Has it really been a year since we began this journey of living full-time in our HOW, (House On Wheels)? It seems to have gone by so quickly. We sold our Sticks-n-Bricks house, retired, and moved into the HOW in mid-June. We began workamping at Blackhawk Valley Campground from the very start. We worked two nights in the office, and we also coordinated a charity auction to help pay the medical bills of one of our fellow campers.
The weekend of Labor Day, which is when the auction takes place, I (Paul) almost died. Again. No, really! Penny had to call 911 for an ambulance ride to the ER. I spent two days in intensive care, and three days in the hospital altogether. That was followed by a series of medical procedures to correct what had gone wrong and a lot of follow-up doctor visits.
Before I was finished with all the medical stuff, the campground closed for the season, so we moved to nearby Rock Cut State Park, where we spent the next 10 days.
Before I was finished with all the medical stuff, the campground closed for the season, so we moved to nearby Rock Cut State Park, where we spent the next 10 days.
Staying at Rock Cut was very cool, literally. The weather was cold and extremely wet, but we had the place almost completely to ourselves. There were wild turkeys everywhere. Every night we could hear owls and coyotes. One night a pack of coyotes decided to visit our campsite. They were snarling, fighting, barking and howling right outside the HOW.
We experienced the Plague of Asian Lady Bugs, and the Invasion of the Box Elder Bugs while we were at Rock Cut.
Once we got the OK to hit the road from my Doctor, we started to work our way South to Polk County Texas to establish residency. (We like to say, Illinoisans by birth, Texans by choice!) Polk County is Northeast of Houston, in the Piney Woods Region. The seat of Polk County is the town of Livingston. This is also the town where The Escapees RV Club has its headquarters. The Escapees have worked very hard with Polk County, to make it easy for its members to establish legal domicile, register their vehicles and register to vote as Texans.
In Livingston, we stayed at Rainbow’s End Park, at the Escapees Headquarters. We stayed there for Thanksgiving, and had a great time with some new friends. For Thanksgiving dinner, there were signup sheets for each table. The park provided the turkeys, and then each table, became its own small pot-luck. The table we signed up for had some really outgoing and funny folks. One woman in particular was the de facto Hospitality Ambassador at Rainbow’s End, and she was perfect for the job. She got everyone at our table together for supper, the week before the holiday, to get to know one another, and also to decide who would bring what to Thanksgiving Dinner. This was a great idea for two reasons: it assured that we would have a variety of dishes, rather than four green bean casseroles and no potatoes, but more importantly, it assured no one would feel like a stranger at the table. We had smoked turkey and all the fix’ns and Penny got to try pecan pie for the first time. We had a blast!
It was nice and warm for the first part of our time in Livingston, and we thought we’d take care of all the legalities regarding residency the week after the holiday. That was when it started to rain. It rained on and off for the next few days and then it got pretty cold. When we took the HOW for its inspection it was snowing! Then came the first of many Winter storm warnings.
We had planned on moseying across Texas towards El Paso, driving through Southern New Mexico, and finally winding up in Arizona. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men… This Winter storm was moseying up our intended route, but from West to East! It snowed in El Paso and New Mexico was iced over. No way we were going to make it to Arizona; our route was blocked.
We changed plans and headed towards the Rio Grande Valley where lots of Winter Texans go to avoid the cold. We would have loved to hang out along the Gulf of Mexico, but the HOW is 14 years old, and we didn’t want to expose it to the salt air. So we went to Chimney Park RV Resort, right on the Rio Grande River and hunkered down to wait out the weather.
After the storm passed, we headed North towards San Antonio, to have our generator serviced at a Cummins/ Onan factory service center. After that we headed West to try heading to Arizona again. I (Paul) have an Aunt who Winters with her daughter and son-in-law in Surprise Arizona. She is very dear to both of us and we really wanted to see her. Our
route would take us past an Escapees Co-op called The Lone Star Corral. We figured we’d spend the night there, check the place out, and head out the next day.
As it turned out The Lone Star Corral was really nice. We met a few folks who invited us to stay for Christmas, (They have Christmas in Texas. None of that Politically Correct Hollidaze BS there!). Another Winter storm was brewing to our West, and everyone was so darned nice, that we said yes, we’d love to. Well, Christmas was so nice, that we decided to stay for New Years. On New Years Day, someone made a whole slew of Black-eyed Peas. They were good, but later, we could have flown the HOW like the Hindenburg. It was probably just as flammable, too… The weather never really improved, and we found ourselves gettin’ comfy right there in Hondo, TX. We actually bought into the co-op so we can go there whenever we want and set on our porch a drinkin’ tea.
The weather began to improve in March, with sunny days in the sixties or seventies, and nights in the forties and fifties. We were scheduled to attend the RV-Dreams.com Spring Rally in Eastern Tennessee at the end of April, and then we had to report for duty at our Summer workamping assignment at Blackhawk Valley Campground in Rockford, IL. Since we really only got to run away from bad weather in the Fall and Winter, we wanted to take our time and enjoy the trip from South Central Texas to Eastern Tennessee.
We settled on a route that would take us up the Natchez Trace Parkway from the Southern Terminus in Natchez Mississippi all the way to the Northern Terminus just south of Nashville, Tennessee. On our way toThe Trace, we journeyed through the Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi Delta areas. We got to check out some beautiful places in bi-yo contry, check out some ‘gaters, and eat a whole lotta crawfish.
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| We et 6 pound a crawfish at dis favorite ah de locals |
We found the Cajuns in Arcadiana to be some of the warmest, most friendly, laid back folk we’d met to date. They made some fine vittles, too.
Once we got to Mississippi, we headed towards Natchez. We picked up The Trace, just eight miles North of where it began and drove it up through Mississippi, a little part of Alabama, (Sweet Home), and finally into Tennessee. We got to an area where the killer tornadoes that hit Yazoo City, MS went through in 2011. There was mile after mile of destruction. 
At the rally we got to catch up with some old friends and we made a bunch of new ones. Linda and Howard Payne of RV-Dreams.com, put on the hands-down best rallies in RV-dom. You learn a LOT, and have a great time doing it. I cannot recommend them more highly. Anyone who is an RV’er or wants to be one, full-time, part-time or any-time, really needs to attend one of their educational rallies. They cover stuff that no one else does, and they party (G Rated) like no one else.
After the rally, we had ten days before we needed to be in Rockford, IL. I wanted to stop in Decatur Indiana to have some work done on the HOW. I called the Fleetwood factory to arrange the service and was told they couldn’t get us in for three months! I asked if there was somewhere they could recommend. They had an authorized service center in the area and they recommended we try there. Sullivan RV Service was able to get us in right away, AND their techs had been trained at the Fleetwood Plant. They also had access to Fleetwood engineers and could get parts directly from Fleetwood the same day. We spent two days and three nights at the service center, but everything was done, and done well.
From there, we moseyed our way Northwest towards Illinois. We topped off our fuel while we were still in Indiana because we didn’t want to buy it in Illinois. We got used to paying $3.08 a gallon in Texas, and the price went higher the further North we traveled. When we crossed over into Illinois, gas was 40 cents a gallon higher as we entered through Cook County. Cook County Illinois, home of Chicago and the best government money can buy.
We arrived at Blackhawk Valley Campground on Thursday, May 15. It was cold and raining. The humidity was so high, everything in the HOW was soggy. It was miserable. We noticed that things, like joints and sinuses, that hadn’t hurt in months, hurt now. When we awoke Friday Morning it was SNOWING!!! It was like we never left Illinois at all.
Yet here we are, back in Illinois until mid October. It’s good to see our friends and loved-ones. Now if we could just move them all Southwest…
If you want the details of our adventures, just scroll down to the bottom of the blog and read your way up!
