your door.... You step into the Road, and if you don’t
keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might
be swept off to."
-J.R.R. Tolkien
Thursday, 13 December 2018 -- Home to Inks Lake State Park
We took 75 down to 35E to a tiny little cutoff between Temple and Georgetown which took us over some pretty narrow roads to Burnett. Not an ideal RV route. (SH 75 S to I-35E to FM2843 to FM 487 to TX-195 to TX-138 to FM 243 to TX 29.)
1. Planned distance: 246
2. Map time estimate: 4:21
3. Adjusted estimate: not done
4. Actual distance: probably pretty close
5. Actual time: 5:20
6. Two 15-minute stops, one for a pee and gear check; one for gas. Traffic in Plano and Richardson stunk; after that episodes of road construction slowed us down. But mostly good driving.
7. Average mph trip: 46 while moving: 51
There had been some rain earlier in the morning and intermittent storm clouds were looming ahead, but eventually it turned mostly clear and very, very windy. We were under a wind advisory until 6am with a 50% chance of showers overnight. But what would you expect? We were camping in December! Those fast-moving cold fronts they call "blue northers" are only to be expected.
During the previous two weeks Ed had been busy adding a new responsibility onto Mammoth. Mammoth the Money Eater is now Mammoth the Tow Truck. For the next trip and pretty much all of the next trips, she'll be pulling a little Mazda-3 behind. Bye=bye, my Mazda
What you can't see in this picture is that Mammoth is parked at a truck stop alongside a fairly normal-sized 18-wheeler. The total length of Mammoth plus Mazda is less than the length of the tractor and trailer. Which proves what Ed's been telling me--anywhere one of them can go, we can go too.
For the records, I-35 is mostly a mess from Waxahachi to Hillsboro. It should be six lanes the whole way, but so much is under construction you can't tell what it used to be before they slapped up walls and rerouted the traffic into a narrow mess. I don't remember any complete stops once we left Plano behind, but there were a lot of slowdowns.
Sadly--for me--my pilot had taken the time to load up his IPhone with music and comedy tracks for the trip. I like music and comedy myself, but some of it was very loud and required constant twiddling with the volume control. By me. And then when he bought a bag of Funyuns at the gas station and started shoveling them in with one hand while steering with the other, we spent more time on the buzzy strip at the side of the road than off it. Between the wind gusts, the 18-wheelers passing us at 75 miles per hour, Funyuns and Bruce Springsteen, I was developing a massive headache before we hit Waco.
The IPhone was navigating and the route it chose came dangerously near to cross-country. Just past Salado we headed west on FM 2843 and various other roads to Burnet, then TX-29 to the park road. Note for future: Burnet is a nice little town with plenty of places to fuel up for the road. Also it's near the center point of several edge-of-hill-country attractions. We'll probably be back there someday. The route was five miles shorter than the "big road" route through Killeen and Lampasas, which we took on the way back and determined that it was much more suitable for Mammoth-sized vehicles. In future we'll avoid as many FM's (farm-to-market roads) as possible.
We filled up in Burnet--the tank was a little under half full and we added 24 gallons for about $70. Ouch. So much for RV camping saving money over motels! By my calculations, with the side wind, the slowdowns on I-35, and the tow vehicle, we were doing about 9.7 miles per gallon. Will have to do.
We arrived at the park at about three o'clock. It was beautiful, from what we could see of it with our hoods battened down over our faces and eyes squinted shut. Even in the shelter of Mammoth, wind gusts were whipping us so hard we could barely walk in a straight line, let alone admire the scenery.
At five-thirty, when it was starting to get dark, I took the dogs for a second walk and fully expected little Zack to blow away. Luckily he has plenty of ballast in his heavy shoulders and front end. With his age and shape, his hind legs are puny.
We had a lot of free spaces to choose from, so of course we chose one right next to the water. Even with all the mammoth weight it felt like a strong enough gust would flip us over, letting us slither down the slope to the water's edge.
Coots and unidentified ducks were fishing in the calm water near the edge, but at nightfall they all disappeared. Sleep was on the way. Tomorrow should be calmer.
No comments:
Post a Comment