Speed Bumps

November 24, 2014

Thanksgiving is in less than one week.  Wow.  The holidays definitely snuck up on us this year.  We have totally lost track of the seasons with our travels.  We’ll be in one state enjoying summer, then the next state enjoying fall, then back again to enjoying summer…well, you get the idea.  How can anyone keep up with seasons when bouncing between them?  I think in our original plans we were supposed to be in sunny, southern Arizona by now.  Ha, original plans.  Have we been able to stick to any plan, yet?  I guess that brings us to now.  We are still in Texas and we haven’t even made it to the central part of the state.  I wish that I could say that this slowdown was all in our new grand plan, but it wasn’t.  We hit a few “speed bumps” this month.  I guess we were due, since it has been pretty smooth sailing up until this point. 

Alright, so we made it to our new hometown of Livingston only to find out that our trailer would need to be inspected and the right side tail light wasn’t working.  No problem.  It can’t be that hard of a fix, can it?  It would obviously be the easy, cheap fix, right?  The four dollar bulb.  Um, no.  Of course that would have been too easy, what were we thinking?  How about replacing the connector from the trailer to the car?  That for sure has to be it, because our previous one had gotten pinched.  Off to the store to get a new cord.  Tom spent hours under the trailer only to find out that wasn’t it either.  Although, now we have a nice new un-pinched cord and Tom has a permanently cricked neck.  Well, after what felt like fifteen trips to Wal-Mart and Tom spending the entire day under the trailer attempting to re-wire while working on his neck injury, that also was a failed attempt.  Next step, calling every RV repair person possible only to find out we couldn’t get an appointment for another ten days to even have it looked at.  Frustration starts creeping in at this point.  Oh, and it gets better.  The week before, our gas stovetop stopped working.  Thank goodness for electric ovens and outdoor grills, we haven’t gone hungry!  (It still doesn’t work by the way.)  Luckily the Camping World in Houston gave us an appointment, so we enjoyed a week-long trip to the beach in Galveston waiting it out.  (I guess there could be worse places to wait it out after all.) 

During our time near the big city we were able to visit the Johnson Space Center, home of the famous command center, which was completely awesome. 

We also made our way out to the U.S.S. Texas navy battleship and spent the entire school day exploring this historical icon. 

We never have anywhere to be, so what’s the point in feeling rush or stressed by any uncontrollable circumstances?  Actually, we enjoyed a fabulous week seeing the sights and enjoying ourselves at the beach that we probably would have otherwise skipped.  Not such a bad turn of events after all.  I think we all needed a change of scenery and the beach was a perfect place to unwind. 

Kayaking in the marsh while watching pink flamingos and herons fly over, playing in the waves, running on the beach, watching the sunrise over the horizon…even when our life hits bumps, how can we complain?  Life really is good. 

 

We did, however, finally make it to Camping World three hours late for our appointment due to unforeseen traffic (we forgot what rush hour looked like in a big city!).  Unfortunately, only to find out this entire time nothing was wrong with our trailer and it would have passed inspection perfectly back in Livingston.  Nice.  A blown fuse in our truck was the issue.  Go figure.  Knowledge really is power, kids.  And despite what some people may think, no, the internet doesn’t hold all the answers.  My husband and I exchanged some looks of “you live, you learn” as we drove away and then chalked it up to a nice time at the beach.  It really could have been so much worse! 

It led us to reminisce about many of our other smaller speed bumps along the way.  Our very first campground we missed our turn and found ourselves winding up the mountain where Tom had to find a way to U-turn.  That will break you in to the full time RV lifestyle real fast!  Then, everyone by now should know about our chigger experience in Tennessee and the misery of the week stuck in the Land Between the Lakes.  Or even our bike ride on the trail known as the “Devil’s Backbone” that almost left us stranded in the woods.  It doesn’t stop there.  In Michigan, we decided to walk to the Soo Locks from our campground.  Well as everyone knows, we take our dog everywhere with us especially to places where there is an outdoor park.  The staff at our campground assured us that it was within walking distane, so we walked and walked and, well, about 4 miles later we arrived.  Unfortunately, after arriving, we quickly found out that dogs weren’t allowed in the park!  What kind of place doesn’t allow dogs in a grassy, public park?  So we walked all that way without even seeing the Soo Locks at all.  We sang the “bottles of milk on the wall” song all the way back and laughed about getting our exercise for the day and seeing the town of Sault St. Marie on foot.  In Hot Springs we had a similar experience staying in the National Park and finding ourselves hiking into town to eat only to realize that after finishing our meal it would mean hiking back in the dark.  It wasn’t ideal, but we spent the entire time in the woods spooking and scaring each other all the way back to our trailer.  I could go on about the many other silly situations we have gotten ourselves into, but the real point is that it is all part of the memory making experience.  Adventures aren’t always rosy, but they are always memorable.  Texas has been an adventure already.  Who knows how long it might take us to journey across this great state, but we will eventually make it, speed bumps and all.