Final 5th Wheel Adventure Post

We had a great last day of our adventure, we walked the old streets of Bisbee and did a little shopping, found a couple treasures. Headed back to Tombstone and walked the streets shopping and stopping in the bars along the way that Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and the rest enjoyed. Ended up at "Big Nose Kate's" saloon and had some dinner, listened to a band and danced a bit. Got back to camp at decent hour, maybe before morning. LOL. Woke up this morning and had a little breakfast at camp then loaded up for home. The drive back should have been and easy few hours but we ran into an accident on I-10 that held us up for probably an hour. Finally made it home around 2:30 this after noon, unloaded and back to normal. Overall the trip was fantastic and we can't wait till the next one. We pulled our second home a little over 4500 miles. All's good. Thanks for following us these few weeks and we look forward to seeing you all soon. THE END

P.S. We played a total of 23 games of rummy throughout the trip during our evenings and Jerry won 15 games out of the 23. We'll see what happens next trip.

Walking old town Bisbee

Old building in downtown Bisbee

At the Crystal Palace in Tombstone

Day 24

After sleeping on it we woke up this morning deciding to extend our trip by 1 day and avoid Friday's rush hour traffic in Phoenix and because we can ha...instead of staying in Bowie, AZ tonight we made our destination Lordsburg, NM. Tomorrow we will head to Bizbee and stay in Tombstone for the night and head home on Saturday. The only action going to today was once we arrived at the KOA in Lordsburg and got set up we decided to walk over to the office to pick up some ice and along our walk what appeared to be a sweet little pug dog outside with it's owner ended up being a little shit and attacked Jerry biting his finger... really... he should be just fine as the owner says that it had his Rabies shots. However, Jerry would prefer to shoot him lol.

Our exciting KOA campsite for the night - nothing special

Vicious attack dog bite

Day 23

Our second to the last day of our trip, getting sad...don't want it to come to an end and have to get back to reality however, it's been another great day. We left Dalhart, TX it was a chilly 30 degrees this morning when we woke up and finally made it on the road by 11:00... guess that's retired life for ya haha. We did see a little action once we left Dalhart...unfortunately we saw a large plume of smoke where a grass fire had started and the wind was blowing it near the houses in Nara Visa, there were about 10 - 15 fire trucks that passed us coming up from the next town Tucumcari which all appeared to be voluntary fire fighters.
Took all the side roads to our destination of Valley of the Fires Recreation Area located in Carrizozo, NM. Although we do have to say the side roads are much more scenic however, you do have to watch your fuel as you never know which of the small towns are ghost towns and which ones are active towns with a gas station. Come to find out our destination place turned out to be a pretty cool stop, it's a huge lava bed from thousands of years ago. They have a nice hiking trail that takes you through it so we walked that once we got set up. We sat at the picnic table and watched the beautiful sunset. Tomorrow back on the road for our last overnight stop in Bowie, AZ.

Fire moving quickly to towards the town of Nara Visa

The lava bed view looking out the back windows of the 5th wheel 

Lava formation

A picture of our 5th wheel from the hiking trail into the lava beds

Sunset from our porch

On the lava hiking trail

Day 19, 20, 21 & 22

Enjoyed our time in Medicine Lodge, KS visiting Bobby (Jerry's brother). During the day when Bobby was working the gun shop, Jerry and I walked the shops of Medicine Lodge main street one day and took a trip to Pratt which is about 30 miles out and walked the shops on their main street another day. Always enjoy browsing the thrift shops and antique shops, never seem to have a problem finding treasures haha. In the evenings we would walk down to the 1 bar and grill they have in town for some dinner then head back to the Grand Hotel bar for drinks, pool playing, politics talk and lots of reminiscing. Good times! Sunday we went out to Bobby and Dorothy's ranch to do some shooting and to blow up some really cool Sonic Boom explosives that you can purchase a sporting good stores. (Jerry said he wish he would have had that stuff at RRFSS/aka ATF). Monday we drove back to Wichita for the little cousin reunion at Cracker Barrel, it was so nice to meet his cousins and their spouses had a great visit, from there we all went back to the farm and went through a bunch of old family pictures that his cousins had dug out and shorted out for everyone and continued to have a great visit with everyone. After that we headed back to the Grand Hotel bar to finish out the evening with Bobby. This morning we hooked up after our 5 day stay in Medicine Lodge to hit the road for our trek back home, which we are sad to see come to an end. However, we know there is another adventure trip around the corner. Tonight we are making Dalhart, TX our stop and then off to Carrizozo, NM for our stop tomorrow night at the Valley of Fires Recreation Area...we are expecting to arrive back home on Friday.

We have really enjoyed our stops at all the different RV parks, they are all different, interesting and fun in their individual ways. We have met some nice and interesting people that are full timers and some that are traveling the US just like us. Pretty cool!

Sunset off the balcony at the Grand Hotel

Sonic Boom explosive targets at the ranch range

Target shooting with a Ruger 10/22 Takedown - I got this! ha

Bobby and Jerry shooting

The Grand Hotel/Gun Room - Medicine Lodge, KS

The bar at the Grand Hotel

Grand Hotel Bar - The Happy hour hang out!

The Gun Room at the Grand Hotel

The Gun Room at the Grand Hotel

Another view in the Gun Room

 

Pratt, KS water towers, hot and cold. People in Pratt don't have to have hot water heaters lol.

The cousin reunion at the Cracker Barrel

The bar dog Roxie waiting for her treat

Brothers at the bar

Day 16, 17 & 18

Arrived in Valley Center, KS which, is just outside of Wichita on Wednesday. Valley Center is where the farm that Jerry's grandparents owned and his cousin Connie lives. This is where we parked the 5th wheel for a couple days. It was such a peaceful place. Jerry lived on the farm for a couple years during his childhood. Coming back to the farm brought back a lot of memories for him. All of the buildings are still on the farm along with his grandparents house and his aunt and uncles house (Connie's parents house). The farm is not active however, Connie does have sheep and a donkey to take care of. It was nice meeting her, she is a very sweet lady. Enjoyed seeing the farm and hearing the stories that Jerry and Connie had to share. We headed out of Friday and headed to Medicine Lodge, KS to visit his brother Bobby over this weekend. We set up at the town park, nice quiet little park. Heading back to Valley Center on Monday to have a little cousin family reunion that Connie set up. Looking forward to meeting more of Jerry's family and I know Jerry is looking forward to seeing his cousins and doing some reminiscing about the past! We plan to head out Tuesday and make our way back home, we should arrive home on Friday. It's been an awesome trip and looking forward to our next adventure trip!

Jerry bringing back some of his farming skills by feeding the sheep and the donkey

Our current home here in Medicine Lodge

To the left is Jerry's Grandparents house and to the right is his Aunt and Uncles house

Old chicken coop and barn

Buddy the donkey with his sheep friends... he thinks he's a sheep

Another barn and the grain storage bins in the back

Day 14 & 15

Headed out from the tropical weather in Corpus Christi attempting to make it to Gatesville, TX. However, shortly after leaving Cameron, TX we had a blow out in one of our 5th Wheel tires...fun fun. Now out in the middle of no where after a 3.5 hour wait Daryl and Daryl finally showed up to fix us up and get us back on the road. Good thing for our trusty Good Sam road side service provider! From there we headed to the next town dodging deer from dusk until we hit Waco at 8:00 p.m. and parked it there for the night . Up this morning searching the internet and making phone calls to get another spare tire and for someone to fix the leveling system (btw the blowout took out the wiring to the self leveling system). We soon realized that no one in TX starts to work until 10 a.m. haha. Might I add that Jerry did however, re-wire the leveling system similar to what Daryl and Daryl would have done with duct tape and at the end of the day it's working. Yeah!! :) Staying in Oklahoma City tonight and heading to Wichita tomorrow to see Jerry's extended family and then onto Medicine Lodge to see his brother. Not too much for pictures maybe more when we are in KS! We will continue to keep you all "Posted" :)

Daryl and Daryl doing the tires.

Our current spot with 55 mile hour winds and tornado warnings in surrounding areas... got to love OKC.

Day 13

Started our morning out by heading to the beach, took in the beautiful morning and sandy beaches by taking a 2.5 mile walk barefoot :) from there we went and browsed the Padre Island souvenir shops. Then headed over to a fishing pier on Padre Island, you are able to drive on the beach so we drove and found a nice spot to park and set up our chairs to have a little lunch and enjoy the ocean. After our lunch we headed to walk the pier and check out all the people fishing and to see what they were catching. We did see one guy catch a stingray (see pic - pretty cool) along with some others that were catching some other type fish. The pier had quite of few spot of dried blood...must have been some pretty good action going on at some point ha! Tonight we will be enjoying hanging out at our camp enjoying a nice dinner of steak and shrimp :) Tomorrow we are heading out and on our way to KS to visit some of Jerry's family! Standby for More to follow :) Hope all is doing well!!

At the pier on Padre Island

A few of the many flocks of pelicans we saw this morning on our beach walk

A picture and a caption especially for Steve Jones, as we always talked about our toes in the sand and finally here they are!

Our spot on the beach that we picked to enjoy our packed lunch

A view from our lunch spot to the pier

A view of the beach from the pier

The stingray that was caught by a fisherman

Day 12

Woke up to a sunny and breezy morning here in coastal southern TX. Had a little breakfast and headed out, today we toured the USS Lexington. A very famous and active aircraft carrier during WWII. After WWII it was "moth-balled" and then re-activated in 1955 as a training aircraft carrier for pilots up until the early 1990's, then becoming a museum here in Corpus Christi. Enjoyed touring the ship and learning more history. After we toured the Lexington, we headed to a couple small shopping districts to get in a little shopping and take in some lunch. Off to the beach tomorrow!

Flight deck

View from the flight deck

Ramp entering USS Lexington

Our home for the next couple of days.

Us on the flight deck.

 

Day 10 & 11

Had a fun filled day yesterday and a really fun filled night, that's why we are a day late on our posting. Haha
Headed out at about 10:30 and took the city bus ($1.30 one trip... pretty cheap even beats Uber ha) downtown to see the sights. Our first stop was the Alamo, when we arrived there, they were obviously setting up for some kind of celebration as there were all kinds of people outside the Alamo and they had chairs set up, camera people walking around, high school bands, etc. before we walked into the Alamo we asked a lady what was going on and she said today is Texas Independence Day...ahhh silly us! Despite that, we did our tour through the Alamo, which was quite interesting, learned some things we didn't know and remembered some that we did. Looked at the list of the Hero's that lost their lives that day, saw Davie Crockett's name but we didn't see John Wayne's name :) however, we did see this name: John Hubbard Forsyth (Frank you may want to check this out...you may have an ancestor that was a hero of the Alamo!). From there we walked a little bit of the Riverwalk and then decided to do a Riverwalk boat tour which, exposed much of the San Antonio history and much to our surprise 99% of the river is natural and about 1% has been redirected by man for retail purposes. It was a great tour highly suggest taking it if you ever make it to San Antonio. After the boat ride we decided to walk the Riverwalk and enjoyed walking the shops and restaurants. Stopped at a place called Casa Rio for lunch and ate outside right next to the river, pretty cool. After lunch we stopped at a few bars for Happy Hour and then ended up at a place called Barriba Cantina (we had heard from one of the bartenders at another bar that this place was a great place to go to listen to some Blues music) he was absolutely right, there was a 3 man band playing and they were awesome and great music to dance to which we did all night! Then took the bus back to our place worked out great because the bus stop was right outside our RV site. :)
This morning we packed up and headed out we ended up changing out next destination as we were going to head to Austin however, we figured it would just be a repeat of last night and we had heard from other RV'ers that Austin had a rodeo going on in town and RV sites were full...so...we decided to head to the beach and changed our destination to Corpus Christi. Plan to be here for 3 to 4 days. Once we got here and got set up we headed to our 3rd home...Wal-Mart to buy some shorts and short sleeve shirts, the weather is a little warmer than we had expected. :) More to follow tomorrow!

Outside the Alamo

Views along our river ride.

A bridge over the Riverwalk with the Casa Rio restaurant in the background. 

Lunch at Casa Rio on the Riverwalk

 

Day 9

Woke up to a foggy, humid morning in Del Rio and loaded up and headed out to San Antonio. Arrived here around 1:30 set up and had a relaxing afternoon/evening. Tomorrow we plan to tour the Alamo, walk the Riverwalk along with take a boat ride on the river, do a little bar hopping and enjoy some dinner along the river. Should be a fun filled day! That's about it for today.

A picture this morning out of our front door in Del Rio, TX.

Our home for the next 2 to 3 days here in San Antonio.