Monday, Leaving Yegua Creek

(August 17)

I can't get my head out of the mode of thinking that says "going home" means "back to work." I'm retired now! But since I need to check in with my contract manager and see about that broken laptop, "home" really does mean "back to work," sort of. Not to mention dealing with all sort of home maintenance activities. Blah.

Edward left before I was awake, for the 1-1/2 hour drive back to his work. And we had a slow, droopy Monday morning all by our lonesomes. The only problem with having a good time with friends ad family is the letdown feeling after they leave. After fixing breakfast and taking the dogs for a walk, I started to get ready to leave and didn't even bother carrying my binoculars. Stupid me--sure, there weren't many birds there, but there are always birds. For the near future, at least.

So the little bird down by the muddy lake shore went unidentified, while the dishes got done and put away, the chairs got stowed in the Mammoth compartment, and the trash got shuttled to the dumpster array. For some reason, instead of scattering dumpsters around the camping areas, they lined up five of them and put them far away on the road leading out.

We left at 11:00 and found that Molly was not a happy traveler this morning. she whined and moaned every time we hit a rumble strip and then intermittently whined and moaned or no apparent reason at all. Poor puppy; poor us.

I made a real goof. It should have been a simple drive over to I-45 and back north to Dallas. But I saw a cutoff over to I-45 that looked much shorter even though google maps said it was nine minutes slower. Well...nine minutes means something different in a car than it does in an RV towing a car. Every stoplight adds twice the time it would in a car, and every twist and turn slow us down a lot more than we normally need to.

As we approached the cutoff, a sign indicated a detour on some obscure county road, and I thought the sign meant that the road we were ON had the detour. But no sooner had we committed to the cutoff road did we realize that I was wrong--we were on the road with the detour--and there was absolutely no space to turn around. I kept telling Ed that if he could find any place to turn around, any at all, he should do so.

But he could not. We went on and soon were on a dirt road detour. I call them gravel roads but Texas calls them white-rock roads and google maps calls them "acceptable routes". Which they are not! Google has an option to "avoid tolls", "avoid highways", and "avoid ferries", but none of those are what we need. We need an options to AVOID UNPAVED ROADS AT ALL COSTS!!!!

This is not the first time Google maps has routed us down a gravel road, but I'm determined it will be the last. We finally got around the detour and ended up on the road under construction, with huge dump trucks in front and behind us. There was no way to get off and nothing to do but proceed. I kept looking for an guide car to come lead us along the one-lane portion, but it never came.

It seemed like forever. When we eventually reached pavement again we did not stop and kiss the ground, but instead put our fists out the window and shook them angrily at the poorly marked mess behind us.

After that failure of judgement, I survived the next ordeal of selecting a suitable truck stop where we could gas up. note for future: the Pilot Truck Stop in Buffalo is pretty nice, although the Valero's Travel Center a little farrther north looks good, too.

Molly's loose stools were still very much in evidence on the small strip of grass next to the huge expanse of pavement (necessary for big old trucks and tiny little Mammoth RVs to turn around in). But she went back in and during the rest of the ride made not a peep of complaining. So maybe that's what she was trying to tell us all along--not that she was lonely and scared and didn't want to be cooped up in the stupid cage, but, "I gotta go!'

The trip around Dallas was remarkably painless. It was nearing 4:00, and I expected traffic to be building up. We'd planned to go on around 635 to the 75 North Central Expressway exit, but the maps app warned us of lanes closed in Garland. So we did the usual detour--I-30 eastbound and then George Bush Turnpike westbound. And it was fine. Ed says that he prefers it in future, and I guess I do too. It's a couple of miles farther but much smoother and almost no traffic.

We arrived at 4:13 and by 5:00 were completely unloaded and hooked up. (Note: the only thing to hook up is the power supply and the extension cord for the freezer. I don't count the satellite dish in this, and of course we don't hook up water at home.)

NOTES:
1. Treat yourself to a small bag of cheese nips for the drive
2. Avoid weekend camping in August
3. Aggressively research routes! Never take an alternate route that's slower than the main route unless you have a good reason for it (like avoiding Houston). When you see a detour/road closed sign, read it carefully and pay attention.