The Road Home

 

Roswell New Mexico UFO Museum

Thursday July 11, 2024

We have one week to cross the country, for me to make my eye doctor appointment. I estimate it will take us five days to run almost 2000 miles. We plan to drive at least half the route on state and county roads. There are one or two places where we will take a section of interstate highway but for the most part, we will shun them.

Today we drove south from Los Alamos New Mexico to Roswell, home of the 1947 UFO crash. Roswell is milking it as a tourist attraction, conspiracy theorists say the government is covering it up and the government says it never happened.

Do you believe?

We stopped in town and visited the UFO Incident Museum and got a pizza for lunch before continuing our journey. From Roswell we would be traveling almost due east on Highway 380. The terrain gradually changed from the deserts of New Mexico to the plains of Texas. We saw lots of farming in Texas, but (IMHO) the green fields were only possible because of irrigation.

By five-ish we were in the Texas town of Post. We’re traveling without reservations but had no problem getting an overnight site in a small campground in town. 3 G RV Park was $35 for a full hookup site. The site was gravel, not level but doable without unhooking the truck. And as all these little out of the way overnight spots, it had railroad tracks close by. Our white noise maker took care of the passing trains or maybe we were just tired after a long day of driving.

Overnight spots are often not luxury resorts!

Friday July 12, 2024

We were up early and with our minimal set up we were on our way quickly. The road today was almost due east on Highway 380 for the whole day. It would be our 2nd day of driving in Texas, and we would not make it all the way across the state. 

The terrain slowly changed from parched earth to green plains and irrigated crops. The closer we got to the Dallas mega-tropolis (Is that a word?) the greener the environs became. Before the day was done, we would see trees, shrubbery and even grass lawns. 

We passed Dallas to its north, still on Highway 380. The suburbs are encroaching into this once rural area, but the traffic moved smoothly. In Greenville we left hwy 380 and continued east on I-30. Our destination for the day was only thirty miles along the interstate in Sulfur Springs. We are well east of Dallas at this point and far enough away that it is still mostly rural country, for now!

Hwy 380 across Texas

We found a campground about a mile south of the interstate highway, far enough away that there was no highway noise, and as a bonus there were no nearby railroad tracks.  I really can’t tell you much about Shady Lake Campground, there four transient pull-thru sites are right behind the office and we never ventured any further into the campground. We had a huge 5th wheel RV between us and the lake so we didn’t even see that. It’s all good, all we wanted to do was plug in the air conditioner and sleep.  $37 with military discount for full hook up site. It was gravel and grass, not really level but again, it was doable without unhooking the truck. 

Saturday July 13th, 2024

Our third day in a row of getting up and on the road early. By early I’m talking like 7:30ish, which is early for us, we don’t usually depart until 9am. We took local roads southeast for about 60 miles to interstate I-20. We have chosen this cross-country route because it’s the straightest route home and we didn’t want to go on I-40 after the terrible road conditions we experienced there on our way west. 

We continued the march east for about 475 miles, this plus the 75 miles south from Sulfur Springs to the interstate equals 550 miles for the day. We drove through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and to Tuscaloosa Alabama. We overnighted at the Tuscaloosa Elks Lodge. They have ten (water/electric/sewer) RV sites behind the Lodge, $25 for Elk’s members. We were the only RV there for the night, it was very quiet. 

At the Tuscaloosa Alabama Elk's Lodge

Sunday July 14, 2024

We were on the road again quickly in the morning and with interstate travel light on this Sunday morning we were soon through Birmingham and on to Atlanta Georga before noon. There was construction on the road through Atlanta, but there was no work on Sunday, so there were no lane closures, and we sailed right on through. 

 

Our very loose plan was to continue I-20 into South Carolina and stop for the night somewhere near Columbia. There were two reasons for stopping at the state capitol. One, it would give us a relatively short 200 mile run home on our last travel day, and I knew if we crossed I-95 we would not stop. 

You may have heard me mention the beeline syndrome before. It’s a real thing and when long distance travelers get close to home, they want to push on and get to their destination. When we got close to our planned stop for the night, I looked at the time and BLS kicked in. I told Millie, it’s only 3pm, I can have you home well before dark. 

The final stretch!

We arrived home around 7-ish with the RV in tow after a 550-mile ride.  We will leave it in the driveway overnight and prepare it for storage tomorrow. It took most of the next day, but we unloaded all our stuff, washed the RV, flushed the holding tanks into our house sewer clean out and took it to the storage lot. The Great Summer Road Trip of 2024 was now over.