Call and Response

Last year the narrative about our Mexico journey was all about travelling through Mexico in our Arctic Fox truck camper.  This time we drove our new RAV4 Adventure.  Plenty of cargo space in the rear cargo area as well as up top in the Thule rooftop carrier.

No more campgrounds; no more hookups; no more climbing up and down the rear landing steps.  Instead, motel rooms! Which have their own set of disadvantages and inconveniences without a doubt, but Jackie and I are older not, and we need our travelling days to be as easy and worry-free as possible.  So now it looks like Motel 6s for us.  Though the quality of the rooms vary greatly from one Motel 6 to another, they are cheap and they are everywhere.

We left Warrenton, OR, on Monday morning, October 28, headed for our first overnight stop in La Grande.  The weather forecast was not favorable.  A major arctic cold front was right behind us, bringing extreme cold and even snow in some areas.

First stop above was the Rodeway Inn with the foothills of the Wallowa Mts. behind.  This was taken Tuesday morning when the temperature was an extremely chilling 15 degrees.

Next stop was supposed to be Ogden, UT, but one to two inches of snow was in the forecast for the area that afternoon.  We decided to take an extra day and bed down at the Boise Motel 6.

Then after an overnight in Ogden, UT, off to Hurricane to spend a couple of days at Jackie’s aunt Fay.  One low point in the driving was trying to negotiate rush hour traffic through Salt Lake City on our way to Hurricane.  Some of the worst drivers and traffic we’ve encountered was in this area.  Worse than L.A.

After a two day rest, we hit Motel 6s in Gallup, NM and Lubbock, TX.  Had a great breakfast at the Cracker Barrel and Country Store in Gallup.  Neither Jackie nor I had ever eaten in one before.  I knew they were RV friendly, allowing overnight camping in their parking lot, so I figured they deserved a try.  I had pancakes and eggs, which was excellent.  They even provided little single-use bottles of “real” maple syrup:

Seven hour drive time from Lubbock to New Braunfels, TX, and Jackie’s brother’s house:  Jim and Rene.  We spent five days there resting up for our border crossing and enjoying the great food in the area:

I love Austin, TX; its restaurants, food trucks, blues music clubs, and progressive politics make it a liberal oasis in a very conservative state.  Shady Grove, one restaurant we visited in Austin, offers an interesting variety of Tex-Mex style food.  Austin seem to be a very popular city for electric scooters.  I’ve never seen so many.  These dockless, electric scooters seem to be everywhere—some neatly parked along the sidewalks and some dumped helter-skelter.  They are everywhere.

From the Austin-American Statesman

There were several food trucks across the street from the Shady Grove.  One sported the banner below:

We also had the opportunity to eat at Crystal Springs, a restaurant we went to in the spring of 2017 with Granny Jean and family.  Home to catfish and Texas size onion rings: