Kevin is a seventh-grade student from Arizona who has taken a number of cross-country trips with his family in a travel trailer. On this trip, he is traveling to Florida to pick up his grandparents, and then returning them to Arizona for a visit. He is keeping this journal of his trip for his extended family and friends.
Kevin's previous journals include his diary of our 1998-1999 US tour to find a new home, and our family move to the great American Southwest in 2000.
You can e-mail Kevin in care of his mom at JMTavares@aol.com.
Anyway, as you may have guessed we're back on the open road. On this mission, the objective is to rescue my grandparents and take them to safer territory, a.k.a. Arizona, for a visit.
Well, I'm getting sidetracked. Today I slept on the road from the center of Phoenix to the middle of nowhere (about an hour and a half out of Tucson). I read most of the way into LC from there.
Once we entered New Mexico, we lost an hour of our time to Daylight Savings. I saw a bunch of signs commemorating the "Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway," a.k.a. Interstate 10.
When we stopped for lunch, We saw a sign on a restaurant advertising
something not very appetizing (see photo).
Between home and here we've only seen water in one wash and the Rio Grande. Nowhere else.
We're staying in Ozona. I asked my dad where the hole is. He says it's
where we ate. I believe him.
Today I slept a lot. Almost all the way here. Unfortunately, it
was on and off.Today we made it to the Texas east border. Well, almost.
We saw a flamingo flying overhead at a nature preserve where we made a pit stop.
I went to buy batteries at Walgreens. They had an idiot-test sale going on batteries. The six-packs were as much as the four-packs and half as much as the ten-packs. Idiot test, right?
Boy times have changed. On our first excursion, the cheapest gas we saw was in South Carolina at 79¢, 75¢, something like that. Now the cheapest so far is $1.35 just east of San Antonio! We had to gas up three times already today.
We have a problem with one of our tires. It's losing all its air quite fast. We have to re-pump it every morning. We'll fix it after we arrive at Grandma's tomorrow.
We saw a whole lot of marshland. It was the traditional tall grassland with channels running through it like veins.
We crossed three states today and ended up in the fourth for tonight. We've almost reached our turnaround point, but that's tomorrow.
We're back east with the muggies and the evil little biting buggies. I HATE BUGS. Especially mosquitoes. I can't wait to get back home in the dry, bugless desert. Arizona, how I love thee! At least in Arizona, everything that bites hides under rocks.
Weeee'rrreee heeerrrreee!On the road today we saw a bunch of bear crossing signs.
We finally got our tire fixed today.
When we got to "The Village" today, we almost got set up before the big storm got to us. I was unfinished with the jacks. I still had two left when the monsoon hit.
We're going to be here a few days.
We ate dinner and then my grandfather and I played some games. He beat me once in cribbage because we didn't shuffle the cards well. I beat him the second time. Then we played dominoes. We played twice and I beat him both times. Then we switched over to Poker. I won twice, he won once. Then the rain started to come down.
Around my grandparents' house, there's been a drought. It poured over there! I think it was a monsoon. It's still raining! The news says there's a tropical storm coming through here.
In the morning, we saw a gigantic and colorful grasshopper. It only
had one back leg.We did a bunch of errands before we went to visit another aunt. I got to swim in her pool while dad fixed her computer.
My cousin came over with her two year old daughter, Tiffany. Tiffy talked the whole time she was there.
We got home at about midnight.
We went about four hundred and fifty miles. Then we ate at the Texas Roadhouse. They had great bread and buckets of peanuts.
After our meal we went home and chose beds. My grandparents took the dinette bed. After about five minutes, I heard a crunch. The dinette table had broken! They had to move to the sofa bed.
We hit a huge thunderstorm. It stopped at abut 1:00.
We were going to go to Ruston LA, but we got too tired so we stopped in Vicksburg. Mom went with my grandparents to the local casino and I stayed with dad to swim. Grandma didn't have good luck, but I got in an hour and a half in the pool.
We went to another casino for dinner. We ate at a buffet and it was good. I didn't eat very much though.
We took a trip through some backroads and found a lot of Confederate Civil War memorials. There was one or more every twenty feet.
Now we're back home and I'm planning to go back in the pool so I'm signing off for now.
I took the dog down to the lake for a swim. He got to chase birds. Then I got to go for a swim.
Dad took me to the beach. I swam for an hour and then found a kid fishing for turtles. He had about four "Red Eared Turtles."
Then I came home and we went to look at a pottery shop. They had a bunch of cool stuff like magic locking boxes. Dad bought a cribbage board.
We went to eat at Cowboys BBQ. It was great. After dinner, we came home and I played all sorts of games with my grandfather.
We stopped for lunch in Kilgore today.We visited the East Texas Oil Museum. We were here before in February, 1999. My grandfather really liked the dummy with the projection on his face that gave him a realistically moving face. I liked the hand pump that was one of the few exhibits you could use. You got to pump water into a trough.
Before leaving town we took a driveby of the "World's Richest Acre" to show them the derricks.
Near Fort Worth, we saw a man hauling a wheelbarrow out of the middle of the highway towards his car in the median. A few miles earlier there were cops hauling a couple of handcuffed people out of the tall grass in the median towards the cars.
On the way, we ate at a burger restaurant. Somebody else left a huge burger with just two bites out of it, so we brought it out to Furful. He walked around for a long time with it in his mouth looking for a place to hide so that he could eat it. Once we got here, the dog was hot. He jumped into the teeny tiny trailer bathtub twice and smiled at us. He was asking for a bath! I'll bet he misses the pool.
Not too many things happened today.
Today we pulled into RV Docks for the fourth time.I went to check out the rec room. I hit some golf balls into the driving net, and then I practised balancing the ping pong balls on the paddle. Dad came in and challenged me to a game. I think he beat me pretty bad but I scored a lot of points.
We went to an Italian restaurant with Dad's friend Alan. It was really good.
Afterwards, Mom, Dad and I went into the hot tub and stayed there for a while. It felt really good, too.
We sat around outside in the dark because it was nice and mild and felt great. When a mosquito landed next to my hand, I decided to go in to bed.
On the way out of Las Cruces the next morning, we drove by a giant
metal sculpture of a roadrunner. It must have been thirty or forty
feet tall. It was right by the side of Interstate 10.
Today we took a short trip over most of New Mexico and ended up in
Tombstone for the night. We pulled into the Wells Fargo trailer park.
We got a nice shady spot.Then we went to the Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner. I had grilled cheese, and for dessert, I had a giant "Death by Chocolate": a warm brownie with chocolate soft-serve ice cream, whipped cream and hot fudge all over it, with the traditional cherry on top.
We took a stagecoach tour of town. They showed us a lot of the highlights of Tombstone.
We walked into a few stores to look at jewelry, rocks, guns, and other stuff.
Tomorrow, we should be home.