A gem of a trip awaits, on the road again

For the first time since March 16, we are on the road again with our mobile residence. It’s not that we haven’t traveled, because we’ve been to Buffalo, New York several times, I’ve been to visit my father twice and both sons from California have been here and gone with us in the intervening time.

But the trailer has been in mothballs since March.

The KOA office (that is not our trailer)

On Tuesday I took the trailer to our RV place for some needed maintenance and we had already packed the trailer for the trip south.

Basically what we are doing is taking a trip to Crater of the Diamonds in Arkansas and then we will finish the trip by dropping the trailer in Amarillo, Texas in preparation for our winter trip to Tucson, Arizona in January. Joan is hopeful that she will find the new Hope Diamond at the park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas.

This morning we headed over to Circle K RV to pick up the trailer and head out.  It was 30 degrees when we started out and the highest temperature of the day only got to 42 as we approached Terre Haute.

It turned out to be a cool, but calm day which always makes for pleasant driving. The winds were light, the roads were lightly traveled and we made decent time to our first stop at the KOA in Terre Haute, Indiana. This is actually the third time we have stayed in this park as it is exactly one decent day’s drive from home.

The last time we were here was March 15, the last day of our trip home from Texas. One of the perks of staying here is that when you check in they give you a small bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

“That’s why we come here,” Joan told the lady at the office.

This is our spot this year

With temperatures expected to fall below freezing tonight here we decided not to drain the anti-freeze from the trailer until we get to where it is a little warmer. So we had a microwave dinner, which included Joan cooking my microwave pancakes twice as long as they were supposed to which turned them into syrup covered hard tack. But I was hungry enough that they still tasted pretty good but I may need some dental work after trying hard to chew them.

It took a few minutes to set up our new television in the trailer, but we spent a warm evening enjoying college football. That includes a heart breaking loss by MSU to Nebraska. Congratulations to my stepmother who is a lifelong Cornhusker.

On the trip down we listened to the Michigan versus Minnesota game and the Florida versus Missouri game on the XM Radio stations.

Time out: 9:13 a.m.

Mileage out: 29366

Time in: 4:45 p.m.

Mileage in: 29772 (406 miles)