Our Big Adventure in the House on Wheels
These are the voyages of the RV Lumbering Behemoth....
Larry Correia has his "Christmas Noun" thing...
As the day got started, it looked like the noun for our Christmas was going to be, let's see, one word, three syllables, first two rhyme with "cluster" and the third refers to fornication.
See, we'd picked up the RV on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and made a start on loading it up. Then, in the interest of checking it out and getting the cats familiar with it, my father went out to sleep in it while it was still parked in the driveway; the cats and I joined him after a bit more packing activity.
It was a dark and stormy night, and the cats demonstrated that littermates raised together can have very different personalities. Southmoon and Huckleberry came right out of their carriers and went exploring; Top Hat was more hesitant, and mainly looked for a better place to hide.
The cats being out of their bags, I went to bed, in the top bunk over the cab. A bit later, there came a commotion: Huckleberry was freaking out, zooming around and trying to escape through various windows. Southmoon, meanwhile, was excited in a good way, peering through the windows and generally acting like she'd given up her childhood ambition of being a mountain lion when she grows up in favor of being a Labrador Retriever. This sort of commotion went on all night, except that Huckleberry was increasingly trying to hide under the driver's seat.
Joy never did join us out there that night; she was up all night with final packing and house-tidying. She'd grabbed about 15 minutes of sleep when I gave up on the night, put the cats back in their carriers, and went back into the house to see what was up.
By 0400, we'd finished putting stuff into the RV, and it was time to batten the hatches and get going. There ensued an hour and a half of frantic activity as we searched everywhere, repeatedly, for the keys. Which, eventually, turned up almost, but not quite, where they should have been in the first place.
And so it was that at 0535 we departed the home where I'd grown up (that was before my 30 years in Sunnyvale) and headed for Los Angeles.
Heading down I-5 was mostly uneventful, but the Grapevine (starting a little before the summit, southbound) was a total twinklefest. At first we saw a police car up ahead, zigzagging across the traffic lanes as if to slow traffic. Initial assumption: trying to slow traffic ahead of dangerous road conditions, such as snow. But then there was a teevee truck on an overpass, and there were a lot more police cars, and a helicopter. Manhunt? But, based on such news reports as I could find, the only activity there was related to snow.
And speaking of snow: we made a hasty stop in Sherman Oaks so Joy could say hi to her newest granddaughter, then pressed on with an eye to getting over the pass (on I-10) ahead of incoming rain. Subsequent news reports seemed to indicate that I-5 had gotten well and truly clobbered not too long after we came over.
Fleeing the Oncoming Storm
So we stopped for the night at the Flying J Travel Center in Ehrenberg, AZ, just over the state line. In the morning, after those intense non-California showers, we had breakfast at Times 3 Family Restaurant in Quartzsite (quite a nice little diner, as it turned out) and, the forecast looking ominous, were on our way.
I'd assumed we'd be staying on I-10 for quite a ways, taking us through Tucson and Benson, but Joy, who was in charge of route planning on account of she was the one doing all the driving, figured we'd have a whole bunch of time by getting back to I-40 as soon as we were past the oft-frozen pass, and so we bypassed Phoenix and headed for Flagstaff. Which....
Yeah, the snow happened before we got there, and had already been cleared. There was more in the forecast, so on we went.
By this time, Southmoon was getting downright relaxed about the whole "little bitty house that moves" thing, and was enjoying her out-of-carrier time at rest stops. The other two, not so much.
After a night parked at the Flying J in Albuquerque, with the weather forecast still looking menacing and also a strong desire to arrive at our destination ahead of the rain forecast for a few days hence, we blew through Texas, Oklahoma, and part of Arkansas, stopping for the last of the night at the Love's Travel Stop just past Little Rock.
There was a fog that was not just Texas-sized but Oklahoma-and-Arkansas-sized as well.
Onward and Homeward
Blast off! Onward to the Tennessee state line....
... through Memphis, stopping at an iHop on the far side for a late breakfast.
Then through Nashville and Knoxville, and thence home! (Photos of home later.)
Southmoon took a couple of hours to adjust to a great big house that doesn't move, but soon claimed it as hers. She's been keeping Huckleberry confined to the pantry, until such time as he remembers that he's the bully of the litter (which may take several days). Top Hat is mostly hiding behind the washing machine, occasionally coming out for food and/or attention but fearful to venture much beyond the doorway of the laundry room.
Comments