On The Road!

It's been a whirlwind couple of days for us.  Yesterday was spent doing last minute things in preparation to pull out and head down the road this morning.  DeWayne turned in his badge and security sticker, his cell phone and his truck.  And he came home at two o'clock, officially retired for good.  It was great! 

However, we didn't have the time to celebrate.  We waited long enough for the heat to let up a little and we set about washing the RV and the truck.  They were both in dire need of a bath.  We got Dad's pressure washer, a long brush and a bucket of soapy water and got to work:

I took this picture about halfway through washing the RV, then went back to doing the rinsing as DeWayne handled the brush.  Dad's camper is parked behind where DeWayne is standing in the picture and I was standing in the same spot when I took the rinsing duties over again.  Well, there was apparently a nest of red wasps in the tongue of his trailer and they apparently didn't care for the noise of the pressure washer, so you can guess what happened next.  One of them flew right over and dive bombed what it thought was the best thing to attack which was the hand on the p/w.  The little ^%#^*&^ nabbed me right on the knuckle of my ring finger.  Needless to say, I promptly dropped the pressure washer!  So after a few choice words, some baking soda, and some wasp spray, we went back to the task.  We were almost out of daylight when we finally finished the RV and did a quick wash job on the truck......whew!

Bless Eula's heart, she had a big pot of chicken spaghetti ready and waiting for us as soon as we got finished, and we were plenty hungry.  It was yummy!  I just love her cooking and she spoils me rotten every chance she gets.  Dang, I miss her and Daddy already!

Ginger and daughter Jana made a point to be there before we left.  Ginger was taking Jana to visit with her other grandmother for the weekend while Ginger was going to spend the weekend visiting with her brothers, so they stopped on their way through to send us off with hugs and "I love you's".  I'm gonna miss my girls!!!

DeWayne went out to get the satellite ready to go and unhook all the lines and hoses and promptly got stung by a red wasp!   After a string of, shall we say, "colorful" language on his part, he got back to work and set about hooking the RV to the truck and, of course Daddy was there to help, who ALSO GOT STUNG BY A WASP.  I think between the three of us geting stung, his camper has now be literally bathed in wasp spray. 

I laughed when I saw this picture.  It looks like Daddy is hugging the RV, but is actually operating the button for the stabilizers on the front.

So we were finally hooked up and ready to pull out.

We paused long enough to pose and say cheese:

Good thing we're heading for the beach.  I could blind somebody with those pasty white legs!

And it was back to work.  DeWayne pulled out of the spot we have enjoyed so much since September and onto the driveway.

While I took a parting shot of our gracious hosts that we will miss so much:

So we exchanged more hugs and "I love you's", loaded up and were off.

We took our time, didn't get in a hurry and had a nice leisurely drive to Jay, Oklahoma.  We plugged the coordinates into our GPS system, sat back and let "Maybelle" guide us and she did a great job.  However......

as we arrived in Jay, we were directed through a residential part of town, winding around through odd streets til we found ourselves on a two lane road that was little more than what I call a "cow trail" with no shoulders, "S" curves and roller coaster hills and Maybelle indicated we still had around 20 miles to go.  Egads!  The hills were so steep that as we topped them, we could only see the hood of the truck because the road dropped down so drastically.  We drove over hill after hill this way with those s curves in between.  It was hard to get enough speed up going around those sharp curves to tackle the next hill, so we crawled over a couple of them.  Needless to say, we were "white knuckling" it and praying that Maybelle hadn't sent us on a wild goose chase because if the road didn't improve, it would be impossible to find a place big enough to turn a 38' trailer around.  I snapped this pic along the way:

Imagine our relief when this finally popped up in the windshield:

Pulling up to the RV park office, DeWayne spoke to the person in charge who told him there is a much simpler way to get here on much better roads.  So, it's time to have a long talk with "Maybelle" who's sweet voice guided so expertly down the WRONG road today.  Okay, she got us here....I'll give her that much.  But from now on, we'll have a detailed yahoo map as backup, as well as the road atlas for clarification BEFORE we get led down the wrong route. 

Chalk it up to "learn the hard way" as well as a few other things we learned today.  I'll share my list:

1.  Do not leave a full bottle of olive oil in the top cabinet which will fall out, roll across the room, lose it's lid and leave a large oil spot in the carpet.

2.  Move the canned veggies to the bottom shelf of the pantry instead of the same cabinet that the olive oil fell out of.  I don't enjoy crawling around behind the recliner to retrieve yet another can of corn.

3.  Place the stereo on the floor and never leave it on the counter again for it to scoot around, pop it's little door open and empty out half of the 50 cd's that it holds onto the floor.

4.  Empty the paper shredder when it's been used so that when it falls over in the floor, it doesn't cough up a ton of little paper shreds all over the carpet.

5.  Don't go bouncing to the bedroom and jerking open the bathroom cabinet after a trip without steel toed boots and some kind of body protection against the various toiletry items that are sure to be raining down as soon as the cabinet door is opened.  (I think I broke a toe when the perfume took a dive).

6.  Secure the refrigerator doors as not to find frozen chicken in DeWayne's office chair along with a melting tray full of ice.

So, how's that for the first day of our full-timing lifestye?  I don't know about you, but I'm tired!  I think I'll shut up, get my "farming" done and get off to bed.  Tune in tomorrow for the latest in our adventure!

Oh, I almost forgot the puppy pic.  I'll leave you with this shot of "Sugar":

Happy Trails!!!