Oct 14th
With the sun coming up later and
later every day we seem to be sleeping in later. This morning it was 7:40 AM
before I got up to shake off the night and take the girls out for their morning
constitutional. It was interesting to
look up toward the freeway and see the sun flashing off the sides of the big
semis as they drove by even though the sun wasn’t visible from the campground.
When we got back and they had
their breakfast I checked the temperature. Oh man… it was only 60 degrees
inside so I flipped the switch from “Cool” to “Heat” so Tina could be
comfortable when she got up. We had washed all the bedding yesterday evening
but our small washer/dryer combo just isn’t big enough to dry everything
thoroughly so we had spread out the blanket and sheets to air dry overnight. As
soon as that was all folded and put away we had our breakfast and with a short
drive we were able to have a relaxing morning.
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| Driving through Dallas |
By the time we had everything
packed up and ready to go it was almost 9:30 AM. We got on I-20 E and headed
out for the 137 mile drive to the Caddo Mills KOA just NE of Dallas. The first 80
miles were uneventful and passed quickly. Then we were on the outskirts of Ft
Worth. The next 50 miles were like driving from Tacoma to Everett but with more
intensity as the edges of the two cities are only a few miles apart. Then
combine it with construction, multiple slowdowns, junctions with multiple intersecting
freeways… well, you get the picture, white knuckle driving at its finest!
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| Downtown Dallas |
But, by dint of extremely
defensive driving, we made it through with only a limited amount of stressful
situations. The downtown cores of both cities are quite beautiful and the
signage is quite good. Anyway we made it through and out the other side in
pretty good time, pulling into the Caddo Mills KOA about 12:30 PM.
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| On the pad at Caddo Mills KOA |
There was no one in the office so
we checked the reserved spots and found an open site. Tina took the dogs and
walked down to our spot and I followed in the rig so she could guide me in –
they’re fairly tight and we had chosen a site with a large shade tree. We got into
our site, set up and dropped the car so we could go get lunch and do some
grocery shopping.
While we were outside Tina saw
about two dozen softball sized fruit lying on the ground underneath the tree
across the way. Our neighbor was walking her dog and we stopped to ask if she
knew what they were. She only knew that they weren’t edible. I sliced one in
half and it oozed a sticky, milky fluid all over my knife. We put the two
halves up in the tree and came in to clean my knife. It finally required use of
Soft Scrub and ammonia to get it clean.
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| Osage Orange |
After looking it up on the web it turned out to be an Osage Orange also known as a Bois d'arc, or Horse Apple. Before the invention of barbed wire in the 1880's, many thousands of miles of hedge were constructed by planting young Osage Orange trees closely together in a line. The saplings were aggressively pruned to promote bushy growth. "Horse high, bull strong and hog tight." Those were the criteria for a good hedge made with Osage Orange. Tall enough that a horse would not jump it, stout enough that a bull would not push through it and woven so tightly that even a hog could not find its way through!
Once we found out what they were we
got in the car and jumped on the freeway. We pulled off at the next exit and
drove to “Bakers Ribs” another small BBQ joint. Tina had some pretty good ribs
and I had a pulled pork sandwich that was also very good. After lunch we got
back on the freeway and exited at Greenville. After making our way through the
road construction we made it into town and found a grocery store.
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| Fishing Lake and Cabins |
On the way home Tina took a short
cut that took us through the back roads between Greenville and Caddo Mills. It’s
really a very pretty area with many green trees and lots of green grass along with large plowed fields ready for
planting. Once back at the coach we put the grocery’s away and went to the
office to register. They have a really nice pool but its only a little above 70
so we decided to just walk around the property. There is a very large fishing
lake with cabins along the shore – very nice.
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| Relaxing on the shore of the fishing lake |
Once more back at the coach we
decided to call it a day and spend some time relaxing.
Miles for today, 137. Total for
the trip so far, 2,956 miles.
To see all our photos, go to:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdolanski
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