Tag Archives: Missouri

Texas, Oklahoma and Home: Concluding another RV Adventure

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After a goodbye breakfast with neighbours, we finished the last minute preparations, and left Mesa, Arizona shortly before noon on April 1st. At 4:30 we were in Winslow, Arizona sitting on the corner eating ice cream, while watching first-time visitors posing for the same pictures we had taken on our first visit.

Bold Jim eating Ice cream
World’s smallest church

When we’d finished the ice cream, we decided to call it a day. We found a campground listed in a flyer we’d picked up so called to reserve a spot. The woman implied that it was filling up quickly, and it was a good thing we’d called ahead. We didn’t expect a lot of amenities because the rates were fairly low, but when we arrived at Winslow Pride RV, we had difficulty recognizing it as a campground. It was located behind a convenience store. The gravel driveway was full of many water-filled potholes, and the water and electric hookups looked very doubtful.  We chose to use only the electrical since we still had plenty of water on-board. There were many empty spots.

IMG_1036

Water tap bearably visible, beside sewer connection.

We’d taken the same course, on I-40 through Gallup, and Tucumcari, New Mexico, through a corner of windy Texas, and into Oklahoma before, but this time the weather was warmer and there seemed to be more RV Campsites available.

We made one stop in McLean, Texas for lunch. McLean is one of the many towns that were once vibrant when Route 66 was the main highway crossing the nation and ran through them, bringing lots of business.  Now McLean is practically a ghost town with many boarded up buildings and dilapidated homes. Not one of the three museums was open, but we did find a The Chuck Wagon Diner, where we shared the daily special of cheeseburger meat loaf served with gravy (of course), mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, a fresh dinner roll and a piece of cake! Even shared it was too much food for us to finish, but it was tasty.

Near Oklahoma City we found a familiar RV Campground, Rockwell RV, where we stayed for the night.  The weather, that had been cooler after we left Arizona, had warmed up to 85°F.

Total length of this rig, including truck, trailer and towed vehicle -- 80 feet!

Total length of this rig, including truck, trailer and towed vehicle — 80 feet!

The next morning we drove into downtown Oklahoma City and spent a few hours enjoying the scenery along the River Walk and taking many, many photos of the magnificent, larger-than-life bronze statues depicting the Land Runs of 1889. Be sure to come back to click on the link and all the menu items on it. It’s a wondrous story. I did find the monument that honoured the natives from whom the land had originally been taken, disturbing.

We had lunch at jazmo’z Bourbon Street Cafe on the canal,

before getting onto the I-44 to Joplin, Missouri where we stayed for the night.

The next day we veered away from I-44 and took a scenic drive through the Ozarks on Hwy 265, stopping for lunch at Lambert’s Café (Home of the Tossed Rolls and extra large coffees) before getting back on course.

Caught it!

After that, home was our only goal. We stopped only for food, gas and sleep. Our last morning, in Erie, Pennsylvania, we woke up to find snow on the ground and Jim said, “I wish I’d listened to the GPS when she told us to make a U-turn when safe to do so!”

We were thankful that there was no snow when we arrived home by dinner time on April 7th.

I, for one, was happy to get out of the motor home that was feeling very cramped after seven months of living in it. But it was an excellent adventure!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this adventure. Thanks for joining us. Likes, comments and new followers are appreciated.

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More Challenges; More Food

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Each day we learn something more about this motor home. Yesterday morning when we were ready to leave Branson, I plugged the back-up camera back into the lower cigarette lighter, and the light didn’t come on. We checked different things, to no avail, but found that it would work when plugged into the dash portal. So we left it there and took off. The morning was foggy, visibility poor in some spots. We were barely onto the highway when a beeping started, coming from the back. After checking the CO2 detectors and pump and furnace switches, I finally determined that it was a fridge warning, but I couldn’t find the cause. Jim took the next exit off the highway in search of a place to stop. Five miles down the road we found a church with a large parking lot. By now all gauge lights and the fridge were no longer working. After fiddling with switches, Jim finally discovered that a button to disconnect the house battery had been switched off the night before, when he was trying to get the stabilizer jacks down. Turning that back on fixed the problem, but he still hasn’t been able to get the jacks to work.

We heard on the news the night before that a nasty winter storm was a couple of days behind us, so the only stop we made yesterday, other than for stretching our legs, was at the Lambert Cafe in Ozark, Missouri, advertised on billboards as the “Home of the Throwed  Roll.” We had to check that out!

It was only 11:30 and already the parking lot was half full.  We pulled into a bus parking spot – yes they come by the bus load. We were seated in a wooden booth in a room where the walls were covered with old tin advertising signs and licence plates. Helium Balloons floated from the backs of the seats. We ordered coffee to start and before we could look at the menu, we heard a cry, “Hot buns!  Hot buns!” We looked up to see a young man tossing dinner rolls to patrons who gave a nod or held up their hands. With a nod, we soon had one of those fresh-from-the-oven buns in our hands. We tore pieces of paper towel from the roll on the table to use for plates. Another fellow came by with a can of molasses and a spoon. When our coffee arrived and we gasped! The mug was the size of a coffee maker carafe.

LARGE coffee

Now that’s a LARGE coffee, the only size offered!

We ordered our lunch of pulled pork on a bun with candied yams and coleslaw, which would certainly satisfy us, but there was also a list of free sides that were delivered from pots to each table – deep fried okra, black-eyed peas, fried potatoes, tomato macaroni, and more. We tried some okra, and Jim tried some black-eyed peas. Everything was delicious, but far more than I could finish.

Lunch

Lunch?

The fellow across from us had a medium chief’s salad that was piled six inches high in a big bread bowl! A lunch menu it wasn’t! An interesting break in the day it was.

We continued on to Oklahoma City, where stopped for the night in Rockwell RV park.

Today we motored on, hoping to avoid the storm. Tonight we have stopped in Santa Rosa New Mexico, where the winds are already rocking us to sleep. The prediction for snow is light and low, but the temperatures are to drop before freezing, which worries us because we filled up our water tank and lines a few days back, when the weather was summer-like.  We’re also having trouble with the furnace, which suddenly refuses to shut off unless the power is turned off! We won’t be cold, unless we run out of propane.

Tune in tomorrow to learn how it all worked out. 🙂

From Ontario to Missouri

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We got off to a late start on Friday, with temperatures well below freezing. We had to wait for the furnace on the motor home to warm things up a bit before loading electronics and some liquids. Then, once the sun started to melt the snow on the roof, we discovered a leak around the newly replaced window. That meant that, once we were loaded, we had to make a quick detour back to the glass place for a fix.

We were just about at Hwy 115 when we ran into Tim Horton’s for what may be the last of our favourite coffee for a while. Jim had a conversation with a fellow biker while waiting in line, and he gave him some good advice – spray the bike with PAM to protect it from the snow and salt! That’s a tip he hadn’t heard before, and since there was plenty of salt on the roads when we left, we decided that a trip back to a grocery store for that always useful vegetable spray would be worthwhile. At 3:00 pm, just an hour and a half after we’d left our driveway, we were finally on our way.

Leaving The Snow

Leaving The Snow Behind

The roads were clear and the driving uneventful, but traffic was heavy and slow going through Toronto. We also drove into a bright sun for the later part of the afternoon. A stop in Milton for dinner didn’t make much difference in the traffic, and by 8:30 Jim was tired enough to call it a night. We spent that first night in our “new home” in a Flying J parking lot at St. Thomas, which was what we’d expected to do since there are no camp grounds or RV Parks open in Ontario this time of year.

We were up and eating breakfast at Denny’s by 6:00 am on Saturday. By 8:00 am we were crossing the border into the USA at Sarnia, with no problems. The rest of the day was unexciting, until we pulled into a Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Bloomington Michigan for dinner. Jim still had his foot on the gas pedal when a black car pulled up beside us and the driver motioned Jim to open his window. The fellow began a whole sob story about how he needed money for food and gas so he could get back home for Thanksgiving, or after, I’m not sure which. He offered his driver’s licence and registration as proof of his worthiness. When Jim said he couldn’t help him, he immediately backed up beside another car, then another, tearing around the parking lot like a maniac. He drove a newer looking large car. I wondered if begging was how he managed to pay for it. When we got into the restaurant and reported him, others had already beaten us to it and he was sent on his way. We parked in a TA Truck Stop that night.

This morning we decided it was time for a shower. We can’t fill our water tanks until they’ve been drained of the antifreeze, and we have a source of water, which will require a campsite with hookups. So we took advantage of the showers offered by TA. This was our first experience with this and it took several tries before we figured out how to do it. We had to pay ($13.00 each) at a kiosk to get a pass code to the private shower rooms. While we paid for the first one, a very nice trucker came by and said that he had extra shower credits that he would be glad to give us. He used his membership card to purchase the second shower for us. Somehow, we ended up with a third ticket. The friendly and helpful girl who looked after the showers spoke on our behalf and got us a refund on the one we’d actually paid for. The day was off to a good start, and the lovely warm, soft water, fresh towels and extremely clean shower room made it all the better. We were much later getting started today after all of this, but we were refreshed. Again the sun was shining. The country was flat and the drive a little boring until we crossed the bridge from Illinois to Missouri. Jim thought a side trip into St. Louis would be nice. I agreed, but worried a little about how we’d get around the city with our total of 46 feet of vehicles. My fears weren’t completely unfounded. We were trying to find a place to park near the Gateway Arch, and the waterfront. We started down one hill and could see the water at the bottom, but just as we hit the last block and approached a bridge, we saw the warning: Bridge height only 12ft. 2in.!

Low Bridge

I don’t think so!!

Now we aren’t sure just how high our new rig is, but it has to be close to that. So Jim had to back up the hill to the last intersection and turn the rig around! We then turned right, down another street that soon became a narrow road of cobblestones. For three blocks we slowly bumped over that before we found another street to take us to the waterfront. All along Leonor K. Sullivan Blvd, which borders the harbor, there were “No Parking, Tow-Away Zone” signs posted along the street. Several cars were parked there, but did we want to take a chance? Jim got out and talked to Santa Claus, a horse-drawn carriage driver, who told him where there was free RV parking further along the street.

Santa Claus

Santa Claus

What a beautiful day to get out and walk a bit. The temperature was around 20 degrees Celsius, apparently rare for this time of year. We took pictures of River Boats, and bridges, and the Arch; we took the tram to the top of the Arch and looked down. Two hours later, after getting lost once more, we found our way back to I-44 to continue our journey.

Gateway Arch

Gateway Arch

Tonight we’ve taken the evening off, in Sullivan Missouri. If this weather keeps up, tomorrow night we will find a campground where we can get charged up and filled up for the rest of the trip. Branson Missouri is also on tomorrow’s agenda.

A special thanks to Denny’s Restaurants for the great meals and internet access.