We left Livingston around 8:30 in the morning today.  A little later than I’d hoped, but Escapee’s do things a tad different.  You pay on your way out.  I guess you don’t have to worry about paying up front when you might just leave, but, it means my departure was delayed.  Also, the electricity was metered here, so you pay for that too.  Still, a very nice place to stay, and was less than $20 a night in the expensive spot. 🙂

So, Diane was up most of the day today.  It’s just the two of us and Francie (cat) and we’re getting back into the groove of rolling down the road.  Nice flat drive, with no winds / tail winds, and 70 mph speed limits.  Got some good gas mileage, and still made great time.

Our overnight is in Fort Stockton, TX, at the well named Fort Stockton RV Park.  Inexpensive, nice people, and an onsite cafe!  We made it 15 minutes before the cafe closed, and had a great take-home dinner of chicken fried steak, barbecue ribs, green beans, mashed potatoes, and drinks.  All for $6.00 each.  Oh, plus a slice of pound cake for desert.  Excellent!

Off to bed.  Will be an early out in the morning.

Well, we’re closing out our stay here in Texas.  We arrived last Sunday in Willis Texas at the Lake Conroe resort by Thousand Trails, and spent two nights there.  The drive between Willis and Livingston was about an hour each way, and after we had no luck getting the car registration transferred the first day, we decided to just move to Livingston and stay at the Escapee’s resort.  It’s $15.50 a day plus electricity, versus free at Thousand Trails, but the gas was going to cost a couple nights stay just to go back and forth.

We DID eventually have success getting both the RV and the car registered in Texas.  We also now have Texas insurance (significantly more expensive) and I have a Texas drivers license.  It’s amazing the hoops.  I had to show proof of insurance for the inspection, for the registration, and even to get the drivers license.  Each one wanted more “stuff”.  But, not much money.  The main reason we went through all of this was for me to be a resident of Texas.  The income tax savings will pay for the registration and drivers license in one month, and the next two months will pay for the extra insurance. So, I get 9 months of that extra dough for us. 🙂

We’re heading out tomorrow morning.  It will be a slightly later start than we usually have because we need to settle up with the RV park office on our way out and pay for our site and electricity.  Should also be a fun time, with rain in the forecast for most of our trek.  The goal is to be in Orange County sometime late(ish) Sunday.  Fingers crossed that all works out well and we don’t run into troubles on the way.

We’ve now used our recent Thousand Trails membership purchase, and we’re parked at their Lake Conroe facility in Willis, TX (about an hour north of Houston).  The drive from Louisiana was filled with LONG flat bridges over the bayou’s and such.  Lot’s of signs for Boudin and Cracklin, but we didn’t stop.  The GPS and other sources for directions suggested taking the non-Interstate route, which provided for some adventure and scenery, and did get us there in a timely manner.  Probably saved $20 or more in gas due to it being shorter.

This place has an interesting procedure for check in.  You start at the gate, and give them your member card.  For that, you get a map, and instructions to go pick out a site.  Not good after a long drive, with the sun about to set.  We found a spot, and then had to deal with the CRV having a dead battery.  Need to solve that one, as the towing setup was supposed to feed DC power back to the car so it wouldn’t drain the CRV battery.

Anyway, got a spot, got setup, got all the paperwork sorted, and found where the Laundry facilities are located.  Today is work, and investigation into the possible Texas drivers license and such.  Fridge needs some restocking too.  Oh, and there’s a place nearby that has BINGO… We might have to check it out.

Diane is still trying to recover from her cold.  Molly reports that she is much better, and enjoying her time with friends and grand-parents in California.  I’m just pushing on.  Hope to get the dash shelf, WiFi link, XM Radio, and CB Radio setup while we’re here, or at least as much as possible.

Diane and I had a nice drive from Georgia to Louisiana today.  Since our travels were taking us so close to Florida, we made a slight detour so that we could drive through Florida, and add another state sticker to our map.  Yeah, kinda cheating, but oh well. 🙂

We also made a bit of a detour and stayed on Interstate 10 so that we would drive down to New Orleans.  It was farther out of the way than I’d expected, but still cool to have done.  We talked about maybe hitting it up for a driving tour Sunday morning, but it’s just too far from our campsite.

I had found a Camping World that allowed overnight stays, but just not quite ready for that.  So, we stayed in Livingston, LA, at Lakeside RV Park.  Not the cheapest park, but VERY nice!  All the spaces are super level concrete pads with some form of picnic table and full hookups.  We didn’t make use of their facilities for the showers, but based on everything else I assume they were great as well.  Staff was friendly and cheapest propane on this trip so far.  Their posted monthly rates were really reasonable too.  Anyone planning on staying in the are for a bit would find it a great spot.

We’re off in the morning for the last bit to Texas.

We had a great time staying in Georgia.  Even though there was a bit of rain, and cold, and illness, it was a good stay.  Diane was able to re-meet her cousin and his family, and I got to meet and have dinner with them as well.  The RV Park we stayed at, Twin Lakes RV Park in Cumming, GA, was just a basic spot with hook ups and a flat space, but a good value.  I’m sure it’s even better in spring/summer when the tree’s a full of green leaves.  Molly and I enjoyed walking around the lakes while she was with us there.  The location worked well for us to in that it was close to most things we needed, and close to my companies office in Alpharetta.

So, we’ll be leaving here tomorrow, and off to Texas eventually.  Not sure where our mid-way overnight stop will be.

We left Sunday morning for the trip from Heiskell, TN to Cumming, GA.  I was being lazy and slow this morning, which led to a wet environment for me to deal with while hooking up the car, and disconnecting shore power.  Also made for a SLOW drive down.  It finally started to calm down about 30 miles into the Georgia border.  The GPS kept trying to take me down some “shorter” 2+ lane highways across Tennessee and Georgia, but I wasn’t falling for it.  Stayed on 75 to the loop, then 400 up.  Worked out great, and still came in only 10 minutes after the predicted GPS time from before my detour.

We pulled into the Twin Lakes RV Park with no issues, and found our name on a map and a spot set aside for us.  It is quite full here right now compared to the other times I came by to check it out.  Should be just fine.  We’ll hang out here this week for me to work in Alpharetta, and for the girls to explore and learn new stuff.

We headed out Saturday morning from Chellie’s, and started making the trek to Georgia.  It’s a 9 hour drive, which would need 2 gas stops, and likely take 10-11 hours in reality, and rain is forecast, so, we decided to take two days and stop in Heiskell, TN for the overnight.  There is an Escapee’s RV Park there.  Since we joined Escapee’s to use their mail forwarding service, we decided to try out one of their parks too.  It was definitely OK for the money.  Only $17 for the night, with full hook ups and cable.  I didn’t check out the restroom’s or showers due to the pouring rain Sunday morning, but I’m sure they were fine.  Very friendly staff for sure.

Well, we arrived at Chellie’s in Morgantown near sundown on Veteran’s Day.  A fairly nice state/county highway drive up from Evansville.  We’ve got a level spot here with electricity.  The facilities are really nice, with clean bathrooms and shower, and even a kitchen to use!  Best RV park ever! And so Exclusive!

We’ll have Thanksgiving at the clubhouse near Mom and Dad over in Terre Haute.  We saw them a couple days ago, and left Molly there for some Granny and Poppi alone time.

It’s nice and relaxing here, except for the lack of nearby dump site.

Not much more posting till we get going down to GA.  We bought a Thousand Trails membership, and are just waiting for the paperwork.  We expect to hang at many of their sites once we get back to CA/AZ area.

We left Nashville around 7am, and headed up to Evansville, IN, to check out the LST museum there.  My first ship in the Navy was the USS Sphinx, ARL-24.  The Sphinx was originally designated to be LST 963, but was converted after the keel was laid, as World War II was wrapping up at that time, and other types of ship were needed.

LST 325 has a pretty interesting history, and the most recent 10 years are pretty cool.  A group of old Navy guys went to Greece to get it going and bring it back.  You can read all about it here… http://www.lstmemorial.org/ It’s a working ship, and they take it out for a few weeks/months each year, up and down the rivers.

We arrived in time to be able to take part in the Veteran’s breakfast they had going on which was nice, and unexpected.  I’d kept out my USS Sphinx ball cap, so I fit in with many of the other vet’s.  After breakfast, we waited for the cleanup, then joined in for a tour.  It was fun for me, as I hadn’t been on the Sphinx since sometime in 1988 or 89, and it was bringing back some memories.  It is a bit different, but the engineering, birthing, and mess hall space are similar.  The big open area that houses tanks was filled with machinery for us, and some other storage or work areas.  All in all, everyone had a good time, and the girls enjoyed seeing something that was like the Sphinx.

After, we headed on up to Morgantown.

We made it to the KOA in Nashville, TN.  It was a tense drive getting through Nashville with all the road changes and wind, but we made it in one piece.  The CRV had spent too much time in “towed” mode, and so the battery was dead.  The workers at the KOA were kind enough to get our Propane tank filled, and to give me a jump for the CRV.

This KOA Kampground is pretty nice.  You can search YouTube for “KOA Nashville” and you’ll find some video of when the place was flooded out a couple years ago.  No sign of any problem at the campground, but the local mall is still closed.  The Grande Ole Opry stuff is all back up and running though, and the Gaylord Opryland is where the Invensys event was being held.

Overall the campground was nice for us.  Not crowded at all due to the time of year.  The only “issue” we really had was with the showers.  For whatever reason, they use one of the outdoor beach type shower heads.  These are the kind that just spray a big stream at you, and you cannot move them at all.  And, they were pointed right out of the shower into the changing area.  I had soaked shoes the first day before figuring this out.

As a post visit update… We got to eat at some new restaurants, although they are chains.  We’ve now experienced a Waffle House, as well as Bob Evans.  Thanks to Naomi B. for the great dinner at Bob Evans.  We’ll be back there for some breakfast goodies soon… Hold the Avocado.

Very soon, I’ll get Diane on here to share about the visits she and Molly made to the state capital and an Elephant sanctuary.