Mammoth Goes After Spring Migration, return

Friday 15 April 2022

Sandy Creek Campground to home
Planned time i4:30
Actual 5:13
Stops: quick gas stop and very quick pee stop

Return trip.  We got an early start, but hooking up and dumping time with cleaning out the tank took upward of 30 minutes. So we hauled out at 9:48 for a google maps time of 4:30

Unfortunately, our failure to fill up the gas tank on the drive to Sandy Creek meant that we were too low on gas to make it to the Love's Travel Stop on I-45. So we went to Lufkin, where there was a stop only 61 miles away. It wasn't really "off" our route--google maps said the I-45 route was only three minutes slower than the US-69 route. But we knew that taking US-69 meant a lot of painful driving through a multitude of small towns, each with a stoplight or two and a 30 mph speed limit.

So that is the route we chose, and we suffered for it. We also made it more painful by getting off US-69 accidentally in some small town near Lake Fork. I was dozing off and the GPS navigation was disabled--we were on 69 and all we had to do was stay on 69, right?

Not right. Somewhere in the town when three highways intersected, 69 took a left turn and the Mammoth Mobile kept going straight. When Ed finally woke me up by observing, "This doesn't look right," we were eight miles off the road.  

Luckily we didn't have to try to make a U-turn (almost impossible in a motorhome towing a vehicle), but were able to take a couple of little county roads over to US-69.

And that was all for the trip. It's a beautiful, beautiful drive through east Texas in the springtime. Grass has grown up tall enough on the roadsides to hide the ubiquitous litter and flowers have grown taller, to adorn them with yellow, red, and lavender bouquets in patches and spreads. When we got to Greenville, bluebonnets covered the ground. It was like a photo spread in National Geographic magazine.

We arrived at about 3:00.  Not a bad trip.

Notes
1. Sandy Creek park is nice. Come again, bring the boat, and get the same spot we were at this time or either of the two next to us. The one at the end of this piece of road is superb.
2. But DON'T come on a holiday weekend. How was I supposed to know that Good Friday was a holiday weekend?
3. Bring travel snacks of an assortment of fake hot dogs, fake cheese cubes, pickles, giardini.