The Stop and Start and Stop and Start Day

We all have days like this.  You go about your merry way and something stops you.  You deal with it, go along again, and something stops you.  That's the sort of day we've had today.

It started out fairly well, actually.  If you recall, we had bought an air mattress to put on top of the "sleeping slab" that was too hard.  Well, I must describe this to you.  First, you need to understand that the mattress supplied by Winnebago is a Queen SHORT, which is 5 or 6 inches shorter than the standard queen mattress.  Okay, I hadn't mentioned that Al's feet had always stuck out over the edges - that was little enough annoyance to overlook.  The waking up with aches and pains wasn't, so last night I stripped the bed, laid out the air mattress and attached the pump.  Within one minute the mattress was filled but Al decided he wanted a little more "give" so we let out a bit of air, I made it up, and some time later we retired.  Well, maybe we had let out a bit too much air because we discovered that getting into and out of the bed was like trying to climb over a field of JELLO - especially at the end with 5 or 6 inches hanging over the edge of the shorter, hard mattress!.  Plus, getting out of it in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom was nearly like skiing down a hill!  It was funny but not easy at all - tonight we're putting more air back into the thing!

The land still looked like this in the morning

Well, as I had mentioned yesterday, today's weather report threatened snow showers so in anticipation of this we packed up and left an hour earlier than usual, hoping to make good time to Junction, TX before any nasty weather happened.  On the way, we stopped at one of the many small town exits that boasted gas stations and pulled in.  As fate would have it, this grungy old pump DRIBBLED gas so slowly it took 15 minutes to put 21 gallons into the tank - but that wasn't all.  First, it was C*O*L*D out there and windy besides - and there I stood for all 15 minutes, shivering and trying to hide from the gusts and waiting for the automatic shut-off to tell me the tank was full.  Uh-oh - the automatic shut-off DIDN'T WORK and suddenly gasoline was splashing out and running down the side of the RV!  Lovely.  So now I'm not only cold and frustrated but my hands are covered in gasoline, I'm trying to wipe off the excess from the RV, and I spend the next 10 minutes trying to stop smelling like a cheap petroleum product.  BLEH!

But we moved on, enjoying the sights such as a wind farm that appeared out of the overcast, semi-foggy day.  We noticed a police car with its lights flashing that had stopped a motorist on the side of the road.  Thinking nothing of it, we passed it by, only to be stopped a short time later by that same police car.  It seems there's a  law in Texas that the officer explained to us, that requires a car to move to the far lane if a car is stopped on the road with its lights flashing.  If one can't move over one needs to slow down to at least 20 miles below the speed limit.  We hadn't known this so the cop was nice enough to let it pass but this was "stop" number two.  (so if you're ever driving in Texas, keep that tidbit in mind).  As an aside, as I thought about it, we've been traveling at about 20 mph less than the speed limit all along!


The limit on I-10 in Texas is 80mph during the day (it's lower at night - see the photo) and we average about 60!  Oh well - on we went, only to stop once again a short while later as Al's colitis acted up and we found a fortunate rest stop to pull into.

Okay, once more we went on our way, noticing that we crossed a whole lot of small bridges (each with a sign saying "watch for ice on bridges"), mostly none of which had any water under them until we were nearly at Junction.

Today's journey consisted of about 200 miles - thirty of which were "extra".  See, because Christmas is so near we wanted to make sure we had enough propane in the RV to provide heat through Sunday.  I can't think of anything more awful than sitting in a freezing RV on Christmas day, so another stop was in a small town called Ozona to look for a place that sold propane.  We found a place and filled up but for some reason our trusty Garmin led us astray!  Instead of leading us back to Route I-10 (which was actually only about a mile from where we found the propane) it led us down a rather nice country road for about 15 miles, only to show us a place to TURN AROUND and go back!!!  BAD GARMIN!!  Naughty!  Go sit in the corner!!  Well, it was a nice side trip anyhow, and we could tell the day was ending because as you can see from the picture below, the cows were beginning to parade their way back home.

Lots of cows, sheep, and goats on this trek

So that counted as our next "stop" though we really never stopped traveling.  While all this was going on we noticed the topography changing again - from scrubby little bushes to taller, well-filled out shrubbery and actual trees!  We had arrived in a temperate zone and left the desert country!  We still passed through a lot of long, slow hills and a few actual mountains - some of which had clearly had pieces chopped out of them in order to make the passes for cars.  The one below struck me as particularly obvious - as though a giant pie slicer had scooped out a wedge of mountain.  Interesting!

So we've finally reached Junction, where we stopped at a local restaurant to see how their "Country Fried Steak" compared to the same item we enjoyed so much the other night.  Nope - no comparison.  Oh well - another day another experiment.  

We've checked the weather report for "hereabouts", which speculates that the temperature won't quite drop to freezing, so we're taking a chance and have hooked up our water hose, hoping it won't freeze overnight but prepared with fresh water in the holding tank just in case.  Weatherman promises rain all day tomorrow between here and San Antonio, our next stop but fair weather for Christmas day.  Sadly, the temperature has been SERIOUSLY below the average for Texas - they usually expect 50s and 60s at this time of year and we'll be lucky if either city reaches 45!  Brr.  Yeah, I know - we're SO spoiled - but hey; we've been used to 60 and 70s at this time of year - 45 feels COLD to us!  We're still hoping to avoid any snow at all - but these days, who can tell?   We'll keep you posted!