When we last left our intrepid explorers they were approaching Los Angeles. A suburb just to the south of it, to be precise.
That is where they (ok, we - enough of the third person stuff) visited Bryn’s half-sister who is valiantly fighting ALS. Bryn also celebrated her birthday there.
Eventually it was time to go, and it was obvious the weather and fires would not cooperate. So we made an early departure in an attempt to maximize travel before the heat set in. We took I-40 East, retracing much of the old Route 66. We took a brief lunch break at the southern edge of the Mojave Desert, with temperatures approaching 100, after which Bryn noticed that our spare tire was about to fall off of the back of the RV! We removed it quickly, stashed it in the back of the Honda and proceeded. We finally made it to Arizona and climbed the Mogollon Rim until the temperatures dropped back down to reasonable levels.
We spent one night in Seligman, then boondocked north of Williams, AZ, south of the Grand Canyon with a few dozen other like-minded RV’ers. After a few days we relocated to a spot south of Flagstaff, reuniting with several of the RV’s from near Williams.
After about a week there we made our way on over to Albuquerque. Our favorite park was full, booked! We ended up staying across the highway at a nearby park. We detoured a bit to visit Santa Fe for awhile,
then headed back to Texas.
We ended up at an interesting RV/Tiny Home park very near my brother’s house. We ended up staying a month, even though we only got to visit my parents twice, due to COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown/quarantine situations. The good news is that their facility is *very* careful and has managed to generally avoid outbreaks. (UPDATE: residents have now all been vaccinated!) We also got to spend time with my brother and his wife and catch up. And Bryn painted our kitchen cabinets.
While we were in town, we decided to purchase some mountain bicycles. We visited a couple of bike shops only to discover yet another item that Americans have gone crazy for is out of stock. The only bikes in stock started at around $500 each. In the end, we bought Schwinns from WalMart. They work just fine.
We spent a few nights at a friend’s ‘tiny ranch’ near Austin,and then on Nov. 16 we arrived in Livingston, Texas at the Escapees Rainbow’s End Park, their official headquarters. We were part of a ‘Winter Hangout’ where all participants quarantined and wore masks until we established a bit of a ‘pod’ after which we continued to drive separately and socially distance outdoors. We made some new friends and had some nice hikes, eventually leaving on January 1.
We drove east along the Gulf Coast, and yet warmth eluded us. Most nights were closer to forty degrees than anything else.
We are now wrapping up a month near Bushnell, Florida, at another Escapees RV Park. We are in between Tampa Bay and Orlando. It has been cold here as well, including one night when it was 29 degrees for a few hours. Fortunately no hoses froze up. Now it is finally warmer so of course we were under a tornado watch last night. Nothing worse than rain and lightning so that’s good.
While we have been here we have started switching our official domicile over to Florida. That’s right, we are no longer Texans! We are waiting on the license plates for the RV but everything else is finished. The main reason for this is so that we can take advantage of Florida Blue for our ACA health insurance. It is the only plan that I know of in the entire U.S. that has decent coverage across the country. That’s kinda important considering that we live in our RV full-time. We’ve been from Texas to Washington to California to Florida in seven months. Only in Texas did we have access to a covered health care network, if we had needed it.
So, that’s that. We hope to explore our new home state for a bit until the east coast warms up some. Maybe catch a rocket launch, see some Everglades, maybe Key West? After that we intend to see family in North Carolina (pending vaccinations) as well as some genealogy research both there and in Delaware. Then New England, fall leaves and all. Not counting Hawaii, those are the only states that neither of us have ever visited. Bryn really wants to see Maine, probably because she loves Stephen King novels so much…