July 3-6th • The Move to Texas
Well, if you have kept up with our blog you know that we are now calling Iowa home. We have officially moved into a house here on September 1st. That doesn’t mean we won’t still be traveling just that we now have a home base to be able to homeschool and run a proper business. I know that I’m quite a bit behind on updates and now that we are at a home base with good internet, I will do my best to get things caught up for our family and friends. This journey has been crazy and a lot of unexpected things have come along the way.
We will now rewind to the beginning of July when we did our move from New Mexico to Texas. We packed up and left our campground Ceder Cove Too in Elephant Butte, NM as early as we could get ourselves up and running. The 5th wheel was hooked up to the truck but we still had a trailer with a tractor we had to come back for after this trip. We were excited because for the first time this entire trip we planned a month in advance and had a campground booked. Which meant we just had to map from point A to point B and figure out where to stop along the way.
We left New Mexico later in the day as we planned to do half the trip and then find a place to sleep for the night then finish our journey the next day to Texas. We drove for 4 hours and it was getting dark so we decided it was time to find a place to stop and call it a night. We found a park right off the highway close to the New Mexico/Texas border. It was late and we just wanted to get some sleep so we could finish our journey in the morning. We set the jacks, opened the slides, make a quick meal then all got settled in bed for the night. I heard a noise outside our camper like someone was walking around, it freaked me out as we weren’t somewhere anyone should be walking around our camper. I woke up Kevin and he heard it too! His first instinct was to turn the truck on with our remote starter. That was enough to spook the people away from our camper. Although, we could see them parked at the entrance of the park. At this point, it is 1:30 am and we are all freaked right out as we heard the voices and them walking around our camper and truck like they were sizing up what they could take. We then for the first time in our entire trip packed the kids up in the middle of the night and hit the road as fast as we can. We aren’t sure if it would have been a dangerous situation or not but, we didn’t want to change that. Of course, by this point, Kevin and I were both high on adrenaline. We decided we would just keep driving and could get to the new campsite by morning and then just sleep in the morning.
We arrived at the “new” campground the one we booked a month prior at about 8:00 am. We were exhausted after driving straight through that night and just wanted to sleep. We found the turnoff to our campsite that was supposed to have a private campsite, a large area by a creek and fruit trees. Only to drive up to a huge gravel lot with a bunch of campers which appeared to be people living in them that had nowhere else to live. It looked like a homeless ground and we just didn’t know what to do we just drove almost 11 hours to this new place and it was nothing like the website or what the owner explained. The only thing we knew is we were not going to stay here for an entire month!
Even though at this point we all were so exhausted we knew that we had to find a place to stay. We drove around Springtown for about an hour and sized up what was in the area and pulled into a campground called Valley Rose RV. They had space for us and a huge plus was a pool. They are the only RV park around that had a pool and knowing how miserable we were in New Mexico without a pool we decided this was our best bet. The managers were super accommodating and helpful for space and getting us set up for the day. We had a concrete pad and were only 1 space away from the pool. We felt relieved we found something and this would work for a month for us. We also were really happy the space was large for extra parking for our tractors and trailer.
After we pulled into our site we realized one of the trailer tires was flat. That meant we couldn’t set up just yet we had to find a tire shop to get our tire fixed before we set up the 5th wheel. Yes, I can say not having sleep, dealing with finding a place to stay on the fly, and having a flat tire wasn’t the best way to spend our morning. But, Kevin and I have learned to go with the punches life gives us and just work as a team to do what needs to be done to take care of what’s at hand. We found a little Mexican tire shop along the road and they had us back up and worked on the 5th wheel right there outside the shop. As soon as we got the tire fixed we headed back to our site to actually set up this time.
Once, the setup we all took a nap and got some well-needed rest. Kevin then had to head back to New Mexico to get the trailer and bring it to Texas. He drove all the way to New Mexico that night, slept in his truck, and then brought the trailer back the next day. The kids and I stayed at the camper to get laundry done and everything set up at the new location. We arrived on July 3rd and the RV resort had a celebration for July 4th. The kids were super excited we had BBQ hot dogs and hamburgers. They got to enjoy food, swim all afternoon, playing on the waterslide and just have a good time.
Kevin got back on July 4th in the evening. We had planned to see one of my friends for fireworks but, she was about an hour away and we with all the exhaustion and Kevin being back late we decided it was best to just stay at the camper and hang out. We were not disappointed there were fireworks going off everywhere around us and the kids had a blast staying up and watching it all. This was the kid’s first 4th of July since we have been back in the states. We had plans to take them to a show or something but, you know this was a perfect little family celebration. The truth is sometimes its the little things we do together that create the best memories.
