Winter Travels 2019--Part 1: Getting to Texas

(I am taking a giant leap from Winter 2018 to Winter of 2019! During 2018 we traveled to Portugal (which I still hope to add to this Blog) in the spring and camped in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the Summer. In the fall we did a big loop with the trailer from home to Sarah's in Carmel, to the Lincoln Trail in Illinois and exhibits in Springfield, to Iowa and seeing Jean Murray, through Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula and to home. Then in October we took Sarah and Craig's family and stayed for five days in a rented trailer at Fort Wilderness at Disney World in Florida. Eli, Jordan, and Analyn were the perfect ages for that adventure and we will repeat it in about 5 years when Ken and Jen's kids, Josh and Josie are old enough to truly enjoy the magic. For now, I will try to keep up with our Winter Travels 2019 to the southwest part of America with the trailer.) 

Jan. 16-19: It was cold in East Lansing but there wasn’t much snow in this thus far unusually warm and dry Winter of 2018-19. That meant that we could easily pull out the trailer, and it made packing and loading easier than some years. After doing last minute things we left East Lansing and headed to Sarah and Craig’s with a short stop for lunch along the way. We had changed our plans at the last minute to avoid a major Winter Storm that was going to reach from California to the east coast. We decided against trying to stay a few days in Oklahoma (one of the two last states in which we want to stay overnight, along with Delaware) in order to head straight south to Houston, where the storm was supposed to bring wind and lower temperatures but not the snow and Arctic temps expected for much of the country. In Carmel, we took the family out for dinner at Max & Erma’s for Analyn’s 8^th birthday dinner. That left us three more hours to drive before we changed time zones and stopped at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Effingham, IL, where we could stay the night for free in their parking lot.

Staying for free means no electricity but we can manage just fine for a night at a time when we’re in a hurry. The temperature got down to around freezing but we stayed warm enough and, after a nice breakfast (I found out their Good Morning Breakfast has only 3 WW points!) we got back on the road for a heavy day of driving. With few stops, we made it to south of Texarkana, TX and stayed again in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel. This stop we took some time to organize our provisions a bit and realized we could easily make breakfast and lunch from what we had packed. So we ate breakfast in the camper and got an even earlier start after a not-quite-so-cold night.