On the road

After weeks of anticipation, we are finally on the road. We packed our shorts & flip flops and left the cold and snow of Iowa on Friday.

We are headed to see this:

But of course, on the way we need to first drive 1,300 miles through Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Tai is doing pretty good. He was pretty mopey the first couple days without Roxie, but he’s doing better. He has the entire platform in the truck to himself, which he likes. Although he still feels the need to put his head on Al’s arm.

It’s been nice to not have him go nuts when someone comes up to the truck, or when we are walking him. We don’t have to worry about him going after another dog or person. (I’m thinking positive!)

We stopped the first night in Carthage, MO (home of Precious Moments, in case you needed to know this) at a nice little campground. They didn’t have the water on yet, but it was almost full of campers & motorhomes when we got there at 9:00.

When we first started doing this trip a few years ago, I looked on Diner’s, Dives and Drive-in’s website to see if there was any of the restaurants featured on our route. Clanton’s Cafe in Vinita, OK is one that we have thought about stopping at before, but the timing just didn’t work. This year we decided to actually stop and see how it was on Saturday morning.

It was completely full when we got there with only one booth left. It was good, and very quick. I don’t think we were there 20 minutes from the time we ordered until we were done. And the total bill was only $9.00.  When we left to go back to the truck, there was a truck and horse trailer parked next to us with a bull in it that was not at all happy that we were there. He wanted to climb right out of the trailer. I’m not sure if he saw Tai, or Al, but he wanted to get at one of them.

We only had one small calamity with the camper this year. One of the doors in the kitchen evidentially came open as we put in the slides and bent the hinges. We don’t use it anyway, so we just took the door off.  Not bad compared to what we have had in years past, so I will take it.

More tomorrow…