Heading to Austin

It’s Tuesday and we started the day out in Livingston with 148 miles to go before reaching Austin. I must say it was 148 of the most beautiful miles I have seen in a long time. Mother Nature provided us with her artwork in the form of Black-eyed Susan’s, Queen Anne’s Lace, Indian Paintbrushes and Bluebonnets. Yellow, white, orange and blue colored the road sides and fields. All in their glory and at their peak like they were welcoming us back to Texas. The day was overcast but comfortable. Most of the trip today was on the back country roads. I tried to take pictures of the beautiful wildflowers and some other things but most of the pictures are fuzzy. It’s not always easy to get a decent photograph thru a windshield while going 70mph, especially when it is a little drizzly. I did the best I could. We finally met up with Jamie tonight. It was so wonderful seeing her again. Millenni and Bella finally got to meet but only got to spend a few minutes sniffing each other out before we left to go out to dinner. We are camping at a park in Georgetown, north of Austin. When we got back to the RV tonight it was evident there had been a windstorm while we were gone. Our site is right on the lake. I first noticed that our awning was closed and knew David had opened it before we left. Then I saw the ladder was on the carpet out front and our chairs were missing. A little investigation showed the chairs were folded and stacked under the RV. Our nice neighbor had come over and taken care of everything in our absence. HOW NICE! He said the wind storm hit quickly and everything was blowing away so he came over and secured everything for us. Unfortunately our satellite dish had blown over and received some damage. Hope it will still work! We have run into the nicest people while camping. That man could have easily let our things blow away and not cared but instead he came over and took care of everything for us while we were gone. We are exhausted now so I probably won’t post this until morning. I still need to look thru the pictures and decide which ones to post am just too tired tonight. Driving to Jamie’s apartment tonight I was once again made aware of just how beautiful it is here in the Austin area. Debbie, I bought the Texas magnet you wanted.

a Texas Roadrunner

David, Jamie and Linda after a nice Mexican meal at Maudie's in Westlake

Oreo traveling in her cage. She has become quite content riding in the truck now. Both she and Millenni have been excellent travelers.

Ahhh... Texas! Cattle and an oil drill

Prickly Pear Cactus along the roadside

our site at the Escapees RV park in Livingston

Black-eyed Susan's

more Black-eyed Susan's

Black-eyed Susan's and Queen Anne's Lace

Indian Paintbrushes, Bluebonnets and Queen Anne's Lace

I will get some good photos of the beautiful Bluebonnets this week and get those posted too. Unfortunately the photos I took of them yesterday while traveling didn't turn out well.

One of "those" days!

It started out as an ordinary day but quickly turned into one of those days we don't like to have too often. David was up early and already sitting in one of the recliners and sipping on a cup of coffee by the time I got up. We had a leisurely morning then David took off to get his Texas drivers license and get the truck inspected. Shortly after he left I received a phone call from him. His day was off to a horrible start. Before leaving this morning he made certain he had all the necessary papers and such that was needed to obtain his drivers license. Once he arrived at the local DMV he checked again and had everything. When it was his turn he went forward and presented his things to the attendant. His social security card was no where to be found. He knew he had it in his hand right there in the office but now it was missing. After searching everywhere with no luck he was told he would have to drive to the town of Lufkin, TX which is 45 miles north of here and get some paperwork verifying he has a SS card. So off he went. He obtained what was needed then drove back to Livingston. Now he could proceed. Once the lady found out he had previously had a Texas drivers license in the past she said he had made the trip to Lufkin for nothing as they had his record on file. Poor David! OK, so now he has his Texas drivers license once again and the truck has been inspected. While he was out doing all of this I decided to walk to the post office and pick up our mail. I had emailed them a couple of weeks ago and asked they hold our mail rather than forwarding it to us in SC and we would pick it up while here in Livingston. Well.... they claim they never received my request so our mail has not been held at all but instead has been forwarded to the post office we were using in Roebuck, SC before moving to one in Townville, SC. What a mess! I have some meds that were sent out 2 weeks ago that I need and was expecting to pick up today. Oh well. Like I said it was one of those days! This afternoon was better. It was a beautiful day today and aside from a rough start it was a good day. We spent the afternoon geo-caching in the area. We ended up finding more than we bargained for as on the way back to the truck we encountered a big snake. YIKES!!! At first I thought it was a long piece of black rubber and almost reached down to pick it up and toss at David yelling "snake". The joke would have been on me if I had done that because it was a real snake! I could see its beady eyes. David thought it was dead and started to poke it with his cane and it slithered off into the tall grass in a big hurry. I didn't waste any time getting back in the truck! Tomorrow we head to Austin. YEAH!!!!! I can't wait to get back to my favorite city in the entire world. Plus we will get to see Jamie tomorrow too.

we are staying at the Escapees RV park and our site is on the corner of Dreamcatcher and Racoon Valley

Now isn't this a rare site these days? We were geo-caching a site in the Lake Livingston State Park this afternoon and saw a phone booth right there in the park. I can't even recall the last time i saw a phone booth so had to take a photo. How funny!

Lake Livingston

Nearly 1000 miles

We have completed nearly 1000 miles of our trip. So far so good! We started out at 9:00 this morning and arrived in Livingston, TX around 4:00 this afternoon. Oh I can't tell you how great it is to be in Texas once again. David asked me if I wanted to pull over and kiss the ground when we crossed the state line and believe me I was tempted. I love Texas! What can I say??? We drove through southern Louisiana today before arriving in Texas. All along our trip we have been able to see the damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, even after all this time. We crossed the mighty Mississippi River today.

the Mississippi River

the Mississippi River

the bridge over the Mississippi River

While traveling thru Louisisana I took a couple of pictures for some friends of mine. Kristi you will enjoy this one. Did you know there was an Iowa in Louisiana?


And Davy, this one is for you. Can you imagine an entire bay of whiskey???


I-10 thru the Louisiana bayou is one very, very long bridge over the swamps. Miles and miles of this then check out the bridge! WOW!! It looks like a bridge to nowhere. YIKES!!!!





David drove like a pro. I-10 is still pretty messed up from Katrina and Rita damage. It was a bumpy ride in a lot of spots. Doesn't he look confident?


Millenni and Oreo traveled in the back seat of the truck. I made Millenni a nice perch and she loves riding back there sitting up high so she can see out the windows. Both she and Oreo have traveled so well. Poor Oreo has to ride in her carrier cage. She is not big into riding. She hates having to get into the cage so it is a fight each day as we start out. I wasn't able to get a good photo of her in the cage from my seat but you can see part of her cage next to Millenni in this photo. You haven't lived until you try putting a cat into a cage!



AHHHH.... we finally reach paradise once again! Have I ever mentioned just how much I love Texas???


Driving today we saw the strangest looking thing. It was a large white egert walking along the interstate. We have seen a ton of them on the trip but they are normally in a wet area. This one was no where near any water we could see and it was walking right along the road like it knew where it was going. I laughed and told David that even the egert was on his way to Texas!

We went on a geo-caching adventure this afternoon and located the cache. What fun!

So ends another day. Tomorrow David has to take the truck in for inspection and is going to get his Texas drivers license. I already have mine. And we both need to get out voter registration cards. I filled out the forms to get a new one for my new address here but never received it and I definitely want it to be able to vote!

Saturday Night

We had a fantastic travel day! We had been concerned with the severe weather forecasts but we never encountered any bad weather. We did hit some heavy rain that lasted for maybe 2 minutes but other than that there were no other problems. Whew! As we traveled along I couldn’t help but notice something that I’ve noticed before when we travel. Many, many names of things have Native American names… rivers, towns, streets, etc… Generally speaking I don’t normally think of that but each time we travel about I seem to notice it. In our travels today I saw a lot of long words with the letters X and Q in them. I am always intrigued by names of places. We have stopped for the night in Livingston, Louisiana at a very nice campground. We thought it was funny that we stopped in Livingston since next we will be stopping in Livingston, Texas. Livingston, LA is in the Baton Rouge area. One our way here we first stopped at a State Park but it has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Part of it was open but you could still see so much damage. It was on the gulf and had standing water in the camp area that was open. It was packed with campers though. The one spot they said was large enough for our RV was not and it was full of standing water anyway so we opted not to stay there. they certainly had packed the RV’s in there. I guess since most of the campground was closed from Katrina this was all they could use so they crammed them in tightly. Glad we drove thru just to see the damage left behind but even more glad we didn’t stay there. Here are a couple of photos I took from the truck today during our traveling. One is of a large bridge we drove over and the other is of the Louisiana swamp. Oh, and one more thing that I should have written about in the last post… on Friday just as we were about to leave on our trip I happened to look down and right at my feet I saw a 4 leaf clover! I couldn’t believe it. I have rarely ever found one but the few I have found have been just like this time, just a glance and there it was. I have spent hours looking and never found one but the times I have found them it has been like a neon sign. So it was Friday the 13^th (a day I consider a lucky day myself) and I had found a 4 leaf clover… LUCK was surely going to be with us on the trip!