Ty, as well as Kismet and Princha, made themselves quite at home at Ann and Jerry’s house.
Dallas was a long, fun, productive, but not overly exciting stop - but exciting has a new definition after seeing dinosaur tracks. When we were in Austin, Tom had called around to see if he could find a garage where we could get some suspension work done on the truck. The closest he could find to Austin was in Cleburne, TX, which is actually closer to Dallas, so he scheduled a Thursday morning appointment at Quality Alignment & Brakes. He also scheduled to pick up a new Goodyear Wrangler and have it mounted with the Goodyear Wrangler we bought in Ciudad del Carmen in Mexico, but that was in North Dallas. It got a little complicated, but long story short, we left the Dinosaur Valley State Park on Tuesday morning, stopped at Quality to make sure our truck would fit in their doors, and headed up to North Dallas to get the new tire and visit with old family friends Ann and Jerry for the night.
“Old” is a misused word, but in this case it probably applies. Ann and Jerry are my parents’ age. In fact, they were friends of my parents before I was born…and even before they or my parents were married, so that whole “glint in the eye” thing doesn’t even apply. That’s how old “old” is here. Over the years, they stayed more in touch with my Aunt Dot than with my mom, and Tom and I hadn’t seen them since we’d stopped by in 2016, so I had to call my cousin Biz to make sure they were still alive and kicking before I arranged a visit. They are, and in fact they don’t seem to have aged a day since we saw them over six years ago. We couldn’t go through Dallas without checking in, so after making sure the truck fit in the Quality garage bay (it did), and getting the new tire, we headed to their house in north Dallas.
We had an absolutely wonderful visit. Talking to people who’ve known you since before you were born is wonderfully relaxing, and the day we spent with them went very quickly as we caught each other up on family events on both sides of the past few years, had a few great meals which I really enjoyed since they weren’t cooked by me in the camper (on top of being delicious, of course), and drank Jerry’s Manhattans, which is a drink I remember my parents drinking frequently, but which I would never mix myself. We also caught up on our laundry, let the dogs run around in their yard, took a long walk on a greenway trail heading north out of Dallas, and got what is basically the parental seal of approval on the camper build. We reluctantly said goodbye the next afternoon to head back to Cleburne to make sure we’d be at the shop early for the work on the camper, but not before promising to stop by when we swing back through Texas in the winter on our way to the West Coast to head up to Alaska.
We spent the next couple of nights in the Cleburne Walmart parking lot. It definitely won’t be the best place we spent time, but it was productive. The one day of work turned into two, which turned out to be a good thing since new shocks make the camper much more manageable on the highways at high speeds with semis zooming past. Quality also recommended a place where we could get our oil changed, which we did. We spent the whole day between truck appointments shopping for things we had put off buying until we were in the US, and we now both have shoes, some warmer clothes, various bits of hardware - and a television!
On Friday, the truck work was finished and we headed back towards Dallas to see a friend we had met in Belize. Sheryl is a birder who had visited us at Moonracer, and we’d kept in touch since we have lots of things in common - birds, dogs, conservation, living in the country, not to mention a bunch of mutual friends at this point - so we went to her house which felt so much like home to us she has no idea how close she came to having us stay for what could have been a long time, then went out for a delicious real Mexican lunch, before meeting her husband and saying goodbye (until we pass through again in the winter) before starting our trek north.
Sheryl gave us good directions to get to Oklahoma City, which was the next city on our capital quest. We left her place before 3PM and thought we’d at least get out of Texas, but we didn’t count on the Labor Day traffic. We worked our way north through Ft. Worth, but as we approached Denton, the next city in Texas, the traffic on the highway was so stop and go that we decided to get off and make our way on the back roads. By this time, it was also approaching 5PM, so we looked up parks and other likely overnight places on the phone, and decided to start ticking them off as we headed north, figuring we’d be turned away from at least the first few due to weekend campers’ reservations.
The first one we tried was the Ray Roberts Lake State Park Isle du Bois Unit in Pilot Park, TX. It’s a really nice state park, on the shore of a very pretty lake, with tons of hiking trails. They were, in fact, full, but when Tom explained that we didn’t need any hookups, they told us to park in the car park for the primitive camping sites, which was a win/win situation since they collected a camping fee for a site they didn’t have, and we got to pay the primitive camping fee rather than the RV with hookups fee - plus we had a really nice place to stay for the night. We walked on the trails, saw a beautiful sunset, and in the morning took the dogs for a long walk before topping off our water tanks and heading for Oklahoma City.
“Old” is a misused word, but in this case it probably applies. Ann and Jerry are my parents’ age. In fact, they were friends of my parents before I was born…and even before they or my parents were married, so that whole “glint in the eye” thing doesn’t even apply. That’s how old “old” is here. Over the years, they stayed more in touch with my Aunt Dot than with my mom, and Tom and I hadn’t seen them since we’d stopped by in 2016, so I had to call my cousin Biz to make sure they were still alive and kicking before I arranged a visit. They are, and in fact they don’t seem to have aged a day since we saw them over six years ago. We couldn’t go through Dallas without checking in, so after making sure the truck fit in the Quality garage bay (it did), and getting the new tire, we headed to their house in north Dallas.
We had an absolutely wonderful visit. Talking to people who’ve known you since before you were born is wonderfully relaxing, and the day we spent with them went very quickly as we caught each other up on family events on both sides of the past few years, had a few great meals which I really enjoyed since they weren’t cooked by me in the camper (on top of being delicious, of course), and drank Jerry’s Manhattans, which is a drink I remember my parents drinking frequently, but which I would never mix myself. We also caught up on our laundry, let the dogs run around in their yard, took a long walk on a greenway trail heading north out of Dallas, and got what is basically the parental seal of approval on the camper build. We reluctantly said goodbye the next afternoon to head back to Cleburne to make sure we’d be at the shop early for the work on the camper, but not before promising to stop by when we swing back through Texas in the winter on our way to the West Coast to head up to Alaska.
We spent the next couple of nights in the Cleburne Walmart parking lot. It definitely won’t be the best place we spent time, but it was productive. The one day of work turned into two, which turned out to be a good thing since new shocks make the camper much more manageable on the highways at high speeds with semis zooming past. Quality also recommended a place where we could get our oil changed, which we did. We spent the whole day between truck appointments shopping for things we had put off buying until we were in the US, and we now both have shoes, some warmer clothes, various bits of hardware - and a television!
On Friday, the truck work was finished and we headed back towards Dallas to see a friend we had met in Belize. Sheryl is a birder who had visited us at Moonracer, and we’d kept in touch since we have lots of things in common - birds, dogs, conservation, living in the country, not to mention a bunch of mutual friends at this point - so we went to her house which felt so much like home to us she has no idea how close she came to having us stay for what could have been a long time, then went out for a delicious real Mexican lunch, before meeting her husband and saying goodbye (until we pass through again in the winter) before starting our trek north.
Sheryl gave us good directions to get to Oklahoma City, which was the next city on our capital quest. We left her place before 3PM and thought we’d at least get out of Texas, but we didn’t count on the Labor Day traffic. We worked our way north through Ft. Worth, but as we approached Denton, the next city in Texas, the traffic on the highway was so stop and go that we decided to get off and make our way on the back roads. By this time, it was also approaching 5PM, so we looked up parks and other likely overnight places on the phone, and decided to start ticking them off as we headed north, figuring we’d be turned away from at least the first few due to weekend campers’ reservations.
The first one we tried was the Ray Roberts Lake State Park Isle du Bois Unit in Pilot Park, TX. It’s a really nice state park, on the shore of a very pretty lake, with tons of hiking trails. They were, in fact, full, but when Tom explained that we didn’t need any hookups, they told us to park in the car park for the primitive camping sites, which was a win/win situation since they collected a camping fee for a site they didn’t have, and we got to pay the primitive camping fee rather than the RV with hookups fee - plus we had a really nice place to stay for the night. We walked on the trails, saw a beautiful sunset, and in the morning took the dogs for a long walk before topping off our water tanks and heading for Oklahoma City.
Princha just *KNEW* Jerry needed her help frying bacon and parked herself in the middle of the kitchen floor. We were very glad nobody tripped over her since she saw absolutely no reason to move.
This is a no filters photo of the setting sun shining though the trees onto the forest floor at the Ray Roberts Lake State Park.
We were treated to a spectacular sunset.
Our campsite wasn’t bad either.