Are We There, Yet?

No, he is not getting squashed in that last photo - my arm is barely resting on him.  It was a long driving day, and Rufus was tuckered out.

We left the "down home" campground this morning, just after 8:00.  The first 7 miles were on Interstate...

And then a turn onto yet another moderately crappy two lane...

You may have noticed that Joan and I are quite different.  She is smart and I am pretty.  She is strong and I am pretty.  Beyond that, she is the navigator and I am the driver.  Oh, we can switch duties, but neither of us likes that.  She likes back road two lanes, and when I am driving this rig double towing, I like a 4 lane road.  Especially in Texas, where the speed limit on roads like the one shown above is usually 75 mph.  I don't drive this rig 75 mph.  Oh, the motorhome could do it, but trailer tires are speed rated at 65 mph.  The towing instructions from Honda on the CR-V clearly state to not tow faster than 65 mph.  If you drive 10 mph below the speed limit on a two lane road in Texas, you are a road hazzard.  People get cranky.  They take chances they wouldn't normally take if they could drive their typical 10 to 15 mph above the speed limit.  Most of those chances involve passing our long rig in less than safe places.  As a result, I find myself driving faster than I care to, so as not to hold them up too much.  In essence, it makes extra stress.

Also, many of these two lanes are narrow.  And not much of a shoulder.  My mind constantly plays the "what if?" game... and there are not a lot of emergency "outs" on a narrow two lane.  Not to mention that there aren't convenient gas stations that can handle our length at regular intervals.

When I balked at this two lane, Joan went to work routing us to more 4 lane Federal Highways instead of the two lane State Highways.  This would add some miles to our already "longest driving day" this trip... but the lower stress would more than make up for that.

The 4 lane Federal led us to an Interstate...

And a Flying J fuel stop where they had nice wide and long gas lanes just for RVs...

Another difference: she like cold sandwiches and Lunchables; I would rather have a McDonalds burger and fries.  In the spirit of cooperation and compromise, I agreed to the cold crap...

Rufus also is cooperative: he lays on both of our laps...

A stop at a rest area (something found on Interstates and rarely seen on two lanes)...

Joan made cold sandwiches while walked laps around our rig.  Rufus also got his lunch.  On schedule.

Heading towards north central Texas, you see a lot of windmills and oil wells...

Some signs:

I am Mister Happy-Freakin'-Go-Lucky - I don't want to wait a mile to be happy.  Or, Dumas (my kinda town)...

Rufus getting his rest...

Another hot one today.  By 1:00, the outside air temp was 100º...

This is Day 4 out, 3rd driving day.  It wasn't until almost 3:00 this afternoon that we got out of Texas.  See if you can name all 5 states that are shown on the GPS map...

Out of Texas, and into Oklahoma...

The Panhandle of Oklahoma isn't very wide.  It wasn't long before we were into Kansas...

After 3 days of driving in Texas, the last hour and a half had us in 3 states.

On this part of our trip, we are just making miles, without being crazy about it.  This trip is about the destination, and we're both looking forward to it.  It will be cooler in the Black Hills.  It was 102º when we pulled into the RV park this afternoon.  There is a cold front (relative term) moving south as we will be driving north tomorrow.  We may actually see some 70s at some point.

For now, it is good to be down for the day.  The a/c in the Aspect is keeping us comfortable.  We have decent Verizon coverage and data speeds.  Life is good. 

:-)