Friday - Leaving the Trace (5/2/14)

Friday.  We woke up to another pretty day, and got another early start (yes, it's truly amazing).  Joe decided to top off the water tank and dump the holding tanks before we left our state park campground, since he really didn't know where we were on any of them because we hadn't dumped since before we got to Vincennes.  But after all that, we were still on the road by 8:25 (I'm hoping Joe has turned over a new leaf and is becoming a morning person).  We decided to drive the last 10 miles of the Trace again, in the RV.  No wildlife came to tell us goodbye.  We found our way through Natchez and across the Mississippi.  We drove across Louisiana, and hit the Texas state line at 1:37.  Today, we had to contend with traffic again, and stop signs and stoplights, and Hwy 84 makes lots of turns and intersects with lots of other roads, so we had to be on our toes.  We only lost it once, but after about a 20 mile loop we picked it up again.

 We can tell we are back in Texas when the Whataburger's start showing up.  Joe was hoping for one for dinner tonight, but there wasn't one in Fairfield, where we stayed.

Can't remember which town this was, but it definitely was in Texas.  We saw a lot more cattle and horse farms today.

Highway 84 has been designated as the El Camino East/West Corridor -- between Brunswick, Georgia and El Paso, Texas.  "It is a 1,729-mile roadway named "El Camino Real" or "The King's Highway" in Spanish and was named for the historic trail it will duplicate.  The oldest road in Texas, it extends down into Mexico."



There are a lot of state park campgrounds along this route but when I started calling for a place for tonight, I sadly learned that they were all full because it was the weekend.  We got lucky and found a campground (not listed in any of my books) right on the highway at Fairfield that had some openings, so we were glad to call it a day.  It was about 5:00, and we were both pretty tired.  After a little rest, we went into town to dinner, but got back to the RV pretty early, and I've been working on the blog ever since.

We drove 349 miles today, the weather was beautiful but a little warm -- high 70s.  We had our first roadkill today -- Joe hit a bird, or rather, a bird hit us.  I'm thinking he was suicidal.

We have really been lucky with the weather.  Every day has been nice, and only the first night there were some slight storms.  Vincennes has been cold and windy, and our Florida kids were under tornado warnings today (Shooter experienced his first tornado warning signal at day care today).  We apparently lucked into a little window in the weather to get in our trip home.