Author: barry.j.bentley@gmail.com

First, the good news for those of you who have been unable to sleep from the horror of the passenger seat malfunction preventing Therese from putting her feet up while enroute – Saturday evening,  I went to the nearest Lowe’s and bought a multimeter. With that, I was able to determine that the seat was not getting power from the coach. So, I decided to look harder for a blown fuse. Sure enough, hidden behind the black cover in the picture below, there are more fuses, including one for the passenger seat.

Sunday morning, I bought a replacement fuse (and some spares, of course) from a nearby Autozone. So Therese’ Mother’s Day present was a functional seat. Now you (and sometimes Therese, while on the open road) can sleep easy.

Our destination today was the American RV Resort, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which about 240 miles north of Las Cruces. Almost the entire trip was on Interstate 25. We proceeded at a leisurely 65 mph, 10 mph below the 75 posted limit. Traffic was light, and in particular there seemed to be far fewer trucks than usual. We took a few pictures on the road this time, which we haven’t been doing. The terrain is very different from what is considered scenic on the east coast – desert with almost no trees to speak of, but with impressive mountains in the distance.

The few towns that are on the way look like they are dying out – probably most young people there can’t wait to grow up enough to escape to someplace a bit more lively.

About 10 miles outside Albuquerque, we filled up the rig (7.0 mpg this time). Traffic picked up near Albuquerque, which of course is a pretty good-sized city. American RV Resort is on the southwestern side of it. When we pulled into our campsite, the odometer read 4174, so we covered an easy 242 miles. The campground is pretty densely packed, but we liked the fact that they have planted trees (practically the only ones for miles around) between the sites. The trees are a nice mixture of species, and they look to be 15 years old or so. The park owners must have their hands full keeping them alive in this arid climate.

Sunday evening, we got together Dawna Prahl Haley, an old friend from  West Chester, where her son Ian and our son Thomas were in preschool together. About 10 years ago, she moved to Santa Fe, which is about an hour northeast of Albuquerque. We went out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant that was quite good, and we had only a short wait despite the fact that it was Mother’s Day. It was great to catch up with her, and to hear her resident’s view of New Mexico and its quirks.

Monday morning, we set out for a day of sightseeing, in absolutely perfect weather conditions – mid-70’s, sunny and breezy. Our first stop was the Petroglyph National Monument. There, on an easy three-mile hike, you can see where indigenous tribes (and later, Spanish settlers) scratched designs and pictures into basalt volcanic rock. Some are purported to be three or four hundred years old, which they can apparently tell from the level of oxidation of the scratched surfaces.

To tell the truth, I’d skip this stop if we had it to do over.  Trigger warning: skip the rest of this paragraph if you are easily offended by non-politically correct speech.  To me, the Petroglyphs were about as impressive (actually maybe less so) than modern day graffiti. The signs say they have deep cultural significance to some of the tribes, but if that is the best they could do for artwork, then I hope they were better at something else. This is well after Michaelangelo sculpted the Pieta, and they’re scratching rocks? I personally suspect that these were either actually done by the young hooligans of the tribe blowing off steam as young hooligans have done since the beginning of time, or some hoax has been propagated on the unsuspecting public to make these things look old. Look at the pictures and judge for yourself. If you’re visiting the area, my advice is to spend time elsewhere.

We had a bit of a mishap at Petroglyph – in an attempt to take our daily allotment of one selfie, I nearly dropped the camera. I caught it, but in the process squished the lens in a bit. It is still working, but making a bit of a grinding noise when focusing and zooming in or out. At this point, we’re not sure whether it’s going to go the distance.

After Petroglyph National Monument, we went to El Malpais National Monument, which is about 70 miles west of Albuquerque, on Interstate 40 near Grants, NM. By the way, as far as I can tell, I-40 coincides with what used to be the famous Route 66, since we saw signs proclaiming “Historic Route 66” both in Grants and Albuquerque. But the road itself has been swallowed up by I-40, I guess.

El Malpais (which means “The Badlands” in Spanish) reminded us that if you get a choice between seeing something produced by nature or something produced by humans, pick nature every time. The visitor center was very nice (nearly deserted on this weekday in May) and the enthusiastic young attendant started up a really spectacular video about the northwest quadrant of New Mexico just for us in their comfortable 40 seat theater. The geology, and thus the scenery, in this area is astounding. It’s all a mile or more above sea level, with amazingly diverse desert scrub, lava flows, and sandstone escarpments all popping up seemingly at random as you drive around. El Malpais is quite large, and the most accessible part of it is along highway 117, four miles to the east of the visitor center off I-40. After about 10 miles on 117, you come to the Sandstone Bluffs Overlook, where you see one of those huge sandstone escarpments from the top. It looked like about 300 feet straight down, much too scary for us height pansies to get right up to the edge (where there were no railings or “keep off” signs, relying on visitors’ common sense and self-preservation rather than the usual nannying).

There were spectacular views in every direction. We were there – we saw it. You can look at the pictures, but you have to visit it yourself to get the real effect.

Next, another 10 miles or so further down Route  117, was La Ventana Arch – the largest accessible arch in New Mexico (there’s one larger, but it’s on an Indian reservation and you can’t get in to see it). A short trail gets you to within 500 yards of the arch, but that is as close as they allow visitors. It’s an impressive sight – it is basically carved into a sandstone cliff that is probably 300 feet high. There are both horizontal and vertical fissures that make you a little uneasy standing near it, but it held up at least for today.

Continuing down Route 117, you pass “The Narrows” on the way to the Laval Falls Area. You travel on the desert floor quite close to sandstone cliffs. A road sign depicts a car with rocks falling onto it. Luckily, that didn’t happen today.

At the Lava Falls Area, there is a hiking trail onto the youngest lava flow in the area, which is 2000-3000 years old. The contrast between that surface and the surrounding desert is quite remarkable. The rock is black, with deep cracks and some sinkholes (?) It is a porous, sharp edged stone to walk on.  We spent about a half an hour on the lava, and then decided that while impressive, there wasn’t a lot of variety to it, so we headed back.

Finally, in another 10 miles or so is the Chain of Craters Backwoods Byway, which is a dirt road that runs by a bunch of volcanic craters. It was pretty rough, and after we followed it for about six or seven miles, we decided to turn back, having proven the “off road” capabilities of our Jeep Grand Cherokee. At least we can say it’s been off the pavement, probably 90% of the ones they sell never get further off road than a mall parking lot. Unfortunately, the thorough cleaning we gave it a few days ago has been completely negated, both by the dust from the dirt and gravel roads, and the sudden bug storm we drove through.

That was enough for one day, so we headed back to the campground. Despite the desolate beauty of New Mexico, I am not sure why anyone would choose to live outside of the major population centers. It must take a more hardy-than-average person to put up with the dryness and isolation. Most of the housing in the towns (if you can call them that) along I-40 appears to be house trailers and manufactured housing, or makeshift tumbledown shacks with corrugated steel roofs. There are also quite a few buildings that appear to be abandoned in rural New Mexico. It is probably hard to find a way to make a living out there in the middle of nowhere. There are some large ranches that probably do ok, but the grazing area for cattle is so dried out that it must take 20 times the acreage per cow than it takes in Pennsylvania or some more moderate climate.

Tomorrow, we’re leaving for a comparatively short drive to Holbrook, Arizona to take a look at the Petrified Forest.

Thursday night, we called another audible. (When she read the previous post, Therese had no idea what “call an audible” meant. Now that she knows, she’s become quite fond of the expression and of calling them). We had planned to go camp near Carlsbad Caverns, in the southeast corner of New Mexico, but being that we have already been to one cave on this trip, we decided to visit Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument instead, which is in Las Cruces, in southwestern New Mexico. We called Hacienda RV Resort; they had a space for two nights, so we enthusiastically signed up, blithely sacrificing our deposit at Carlsbad KOA. Only then did Therese check her trusty smart phone to discover that it’s a 600 mile trip from Marble Falls to Las Cruces. So we set our alarm and got up early enough to be all hitched up for travel by 6:49 am – a  new personal best.

All but 20 miles of the drive were in the great big state of Texas. The first part of the trip was through the Texas hill country on route 281 and then route 290. Both are nice drives through picturesque peach orchards and wineries, with a few small towns (Therese declared Fredericksburg, in particular, was “cute” – I’m sure the town fathers are thrilled with that description). Both roads were mostly 4 lane, with a few 2-lane sections, and very little traffic. There was some construction going on in Fredericksburg, and I think I owe them for one smooshed traffic cone. They can put it on my tab along with the fine for the traffic light where I may have stretched the yellow a little thin. In Texas, they post high speed limits, and for large parts of both 281 and 290, it was 75 mph. That’s a little fast for the motorhome, but there are plenty of pickup trucks and cars that take full advantage of it.

Then we got on Interstate 10 west, and stayed on it for the remaining approximately 530 miles. The speed limit on I-10 is 80 mph, and there is very little traffic through the western part of Texas. You can see why – it is totally desolate. Scrub mesquite (I think) trees about 10 feet high, with fairly steep 200-400 foot flat topped hills, maybe a half mile long scattered about. I don’t know what geologic condition created those hills, but they repeat over hundreds of miles. The population density must be in fractions of a person per square mile, since for miles you can’t see any evidence of human habitation at all. You are also continuously climbing. Marble Falls is about 800’ above mean sea level, and our GPS altitude displayed as high as 4600 feet msl. That, combined with a stiff headwind for part of the time, and higher travel speed, resulted in our worse gas mileage to date when we filled up in Fort Stockton, 6.35. That’s pretty pathetic compared to the 7.3 we had recorded on the way to Marble Falls in comparatively flat terrain.

About the only thing that looked like a profitable use of the western Texas land was planting windmills on top of the above-mentioned hills, and there were hundreds of them. We also happened to see three trucks carrying what I am pretty sure were the blades of one of those windmills. They were at a rest stop on the other side of the interstate, so we only got a brief look as we went by the other way, but they appeared to be about 75’ long, with a wing chord of 12 feet or so. They have an interesting twist to them also, much like an airplane propeller. You don’t get an adequate sense of their scale when you see them turning on the top of hills.

The difficulty of driving the Dutch Star is highly affected by winds. If there is a significant crosswind, you really need to pay attention to keep it going where you want. When the wind dies down, as it did in the afternoon, it is much more stable. Luckily, not only was the traffic light for most of the drive, the winds died down after lunch and it was a pretty easy drive. We kept it between 69 and 72 mph, which it was able to hold for all but the steepest uphill parts.

The lack of traffic came to an abrupt end in El Paso, which is near the Texas – New Mexico state line. We got there about 3:20 (we gained an hour as we transitioned to mountain time about halfway), but it was already busy. They are also doing construction on I-10 through there, so the lanes were narrow, there were lots of big trucks to the left and right, and it was white-knuckle time for Barry, while Therese blissfully slept through it, oblivious to possible disaster.

Las Cruces is right past the state line, and we arrived at the campground at about 3:45, with the odometer reading 3932, Those 599 miles shattered our previous record of 545. The campground is pretty nice – the sites are pretty close together as you can see from the picture, but it is run like a well-oiled machine.

We had our first motorhome malfunction today. The passenger seat moves up and down and front and back electrically, and there’s also a footrest that comes out, recliner-style, that Therese likes to put up while we are on the road, since her short little legs otherwise don’t reach the floor. It was working in the morning, but inexplicably all motion stopped mid-day. So far I haven’t been able to find a fuse that is blown, or anything else obviously wrong. I put in a call to Newmar, but it was after their business hours and I declined to have it forwarded it to their “emergency” line. The hardships we are enduring can only be compared to those of the pioneers crossing the same ground in their covered wagons. It was 90 degrees by the time we got to Hacienda RV Park, so I certainly hope our air conditioners don’t give out on us.

On Saturday, we headed out at about 8:45 for a day of tourist activities in the vicinity of Las Cruces. On  the way to our first stop, Dripping Springs Visitor Center of the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, we were on the lookout for a car wash because our Jeep was really disgustingly dirty from being towed behind the rig in the rain. We spotted a little sign for one of those sports team $5 car washes and circled back to give it a whirl. If your car is only ordinarily dirty, those things generally make it worse, but with the level of filth on the Jeep, it could only get better. We gave them $15 on the theory that we had 3 times as much dirt as an average car, and in hope that they would take a little more than the usual slapdash care. And in fact it came out looking at least reasonably clean – a huge improvement. Unfortunately, part of the road to the Dripping Springs Visitor Center was gravel, so it got a little dusty, particularly in back. But even so it was much better than before. I’m going to dry-wash it using Optimum No Rinse this evening to get it looking good, at least until the next rain.

Organ Mountains Desert Peaks was designated a National Monument in 2014. It is composed of almost 500,000 acres in three or four discontiguous parcels, showcasing the southern Rocky Mountains. The part we went to, Dripping Springs, is north east of Las Cruces, and I think it is the most popular part.

The OMDPNM is run by the Bureau of Land Management, and they man the visitor center. There are a number of trails from there, and we took the 3-mile Dripping Springs trail, which is a well maintained gravel trail with an elevation gain of 500 feet (from about 5400’ to 5900’). It is at the foot of the Organ Mountains, which rise steeply from the relatively flat Las Cruces (elevation 3900’) to just over 9000’.

The late morning hike was great – the scenery was fantastic (out pictures do not come close to doing it justice), and the weather was a picture-perfect sunny 77 degrees with a pleasant breeze. I haven’t said much about the weather in these posts, and that’s because I haven’t really had to. We had some rain one day when we were travelling, but otherwise it’s been remarkably pleasant. Austin and San Antonio were cloudy with rain threatening, but it never materialized. Most of the other days have been clear or scattered clouds. The temperatures have been 70’s and 80’s and very comfortable. May must be one of the most pleasant months to visit the southern states.

The springs were indeed dripping, but just barely, as this is a dry time of year around here (in fact, they get only 10 inches of rain a year, most of that coming in the summer months). Near the springs is the ruins of the Van Patten Hotel, a tourist destination in the late 1800’s. It was pretty small, but I guess was something reasonably special in its day.

Several different varieties of cactus and what Therese declared to be Yucca plants are in bloom this time of year, so we got some pictures of them.

On balance, we were really glad to have gone to this lesser-known National Monument rather than Carlsbad Caverns, which surely would have been far more crowded on a weekend day.

From there, we drove the 45 miles to White Sands National Monument, which is managed by the National Park Service. This is a much more well-known destination, and there were quite a few people there. The White Sands are gypsum, formed by minerals dissolving in rains from nearby mountains, flowing down to a flat-bottom pool, and then evaporating during the dry season. The mineral deposits are fairly fragile and not very heavy, and when the wind gets up to about 15 mph, they start blowing around and bang into each other until they are quite white very fine grained sand. The dunes are very new in geological terms, only 10,000 years old. They are continually shifting and reform, particularly the more recently formed dunes. Adaptable vegetation stabilizes the older dunes and then they don’t move as much.

Unlike almost all others, White Sands is a “please touch” type of park. They let you freely roam around on the sand dunes, since they know that your footsteps will be erased in the next strong breeze. There were people “sledding” down the edge of the dunes on round discs, but it’s a pretty short ride, since the tallest dunes are about 30-40 feet high. The shape of the dunes is interesting – the wind is generally from the southwest, and they slope fairly gently from that direction until they get to a point where the opposite face collapses fairly steeply down to the underlying ground. You can cause a mini-avalanche by stepping on the peak, and the sand flows smoothly downward, sometimes all the way down to the bottom. There’s an eight-mile drive through the dunes, with about 5 miles paved and the rest plowed through the sand. The sand part is packed down pretty hard except the places where fresh sand has blown onto it. For some reason the fresh sand tends to make a washboard surface that shakes the heck out of your car, but it is still fun to drive on. Unfortunately, our pictures of White Sands didn’t come out well – I guess it was simply too bright for the camera to compensate for.

On the way back to Las Cruces, we considered stopping at the White Sands Missile Center Museum, but it was getting late and we decided that we were touristed out.

We returned to a nice clean motorhome – there’s a guy, Sal, who will detail your rig while you’re staying at Hacienda RV Resort, so we called him Friday night to see if he could do it while we were gone. He did, and it looks great again. It’s a great deal for the $90 he charged. For some reason, we had picked up far fewer bugs driving the 1150 miles through Louisiana and Texas than we did on the 300 miles of western Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, but there were still plenty and they’re all gone now. The wheels are all nice and shiny, and he even cleaned up the tires. Now we’ll have a clean rig until we encounter the next rain.

We went out for dinner to a Mexican restaurant in historic Las Cruces. Quite tasty and authentic enough for Therese’ discerning Mexican taste.

Overall, Las Cruces is bigger and nicer than we expected. There are some very nice parts of it, and it seems to be growing and prospering. There’s also a lot of stuff to do beyond what we could do in one day – I think you could enjoy three or four days here.

Tuesday, May 9

According to our original plan, our next stop would have been Galveston State Park in Galveston, Texas. But we had gotten lots of positive recommendations for the National Parks in Utah – Arches, Bryce, and Zion, so we called an audible and decided to save a couple days by skipping Galveston. So we headed directly to our next destination, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. That meant that we were covering nearly two days worth of our originally planned mileage in one day. Accordingly, we got up early, “broke camp”,  and got on the road a few minutes before 7:00(!). After a bit of a wresting match with our GPS (which wanted to take us north to I-20, which we didn’t want to do), we got going in the right direction to the Route 84 bridge from Natchez, MS to Vidalia, LS over the Mississippi River, and continued on 84 to Alexandria, MS. From there, we picked up 165 down to I-10. Both roads were scenic drives and traveled smoothly, mostly 4-lane with a few 2-lane sections. The next part of our route took us through Houston on I-10. Since we were worried about the traffic we might hit there, we decided to drive straight through until we were safely past it. We finally stopped for lunch and fuel at 2:00 at a Flying J. We were back on the road at 3:00 or so, and after hitting just enough rain to get the rig, and especially the Jeep, covered with dirt, we pulled into Sunset Point RV park in Marble Falls Texas just before 6 pm. The mileage reading when we stopped 3332, for a total of 545 miles. So we crossed the 1000 and 1500 mile marks on the same day. 11 hours on the road (10 actually driving) is a little much, but we decided it was worth it.

Sunset Point is on the LBJ Lake, with nice sites. As usual, the other campers were friendly. It looks like some of the sites are owned individually, and those are all decked out with built in grills, landscaping, etc. Ours wasn’t spiffed up, but quite adequate. Having full hookups meant we could do laundry and be less concerned about water usage.

Wednesday, May 10

To start the day, Barry had a conference call that lasted  until 12:00, so we didn’t get going until after lunch. We drove about an hour and 15 minutes to Austin (the advertising for the park indicated it was an hour from Austin and San Antonio, we should have done some fact checking there, since it’s more like 1:15 to Austin and 1:30 to San Antonio). Our first stop in Austin was the Texas State Capitol. It is an impressive building, which we learned quite a bit about on a “Heroes of the Texas Revolution” guided tour. It was built from 1881 until 1888. Texas was short on money and long on land, so they paid the company that built it (I think the company was from Chicago) 3 million acres of land in the Texas panhandle.

The architecture was very interesting, and the millwork and flooring were masterpieces. Much of it was restored to its original form back in the 80’s, and a large underground extension was also added underneath the “mall” to the south of the building.

The rotunda over the capitol is 290 feet to the top, which they claimed is taller than the US Capitol building’s rotunda. The star at the top you see in the picture is 8 feet across.

What, you might be wondering, are “Heroes of the Texas Revolution”. Well, I don’t think you’d be wondering if you were from Texas, because this part of Texas history seems to be a point of pride in this state. Prior to 1836, Texas was part of a one of the Mexican states. A guy named Santa Ana (he has about 5 other names preceding that) was elected president and somehow abolished the existing constitution, effectively making him a dictator. Texans seemed to be looking for an excuse to secede, so they  declared independence. Santa Ana was not only the president of Mexico, but led its army, too, and he marched it up to Texas to teach them a lesson. He was out-maneuvered handily by the heroic Texans led by Sam Houston and Steve Austin, and in an 18-minute battle, Santa Ana lost 600 men, while the victorious Texans lost only 9. Santa Ana threw in the towel and surrendered to a wounded Sam Houston while Steve Austin and Davey Crockett looked on (if the painting hanging in the capitol entryway is to be believed). Texas declared itself to be a separate country, and told Mexico “Don’t Mess with Texas”. They say that a lot down here. Texas was only a separate country for a fairly short time, joining the United States in 1844.

There was quite a controversy over whether Austin should be the capital or not, with two of the Texas Heroes, Sam Houston and Steve Austin, on opposite sides of the debate. Violence was nearly resorted to before Houston gave in.

The floor of the capitol has six emblems on it for the six flags that have flown over Texas. France, Spain, and Mexico were there, then the emblem of the independent nation of Texas. Since Texas joined the secessionists in the Civil War, the Confederacy emblem is next, and then the United States. You see the six flags theme a lot in Austin, along with the Texas star. I think a lot of Texans thing they should have stuck to being their own country (some of them probably think they are).

After the tour, we went to the visitor galleries of both the House of Representative and Senate chambers, where they were in session. That wasn’t the most fascinating exercise. We saw the House pass HB 1643, which (purports to) outlaw flying drones at an altitude of less than 400 feet over cattle feeding operations (you can’t make this stuff up – search for it on the internet if you don’t believe me). However, I know for a fact that the FAA has sole authority over regulations affecting the nation’s airspace, so I have my doubts as to the enforceability of that statute. But of course maybe the FAA doesn’t want to mess with Texas.

After the Capitol we walked around Austin for a while in the Capitol district. We had heard that there is a cool section in Austin, but it wasn’t marked on the map, so we settled for Congress Street (both Katie and Steven have been to Austin, and both declared we were nowhere near the cool part of town, but they probably wouldn’t have let us in anyway). We had a very good dinner at Second Bar & Kitchen.

Next up was a cruise on the Lady Bird Lake to the Congress Street bridge, where 750,000 expecting Mommy bats live from March until June, when the batlings are born and then there are 1,500,000 bats. The bats like it because of the longitudinal expansion joints in the concrete where lanes were added in the late ‘70s. They’re about 2 inches wide, and thus too narrow for predators to come eat them while they sleep during the day. The cruise is on a 40-passenger pontoon boat with an electric motor that starts about 200 yards from the Congress Street (bat) bridge. It launched at about 7:45, and headed away from the bat bridge at the blazing speed of about 3 knots to see some of the sites of Austin, which truth be told weren’t that scenic, but I think they were killing time waiting for the bats and trying to justify the $10 they charge.

About 8:15 or so, the first of the bats started coming out and then for about 15 minutes there was a constant swarm of them. They roost all along the bridge, but when they come out, they fly under the bridge to the south shore, and then fly east right at tree top level, so there’s a 30 foot wide parade of them that are clearly visible against the not-quite-dark sky. It’s definitely worth seeing. A lot of people also stand on the east sidewalk of the bridge, but our boat captain/guide pointed out that then you’re looking down at the bats and they are harder to see with the water as a backdrop.

We retrieved the Jeep and finally got home around 10:00.

 

Thursday, May 11

Next stop was San Antonio. We got rolling about 9:30 and got to San Antonio about 11:00. Barry did a lot of complaining about parking in a lot with a big “$5” rate listed only to find that the fine print said that only applied if you got there before 9:00. To top it off, there was no attendant or anything, we had to download a pathetic “ParkMobile” app and spend 10 minutes creating an account and putting in credit card info, and then were ripped off for $20. San Antonio had to make a comeback from that start. We were near the Alamo, but as expected the lines were too long for Barry’s limited patience, so we skipped actually going in. Therese had been there 45 years earlier with her family and it probably hasn’t changed much.

So off we went to find the supposedly nearby River Walk. Well it is nearby, but we still had some fits and starts finding it because they were working on the entrance near the Alamo so you couldn’t use it. When we finally started walking the river, it was entertaining and very nice.

It was a huge and welcome contrast to the very urbanized city proper. After some exploring, we went to a place called Ostra for an excellent lunch. The margarita moved San Antonio’s approval rating up substantially.

Further walking around brought us to the boarding area for the San Antonio River Cruise, which we decided to take. That was interesting. I’m not sure “river” is the right description for this body of water, since it seems to have a few loops and it’s not obvious whether it is really flowing or not. But the “linear park” idea pioneered turned out to be a big hit after a slow start.

There’s a shop/restaurant area called La Villita along the River Walk that Therese wanted to see, so we stopped there briefly. Then we walked back to the expensively parked car by way of the Alamo so we could snap a picture and lay claim to remembering the Alamo.

Next stop was Mission San Jose, about a 15 minute drive away in a considerably less prosperous section of San Antonio. The Mission was started in 1721, with the aim of teaching (coercing, brainwashing, take your pick) the indigenous population to be good Spanish citizens. There was quite a bit of tug of war between the church and secular leadership over declaring it to be independent of the church. When they did, the friars left, and then it literally fell apart. What is there now is the result of several restorations, including one during the depression era using Conservation Corps workers. It is now a National Historic Monument, and parts of it are being restored to its former state by the Park Service.

It was an interesting place, but after seeing it we were touristed out and headed back to “camp”. Back in Marble Falls, we stopped at the grocery store and then got back to the campsite at 6:00.

Tomorrow, we are headed to La Cruces, New Mexico, where we plan to see the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument.

On Sunday, we left Gulf Islands National Seashore at about 8:40 for Natchez, Mississippi (we congratulated ourselves for what was an early start compared to other days). It was our longest mileage day yet. Our route took us north through Pensacola to pick Interstate 10 west to Mobile, Alabama, where we took I-65 for only a few miles northward until we picked up US 98, which took us all the way to Natchez. We were only in Alabama for about 50 miles before entering Mississippi. US 98 is a nice road to travel on. It goes through a few towns and has some stop lights, but most of the way it is a four-lane divided highway with nice scenery and little traffic. As we parked at the campsite, the odometer read 2787, so we covered about 324 miles.

We stopped on the way for our second fill up. Our fuel mileage was down to 6.6 on this leg of the trip, I think because we had quite a bit of stop and go traffic both getting away from Florida Caverns and to and from Gulf Islands, and because we had some stiff headwinds going west across Florida towards Gulf Islands. The rig is anything but aerodynamic, it’s more like pushing a big brick through the wind. I’m not sure whether our bug kill per square foot of frontage would have been different had we been driving a car, but we whacked an incredible number of bugs on the way to Natchez. The frontal area of the Dutch Star is about 100 square feet, and I think it had 1000 dead bugs on it – maybe more considering that many of the bugs were the “love bugs” that always seem to get smashed in pairs.

Fortunately, the Dutch Star has a hose bib piped to the hot water right behind the front grill, which I used to good advantage cleaning them off. We had enough room in the “basement” storage to bring a ladder, which was definitely required to get to the huge windshield. It took 45 minutes to clean it up. At previous stops I had attempted to clean the windshield with a scrubber and a squeegee on a five foot pole, and that sort of works, but now it’s really clean and will stay that way for all of about 10 miles.

On the way, Therese used her cell phone to plan more of the trip and to get reservations for a few of our future stops.

Natchez State Park is very nice. We have a pleasant site with a large flat concrete pad that we backed into. There’s water and electric service, but once again no sewer, so we remain in water conservation (really holding tank capacity conservation) mode. Cell service is also minimal – once again Verizon seems to trounce AT&T for signal strength.

We (mostly Therese) met a few people from California, doing the trip in the opposite direction. One lady was travelling by herself in a camper van. She had just left her job and had no particular route planned, nor any particular schedule for getting back. Everyone has been friendly at the campgrounds we’ve been at, and it has also been surprisingly quiet at night. I think the Dutch Star’s sound insulation is pretty good, which also helps.

Monday morning, after a leisurely start, we headed to downtown Natchez at about 9:30. Our first stop was the Natchez Visitor Center, where they have a nice display with the history of Natchez. The town was important and well known in the late 1700’s through the Civil War (Therese says that should be capitalized), serving as the capital of the Mississippi territory and as a magnet for wealthy southerners. Its heyday came between Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin (in the late 18^th, early 19^th century) and the Civil War. Before the cotton gin, even with slave labor, cotton farming was not profitable, it was simply too labor intensive to separate the fibers from the seed. Technology changed the economics, and huge fortunes were made by plantation owners in the south. Despite the fact that less labor was needed per pound of cotton, production grew such that from 1800 to 1830, the number of slaves quadrupled.

The rich plantation owners apparently needed a place to congregate and show off their wealth and Natchez was it. Large antebellum mansions were built in the 1820’s through 1860, many of which are still standing (and provide the backbone of the tourism industry which, together with agriculture and gambling, is the major economic factor in the area).

The story of Natchez heavily involves the economics and politics of slavery and emancipation. During the civil war, Natchez wasn’t heavily guarded by the Confederacy, and was easily taken by the Union side. They headquartered in some of the antebellum mansions and started running things. Many slaves joined the Union side during the war. When the south lost, the Confederate currency was worthless, and two years of drought finished off the plantations. The Union retained control for about 25 years after the war, and that seems to have been a time of comparative prosperity and freedom for the freed slaves. But around 1900, Mississippi was turned back over to local governance, and the white majority found ways through literacy testing, poll taxes, and other “Jim Crow” laws to oppress the black population again. Many left in the “Great Exodus” to northern cities. The Civil Rights movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s brought much turmoil to Natchez (and the south as a whole), and it seems like they are still working on sorting it all out 50 years later. I was somewhat surprised at the tone of the Natchez Visitor Center history exhibit, it seemed to me that a Natchez native (at least a Natchez native Caucasian) would have tried to play down the controversy and put a more positive spin on it. The exhibit was authored by the National Park Service, maybe they nixed any sugar coating.

Freshly steeped in Natchez history, we drove down to the waterfront (the Mississippi river) which runs right alongside the town. 90% of Natchez (and all of the nice part) is situated on a 30 foot high bluff along the river, with only a small part down below that bluff. The Mississippi isn’t particularly scenic – it looks to be about a mile wide and is brown as mud. There is a twin bridge (one span built in 1940, the other identical span built in 1990) that goes from Natchez to Vidalia, Louisiana. There are riverfront casinos on both sides of the river. We took the “Bluff Walk” along the river for a half mile, and then turned inland to the historic district on the “South Walk”. Downtown is maybe ¾ of a mile square, so it’s easy to walk. There weren’t that many tourists around, and after walking around for a while, we found a nice place for lunch (Pearl Pasta, on Pearl Street) at about 12:15. After lunch, we went on the “North Walk”, and then toured Stanton Hall, one of the largest of the Antebellum mansions. It was built by one of the rich plantation owners, Irish immigrant Frederick Stanton. It took 8 years to build, and was finally finished in 1857. Frederick then died 9 months later from complications from Yellow Fever, but his wife lived in it for another 34 years. It wasn’t one of the homes that was occupied by the Union, but the family fell on hard times and it bounced around until finally being purchased out of foreclosure by a local group of southern ladies (the start of the Natchez Pilgrimage Society, or something like that). They operated it as a bed and breakfast from 1941 through 1985, but now it is used as a wedding (and other social occasion) venue and for tours. It was remarkably ornate inside, and they have managed to get some of the original furniture back from descendants of Frederick Stanton. According to Wikipedia, Disney’s Haunted Mansion was based on its design, but the tour guide didn’t mention that. Parts of Natchez weren’t quite as nice as Stanton Hall.

It was worth doing, but by the time we got out of there it was 3:00 so we headed out of town. Our plan was to go to a local plantation exhibit (Mount Locust), but luckily Therese called to get the hours and we found that they were closed on Mondays.

Instead, we drove a ways up the Natchez Trace Parkway. Natchez Trace dates back to Indian times as a major trade route from the Mississippi River to Memphis Tennessee. Before the advent of railroads and steamships, traders would build boats in the norther parts of the river, fill them with salable cargo, and sail them to Natchez. There they would sell the cargo, but since the Mississippi was too fast moving to navigate upriver, they would also sell the boat for lumber, and then walk back on the Natchez trail. Today it is a picturesque two lane road that still goes all the way to Memphis. It’s in great condition and there was hardly any traffic.

We stopped at the “Emerald Mound”, one of the mounds that native Indians apparently built for rituals or whatever.

Then, about 4:30, we headed back to the campground to engage in “camping” (and writing this long boring post).

We set out from Florida Caverns for Gulf Islands National Seashore, getting underway at about 10:50. It was less mileage than our other travel days, a little over 150 miles, bringing our odometer reading to 2463. However, on both ends of the trip we were navigating some comparatively narrow in-town streets. The Dutch Star is not a nimble vehicle, and right turns in town are adventurous. Nevertheless, we made it without mishap to Gulf Islands.

Back in our planning stages, we had purchased an “America the Beautiful” National Park Pass, so our admission to the park was free (staying at the campground was extra, however). Anticipating a crowd due to the weekend, we had made reservations for the park. Their website was a huge pain, but we figured it out enough to reserve a site long enough for the coach. However, when we got there, they apparently paid no attention to any of that, and assigned us a different site. When we got there, it was clear that the Dutch Star was not going to fit. Luckily, there was a Camp Host in the vicinity who recognized our predicament and helped us get reassigned to a site that was large enough.

It was cold and windy the entire day, and after going out to dinner at the Grand Marlin on the island, and then crossing the bridge to Pensacola to pick up some groceries, we pretty much stayed inside for the evening.

The park has electric and water hookups, but doesn’t have sewer hookups, so we went into water conservation mode for our two-day stay, using the park restroom sometimes, taking quick showers, and washing dishes with minimal water usage. That worked just fine for two nights, three would have been more challenging, but probably doable. The park is apparently quite popular and was just about completely full. It’s on the western end of Santa Rosa Island, a barrier island about 20 miles long but only about ½ mile wide.

The next day, we headed to the visitor center, which is at Fort Pickens, inside the park. The fort was built in the 1800s for border defense of the Pensacola area. Although it’s in the deep south, it was held by Union forces throughout the civil war, and exchanged cannon fire with two other forts in the area that had been taken by the Confederates. It succeeded in destroying the other forts and stayed in Union hands. After the civil war, it became somewhat obsolete because newer artillery was capable of demolishing its brick walls. A “fort within the fort” was built of reinforced concrete and outfitted with 12” rifled cannons capable of shooting targets 15 miles away (previously, the smooth bore cannon used 15” round shot and were limited to an 8 mile range). It continued in operation until the 1920’s when naval patrols took over coastal defense.

There was also an interesting small museum talking about the evolution of the island – it is continually changing shape in response to currents in the Gulf of Mexico and hurricanes and other weather.

In the afternoon, we went out onto the beach for a short time. The morning had been very comfortable – temperature around 70, with a slight breeze, but in the afternoon it got quite windy again – windy enough to blow sand around. So we pulled the plug on it after about half an hour and headed back to the campsite.

Therese spent some time trying to get reservations at campgrounds in Utah, where we’re hoping to visit Arches, Bryce, and Zion National Parks. It was a frustrating experience, since the web sites were uncooperative and nobody answered the phone at two of the three campgrounds.

At least our cell phones and cellular data worked more consistently here, so I was able to post to the web site.

Tomorrow, we have a longer drive to Natchez Mississippi, where we’re staying at the Natchez State Park.

Florida is a big state! We started this morning with the odometer reading 2106 (the trip started at 1790), and ended at 2307, and we still have another 100+ miles until we get out of the Florida panhandle. Much to our surprise, we also crossed over into the Central time zone. I couldn’t understand why both my GPS devices were telling me at 3:45 that we were going to arrive at 3:25. I assumed it was some error due to stopping for lunch or something, until the time jumped back to 2:45 just west of Tallahassee (I think the changeover must be due south of the Georgia – Alabama border). It’s the first time either of us has been in the panhandle part of the state, and once we got out of the peninsula we even discovered a few rolling hills.

We discovered another way to screw up this morning. I put my computer bag on the floor next to the bed, next to a small suitcase with wheels, with the idea of preventing the wheeled suitcase from rolling around. Unfortunately, when I put in the slides, I didn’t notice that there was insufficient clearance, and the slide crushed the bag a little bit. One of the hinges for the laptop screen took a beating, but it works fine. Another important safety tip!

We fueled up for the first time today. With 545 miles on the tank, it took 68.7 gallons for a calculated 7.2, a bit less than the 7.4 that the trip computer reported. We ran the generator a little, which could account for some of the difference, but not all of it.

We have a much nicer campsite at Florida Caverns. Quite spacious, large magnolia, oak, cedar and cypress trees, and nobody next to or across from us yet. This was our first “back in” campsite, but it was easy to get into. We used the walkie-talkies that my daughter Katie gave us for Christmas (and today is her 27^th birthday!) The picnic table is on the correct (passenger) side of the coach at this site, unlike the Manatee Springs campsite.

After setting up camp, we went for a 2 mile “hike” that went next to the Chipola River for a stretch. The sign said that it averages 93 million gallons of water a day flowage, but this is the dry season here, and it looked pretty sluggish.

We are sticking around for tomorrow, hoping to take the tour of the eponymous caverns at the park.

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Despite the aforementioned dry season, It started raining pretty hard Wednesday night, and continued until about 10:00 Thursday morning. We got going early enough to get to the park visitor center for the 9:30 Cavern Tour. Maybe because of the rain, we were the only ones for that tour (they limit it to 25, and the brochure says they frequently fill up, so only two is pretty unusual). So we got a private tour with a knowledgeable young man named Saylor. We saw all kinds of interesting formations during the hour-long tour, and heard a little of the history of the caverns. The one which we were touring was discovered in 1937.  Clearing a path through it was accomplished by the Civilian Conservation Corps until 1942, then taken over by a group of veterans of World War I.

After the tour, we went on a short hike around the forest near the cave, and then went through the small museum at the visitor center.

After lunch and some lazing about, we went on an easy and very pleasant 4.5 mile hike before dinner, starting from our campsite and going through a different part of the park.

In the evenings, we have been watching a PBS series called “The Tunnel”, which I downloaded from Amazon before we left. It’s violent, which Therese doesn’t like, but it holds your interest. And despite the fact that the cell coverage is pretty spotty at this campsite also, we are not exactly roughing it. The Dutch Star is still problem free. Probably shouldn’t say that, tomorrow it will fall apart.

Tomorrow we are heading out to Gulf Islands National Seashore near the Florida-Alabama border.

May 1 was our start date for the grand expedition. We got everything loaded up, set up, and hitched up a few minutes before 11:00am. That was a little bit later than expected, but we weren’t in any hurry, so it wasn’t a problem. The odometer read 1790 when we pulled away from our storage location – about 1400 of those miles were put on before we took delivery, since they drove it from the manufacturing plant in Indiana to the dealer in Fort Myers. We put the rest on before the big trip while driving to and from Wellington to visit my brothers Keith and Ray, and on our shakedown cruise.

A few rookie mistakes surfaced early. As we were making the first right hand turn, I put on the turn signal and it dawned on me that I forgot to turn on the wireless light bar, and we hadn’t tested the lights on our toad. Of course there was no place to stop at that point, so we continued on. Upon making our first left hand turn, a loud crash made it quite clear that we had also forgotten to lock the refrigerator closed – the half gallon of milk and a few other things tumbled onto the floor. Luckily, nothing broke and no harm done, but we are now going to make a complete before takeoff checklist so stuff like that doesn’t happen again. No doubt we’ll find other mistakes we can make.

We found a place to stop after a mile or so and got the lights working and tested. Refrigerator reloaded and now locked, we headed onto I-75 North towards our first stop, Manatee Springs State Park in Chiefland, Florida.

We stopped at a rest stop for lunch, and on the walkaround before leaving, I discovered that we had also left the windows open in the Jeep. Fortunately, we had only encountered some light rain for a few minutes during the morning drive, so again, no harm done. The poor toad does get covered with dust when behind the motorhome, and the slightest rain sprays all over it, so it’s going to be one dirty vehicle.

The Dutch Star is not exactly a joy to drive, but it’s not bad, either. It requires continual steering input to keep it in the center of the lane, and with a width of 8 ½ feet, that’s more important and more difficult than it is in a passenger car. It is pretty susceptible to crosswinds, too, and today we had winds that judging from the way the flags we saw were snapping around, were about 15-20. When a big truck passes, it also tends to blow the coach around a bit, and since that truck is only a few feet away, it’s a good idea to pay close attention while that’s happening.

The Dutch Star accelerates very slowly compared to any light-duty passenger vehicle. It has a 450 horsepower, 9 liter six-cylinder Cummins ISL diesel, with 1100 foot-pounds of torque (or something like that), but when its loaded and the Jeep is hitched up, there’s 44,000 pounds to move. From a standing start, you almost always simply floor it and wait for it to get up to speed. My estimate is 0 to 60 in 30 seconds. I’ll have to get out a sundial and time it someday.

On the plus side, there is almost no engine noise. You can feel something way back there making it go, but you can’t really hear it. A comfortable cruise speed is about 64 miles per hour, and at that speed in top gear (it has a six-speed Allison transmission) it is turning over 1600 RPM. There is a bit of tire noise, and some creaking from the cabinetry and accessories, but it isn’t bothersome at all. The stereo system is pretty lame – two 5” speakers up above your head. Sounds pretty tinny.

Considering that it is moving about 10 times the weight of an average car, fuel economy isn’t that bad. The trip computer reported that we got 7.4 miles per gallon over the 316 miles that we travelled. We arrived at the campground at about 5:40. I think we would have been about an hour earlier except we got some bad advice from our GPS and ended up on a road with dozens of long, Florida-style red lights.

The campground is quite nice. Unusually for a state park, it has full hookups (50 amp electrical service, water, and sewer). We managed to get everything set up without wrecking anything, and then Therese cooked a delicious spinach and cheese stuffed steak dinner (purchased ready- to-cook from Publix supermarket) in the convection oven.

After dinner, we went on a walk around the campground just as it was getting dark. We saw deer, an armadillo, and a toad, but the most memorable wildlife was an aggressive bee or wasp (too dark to tell which) that followed Therese around for a half mile. Finally it landed on her and was bravely dispatched by her fearless husband.

We found that not only is there no wifi here, there isn’t any cell service either. The hardship of it all! I’ll have to publish this blog after we return to some semblance of civilization.

We’re going to stick around here for another day. There’s a river/pond where manatee are alleged to hang out sometimes, hence the name of the park. We’ll look for ‘em and let you know.

On Tuesday, we took a walk over to the spring that Manatee Springs its name. The spring is impressive – about 25 feet deep, crystal clear and flowing strongly. The sign said that between 50 and 150 million gallons of water a day flow out of it into the Suwannee River, making it a “first magnitude” spring.

We saw a variety of land and water wildlife – deer, armadillos, heron, some other hawk-like bird, and toads. At first, we thought we were seeing baby deer, since they were only half the size of their Pennsylvania cousins. Later we concluded that they must be of a smaller species (mule deer?) since we never saw one more than waist high. In the water were some 2 foot catfish in the spring, and then when we got down to the Suwannee river, we saw some bluish 4 or 5 foot fish of some kind, and we saw some 3 or 4 foot sturgeons jumping a few feet out of the water. The weather was perfect, and we enjoyed our walk (I don’t think we could have called it a hike)  all around.

We went for a drive into town in the afternoon to pick up a few things we forgot. We got back into cell coverage and got a bunch of e-mails and text messages on our phones. On Tuesday evening, I turned on my iPad and discovered that it was getting some reception. I guess that must be because it’s Verizon and our phones are AT&T. It still wasn’t good enough to get reasonable data transmission, so this post will still have to wait until we’re someplace in civilization.

Ok, it’s May 3, we are on our way to another Florida State Park, Florida Caverns. We are stopped at a rest area, and got good enough cellular data signal to post this.

 

Now that we had the DutchStar and the toad all set, we wanted to take it on a “shakedown cruise” to make sure everything was working correctly, so that we could get North Trails to correct any problems before the big trip. It turns out to be pretty hard to find an RV campground that isn’t booked up for January in Florida, but we were able to get a site at Riverbend RV Resort in Labelle Florida. Riverbend is a fancy destination RV resort. Only Class A motorhomes are allowed, and it even restricts the age of the motorhomes to less than 10 years old. Unlike most campgrounds, the sites are individually owned, but can be rented out to the riff-raff like us when the owners aren’t there.  We discovered that most of the owners are midwestern “snow birds” who drive down in November and stay in their motorhomes for the entire winter in the mild climate of Florida. There were lots of very fancy motohomes there – Prevosts, Newells, King Aires, American Coach, etc., and most were the 45 foot maximum size. There’s a clubhouse where they have various activities, and Therese and I went to a few of them and enjoyed meeting the people. As RV’ing newbies, we got lots of good advice from the experienced RVers.

We got some practice driving the RV, hitching and unhitching the toad, leveling the RV (which it actually does automatically), operating the slides, hooking up the electric, water, and sewer connections, and running the A/C, heating systems, TVs and appliances. I’m happy to report that we had only one minor problem with the RV (the display for the solar panels on the roof wasn’t working), which I was able to fix myself. From what I have read on internet forums, that is a pretty fortunate situation for a new RV. After four nights, we called it a success and headed back to Naples.