Park vs. Parking Lot Camping

This is day 3 of our trip to Texas. The reason we are making this trip to Texas is so that we can get our Texas driver's licenses, which we should have obtained the first time we were in Texas, but ran out of time. As I thought about it today, it seemed somewhat ludicrous to make an eight day round trip for the purpose of spending one day at the DMV, but we had a 90-day grace period, and that grace period is almost up. We don't have to be back in Minnesota until the last week of September, so we decided to take advantage of the dead time to get this important task done. This will give us more of October to spend in Spokane, our next venue.

What we thought was going to be a three day trip from Sturgeon Bay to Livingston turned out to be a four day trip. We spent the first night in a Walmart parking lot and the second night in a roadside rest area. Mark seems to be less sensitive to the travel weariness that affects me so, and he was just fine with another parking lot night, but I started looking for an RV park at about three o'clock.

I have two apps on my phone that help with site hunting - "All Stays," which lists all types of parking options, and "Passport America," which lists the parks that offer the Passport America discount, of which we are members. We expected to stop for the night somewhere in the vicinity of Texarkana, and in short order, I found a couple suitable parks. We settled on this one--Texarkana RV Park, which is right on Hwy 59, the last leg of our journey. What a great park! It's not fancy, but there were plenty of vacancies, a pool, and after our 50% Passport America discount was applied, the cost was reasonable. We were able to get a pull-through site (no unhooking the car trailer) with full hookups...and did I mention they have a pool??

We pulled in at a little before 5:00, got parked and connected, pulled out the swimming suits and headed for the pool. The temps in this part of the country this week are in the 90s, so that cool water sure felt good. Being in a park also has the advantage of being able to open our living room slide and stretch out a little. And the power hookup means we don't have to run the generator all night for cool air. The little rooftop cooler is not really adequate for these hot temps, but at least we're not boiling in our bed.

Sweetie is still not handling the traveling very well. I had her on my lap most of the time today, and she seemed calm and fairly content for the most part. But by the end of the day she was listless and just looked like she didn't feel well. It could just be the heat. Maybe the constant motion bothers her. Hard to say. Prior to this trip, Sweetie was running to the back of the coach and crouching on the floor behind the bed every time we closed up and moved. She is afraid of the bumps and noises of the moving house. But it's not good for her to stay back there so long without coming out to eat and drink or use the little box. So I've been putting on her harness and leash and more or less forcing her to be in the front of the coach with us. Usually I start her out in the carrier, then let her out on the leash. She always tries to hightail it to the back, but I've been keeping the leash short and she eventually ends up on my lap or beside me. We're hoping to get her over her fears with gentle persistence. When she gets to the point where she stays in the front of her own volition, the leash and harness will come off.

One thing is sure, we are decidedly happier campers this evening than we were the first two nights of our trip (except perhaps for the cat).

Side note:  I had a request for pictures of the inside of our motor home and realized that I haven't really posted too many. Here is the living area looking from the front toward the back. I'll post more next time (after I've had a chance to clean house. :-).

It's bigger on the inside