Sleep deprived before our trip - Thursday, June 11, 2020

At 6:00 a.m., we started our adventure for the summer. But first, we worked over the course of 1-1/2 days to move clothes, food, the stuff of daily living from our home base into the 5th wheel. 

I also like to clean our home before we go so that it is nice and neat when we get back. Plus, there's the itinerary book I make for each of our forays. 

Cooking meals to eat on the road is something else I love to do before a trip. I roasted a turkey Sunday so we will have lots of sandwiches and great turkey dinners, made macaroni salad, egg salad sandwiches, and chocolate chip cookies. Last night, I only got one-half hour of sleep.

Today, we had a long driving day (10 hours) from San Antonio to Amarillo, Texas. Yes, Texas is a huge state. Thankfully, Bob slept last night, so he drove eight hours today and I drove two. We didn't stop much, just once for diesel, once for a lunch break in the 5th wheel, and multiple times for restroom breaks. There isn't much to stop for. It's miles and miles of cotton fields, oil fracking operations, wind turbines, or Texas desert scrub. Bob did a great job driving. Thank you! As he always says, "You have to drive through a lot of nothing to get to something."

At 4:00 p.m., we pulled into the RV park. I mailed back my Netflix DVD and walked the park to take photos. 

All in all, it was a get-out-of-Dodge kind of day. Although we haven't made it out of Texas yet. We will get out early Friday. 

Here are photos of Fort Amarillo RV Resort. We've stayed here before and liked it. 

It is next door to the historic helium plant. There are historic markers in front of the building.

Entrance to Fort Amarillo RV Resort.

Fort Amarillo RV Resort - sites are
separated by short fences.

Waterfall and pond in the middle of
the RV park.

Children's playground at Fort Amarillo
RV Resort.

Blooming prickly pear.

Some cities decorate moose sculptures, some do bears, cows, etc. Amarillo businesses decorate quarter horses. Amarillo is home to the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum. Even though we've been through town twice, we have not visited this museum. This trip we cannot. It is closed due to Covid-19.

As an aside, we have spent an afternoon at the Jack Sisemore Traveland RV Museum in Amarillo. (If you click the link to the Jack Sisemore Museum above, all you can do on the site is scroll through the photos using the arrows on the sides of the photos.) We highly recommend the museum to you. It is in one moderate-sized building, not a mega-museum, which makes it intimate and easy to navigate. Bob and I were very impressed.

Painted quarter horse statue at
Fort Amarillo RV Resort.

Another view of Fort Amarillo
RV Resort campground.

And here we are, set up for the night.

I'm heading to bed to read, but I think the book will hit my nose before I make it through 20 pages! Tomorrow, we have another driving day, but not nearly as long as today. We will spend the night in Limon, Colorado. 

Our first real destination is Custer, SD. We will spend a week there. Bob is excited about bike riding on the Mickelson Rails-to-Trails bike path. I am excited to hike the Sunday Gulch 4-mile trail around Sylvan Lake and The Needles hike. We will also go to Crazy Horse. Bob has not been there yet.

That's it for today. Have a great weekend!

RV Park Review: Fort Amarillo RV Resort - Monday, Oct.12, 2015

Fort Amarillo RV Resort entrance

For our long weekend in Amarillo, we perused RV park reviews and listened to what other bloggers said about camping in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We also factored in where we would like to spend the most time while we were in the Amarillo area. Colleen of TravelingwiththeLongDogs mentioned how steep and narrow the road in and out of the canyon is. Another RV park is located in Canyon, Texas, but it's mostly a grassy field with some trees.

We opted for Fort Amarillo RV Resort west of downtown Amarillo and a block north of I-40. The reviews were good and we liked the photos. Our other choice would have been Oasis RV Resort, which I mentioned in my post two days ago, but it was too stark.

Upon arriving at the resort, check-in went smoothly and we were given a map to our site with very good directions on how to navigate through the park to find our empty space. The rigs are packed in pretty tight, but we had enough room to put out our slides and awnings. Short fences separate the sites. Each site has its own concrete pad with picnic table. What I didn't care for was our dining room window looked right into the living room window of the rig next to us.

Site #168

Site #167 and #168

Amenities include indoor swimming pool, exercise room, laundry room, a large fenced playground area, pond with ducks, walking path, off-leash dog area, large indoor hot tub (currently under repair so not open), and Lizzy Mae's, a very fun gift shop.

Horse art on the property

Rec hall with indoor pool, exercise room, shower/bathrooms,
hot tub (closed for repairs), and laundry room

Indoor swimming pool

Exercise room

A nice porch rocker

Fort Amarillo RV Resort sites

Walkway and flags along the entryway
(flags need to be replaced)

Overview of more sites

The pond

Resident ducks in the pond

Another area of the park

We liked the park even though it was close quarters. We were there to sleep as we would be out and about sightseeing or walking every day. The RV resort is very convenient to: Cadillac Ranch, Jack Sisemore's RV Museum, Wildcat Bluff Nature Center, Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, lots of restaurants, a movie theater, hospital, and about 25 minutes from Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Ambulances went by intermittently on the way to the hospital, so there were sirens.

The internet connection was good, no problems there; but the cable TV they provided had only seven channels. We weren't able to watch our shows.

Overall, we would go back to this park.

The Only Worry in the World ... Is the Tide Going to Reach My Chair? - Thursday, October 8, 2015

A couple of years ago on our trip to Yellowstone we drove through many areas where the only music on the radio was country western. Aaack! The lyrics made for a good paragraph in my blog in 2012.

Today, as we drove through the middle of nowhere, Bob turned on the country western music station. The song that tickled my ears was "The Only Worry in the World ... Is the Tide Going to Reach My Chair?" It just seemed off on so many levels. First, what's a cowboy doing singing about the ocean? Second, how can that be his only worry? I guess maybe if he's a paniolo from the Big Island of Hawaii he'd have a reason to be singing those lyrics. Then again, why am I over-analyzing a country western song? Sheesh.

Our drive today was pleasant. We had no rain but saw one town that obviously had a huge downpour in the past day. Massive puddles, ponds in fields, and water standing at the side of the road attested to that.

Our destination for today

To get to Amarillo, we passed through a lot of flat land with not much on it.

Active sky but we only had a few drops on the windshield

Long, empty stretches of road.

A pretty picnic area

Kitty travelers: Bowie (in the tube)
and Sunnie (in the box)

Once in Amarillo, we checked in at Fort Amarillo RV Resort. While Bob checked us in, I went into Lizzy Mae's Gift Shop. The shop's name is spelled wrong in my book. It should be Lizzy's Maze. A person could get lost in there. But what a fun store! Not nearly enough time to look at everything so I will definitely be going back!

For lunch we chose Red Robin because it's close and it's good. On our Amarillo bucket list were Cadillac Ranch and Jack Sisemore RV Museum. Both would fit nicely into our afternoon.

On our way to Cadillac Ranch, we saw Oasis RV Resort and decided to take a drive around for future reference. It's a very nice park, new, and a little stark. But the sites are big and they have nice amenities. We wouldn't want to stay there and have our 5th wheel become part of a new collection!

Spacious sites, but very stark landscaping

We had to laugh at this! Is this what
happens if you don't pay your bill?

Another shot of Oasis RV Resort sites - good for big rigs!

Cadillac Ranch is a bunch of old Cadillacs buried nose-in in a field. Today that field's name was MUD. The thing to do here is buy spray paint, then walk out into the field and add your spray paint art to the already over-painted Cadillacs. While it would be fun on a nice dry day, there was no way you could get us out in that mud bog of a field today! As we drove by, we watched people who had gone out trying to clean the red caliche mud off their shoes. Yuck! We had enough of that when we worked in the oil fields. Here are some photos taken (with zoom) from our truck...

Cadillac Ranch

Cadillac Ranch

Who thinks of these things?

Who does think of these things? Turns out it was three guys in San Francisco who were looking for a sponsor for their art project. They found a wealthy sponsor, Stanley Marsh III, who lived in Amarillo and wanted the project to go on land he donated in Amarillo. And then Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about it. The rest is art history. LOL. Now it's a mecca of sorts for Bruce Springsteen fans and others who have heard about it (like us).

Driving back to the freeway from Cadillac Ranch we found Cadillac Ranch RV Park. It's fun to get out and walk around, take photos, but we wouldn't stay there. It's very much a man camp.

Cadillac Ranch RV Park display

Part of the display

Check out those fins!

Next stop: Jack Sisemore RV Museum. Jack Sisemore is an RV dealership in Amarillo. The owner had a passion for RVs and motorcycles. They started the museum so people would have something to do while they waited for repairs to be made on their rigs. We were mesmerized. As Bob said, "It exceeded our expectations."

A wall of motorcycles

1937 Kozy Kamp tent trailer

Blue and white trailer is a 1936 Alma
(Note: There are RVs and motorcycles hanging from
the ceiling!)

Inside the Alma

Bob in front of a Harley Davidson 45

Old scooter

Below is a 1941 Westcraft trailer -- a very rare Trolley Roof model. Westcraft was a Los Angeles company that manufactured top of the line trailers in the 1940's and 1950's.

1941 Westcraft trailer

 Who doesn't remember these psychedelic VW vans from the '60's?

VW van

If you've seen the movie "RV" with Robin Williams, you'll remember the bus below. It was the bus driven by the Gornike family in the movie. This bus was modified for the movie.

1948 Flxible

Interior of 1948 Flxible

1962 "Bambi" Airstream.

Below is a beautiful quilt hanging on the wall behind the "Bambi" trailer above. It looks like all of someone's travel destinations were put into the quilt.

One of the panels

Then there's this piece of history...the very first Winnebago Itasca, Serial #0001, built in August 1974.

Here's the 1975 Itasca

Interior of the Itasca

Itasca kitchen

1962 Bethany pop-up with the original "Mod Squad" interior

This is the story of the trailer below...

1953 Fleetwood

Here's the new hair color.

1973 Winnebago

Bob found a car to match his outfit.

These little doghouse trailers are for sale on the
internet starting at $800. They're bigger than they look.

As we finish our day, I realize I have not taken any photos of Fort Amarillo RV Resort, which is fine. There are plenty of photos here already. I will post some tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be doing a 10k Volksmarch at Wildcat Bluff Nature Center which is not very far from where we're staying. Saturday we plan to do a very strenuous 20k (12.4 mile) Volksmarch (Comanche Trail) at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Saturday night will be a "A Trip to Italy" banquet put on by the West Texas Trail Walkers Volksmarch Club. On Sunday will be our final 10k Volksmarch (the Lighthouse Trail), also at Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

We're looking forward to a wonderful weekend. Travel Bug out.