Yet again in Texas 11/23/21

So for those of you wondering how we can be in Texas this long, I’ll explain.  We were originally going to take I-40 across, but after the terrible experience with the mountains, and given how late of a start we got, we decided to head super south and take I-30 to I-20 to I-10 across… so basically the longest straight route through Texas as possible lol! It’s proven good for us though – it’s been relatively flat with nice, warm days and cool-ish nights.

We finally made it to the desert, and, boy, does it look different! The past 5 or so states we’ve come through really looked the same. The leaves got more and more colorful the further south we went and the land got flatter, but the same trees, animals, rivers, and roads were seen throughout. Now, though, it is totally different! We have seen an armadillo, a flock of actual Black Birds (not crows!), a javelina, and a feral cat, though we probably could have seen that last one back East! We look forward to meeting meeting many new animals in the very near future.

We witnessed an amazing sunset tonight driving in the desert. Braydon said, “do you see that sunset over the mountain?! It’s beautiful!” So Jeffrey asked him if it was “as beautiful as Mama.” Braydon replied, “no, it isn’t THAT pretty!” 🙂

We stopped at a picnic area to stretch and let the engine cool down so I pointed out some cool desert mountains across the road to Braydon.  I asked him if he had ever seen them before and he said, “not in real life but I saw them in a movie” then turned and ran off to play. I still have no idea what he was talking about!

We stopped, made a delicious late dinner, took a walk to explore our place for the night, and are ready for bed. Our solar panels have been keeping our battery bank topped off and we are still on our first propane tank from back in Ohio! We got a really good tip from our skoolie friend about picking up an “all-position spare” tire to keep just in case because if you need roadside assistance to bring you one it’s $800 whereas if you just need help changing it, it might only be $100. We are going to try to pick one up tomorrow morning when we hit up the only place for miles around! Also going to check to see if they have the gasket for our oil pan that is leaking… it would be better to have one on hand than to wait until we have no oil pressure and have to sit around for one to get delivered to an auto parts store somewhere.

All things on the list for tomorrow! Also going to hopefully make it out of Texas and most of the way through New Mexico. Braydon is hoping we will see Mexico so we can wave to his monarch butterflies!