantage of a Rest Area for an extended break.......

Our Rest Area was the one circled in RED

.....typically Rest Areas are oval in layout, but this one was a very long rectangle.....how long?  Well I know because we walked up and then back down the 1/2 mile long sidewalk for a total of 1 mile of walking during our break (per TLE's GPS program on her phone).

  We arrived at the Elks Lodge about 1:45 pm after an uneventful drive.  There was one site left (50 amp no less) and we were able to back our 62' into that spot without blocking any parking traffic.  I plugged into the 50 amp receptacle and then went inside to dial in our DirecTV when we got a call from our daughter Meredith.  She calls us often when she is driving somewhere, and that was the case this day.  While we were talking to her I saw a truck and 5th wheel pull into the Lodge parking lot.  I'm thinking "Boy, I glad we got here when we did!" as I watch the gentleman park his rig and walk over to the Newell.  At first I'm thinking he thinks we are the camp host, but when I open the door he advises me he reserved the site I am in the day prior by calling the office.....DOH!  There is no indication on the website for this lodge that reservations are necessary, or allowed.  There are a number of Elks Lodges that allow, and in some cases, require a reservation due to their popularity, but they state so on their website.  Nonetheless, he had reserved and paid for our site, the last site, the day before.

So, what do we do?  It's still early in the afternoon (about 2 pm), so I ask him for some time for us to come up with a 'Plan B'.  First, I check the weather forecast....the low for night is forecast to be 52º F.....not too bad....so we decide to just move over to a far corner in the parking lot to dry camp for the night.  In the end I think we ended up with the best spot, because there is no one parked on either side of us.....total privacy.....

 I think plan 'B' worked out pretty well!

All of the others are crammed into the corner in the left background

.....by the time we disconnected, and repositioned the Newell it was after  3 pm, and time for a nap....at least for moi.  About 5 pm TLE began preparing our dinner, which consisted of baked talapia (fish), and roasted vegetables (sweet potatoes, onions, zucchini, potatoes, and garlic).  With all the cooking shows we watch I have become interested in TLE's cooking style, and how she prepares these amazing dishes from scratch day after day, so I am now taking time to watch her preparation, and asking a lot of questions.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll cook her a dinner some day.

After dinner we watched some TV, and then read before heading off to slumberland once again.....thank for stopping by!

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West of the Mississippi!

8:16 am - Wednesday - January 16th - Marshall, TX - 48º F, 82% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the north by northeast.......cloudy today with a forecast high of 54º F.

As has been mostly the case for the past 5 days we awoke to steely gray skies and temps in the 30's in Vidalia, LA.  It was the first time I had awakened west of the Mississippi since April 29, 2018.  I had one big task to accomplish before the 11 am checkout time (besides stowing the city water hose, and electrical cord), and that was to check out our non-functioning city water pump.  This water pump is quite important while we are underway, and while we are dry camping/boondocking.  It quit working sometime Monday afternoon on our way into Vidalia.  Since our Jello plan called for us to be dry camping Tuesday evening near Tyler, TX I needed to either get this one working, or remove it and install the backup water pump we have been carrying around for 10 years for just such a situation.

The last time I had to deal with a non-functioning city water pump was almost 11 years ago, before we retired.  We were going away for a long weekend in the Newell and I discovered the water pump was not working.  We were going to dry camp along the Pacific Ocean north of Ventura, CA and needed it to be working.  I was still learning about our new to us 1982 Newell and just assumed the pump was broken and needed to be replaced, so I ran out and bought a brand new one at a local RV store.  Without checking the electrical connections to the current pump I just removed it and installed the new one.  It also did not work.....hmmm.  Must be the electrical connections, right?  I checked both the supply wire and the ground wire and found the ground wire was bad, so I replaced it and the new pump began working.  Since, apparently, the old pump was, indeed, working I decided to save it and keep it for an emergency.  Well, 10+ years later that emergency had reared its ugly head.

This time I checked the ground and the supply wires first, and found them to be fine, so I just removed the old 'new' pump and reinstalled the original pump.....

 The now non-functioning Shurflo water pump removed, and back in its original box from 10 years ago

The original Shurflo water pump reinstalled after a 10 year hiatus.......it still works!

.....in all it took me about hour to reinstall the original Shurflo pump, and we were good to go.  It was now after 10 am and time to get rolling!

We still had some 50+ miles left to travel on US-425 north to I-20, and then another 170+ to our destination for the day.....Marshall, TX.  The last time we were in Texas was back in late April when we passed through Amarillo, TX......

 The birthplace of my brother-in-law, Glenn Parker

......when we had covered about half the distance TLE received a call from her sister, Laureen, advising we would be passing through the birthplace of her husband, Glenn....Mangham, LA.....TLE made sure to snap a picture of the town welcoming sign for posterity's sake.

US-425 is a divided highway all the way to I-20.....very nice highway!

Just before 12 pm we merged on to I-20 westbound, and within 30 miles came to a very nice Rest Area where we decided to take an extended break, including a 1 mile walk around the Rest Area.  We needed to take on some propane as our 60 gallon propane tank was down to 1/4 full.  That's probably good for another few weeks, but I am all about taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves, and there was a Flying 'J' truck stop about 20 miles before Marshall, TX that had a propane station, so we exited the Interstate around 3:15 pm to do just that.  We received good service and were quickly back on the road after taking on 33.2 gallons of propane......hmmm....we had way more left than I thought....those rascally analog gauges can be so inaccurate!  

By 4 pm we had exited the Interstate just east of Marshall, TX to avail ourselves of another Passport America park.  We had planned to dry camp at a Cracker Barrel, but the temps were going to be very cold Tuesday night, so we opted to 'plug in' for $20.  In all we covered just over 235 miles and had a very good driving day.....flat and straight!  We finally got sun late in the day, but by the time the sun set it was to a steely gray sky once again.  

Thanks for stopping by!

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