The trip to Texas

First and apology.  We are in a park with little to no internet access.  I have my Verizon Jetpack, but it uses up a LOT of data to upload all the pictures in my posts.  Therefore I have waited until we could get to some free WiFi in Corpus to upload & post the blog.  Future posts will follow the same procedure, out of necessity.  Sorry for the time delay. :-)


Wow!  We woke up to 27 degrees this morning. Indiana? Nope. Lake Corpus Christi, TX.  But then if you are reading this blog almost anywhere else in the USA you probably had it worse.  We have sunshine and no sign of snow, rain, sleet or ice. God is good!

My first post of the winter had us ready to leave Indy and head south. So we made it. By God’s grace we had no mechanical problems and we even had pretty nice weather for the drive.  But let me tell you a little of the back-story.

We had planned to leave Indy within a couple days after Christmas. But since the weather was great, the trailer was packed, and the house was closed up and ready to be vacant for several months, we pulled out late on the morning of the 26th.  My personal goal was to get far enough south to escape freezing weather, Huntsville, AL. We reached our goal about supper time.  Since it was only an overnight stay, we accepted the hospitality of a Cabelas store.  Most Cabelas have free RV sites for transients as part of their layout.

We were up early and on the road by 8:30 the next morning.  It was windy and rainy, but the temps were very nice.  Our goal was less ambitious since we had gotten south far enough.  The route was down I-65 to Birmingham, then southwest on I-20.  We arrived at Little Black Creek Campground by about 4:30 and had a restful evening.  It was nice to be able to take on water in the trailer without fear for pipes freezing.  That makes traveling more civilized.

The morning of 12/28 was FOGGY.  As a matter of fact, there were fog warnings all across the south down to the Gulf.  We were again able to be on the road by 8:30 heading southwest on I-59 and then down to I-12 north of N'Orleans. After joining I-10 we cruised across Louisiana to the Lake Charles area.  When a Jeep with 2 girls pulled up next to me and honked, I hoped they might be hitting on me.  But they were only telling me that something was wrong on the back of my trailer.  I immediately pulled off and found a bolt had sheared on the bike rack and let Darlene's trike bump the road a little.  There was minimal damage because I had secured it up in case anything happened.  I fixed the slightly bent sprocket in a few minutes once we were in camp.

We dry-camped overnight in an abandoned parking lot in Lake Charles and walked down the street a few blocks to a GREAT seafood restaurant.  I had etoufee' that was out of this world! Darlene had great gumbo.  When in the south eat seafood!!

Thursday was an easy day.  We started out by 9:30 and got into the Rainbow's End Escapee campground about noon.  It was a beautiful day to get out and walk and enjoy not being in the cold & snow.

We were up & at'em fairly early because we had an appointment to have our rig weighed at the Escapees SmartWeight station in the park. The process went smoothly and was professionally done by a friendly weigh-master named Chris. However, the results she explained to me were NOT so great.  My trailer is not over weight. My truck is.  “What can I do about it?” was my question.  She answered with another question, “are you independently wealthy?”  I knew I was in trouble right then. But that will be the subject of a future post.

We left Livingston, TX after the weigh-in and headed south on TX 59 which will become I-69 someday.  Parts of the route are already under construction so there were plenty of slow places.  The slowest and most nerve wracking place was called Houston. We drove right through the middle of it north to south at about lunch hour. Not fun.

Lake Corpus Christi State Park was a welcome sight.  We got set up and settled in just in time to have supper. We had to take a less than desirable campsite for the weekend because the site we wanted was occupied. It was New Years weekend, after all. On Monday we moved to the site that we wanted and where we will sit for the next 2 months.  Why Texas? Why Lake Corpus Christi?  Come on back and read all about it in another post.

Because it was New Years weekend, Darlene's cousin and her husband (all for of us have been friends since high school) came down from Wimberly, TX. It was a most enjoyable weekend of visiting, walking, eating and having fun. We'll see them more during out time in Texas.

So now you know that we got from Indy to the Corpus Christi area safely.  However there are still a few unanswered questions.  I hope all ya'all will come back and keep up with the adventures of the Mosey'n Millers.