Category: Trip to Mexico 2015/2016

Between Llano & Austin, Texas, lies Krause Natural Springs & Camping.  Of course when we heard “springs” our minds thought of “hot springs” and we didn’t put much thought into the advertised year-round constant temperature of 68 degrees.  We quickly realized they weren’t hot springs, or even warm springs.  Carrie and I each took quick dips, and we’ll admit it was refreshing, but not a place you want to just hang out in unless it’s really hot outside.  The big plus: the setting was absolutely gorgeous.  Just ignore the No Smoking signs nailed to trees…sad that isn’t just a given in a place like this.

     

We were awakened at 5:00 am for a pretty funny reason…dozens and dozens of vehicles rolled into the place for none other than the production of a series of Gold Bond advertisements.  They had huge trucks with snow making machines for a scene with snowball fights.  We inadvertently wandered through a scene they were filming from above of a girl running on the rock formations.  We named her Sporty Spice, and we thought she was just practicing until we heard the guy’s radio say “Action!” as we walked by and she took off running.  Oops.

On our way from Caprock Canyons southeast of Amarillo down to Austin, we stopped and spent two nights in Abilene.

Texas is huge, feels like a separate country, which it was at one point.  They compensate for the vast amount of space with ridiculous speed limits.  Roads that in the upper mid-west would have a 55 mph speed limit have a 70 or 75 mph speed limit in Texas.  We’re talking two lane highways with hardly any shoulder & lots of curves. 70 mph.  Add a couple lanes, but still not much shoulder and no median separating opposite-going traffic, 75 mph.  Another item that stands out about Texas is the huge amount of gigantic pickup trucks.  It seems about 90% of the traffic consists of big trucks.  The moral of the story: if we have a collision in our 1998 Toyota Camry we can pretty well guess the outcome!  On a bright note, gas is very cheap, less than $2.00/gallon in most places.  I’d like to say that’s why they don’t mind driving gas-guzzling trucks all the time, but I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with the gas prices.

We initially treated Abilene as simply a place to stop & relax for a couple days, not a city we’d be excited about.  Turns out though, Abiline is a cool place!  It’s big enough to have a fun downtown area and lots of other stuff without being so big that we hit lots of traffic.

It’s been proclaimed “Storybook Capital of Texas”, which meant they had lots of cool sculptures of children’s book characters all over downtown.  Appropriately enough, we started our day downtown at the library’s story time.

  

Characters from storybooks around town, even on top of buildings.

 

Downtown Paramount Theater, amazingly preserved.

 

Great bakery for desserts.

  

Overall a fun place to visit.  Thanks for the great time, Abilene!

  

  

Carrie found us the coolest place we’ve camped so far: Caprock Canyons State Park, southeast of Amarillo.  It was so full for the weekend that we had to camp in the overflow area, which meant we got a large area to ourselves.  That was perfectly fine by us, so we stayed two nights.  The second night brought a 40 degree chill, but we stayed warm.  The bison and great hikes made us glad we headed west.  Most importantly, it didn’t rain.

The bison were nice enough to pose with our car.

  

  

  

   

 

   

One last thing: Don’t Mess With Texas

-Ryan

Click the title or image to see the picture series.

Before getting out of Oklahoma City, the downpour had already started.  We spent the night in a hotel in Madill, Oklahoma.  As much as we love our tent, we’ll pass on setting it up and staying in it during a thunderstorm.

The plan was to drive to Dallas and then south to Laredo via Austin & San Antonio, but Hurricane Patricia, which was bringing even more moisture to our route, made that plan a lot less exciting.  It hit me all of a sudden: Why are we driving further into the rain if we have the option not to do that?  I’m so used to doing time-limited vacations where randomly choosing new routes and destinations isn’t an option that I forget I’m no longer limited by what the plan originally was.  The plan can be whatever we want it to be in that moment.  So with the help of our meteorology savvy friend Steve, in a matter of about 20 minutes we abandoned the idea of heading to Dallas and instead chose to drive west along the border of Oklahoma & Texas and into the “smokestack” of Texas, well away from the bad weather.

Two main things we noticed on our trip west through OK & TX:

1. The people in these parts are really friendly.  For example, they see us wandering and drive around the block just to ask us if we need help and despite our “no, thanks” response, proceed to give us ideas of what to see in the area.
2. I’ve never seen so many abandoned houses and businesses as I have here, even in other (very poor) countries.  It’s desolate looking in one sense yet very interesting in another.

  

 

  

 

  

We stopped for food truck Mexican tamales & tacos that made us even more excited for Mexico, iola devoured raspberries, tamed frogs, and we made more time for interesting potty breaks.

 

  

-Ryan

We stopped by Oklahoma City before the downpour started that still hasn’t stopped.  Oklahoma City was the first place I flew to as an airline pilot in 2007, and I flew there dozens of times after that, but I never made it closer to downtown than the hotels out by the airport.

Today we visited the memorial for the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing that killed 168 people.

  

 

While at the memorial, a line from Forrest Gump kept repeating in my head: “Momma said that the Forrest part was to remind me that sometimes we all do things that, well, just don’t make no sense.”

Trying to make sense of a nonsensical act isn’t possible.  We have no control over it.  What we do have control over is living life in a way that excites us each & every day and choosing to love those around us.

-Ryan

The Tale of Norma

In May 2015 we decided to buy a classic RV.  She was a 1968 Newell Coach, purchased from Earl, the 82 year old former owner.  Her name was Norma.  She was a showgirl.  We gave Norma a lot of TLC and had big plans for the ol’ girl.  I wouldn’t even be able to guess how many hours (more like months) I spent working on her, getting her ready to drive around the US and Mexico this winter.

  

Mother Nature’s little brother Hormones had other plans.  We’re now pregnant with another baby!  After months of deliberating how to blend our original plan of hopping all around the continent in Norma with the new reality that we’re going to have another baby, we made the tough decision to sell her after only having spent the night in her once.  But there’s a happy ending…

Norma’s new owner Castagna drove over eight hours to come pick her up.  She has even bigger plans for Norma than we did.  Norma is Castagna’s new home, art studio, and place of business!  She’s an artist (a very talented one), who’s going to travel around the country visiting classic car shows and painting commissioned work for proud antique car owners.

Today we passed through Guthrie, Oklahoma, where Norma is currently stationed.  Carrie exclaimed on the way into town, “Oh my god, there’s Norma!!!”

We met up with Castagna, who was nice enough to show us around the very cool town of Guthrie.  Did you know it was Oklahoma’s capital city before being moved to Oklahoma City?  I didn’t.

 

 

Castagna took us to a local cafe before we left town.  iola is obsessed with chocolate.

  

Castagna directed us to a great campground between Guthrie and Oklahoma City where we spent the night by Arcadia Lake.  Actually, before that she offered to let us stay in Norma again.  As kind as that was, it wouldn’t be right.  Norma has a great future ahead of her, and we slept well in our tent knowing that.  Plans change and life keeps rollin’.

-Ryan

Ark City’s Cherokee Strip Campground gave me my first shot at a coin-operated shower.  Three minutes for one dollar, payable in quarters.  Extra quarters give you extra time, but how much extra time isn’t specified.  My math tells me 45 seconds per quarter, but I didn’t get to test it since my extra quarter I thought I brought was really a nickle.  Nor did I time it anyway, or even count, so my shower was really a two minute rush to make sure I got all the soap off and then one minute of standing there wondering when the three minutes would expire.

  

We packed up quickly and headed for 10 o’clock story time at the Ark City Public Library.  We stayed after for Halloween craft projects (Carrie and iola made a bat) and lingered for a couple hours playing, reading, and using their free WiFi.

We’re trying to eat reasonably healthy food on our trip.  Ark City was our Sin City.  Leftover Casey’s pizza from the night before and my inability to simply keep driving by Long John Silver’s meant we had a picnic lunch of heart attack with a side of day-old diabetes.

 

We headed south into Oklahoma.

-Ryan

Our choice to not use major highways meant we found iola, Kansas, on our way south.  We’ll likely never be able to find tourist key chains with “iola” on them, so we had to take advantage.  That meant we took roughly one million pictures.  Here’s a small percentage of them.

  

    

  

Carrie and iola can’t get enough of libraries.  iola is in a possessive stage where everything around her is “iola’s!!”  At the Iola Public Library, I finally couldn’t disagree with her.

  

  

We chose to potty train her very young.  This is usually very nice but sometimes interesting.

Our back roads weaved us through a series of small towns that looked like they’d seen better days.  We set up camp in Arkansas City, Kansas, or as the locals would say, Ark City.  Once again, we had the entire tent camping area to ourselves while the RV portion was jam packed.  Many “campers” appeared to be full-time residents based on the amount of possessions surrounding their abodes.

-Ryan

iola is two years old, and she now has a fancy backpack and new books.

  

We stopped to see KC, briefly.

  

We spent the night in Bonner Springs, Kansas.  Don’t misspell that one.  Campgrounds seem to have lots of room for tents while the RV’s are crammed in together like sardines.  We have plenty of privacy.  We also have to use the campground’s version of a restroom, which can go either way.  This bathroom made me want to barf.  Gross enough I didn’t even want to stay long enough to take pictures, so you’ve been spared.

The air mattress has been replaced and we’re sleeping like babies, especially the baby.

 

-Ryan