Steve and Judy's Travels!

Saturday On the road dark and early. South on Interstate 135, then Interstate 35
through Wichita and into Oklahoma. South through Oklahoma City, Ardmore,
and “boom”, we popped out the other side. That was fast. So much for
Oklahoma. Another four hundred fifty mile day. Now we’re in Texas. We’re just north of Denton, which is just north of
Dallas. We’re in a state park in an oak forest by a lake. Looks like it
might be birdy tomorrow morning, so I hung out a bird feeder and salted the
empty camp sites on either side. I’ll sleep with my binoculars nearby so I
can look out if I hear any birds at dawn. I’m going to try really hard not
to wake Judy up to leave before dawn tomorrow. I’ll wait for the birds to
wake us up. Honest. I promise. It was a big raptor day. Must have seen fifty of them. Saw some black
vultures. We stopped at a Flying J for lunch, and to check out the internet. Flying J
truck stops advertise that they are WiFi hotspots. The internet hookup
worked! It took about five seconds to connect. That was handy. The
downside, however, is that Flying J truck stops tend to be really crowded.
This one was a zoo. We have an additional rider on this trip. Flat Stanley. He is a little
cutout figure, colored with crayon by Grandson Tony. Flat Stanley travels.
He fits well in envelopes. Tony has sent several of them out in the mail.
They return with notes about where they have been. Tony keeps track of them
with pins in a map on the wall. Our Flat Stanley is taped to the inside of
the window on Judy’s side of the motorhome. He will report back to Tony in
about three months. We’ve had some cold weather in Colorado already this year. We have had low
temperatures near zero. We’re looking for more fahrenheits than that. We
found Fifty-eight of them the first day out. We did better than that today.
We found sixty-five. We went south. Lower elevation, less latitude, and
more fahrenheit. Last summer, at the north entrance to Yellowstone National
Park, we found ourselves at the 45th parallel, exactly the half-way point
between the equator and the north pole. What would it take to get halfway
between the equator and the halfway point to the north pole? Maybe we can
find that latitude. We drove through the Arbuckle mountains in Oklahoma. Yes, they call them
mountains in Oklahoma. They are, after all, several hundred feet high.
Beautiful wooded rolling hills. They even have a waterfall. The highest
waterfall in Oklahoma. Seventy feet. It is more impressive than Florida’s
falling waters. At least you don’t have to look down into a hole to see it
fall. Oklahoma has an interesting advertising campaign going. One sign touted
something, then claimed: “another reason we’re better than Texas”. How
strange is that when your self-identity campaign starts off with a
comparison to another state? Sound little defensive? Wait! I get it.
Think about all the political ad writers out of work in between elections.
They have to do something. The state campaign equivalent to negative
advertising. Don’t say something about your state. Say something about
some other state and everyone will vote for you.

Friday. Time to go. Texas. They’ve got big long roads out there. Straight east out of Colorado. Interstate 70. Through Watkins, Bennett,
Strasburg. Byers, Deer Trail, Limon. Genoa, Flagler, Seibert, Stratton,
Bethune, Burlington, and out of Colorado. Into Kansas and through… and
through… Not much to go through in western Kansas. Kanorado at the
border, then Oakley, WaKeeney, Hays, and suddenly, here we are in Salina.
Salina is as far as we have to go east before we turn south. 450 miles into
the day. A good place to spend the night. A little RV park on a pond.
It’s all downhill from here. South is downhill, isn’t it? We did leave at the crack of dawn this trip. Got up, unhooked, closed up,
put some drugs in the cat, and left in the dark. Made it through Denver
before any significant rush, and rushed right into a painful sunrise.
Again. It’s really hard to drive east on the plains without encountering
some discomfort. We were hoping for a cloudy morning, but all we got were
just enough thin clouds on the eastern horizon to make a gorgeous sunrise. Judy said I should include something about what time I woke her up this
morning, so I will. I woke up at five o’clock, ready to get up and go. I
didn’t. I didn’t say anything or talk to Judy at all, for an hour. I
waited an entire hour until I woke her up. See how nice I was to her? Family News: Becky decided her optometrist is a quack and she told her so.
The optometrist suggested Becky get bifocals. That means she thinks our
daughter is old enough to require bifocals. I don’t think so! This is just
not possible. We agree with Becky. The optometrist is a quack. As Becky
was leaving, she saw what had been written on her chart. “Patient resistant
to bifocals”. She is a master of understatement as well as an optometrist.
Becky got her new glasses before we left. New glasses without bifocals. Major milestone: Conner rolled over from his front to his back. He has
mastered “the turtle”. He has teeth. Alex learned to climb out of his crib. The first clue for Matt and Kari was
the loud “clunk” from upstairs. On the same day, Alex also decided he
should descend stairs standing up and facing forward, just like the big
people do. Good luck. My knee and I are still at odds. We have settled into a routine. It’s not
exactly a peaceful coexistence. It’s more like an uneasy truce. I run a
little. I walk a little. It hurts a little. Judy said the funniest thing.
She thinks if I just stop exercising entirely for a while, the knee might
get better. Now why would she say a thing like that?

Wow! That was exciting! We had a wind storm. The wind blew all night. We weigh 25,000 pounds. We’re parked on a cement slab. Our hydraulic jacks
are down. But it felt like we were sleeping on a boat…. A boat that was
underway. It bounced us all over the place. Some of the expensive motorhomes have weather stations on them. When they
stop, they raise the weather stations and get all the current readings.
There are a couple of those motorhomes here in the park at Dakota Ridge.
They both agree. We had 80 mph winds overnight Thursday night. Lots of wind damage around the next morning, tanks blown over, flags
missing, bird feeders gone, awnings blown off, but we rode it out just fine,
and the next morning, Judy found both our rugs and the Christmas wreath off
the front of the Bounder. That was exciting.

_____________________________________________
From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 11:01 PM
To: Bill Taylor (E-mail); David Taylor (E-mail); Tom Taylor (E-mail)
Subject: dakota ridge The morning view out the side window now. It evolves (or devolves).

We did it! We figured out the water. The freezing. It froze the first night at three degrees. The next day, Judy stuffed
insulation around the hoses leading out of the utility cabinet. The water
froze the next night. Judy bought a drop light, plugged it in, and hung it
in the utility cabinet all night, turned toward the exposed water lines to
keep them warm. It froze again. We put a remote temperature sensor in the
utility cabinet. It never got below fifty degrees. Last night we were sitting in the living room, watching the temperature
plummet. It was down to ten degrees. The water quit working. Now, every
time this happens, we can still get water out of our freshwater tank with
the pump. We just can’t get the outside water. I went out and messed with
the outside faucet. I found a button to push. The heater taped to the
all-weather faucet needed to be reset. It was never a freezing problem in
the motorhome! The water provided by the RV Park was freezing. It was
freezing before it got to us. The water came back on within an hour. The low got down to four degrees.
This morning, the water worked. It worked! Problem solved! Life on the road.