Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Westward bound

After spending a final week near Gainesville seeing Jeffrey's parents, we began our trek westbound -- the goal being  to get back to Texas in time for the SEC picnic mid-August with our beloved Lone Star Gator Club.  Lucky for us, Jeffrey's brother and sis-in-law Susan live in Pensacola FL, so they are a very nice place to stop and hang out for a few days.  On our drive over, we stopped at a Pilot to fill Max with diesel and found ourselves the lucky recipients of a freezer full of Haagen-Daz ice cream from a trucker who was going to have to throw it away because the outside box was damaged.  Lucky for us, the single-serving containers of chocolate fudge brownie were totally fine!

We also enjoyed our final days on the nice Florida highways as we have found the southern states further west to be BUMPY... at least in a motorhome.  We have learned to "batten down the hatches" on rough roads, including putting rubber bands around the silverware so they don't clink-clink-clink.  As a result of our bumpy trip over I-10 when we came east last December, we decided to detour up to I-20 and see if it was any smoother.  It also gave us a perfect opportunity to visit my cousin Peyton and her family who had just moved to Jackson, Mississippi.  Jackson also has a zoo (see pictures below) and, while it was so-so, we pretty much had it all to ourselves (as well as the planetarium in town).  Found a few more folks in the local art museum, but the real crowds were at one of the local indoor malls keeping cool!

As I write this update, we have plodded further west to Mindon, Louisiana just for a night stop and will do another 1-day drive to Terrell, Texas tomorrow.  As it turns out, the worst of I-20 was at Jackson and it has been better as we go west -- though we have been warned that the road out of Shreveport may be bumpy too.  Guess I better keep the rubber bands on!

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