5/30/13, Thursday, May 30: Tonight if all goes well, I get into the city of Nashville, TN: I've been thinking since Texarkana, TX, that I managed to cross the great state of…without seeing a single longhorn cow or bull and without seeing a single armadillo, unless it was unrecognizable flattened fauna.

   I've been kicking myself that I didn't print out my itinerary before I left home, but it's changed so much as I've gone along that it would be almost unrecognizable now.

   My new best friends are settings on the van's climate controls: NORM A/C and MAX A/C, especially Norm.

   Tootling along through Tennessee, I suddenly felt quite disoriented: What am I doing so far east? Where are the Sierra? Where's the Pacific Ocean? What are all these rolling green hills? Help, where am I?! This is what I call being out of my comfort zone!

   Crossing from Arkansas into Tennessee: My gosh, the Mississippi is big! So are all these rivers! The farther east I went, the hillier Tennessee got. This must be how I wound up in the Nashville KOA in the midst of country-music attractions galore. I have little or no idea who these artists are.

5/29/13, Wednesday, This is the not-city, Village Creek State Park, AR: Site 36. Just outside Wynne, AR, which is off on a winding country road from Forrest City and I40, which I've been on since Little Rock, AR.

  ( WAAAAAH! The people in the next site here at the Texarkana KOA just drove off and took their lovely cat with them! Bring it back!!)

   On the way to Village Creek SP, I saw a bumper sticker worth noting: EAT RICE/Potatoes Make Your Butt Bigger. I can do "bigger butt" on rice just as well.

   Again, beautiful, lush countryside. What we call a river hardly counts as a creek here. However, behind some of the well-forested facades, I could see clearcuts. Lots of evergreens as well as deciduous trees. Very humid with nose-filling and pleasant vegetation fragrance. It reminds me so much of Hilo!

   Village Creek SP is especially lush, with its many deciduous trees that include liquidambars. The campground is very lovely, and I have neighbors who have a tiny, teacup Chihuahua and a very young and adorable kitten. It began to thunder and get quite windy, so I went over to help them nail their stuff down, and I had a chance to pat the dog and cuddle the kitten. Poor little things were frightened and bewildered.

   It rained a very little. I wonder if that's that? According to the radio, if it rains, it will reduce the humidity (a relief it sounds as if they'll really appreciate). I'm tucked into a shady site with water and electricity; what more could I want?!

5/28/13, Tuesday: The Short and Very Pretty: What with getting into East Jesus so late last night, getting set up and ready for bed by…MIDNIGHT!, I slept in and, after refilling with propane and gasoline, got a very late start. It had been a pleasant night, enlivened by having all my doors and windows open and attracting several June bugs who seemed miffed at being put out. One got stuck inside overnight and was royally cheesed off by the morning!

   It was a windy day, but the drive out of Dallas just got prettier and prettier, with a rolling, green, wooded landscape and improving weather as I went west. There was a big lake the freeway crossed on the way out of Dallas, Lake Ray Hubbard (a reservoir) with beachside places and marinas -- for a minute, I thought I'd made a wrong turn and gone to the Gulf Coast. I'm really enjoying this! Today made me so glad I'm making this trip!

   I actually left Texas for Arkansas at Texarkana, which straddles the state line, but then decided to turn back at the Arkansas Visitors Welcome Center about 10 miles over the border. It was already 6 PM, and I just didn't want to drive any more. The hell with it. Only 177 miles today. So?

   So I'm back in Texas, barely, at the Texarkana KOA, a really lovely campground, all hooked up and ready to to call it a night around 10 or 11 PM. The sites here are surrounded by grass and big trees, and I already have one June bug hanging out with me. Gosh, the exciting company I attract!

5/27/13: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (Memorial Day):  The Big Whew! Nancy and I continued to have a great time in San Antonio. We waited till the rain let up at midday on Saturday before she collected me. Saturday, I picked up some groceries at her local Trader Joe's and more Medifast meals at a nearby Medifast center. We drove to downtown San Antonio and made a flying pass through the Alamo -- a must-see but nothing either of us was much interested in. The rain started again, but it was nothing like Friday's rain!

   After that, we found a good place for lunch, went to the San Antonio Museum of Art especially for a Latin American folk art exhibit -- very interesting, and then had an early dinner at Luxury, which was very good but an even more basic place than a picnic table at a roadside rest! I had a "naked" hamburger: no bun.

   Nancy and I talked about Cliff (such a great guy; a real loss, but she and he had 50 good years together, and how many among us can say that?) and about our friends from Stanford-in-Italy. I can't believe how long ago that was!

   Sunday we had a relaxed, late start on our way to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens -- two thumbs up! I really enjoyed the plants, the scents, the huge and varied greenhouses, and some old pioneer houses of adobe and wood. Rain caught us, but we dried out a little in the greenhouses, in one of which they have a nice cycad collection. Nancy's daughter, Kathryn, joined us for lunch at a vegetarian place called Green, where we enjoyed a very good lunch. Lovely girl!

   Nancy had a great suggestion: That we see some of the truly historic missions of San Antonio, where they lie roughly in a line, each 3 miles from the other, and all near the San Antonio River. I enjoyed walking in their grounds and seeing their interiors. There are 5 of them, but we saw only 2, the largest and the smallest. Much older than Oceanside's Mission San Luis Rey!

   Then it was time for me to get back to the motel to rest, do laundry, and pack up, dammit.

   Last night I spoke with Scott -- thank you, Scott, for having called -- and he suggested I plan to stay longer in Virginia to see colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, etc. I completely overlooked Virginia's huge historical significance in my pursuit of its natural beauties and of Gettysburg!

   Today, Monday, I was off to the Dallas-Fort Worth area -- Grand Prairie, actually, a little south of there. It was one heck of a miserable drive, with heavy traffic and LOTS of miserable road-work slowdowns between Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth. It took FOREVER to get to this Trader's RV Park, but I'm here safely at last. It's cooling off, and I'm airing the van out. It had got pretty stinky while rusting in the Motel 6 parking lot in San Antonio.

   I have seldom seen a countryside as utterly devoid of interest as that between San Antonio and Grand Prairie -- almost as boring as California's Central Valley. (Even West Texas was more interesting and at least not as urbanized.) While the landscape wasn't perfectly flat, it had hardly any relief: just gently rolling, green, and occasionally wooded, with lots of ugly little communities that, from I35, looked very much like anywhere else. I could almost have gone from one McDonald's to another clear across that half of the state. In fact, I did: I'm learning the fine art of peeing at the next McDonald's without having the grace to buy anything (GUILT!).

   But then the GPS unit vectored me off onto I35W and then onto some godforsaken web of roads that wound from one unmarked farm to another, till I had no idea where I was or where I was going. But, of course, I really had to pee. Desperate, I stopped at a turnout, pulled out the potty, and peed in full view of oncoming traffic. My god, the potty compartment stinks! I'll have to rip out the carpet there.

   The joys of a half-gallon of water a day plus a diuretic. And I thought it was wet in San Antonio.

   Just as I was sure the GPS had led me to East Jesus*, I found the RV park. It's next to the Grand Prairie Municipal Airport, so that will be interesting in the morning. I love to watch planes take off and land. But this place IS East Jesus!

*"East Jesus" is what my brother-in-law Craig calls any place that counts as no place at all.

5/24/13: Friday, San Antonio, TX: The Big Thundershower: Today we had another stroll along the Riverwalk, this time through downtown San Antonio. For lunch, we stopped at a place her family used to go to when she was little. I had my first bowl of real Texas chili as we ate at the riverside, under an umbrella.
   Rain hadn't been forecast, but it did start to rain as we were eating, and it soon rained very, very hard! Everyone is delighted; Texas has been in a terrible drought. We stuck it out but were pretty damp by the time we finished, so we dashed inside for a cup of hot tea before heading over to a store called the Five and Ten -- alas, $5 and $10! She bought a T-shirt for me and a poncho (accidentally) and umbrella for herself, and with the coverage of the latter two, we made it back to her car, soggy, somewhat weary, and very happy.
   The Riverwalk is so much more varied and lovely than I had imagined! The vegetation in the downtown area is particularly lush and tropical -- quite enchanting. During the storm, water seemed to cascade everywhere from the walls down into the river. They'd posted off a section of the walk, even stationing an officer there, where the runoff fell so hard and with such a volume that anyone trying to go through it was likely to be washed away.
    My feet are sore. What a wonderful day!

5/23/13: Thursday, San Antonio, TX: The Big Sultry Plus KK: Before I forget, I want to mention a great cat I met in Van Horn, TX, named KK. He belongs to the KOA managers, and they're lucky I didn't take him with me. He is like a dog when he wants to be patted: he sits up on his hindquarters and paws at your hand to recall you to your proper duty of scratching behind his ears, under his chin, at the base of his tail….
   San Antonio is hot and humid; I worked up such a lather bringing the rest of my luggage upstairs that I took off my shirt and bra and hung them over the air conditioner to dry. They didn't.
   I went to the bank and then to a movie theater to see the latest Star Trek film. What a yawner. Talk about a plot device that's been done to death and does not warrant resurrection! Of course, there were bigger and better chases, more and larger explosions, and showier and deadlier crashes, but they just went on and on and on….Truly a 13-year-old boy's dream world.
   Nancy picked me up in the late afternoon, and we went for a delightful stroll on San Antonio's famed Riverwalk, followed by an excellent dinner at her favorite Mexican place, La Gloria. Last night, after I'd had a chance to rest, she had picked me up for another excellent supper at a cute Mexican place in the plaza/shopping area where she lives. Her apartment is really beautiful, and she enjoys being within easy walking distance of so many shops and restaurants, including Trader Joe's.

5/22/13: Wednesday, The Big Wildflowers. Driving east from Sonora, TX, to San Antonio, TX, I saw the most amazing roadside displays of wildflowers in the median and on the shoulders. Delicate coneflowers, that mint with the blue-and-white spikes, yellow and orange "belly flowers," and others I couldn't identify without driving -- AAAAAACK! -- into a ditch.
   The countryside grew more and more hilly as those big, layered tablelands of limestone became more frequent. I need a geology lesson here. These aren't reefs, and I presume caps of erosion-resistant materials as well as the carving actions of water and wind are responsible for the landscape relief-- but I'd like to know for sure.
   I called Nancy Fix Anderson from a gas station in Sonora, and we'll get together for a late supper tonight. Don't anyone tell her I may sneak out to see the new Star Trek movie tomorrow while she's busy most of the day. At least I'll get to see her, unlike my bad luck at seeing Carol Robinson (DIDN'T get to -- my bad). Nancy and I were roommates at Stanford in Italy way back in 1960-61.
   Now I'm deep in the wilderness of urban San Antonio -- AAAAAACK, the big city! Far and away the biggest since I left the San Diego area. The route to the motel -- a Motel 6 on Kenley Place -- was a looping, tangled, freeway-and-surface street maze that I navigated only thanks to the GPS unit, bless my little Garmin.
    I have driven more than 1500 miles eastward and a little southward, and for more than 500 of those miles, I've been in Texas. If I'd gone northwestward, I could be in Bellingham, Washington, now. Jeez, this state IS big!
   It's sultry here; I need a shower before I gas all the bugs and wildlife around here.

5/21/13: Tuesday, Chasing the Big Sunrise. Driving eastward is chasing the sunrise.
   Between Van Horn and Sonora, the country was at first nearly flat, with just a long, gentle roll very like long, low swells on a calm ocean. Very few mesas and tablelands visible from I10. How appropriate for an ancient seabed! I wonder what Permian treasures lie locked in its layers. But the landscape was also scorched brown, with little except small shrubs and grasses.
   Around Fort Stockton, the mesas became larger and more numerous, and the tablelands became more extensive. Burrowing eastward between road cuts, I could see that the sedimentary layers were as horizontal as layers in a cake made by Martha Stewart! Nothing as unmannerly as subduction or orogeny seems to have intruded here.
   The farther east I got, the greener the countryside became -- for now, I suppose. Small trees began to appear and then grew more numerous the nearer I got to Sonora, until the landscape appeared almost lush compared to where I'd been. Patches and then carpets of yellow wildflowers brightened the median and shoulders.
   Now I'm in the Caverns of Sonora RV Park -- very pretty and lively, with lots of oaks and sycamores, wildflowers, and domestic birds: guinea fowl, peacocks, maybe pheasants. Ed should be here to get the peacocks to sound off. A big, fat ground squirrel stopped to sit up and stare at me: "So, where's the handout for adorable moi?"
   If there's wifi here, you could fool me. Probably just semaphore.

5/20/13: Monday, The Big Empty. Enjoyed the McKittrick Canyon Nature Loop very much, thanks to the abundant and interesting interpretive signs. Spent the night in the KOA in Van Horn, TX, a pretty town of 2,500. (Re: West Texas: Jeanette Walls's great-grandfather was right.)
   In the morning, I went to shower and found the place stuffed with teenage girls, nice kids on a school trip. They'd used up all the hot water, but I got pretty clean anyway. The tent area was full of identical tents, tents that had been missing when I pulled in yesterday afternoon. Their excursion for the day was to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Surprise!

5/19/13: Sunday, The Big Windy. Pine Springs Campground here in Guadalupe Mtns. NP is periodically wildly windy. It blew all night last night, and the van creaked, popped, and protested so I got almost no sleep. What little sleep I got was dogged by nightmares. I expected to hear the canvas rip and the roof fly away any minute.
   I lowered the roof partway and later on added security to it with some bungee cords I had on hand. Tonight, I'll take a sleeping pill and possibly put in earplugs, and tomorrow I'll leave. Two nights of howling winds are enough. I don't feel like trying to like this place any more. I was hoping to hear the coyotes sing, but the wind drowned them out.
   Shoot me Tuesday, but I can't take the wind another night.
   I'll go up to see McKittrick Canyon first -- the park's riparian beauty spot -- no campground there -- and at least hike the nature trail there before heading south  for nearby Van Horn, TX, just off I10, where there are 2 RV parks. Then I'll further alter my itinerary by going to Sonora instead of Ft. Stockton so as to be closer to San Antonio for the final push.
   I spent most of the morning lazing abed, but I did walk to the Visitor Center around 4:30 PM. It was already closed, but the information displays let me identify a number of plants I'd been guessing at, like mountain mahogany.

5/18/13: Saturday, The Biggest Peaks in Texas. This is Guadalupe Mountains National Park. These mountains are in large part the remnants of Permian-era reefs, not corals but sponges, algae, and other undersea life cemented together in great calcareous reefs beneath a long-vanished sea 270-260 million years ago. As far as we know, the extinction event we use to mark the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago is the greatest of the great extinctions. My beloved trilobites were finally extinguished then, though their numbers and variety had already suffered considerable diminution. There must be wonderful fossils here.
   Now it's a high and very dry desert, part of the Chihuahuan desert. Low, scrubby vegetation carpets a landscape even less varied than the Mojave and the Great Basin. It's very arid. Up here there are some shrubs and small trees, like junipers, live oaks (succumbing to mistletoe), possibly jojoba, and many I don't recognize. Definitely a solanum with pretty purple flowers and a fruit on its dead stems that looks like apple of Sodom -- deadly nightshade?
   Very windy tonight with a bright half-moon; getting chilly. I look forward to going to the Visitor Center tomorrow, but I'm starting to wish that I'd spent an extra day in the Catalinas instead of here. And that I'd not backed into a ditch and been scared out of the Catalinas by my own ineptitude.
   Guadalupe Peak at 8749 feet is the highest peak in Texas, and it seems to be right above this campground, though not visible from it. I am too intimated by the barrenness of the place to come up with any Dragnet-style jibes tonight. The brochure calls it a magnificent desolation.
   Leaving Deming this morning, I had to stop for another bowl of chili at El Mirador. I tried the green chili -- very good but I like the red better -- and got a bowl of the red chili to go. I suppose in the interest of truth, justice, and the American way, I shall have to try some Texas chili next. All I saw of El Paso was very little: part of it from I10 looked like old Hollywood off the 110, say around Vermont and Normandie, and then U.S. Hwy. 180 sent me east through suburbs that looked like Lancaster.

5/17/13, Friday, The Best-Ever Chili: Up at 6 AM again, loaded the van, and headed for New Mexico. This was the wrong time of year for desert wildflowers, and, if anything, western New Mexico was flatter and browner than eastern Arizona. Rolled into Deming, NM, around noon today, checked in at the Little Vineyard RV Park, and interrogated the ladies at the front desk as to where a good place in town was for chili. "Just the facts, ma'am." One of the two women volunteered "El Mirador" without asking for a lawyer.
   (Boy, that's something I noticed in those old "Dragnet" episodes besides everyone smoking: No Miranda statement, and no stopping questioning when the suspect asks for a lawyer. How times have changed!)
   And what an excellent recommendation! The El Mirador is a tiny restaurant, very plain and simple, and had the BEST chili I have ever tasted in my life! I hated to finish the bowl because I wanted to savor the chili longer. I ate a sopapilla for the first time, too, but didn't know I needed to put honey on it. Just as well: honey and I get along very -- blurp blurp blurp -- badly.
   The Little Vineyard RV Park is quiet now that the snowbirds have migrated north, and its facilities are nice and clean.
   So: Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX, tomorrow!

5/16/13, Thursday, The Big Mountains -- The Big Lesson: I rose at 6 AM today to get ready to meet Carol Robinson at 10 AM at the Palisades Visitor Center for a hike. So excited I…needed Lomotil today. I also decided to move to the adjacent campsite, as it looked more level. What a disaster. I moved, all right, but as I backed out of the new site to go meet Carol, I reversed a little too much and backed right into that deep hole in the ditch. My rear tires had no purchase; I was stuck. A couple of camp hosts came by and commiserated, expressing the hope that I hadn't damaged the van permanently. The tires looked hopelessly splayed out. I hadn't heard any terrible noises, but….Meanwhile, they offered me a ride to their site where there was a telephone I could use to call AAA.
   A woman came down with a video camera to take footage of my van's awkward position. I could have done without the attention!
   Thank goodness for AAA RV coverage! A tow truck was out in an hour or so and pulled me out. The mechanic and the camp host looked over and under the van and pronounced themselves astonished that there was no apparent damage!
   I decided to go back down to find a cheap motel in town, where, if the tires subsequently deflated or the van shed enormous puddles of oil or transmission fluid, I'd at least be within limping distance of a service station or garage. So here I am, at a former Motel 6, now a Rodeway Inn, having napped and read the afternoon away. Now I'm about to shower and sleep. I called Carol when I got here to make my blushing apologies; I've not heard from her yet.
   The van, perfectly level now, lets me open the main access door with no problem. I've cranked the refrigerator up so far, everything will probably freeze in both compartments.
   Off to Deming, NM, tomorrow!

5/14/13: The Big Saguaro. This is the city: Tucson, Arizona. It's hot but still about 10 degrees cooler than El Centro. I'm stationed at the Rincon Country East RV Resort — very nice! It was a 300-mile drive. Got here around 8 PM, so I'm pretty tired.
   Picacho Peak north of Tucson was, as always, a very striking sight, with its upper slopes so nearly vertical and that cusp between the peaks (Google "Picacho Peak photos"). I wanted to take it in for questioning, but Capt. Matilda pointed out that there wasn't room for it.
    Got 13.87 miles/gallon between Oceanside and Yuma, but it was so hot on the road today that I had to use the air conditioning, which probably shot the mileage to blazes, ha ha. Also after El Centro, I had filled the fresh-water tank, so there's another 64 pounds to carry.
   I'll shower in the morning but have a baby-wipe bath tonight. After El Centro, I'm keeping the baby wipes in the refrigerator.
   This park has Tengo Internet, which I've used before, elsewhere. It has to be one of the worst providers, short of no provider at all.

5/14/13. The Little Frying Pan. This is the city: El Centro, California. It was cloudless and hot, the kind of "hot" that makes the sky colorless and opaque. My name is Kathy; I'm not a cop. The boss is Captain Martha the Panda. The case: Get to Tucson, AZ, via mysterious byways (I-8, I-10). Lt. Matilda the Cat and I discussed several approaches and decided to get on I-8 and see what would happen.
   Last night I woke up with my left arm curled around a cat, who'd buried his face in my armpit. We had a suspect: Officer Nelson the Orange Tabby. Damn! No cat! Maybe it was the late Sergeant Willow making a stealth  visit.
  Another note from yesterday, on the hazards of losing weight: I was using my extra-long squeegee to wash my windshield while filling the gas tank, so I literally had my hands full, when I felt something slithering a little below my waist. Then it crept down to my navel but didn't stop there. By the time I had dropped the squeegee and checked my creeping shorts, they had fallen to the top of my pubic bone. That's not supposed to be the public bone, and I hauled the shorts up just in time. Must now tuck shirttails in to add friction and help avert pantsing myself.

5/13/13 -- Later that same day....

   9:50 PM After packing the van, I felt like someone had let the air out of me. I got away at 4 PM and thought I'd be lucky to make it to El Cajon.
   To my surprise, I did get to El Centro. Really enjoyed the drive over the Laguna Mountains.
   Am tucked into a space in the Sunbeam Lake RV Resort (said lake being a small pond). Arrived about 8 PM after having driven around for about 30 minutes looking for it in the dark. 
   Nighttime temp okay. I interrogated the manager, and she said the daytime temp was 107 degrees F! IN MAY!

5/13/2013. The Big Goodbye Day

   5/13/2013: This is the city: Oceanside, California. It was a Monday. I was working the Get Van Packed Division. The name's Ant Kathy. My partners were Martha the Panda and Matilda the Cat. The assignment: Oceanside, CA, to Provincetown, MA, and back in my van-based RV, a 1992 Ford E250.
   11:18 AM: I'm so nervous I get mental whiteouts when I try to think about this trip. Last night I couldn't sleep, so I over-ate "sugarless" desserts. Naturally, that left me badly needing Lotrimin and black tea in the morning. Good thing I'm just naturally cool. I don't care if I get no farther than El Centro today, just as long as I get started. Anxiety is a good waker-upper.

   (Yes, I've been watching old episodes of "Dragnet.")

   _____PM: Finally took off. [FILL IN BLANK BEFORE POSTING!!]

    Recipe: It's become the rage to include a recipe with your blog, so here's mine for today, a tropical-themed treat, "Rum and Mosquito Jello Salad." Dang, I'm out of space.