Happy Trails, Part 88

SAN ANGELO STATE PARK, Texas — I chatted up a young tow-truck driver this morning and then said something that sort of just flew out of my mouth.

I was telling him about being retired, about selling our house and how our fifth-wheel RV is our “residence.”

“That means we have nowhere to go,” I said. An instant later, I corrected myself. “Or, you can say that it means we have everywhere to go.”

Yes. I should have said the second part first, and then omitted the rest of it.

You see, the RV lifestyle we have adopted means that (a) our “house” is hooked up to the back of our pickup and (b) we have an entire continent to explore while we are still able.

We have embarked on another fairly short-term trip. It’ll last about two weeks.

We’ll depart San Angelo State Park soon, heading to Lockhart State Park just south of Austin. After that we haul our “house” to Village Creek State Park just north of Beaumont.

We owned property in Beaumont fro 1988 until 1995. We loved that house. We enjoyed the street. It was quiet and heavily wooded. A hurricane took care of much of the tall timber in our old neighborhood not long after we departed for the Texas Panhandle.

Hurricane Harvey inundated the Golden Triangle this past summer and we want to see the damage that the storm did to our house. I hope it’s intact these days.

After visiting friends in Beaumont, we will shove off for North Texas to see our son, daughter-in-law and our granddaughter.

Then we return to Amarillo.

I hesitate now to call Amarillo “home,” for the reason I cited at the beginning of this blog post. Our “home” is riding along with us wherever we go.

***

Pickup update: I am happy to report that our pickup truck, which broke down on U.S. Highway 87 yesterday afternoon, is fixed. It’s healthy. Good as new … or almost!

I spent a good bit of time trying to find a towing company and then a mechanic to repair our truck. The power steering broke. It turned out to be that the water pump also blew apart.

It’s all repaired.

And we are on the road again — in search of the next big surprise. We just want it to be a pleasant one.