"X" Revisited plus Update on Rally -- Sun., Apr. 29

Fort Worth, Texas:

Zipper, a great invention that replaced hooks and eyes and, in some instances, buttons and buttonholes. Instead of individually fastening hooks and eyes, you do one zip and you are securely in your clothes!

The other Zipper that I love is a ride at a fair. You are locked into a cage with a lap bar. Before the ride starts, you can rock your cage and get it going around 360 degrees. My sister and I love this ride. When your cage is spinning at the beginning and the ride starts you spin around and around with great centrifugal force. We scream and scream, but love every minute of it! And no, we don't get motion sickness.

ZZZZZZ's equal Bob's head hitting the pillow after a day of driving, hiking, anytime he watches sports or starts to read a book, or when I'm driving and he's a passenger.

The A-to-Z Blogging Challenge for the month of April is finished. Now I've done my ABCs, tell me what you think of me.

Update on our status: I could not do laundry last night as we didn't have quarters. Bob went into town but apparently no one would sell him quarters. (Must have been a busy laundry night somewhere!) I did laundry this morning and had the laundry room to myself.

Bob had the pick up truck weighed on Friday, and the truck/5th wheel combination weighed this morning. Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams weigh each wheel of the tow combination independently. They want us to make sure we're towing a safe weight for our pick up's towing capacity. Our tow combination passed with flying colors. We were about 1,500 pounds underweight. Now we can stock up for gate guarding and not worry about overloading. They suggested we might lower our tire pressure a bit.

This morning, we moved our RV back to Armadillo Junction RV Park in Ingram. We have reservations for two nights.

My Escape pod started making scary noises today. When I shift from park to drive, then turn the steering wheel, it makes a loud clunking noise. I hope nothing is wrong with my steering or suspension. This evening, the air bag light came on after a couple of loud clunks. Uh-oh.

Driving around Texas, I've made a few observations about how Texas is different from Oregon.

1. In certain areas there are long frontage roads next to freeways. You need to know ahead of time what exit you need because you may have to go a mile on a frontage road to get to your destination. If you miss your exit, it may be three or more miles to turn around and get back to where you wanted to be.
2. Many, many goats being raised. In one town the headline on the local paper was "Goat Cook-Off." I don't think they meant old goats cooking.
3. Texas has Mesquite trees, cotton and pecan orchards, Oregon does not.
4. Texas is huge...it takes a long time to drive across it from west to east or vice versa. You can drive across Oregon in one day.
5. There are exotic animal ranches. These ranches are helping repopulate some of the endangered species from Africa, India, Pakistan. They allow controlled hunting on most ranches.
6. The speed limits are 75-80 mph on unpopulated stretches of freeway, 65-70 mph on US and state highways (lower speed limits through cities).
7. There are nice picnic areas along interstates, US, state, county, farm-to-market roads, etc.
8. Scads of historic markers; it seems like a third of them tell about cemeteries.
9. Gas is cheaper. We saw gas for $3.49/gallon today.
10. They use "ma'am" as a sign of respect.

We are in the South, y'all.

That's all I can think of for now. Travel Bug out.