New Mexico

We have completed the first week of our trip.  And we've also finished visiting our first state, New Mexico.  The desert in April feels GREAT!  High of 80's and lows of 30's at night.  Once we arrived at Bottomless State Park near Roswell, NM we were just relieved to have made it to our first destination.  Another little surprise was that we had good enough internet for Joe to work from the rig instead of having to drive into town everyday.  The state park we stayed in had 7 spring fed lakes and was located near the Pecos River.  Gorgeous clear water, and red cliffs surrounded us all around.  There weren't many campers there, besides us.  Everyday after dinner we all did a little hike together or just walked around to look at things.

Day 1- I took the girls into town to The Roswell Visitors Center, a free museum, and then spent the next 3 hours visiting several stores trying to get a phone and line added to our plan for Joe to work with.  I got enough literature at the visitors center to plan out the rest of the week.  Note to self, ALWAYS go to the Visitors Center on the first day!

Day 2- Ranger station and hang at the RV.  Played outside a lot, did a mile hike to see Lost Lake on Daddy's lunch break, and played at the playground.  Kids got a little more sun then I would have liked despite their hats.  Note to self, ALWAYS carry sunscreen and APPLY regularly!

Day 3- Free Zoo, Park for picnic lunch, and visit the Nature Preserve.  The nature preserve was really neat!  We watched a film on the park and did the auto tour around the wet lands.  I let Loralai sit in the front seat for this and she got a kick out of it.

Day 4- Finally took the girls swimming at one of the Bottomless Lakes.  Salty!  And cold!  Not Barton Springs Cold, but still very cold!  Loralai built a dam system in the sand and Juliet nursed for half an hour while looking around her.  We go back to the RV to collect Joe and visit the UFO Museum.  Blah.  Then dinner at Martin's Capital Cafe for some local food.  YUM!

Day 5- Drive to Bluewater State Park.  Short one night stay, but we all hung out on the lake's shore and skipped rocks for awhile and it was beautiful and special.  Bean through the biggest fit when we left the lake.  We hunted for our Easter Egg's in the morning and said "Good-bye" to NW.

The desert is beautiful in a way that I do not fully understand.  I've never spent much time in a desert before this week.  The nights and mornings a very cool.  The sky's are brilliant at night.  Although, after a few days, I was wishing for more trees and green.  Also a little disappointed that on all of our hikes, we didn't see so much as a lizard in the way of wildlife! 

It was a great start to our trip, as we are still very much feeling things out!  Somewhere around day 3, I started doing a little learning time with Loralai where we work on Math and Letters.  I'd like to build on that in the upcoming weeks with more time for art and sensory play.  May try some geocashing too and I plan to have the felt board made this week.  I did start her very first behavior chart and it's working out nicely.....for now.

Easter on the road was a little, tiny bit lonely.  We had a lot of fun dyeing the eggs and decorating them at the RV dinning table.  Then I hid them around our camp site the next morning.  A special prayer at dinner that evening, and that was about it for our Easter.  Since we were driving most of the day, I have some Extended Easter plans for tomorrow.  ;)

Loralai is starting to feel a little homesick.  She keeps asking, "Will my friends be there?", when I tell her we are going somewhere and she's desperate to meet ANY kid she sees!  She's also said a few times that she wants to go home.  This is a huge change for her and I'm sure it feels like we've already been gone a really long time to her.  I just try to help her meet EVERY kid that will stand near us long enough for me to start talking to them.  Other then that, we talk to Nana on the phone a lot and play with Mommy, Daddy, and Bean (who never seem to play "right" it seems). 

We just arrived in Flagstaff, AZ (about an hour from The Grand Canyon) today and will do some exploring tomorrow.  We are now ahead 2 hours earlier then our regular time in Austin.  Which means, Joe technically has to now get up at 5am for work each day!  LOL...  We'll see how he does tomorrow morning....  Staying at "Black Bart's RV Park".  http://www.blackbartssteakhouse.com/rv.html Nice having full hook-ups, including sewer so we don't have to worry about filling up our tanks during the week.  $28.65 a night means we are still coming in below my estimation for $30 a night.  :)

We miss you guys!!!!!  Muah!

WE DID IT! We Started Our Trip!

I half can't believe it, but we've done it!  After 2 months of delay and 8 months of planning, we finally left for our trip on April 1st!  April Fool's Day you say?  Yep.  There were no flat tires or trailers unhitching on the interstate, but we did have some "interesting" adventures....

We pulled out of the driveway 1 day, and 2 hours later then planned.  Lots of neighbors and friends sent us off with wonderful gift baskets, borrowed items, and kind words, honestly making us question why we were even leaving in the first place.  But that's the great thing about good friends, they encourage you to seek your happiness, even when you will miss one another so much (Insert Fantastic Friends and Family's Names Here...you know who you are)! 

So we waved goodbye to Nana, whom we'd miss so much, and headed out to our first planned destination....WALMART parking lot in Odessa, TX.  Things were going pretty well as we hit the road.  Mommy had packed several new toys and activities never before seen, and enough snacks to feed The Dugar family.  We made it past a lot of cows and wild flowers before we even had to turn on the DVD player.  Success!  Our little Beana decided to go easy on us and took a 2 hour nap.  Cool Rest stop.  Gas Station.  Gas Station.  Gas Station.  Damn this truck uses a lot of gas (12.2 mpg)!  Baby wakes up.  Loralai's movie ends.  Mom now in the backseat.  And I say, "Hey Joe, lets go to this cool state park I saw on this map instead of Walmart tonight.  It's only 30 mins further down the road."  He agrees.  We get to the park.  The park is called Monhana Sandhills SP.  It was truly JUST sand hills.  That's it.  No trees.   No park.  JUST SAND.  We took one look and both thought, "Who would come here???", and then I also thought, "SNAKES!!!"  Rather then pay the $20 to say here, we being the wise and experienced RVers that we are (3rd trip now), decided we would drive back the 30 miles we had just come to the Odessa Walmart.  We would actually end up staying at this Sandhills Park before the night was over, little did we know.

We go into Walmart, happy to finally be at our stopping point, to buy some stuff and find dinner.  The place was PACKED!!!  It was after 8pm on a week night.  Every person there had at least 3 kids with them.  Lines were 8+ baskets long.  "Whatever, we have arrived.  Lets get some food!"  As we shop we start to notice that a lot of the other customers are shopping in their PJ's, and are under the age of 21, with 2 kids.  As we wait for the better part of an hour in line, we also notice there are more face tattoos in this Walmart then Joe and I had ever seen in one place before.   Then your mind starts to really search around.  I saw what could be construed as gang attire and a baby with a shaved head (I'm not really sure what that means, but it worried me.).  We make it back to the RV silently to find that we have no electricity from the RV batteries.  We eat our food in the dark, and decide the Sandhills place didn't look so bad. 

So we drive back down the direction we had just come for 30 miles.  "60 extra miles total!  I wonder how much in gas that cost me!"  Thankfully the gates were open and there was an easy pull-through site.  Parked at 10:30pm and in bed, both Joe and I thinking, "What have we done!?!?!".

We woke up feeling better.  It's amazing how wonderful just having electricity can make you feel!!!  The girls actually loved playing in the sand.  And it was so soft!  Later found out we could have checked out sand boards to slide down the hills on (Next time!).  

Back on the road, we head to Roswell, NM.  Trip goes well and we find our destination, Bottomless Lakes SP.  And there is were we BE for the entire week. 

Couple of notes...

I have not had to figure out the laundry thing yet.  Yay!

Life still coming, bills to pay, calls to take, taxes to work on, emails to send.  Trying to minimize.

NO TV!

Traveling is fun!

Traveling is scary!

Having kids 24/7 is Hard Work!

I really wish I hadn't forgotten the humidifier!...and the peanut butter!

Chapped face.

Kids getting dirty and I like it!  REALLY  DIRTY!!!

RV Mods

I've been slaving away, depriving myself of sleep, in order to make some crucial mods to the rig!

Number one priority, kill the bad hotel decor!

Before: Beautiful hotel window "torture-ments"...

I removed the valences and faux curtains (yeah they were just for "looks") from above all the windows.

After: Homey window "treatments"

They were replaced with uber-inexpensive Ikea curtain rods and curtains we bought the fabric for and sewed in only one weekend (rained all weekend).  They are admittedly short in both directions, but pretty good, I think, for my first curtains ever (third thing I've sewed in my life).

Next priority, couch upholstery is ugly, looks/is dirty, and faux cushions are dumb.  Not to mention all the space under the couch is completely un-utilized!

Before: Ugly couch

I sewed and reupholstered the couch in a sage colored plush suede, also known as micro-fiber, and a host of other names.  Don't confuse this material with a leather product.  You can wipe spills right off of this stuff with a wet rag!  Also added two huge drawers in the space under the couch.

After: Lovely soft couch/short "double" bed - two big drawers.

Next, the dinette.  Also covered in the ugly upholstery.

Before: Ugly, non-cleanable/non-kid-friendly, dinette, who's cushions slide out from under you.

Reupholstered the bottom in a dark brown marine grade vinyl and attached it to a piece of ply wood.  No more sliding out form under you and super easy to clean.  Reupholstered the seat backs and trim wood with the same material as the couch.

After: Cleanable, kid friendly, pretty, functional dinette (next a table upgrade).

We decided painting would be great, but takes too long and would make it stinky for a while.  So Aubrey found a ton of great decals to decorate our rig with instead!

Chalkboard Decal - "The Menu" is going with us!

Border in Kids room.

Cool tree decal in the dining area.

Bathroom art...hehehe.

Master head board decoration.

No more bottled water!

GE double filtered water faucet.  The next best thing to self-chlorine treating water and/or reverse osmosis...at half the price.

(to be continued)

Our RV is much more homey now!  We leave in a week and we're super stoked about it!

Next mission,

1. Master bedroom curtains
2. Add 2,000 Watt Power Inverter, battery disconnect switch, huge fuse, and "house" surge arrestor.
3. Repair various minor water leaks and add 2 gallon pre-charged water tank and sediment filter to water pump.

-Joe

The Latest Itinerary

10 National Parks in 4 Months!

4/1- Roswell NM (Area 51)
4/8- Grand Canyon NP
4/15- Grand Canyon NP
4/22- Las Vegas/Hover Dam/Death Valley NP
4/29- Yosemite NP
5/6- Yosemite NP
5/13- Ashland OR (Redwood NP)
5/20- Portland OR
5/27- Olympia, WA (Mt. Rainier NP)
6/3- Forks WA (Olympic NP)
6/10- Seattle, WA
6/17- Spokane, WA
6/24- Great Falls, MT (National Forests EVERYWHERE!)
7/1- Great Falls, MT (Glacier NP)
7/8- Yellowstone NP
7/15- Yellowstone NP
7/22- Grand Tetons NP
7/29- Estes Park, CO (Rocky Mountain NP)
8/5- Flex Time
8/12- Flex Time

HOME

South Llano State Park~ Trip 2

We have just returned from the park with the wild turkeys!  See Joe and Juliet practicing their turkey calls.  And although we didn't actually see any turkeys, we had a really good time looking for them!  Loralai and Juliet's Oma and Opa camped next to us in their RV too.  That gave Joe and I the chance to ride our bikes up a ridge and see some great views together!  So fun to ride together again!!!  We played in the river, took lots of short hikes, Loralai rode her bike around the camp, and saw birds, bunnies, and deer.  Joe and I kept a running list of items we wished we'd had on this trip.  Leaving in 2 weeks for the LONG trip!  Yahoo!  I will post our revised destinations soon.

First time using RV tub.  Success!

The Delay...

Well as much as we don't like it, Joe and I have decided to delay our trip for at least another week.  We have some time on the tail end of our adventure to stretch it out if we want to.  The decision to delay a week is mostly fueled by the need to rent the house before we go.  We had a couple of interested parties, but they didn't pan out.  So we have been doing some work in the yard, mulching, fence painting, and packing up the house as much as possible and just hope to get a short-term renter soon!  Once we made this decision though, we feel good about it!  I mean, we still don't even have our hiking shoes (Going to REI tonight for those.)!  This also gives us more time to reupholster all the cushions in the RV, install mods, hang curtains, pack, etc.  I also have a few real estate deals that still need to be closed and I would prefer to be here for those.  I have some friends coming over tonight to give me some interior decorating/space saving advice in the RV.  Yay!  So our new departure date is  March 10th-ish! 

Putting Dad to work painting the fence!

The Maiden Voyage

Well we have just returned from our maiden voyage.  We went to Beuscher State Park in Smithville, just an hour away from home.   It rained.  A lot.  But it was good practice for what we have in store while traveling the west coast for 5+ months.  Loralai took a day to adjust.  And being cooped up with her for that day was hard.  But we did survive and things improved.  We got to camp and hooked up around 6pm in the dark and rain.  Joe did great!  I entertained the kids in the truck while he worked and got wet.  :)  Once in the RV, I made hamburgers and we all fell asleep around 8pm.  I then woke up at 2:30am from the very loud rain storm we were getting and stayed up until 4am when both the girls also woke up from the rain.  After some milk and cookies and books we all went back to sleep around 4:30am.  Day 2, up around 9am and made breakfast.  We had a break in the rain so we went fishing.  Really that amounted to Joe fishing, me holding a baby while she napped, and Loralai playing with the worms for an hour and a half.  We caught nothing and headed back to "home" for lunch.  Then I left for the store to get forgotten dinner supplies, honestly a very nice break from the kids!  The town store was so small I wanted to interview the check out girl about her life in a small town, but resisted.  Dinner and bed.  Day 3, great weather and we got a canoe to do more fishing.  We caught nothing, but the guy next to us had some live minnows as bait and gave one to Loralai.  So to her, we did catch a fish!  She named him Hooter, and played with him for an hour, covering him with mud and "teaching him to swim".  We released Hooter and headed back home to pack up and eat lunch before departing.  Loralai made a friend while we were readying the RV for departure and they ran around the camp together.  The girls and I went on a tiny hike while Joe dumped the tanks.  We were back at Longhorn Skwy by 3pm.

Much was learned on this trip! 

1. An RV is MUCH smaller than home!!!

2. You are never alone and it's never quiet!

3. My husband is AWESOME and so happy when camping, like a kid in a candy shop!

4. Loralai will take some time to adjust, but will be SO happy once she does!

5. Bean is happy anywhere!

6. It is possible to make friends while on the road (Thank you Loralai for showing me this!).

7. I love my family!  They are so much fun to be with.

8. Keep kids FED!  They throw less fits that way.

9. Fishing with kids is not very productive.

10. Setting up and breaking down camp takes a long dang time!!!!  Must plan for this!

11. MORE in the car activities are needed!  Are we there yet.......  Are we there yet.....

12. I will miss long, private showers.  I will miss them A LOT!

13. I will take some time to adjust as well, but seeing our beautiful country will be worth the adjustments needed.

14.  We need some more RV mods and supplies.  I'm thinking the outdoor patio extension that creates a second covered living space for $700 might just be worth it!

15. I have my work cut out for me!  But it will be an experience of a life time!

 

 

We depart in 2 weeks!