2021 began with our country largely forgetting that Covid was a thing. Businesses reopened, schools were back in session, and people made travel plans again!
We were among those who traveled cautiously. In our RV, we were relatively safe, able to cook our own food, and able to generally stay clear of other people.
We left Sun Lakes, AZ on April 16, 2021, getting as far as the Lazydays KOA in Tucson!
In the 2nd picture, Jodie’s waiting for Jack to return with our food, so that we could all enjoy our picnic lunch on Mt Lemmon.
We were in Tucson for about a week, where we worked on getting some things ready. We tried to get our TV/Dish thing working right, we were successful in finding and fixing a water leak, and we got used to where things would be put in our fairly new rig!
We left Tucson, heading east. Our next few days we spent in El Paso. Having taken pains to get around El Paso for years, I decided to give the city a try. We got an RV park and took the car off to sightsee.
On the 26th of April, we left, heading toward Van Horn. I was driving and something suddenly felt a little different with the rig’s handling. I looked in my rear-view camera screen and saw immediately what the problem was: the car had come partially unhitched!
I made it safely to the side of the highway and we assessed things. The truck stop at Van Horn was close, so we both drove there. After a few panicky minutes of wondering what to do, I got on the phone and then online with Blue Ox. Tow Bar pins were what we needed, and they promised to overnight them to our camp in Fort Stockton.
We ended up staying in Fort Stockton an extra day, which meant that we had only one night in beautiful Fredricksburg, TX. And then we were off to San Antonio for a week.
While we were in San Antonio, it rained a lot, and we discovered a roof leak. It turned out to be that the A/C just needed to be tightened down onto the roof.
San Antonio is always fun, and this trip was no exception. We took the bus from the KOA to downtown on 3 of our days there. We saw sights, walked a lot, and ate delicious food.
Then, on 5/5, we drove over to Houston, to Advanced RV Park in Pearland. In our 3-day stay, we did fun things! In Houston, went to the Space Center for a day, and, on a different day, we went to the mall downtown, where Jack actually put on ice skates for the first time in a long time! This was also the day we ate beside other people for the first time since Covid started.
This pretty sunset was the sun setting on our last day in Texas. …
…Or so we thought! As we were leaving our RV park in Pearland, a giant semi truck crashed into the front of our RV. While none of us was injured and the damage was relatively minor, we still couldn’t drive it with that crystallized windshield!
So we drove it back to Advanced RV Park, with a police escort. And we cleaned up glass and, over the next few days, we tried to get over the horror of wrecking our beautiful RV. Jack taped over the holes and put lots of tape on the windshield to hold it all together.
It took about 3 weeks for us to find a place to do our work. At first, we thought we were going to be able to just replace the driver’s outside mirror, get a new windshield, and then be on our way. We thought we would do our trip, then get home and have the body work done.
Nope! State Farm and the windshield people agreed that we had to have the body work done before the windshield.
In the meantime, we continued to enjoy the area. Advanced RV Park is right behind Tom Bass Regional Park and it’s a splendid place indeed. We went walking there every day. It was so hot that we went in the early morning so we wouldn’t just die.
The little rendition of Devils Tower? That’s a crawdad chimney. There were many of these. And Jodie is playing (above) in the dog park at our RV park.
Buffalo Soldiers Museum was a pleasant surprise! Lots of great history and neat things to see.
We took a day trip to Galveston and played in the gulf with Jodie.
Pearland was not ALL fun and games. Jack was helping a neighboring RVer moving some very heavy steps. The much younger guy dropped his end, leaving Jack with an excruciating case of sciatica. (To make an excruciatingly long story short, he did finally get into physical therapy once we arrived home, 4 1/2 months later.)
This first picture is of Jack in the ER in Pearland. Then we see Tom Bass Regional Park, Bibi’s Restaurant, and just us hanging in the RV.
Then, on Friday, June 25, we got the call that Quality First would be ready for our RV on Monday! So this was sort of bittersweet news. While, of course, we were eager to get the RV fixed and moving again, Pearland and the chill relaxation had been good for both of us.
So we set about readying the rig and ourselves for the next chapter. One thing that we did was to take a few shots of our beautiful RV Park.
Then we set to work on finding an appropriate spot in which to stay till the rig was ready — 3 weeks. We chose the Candlewood Suites.
We were at the Candlewood Suites till 7/20 when we returned to Advanced RV Park in our beautifully repaired RV for 3 more nights. We needed the time to resupply our rig and just get ourselves geared up to go.
And then we left Pearland for parts east! Follow us along in Part 2! and Travel Tales 2021: Part 3!