To Texas, no Mo, and no MoHo either.

Why in the world would an RV loving traveler drive to Texas without her motorhome?  Kids!  Always blame it on the kids.  My daughter decided it was time to move to Texas and we decided together that it might be nice for me to help her drive the UHaul.  Gives us lots of mother-daughter time, right? 

Quality time in a loud bumpy truck pulling a car on a trailer, covering up to 800 miles per day.  Blog stories about our regular RV travels are leisurely rambles from place to place with all the wonderful delights of carrying along your food and kitchen, your bedroom, not the least of all, your bathroom.

I kept thinking I didn’t need to really blog about this at all, since it isn’t really part of the MoHo Travels, but it is a record of what in the heck has been happening in my life, so here it is.  Not leisurely, not filled with campground reviews and hikes and beautiful sights.  Just the road, the unfurling yellow lines, the sunrise as we keep moving east, the glare of headlights as we continue driving into the night.

We drove down I-5, so familiar from the many trips Mo and I have taken on that route, with many sections repaired and much better than they have been in the past.  We crossed the pass over 58, surrounded by snow but without any falling on us.  We passed Desert Hot Springs buffeted by the desert winds, spending a night in a motel in Indio.  Crossing Arizona and New Mexico, Deb got her first view of Mexico across the “mighty” Rio Grande overlooking El Paso toward Juarez, at 60 mph. I told her long stories of the history of the Rio Grande River and how it has been used and reused and dammed and diverted until the trickle that makes it to the gulf no longer feeds that sea with richness and the shrimp are dying.

We drove many miles within sight of the border, going through some border checks, and after 800 miles that day we slept again at a motel in Van Horn, Texas and rose before sunrise for the last leg into San Antonio. Deb was enthralled by the Texas Big Bend Country, the mesas and long vistas, her first view of this kind of landscape. I called Mo after many hours of no cell service and her first words were, “Have you been hit by a tornado?”  I guess two tornados touched down in Dallas as we were approaching San Antonio, but that was north of here and they are now moving northeast so we are fine.

We covered 2030 miles together in 3 days of driving, with gasoline running 4.15 in most of California and 3.79 here in Texas.  The UHaul got less miles per gallon than the MoHo and we spent just over $1000. bucks on gasoline, didn’t eat a lot, and paid 63 to 99 for the hotel rooms for the 5 or 6 hours of sleep we allowed ourselves. I had my cell phone, but I can’t believe how many hundreds of miles on a large interstate don’t support any bars at all, much less any kind of internet.  I read a few facebook posts from bloggers here and there, but don’t have a clue what is going in the blog world except for a few really important things.

Nan is hanging in there while her husband fights to breathe.  Pray for her. Al and Kelly are almost home, and my heart broke along with everyone else when I read that little Cora Motormouse was gone. I know Rick and Paulette are home in Canada, Erin and Mui went camping among the bluebells, Laurie and Odel are making tracks to central California, Karen and Al got their kayaks in some really gorgeous water, and Donna and Russ are having some doggie troubles.  I’ll catch up eventually with the rest.  For now, my daughter and her Texas honey are unpacking a big truck into a small home and I am sitting in another motel with air conditioning to adjust to the high temperatures and humidity.  I plan to sleep a lot between now and the time I fly back home to Oregon and my simple life. 

Trips like this one really make me see how lucky I am to have the chance to travel in a motorhome.  Although the hard push of a fast road trip actually has it’s pleasures as well.  White line fever he called it, wasn’t that Merle Haggard? There is something extremely satisfying about covering a lot of miles in a short time with a hard push.  It was fun.  I am beat to death and tired as heck, but it was a blast. I am really going to miss having my daughter as close as Portland, but I guess this will just be all the more reason for Mo and I to go spend some winter times in Texas with the MoHo.