Into New Mexico

 

Our ambition is to collect 7 more Elks pins along the way to take our collection to 200.

We’ll see how that pans out.

Not my picture, but this is the Texas Eifel Tower

Paris Texas is a quirky place famous for it’s Eiffel Tower with a Stetson Hat on top! Naturally we stayed at the Elks Lodge but unfortunately they don’t have pins and neither did the two other lodges that were in the area. We had wised up enough to call before we decided to drive only to be disappointed.

We’ve been to Paris several times as well as the other stops along the way and it’s like returning home somehow.

Rt 82 is 4 lanes most of the way but occasionally narrows down to 2 thru the few towns along the way. Speed limits are 75 thru most of Texas but watch out for the 25mph limits or even 20mph in some of the smaller towns.

We like to drive backroads and limit our daily drives to 200 miles or less and Rt 82 is laid out perfectly. Shreveport to Paris 160 miles, Paris to Wichita Falls 190 miles, Wichita Falls to Lubbock 220 miles.

Carlsbad or Alamogordo NM would normally be our next stop but we remembered that our friends Matt and Carol spend their winters in an Escapees RV Park in Artesia New Mexico. They had posted that they were back there already and so we diverted a little to go see them at the Escapees Original Ranch. We explored their park and went out for dinner in Artesia, great catfish!

Always fun when Matt and Carol are around!

Artesia may replace Carlsbad as a routine stop on this route as it stays within our 200 miles a day routine and lets us cut out a stop at Alamogordo because it puts Las Cruces Elks in that 200 mile bracket.

Thanks for a fun time Matt and Carol see you next time!

Kansas

 

Obviously we collected a Kentucky Lodge pin and our next stop was going to be Kansas!

A stopover at a Walmart, then on to Topeka to a KOA campground with full hookups.

In case you haven’t seen our previous posts about KOA’s lets just say we aren’t fans!

We had our coach and car washed just before we drove over to this park but their website didn’t mention the ¼ of a mile of dirt road to get to it. Our $80 was wasted as everything was covered in fine gray dust by the time we got to the office. For $50 a night it was not good value, gravel roads that were more like dirt bike trails and very close to the highway.

Anyway it was about all we could find so we stayed a few days and explored Topeka.

Pioneer Town Soda Fountain and Candy Store.
Great ice cream!

Unfortunately it seems that Topeka’s attractions are mostly closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so we had to cram everything in to Wednesday. Still there were some nice places like the Pioneer Town and I dragged Barbara around another Airplane museum with some interesting WW1 replicas.

WW1 replica aircraft

Several brew pubs were tried but unfortunately there are no Elks Lodges nearby and in a desperate attempt to get a pin we drove 120 miles round trip to Overland Park just to ensure we did get one.

My favorite kind of beer.

We have friends who now live in Kansas so our next stop was their house in Wichita.

We abandoned the RV life for several days and stayed in Marty and Peggy’s guest bedroom while they fed us and showed us the sights around Wichita.

With Peggy and Marty
Thanks for the hospitality!

Meanwhile the temperatures were climbing into the 90’s.

Guardian of the West statue along the river.

Reluctantly we said so long to Marty and Peggy with a tangled semi plan(!) of a side trip to Louisiana on the way to Texas just so we could cross off another state from our Elks pin list!!

Tulsa was a convenient stop along the way and we pulled into the Elks lodge there as they have 50 amp power.

Now the temperatures were reaching the 100’s and wouldn’t you know it our last AC unit expired in a series of loud noises followed by a bang and finally total silence.

We visited another lodge in Broken Arrow not far away and discovered a great big friendly lodge that was open every day and had camping too. The Tulsa lodge was only open at weekends.

We moved to Broken Arrow and were looking around for a company that could replace the AC unit when totally by coincidence we were talking with our neighbor in the camping area and she mentioned that she had a company coming to replace HER AC unit the following day.

We called the company, Precise RV Mobile Repair, and they would come look at it and give us prices and options.

By now it was Tuesday and when we called into the lodge to pay for the camping they told us that they had a massive car show on at the weekend and we would have to leave on Thursday.

We explored our options and looked for places to visit that had AC! Luckily we found several and set off to explore.

Route 66 marker

We didn’t realize that Route 66 the famous “Mother Road” ran through Tulsa. A visit to the Route 66 Historic Village was both interesting and disappointing. A good idea at some point, we found everything closed and a little neglected.

The Route 66 village

Another stop was the Woodie Guthrie Center. Woodie was a famous Folk Singer from the 30’s thru the 60’s and both Barbara and I liked Folk music back in the 60’s and 70’s in UK. Woodies most famous song was probably “This land is my land” and is still sung at major events.

Oklahoma was the center of the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930’s when poor farming practices led to the soil degrading and being blown in the wind. Oklahoman’s faced with the Great Depression, foreclosure on their farms and little hope of finding work, packed their few possessions into and onto their cars or trucks and with their families headed west along Rt 66 for the promised land of California.

Steinbeck’s classic novel “The Grapes of Wrath” told the story of the journey and Woodie Guthrie joined the migrants and sang.

The famous 1930’s American humorist Will Rogers was born not far away too and we visited the very impressive home he had built there.

The Blue Whale is a famous Rt 66 landmark

The RV techs said they could replace the front AC and recommended not going the way the place in Casa Grande went when the replaced the rear AC. We should get a wall mounted thermostat rather than mess with the adapter to get it to work with the existing wireless controller. Because the rear AC would only run for about 30 minutes before stopping we went with his suggestion.

Unfortunately it would be Monday before the unit could be delivered, which left us with the problem of finding a place to stay, preferably with a room that had AC.

The tech recommended Mingo RV not far away and we checked it out online. Sounded ideal, full hookups, laundry, Rec Room (with AC!). We went to Lowes and bought a portable AC unit so we could survive for 4 days and moved to Mingo.

Temperatures hit 100 and, with high humidity too, felt like 105.

The portable AC couldn’t keep up after about 11am and showed a room temp of 95 degrees.

Yep 95 degrees with the portable AC running flat out!

We explored in our air conditioned car looking for air conditioned attractions. We collected some more pins from air conditioned Elks lodges.

Gorgeous mansion now the Elks Lodge in Okmulgee OK

We discovered an air conditioned English Pub he White Lion that had all the atmosphere of a real old English pub. Looking at the memorabilia on the walls we noticed that a lot had to do with our "Home" in Liverpool England.

English pub

Irish beer!

With good cause apparently because the lady who started it, and still owned it in her 90's, was from Liverpool, had married a US Navy officer and set the place up when they retired and moved to Tulsa.

Finally after exhausting all the places we were interested in we drove to a huge shopping mall and walked thru the air conditioned stores and ate lunch in the air conditioned food hall.

Then the AC unit was installed and tested, and IT WORKED!

At last cool air!

Unfortunately we had made a reservation at an RV park near Fort Worth to spend a couple of weeks with our friends Paul and Karen Dean who we knew from Arizona.

https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2024/05/start-of-new-adventure.html

That messed up the complicated plan we had come up with to stay a couple of nights at the Shreveport Louisiana Elks on the way to Fort Worth. Getting the pin, would leave New Jersey as the only continental State we wouldn’t have a pin from. If we drove to Shreveport from Fort Worth and back would add about 500 miles to our trip.

Paul and Karen were in the midst of moving their trailer from the RV park we visited them at last year for the solar eclipse to a new one not far away. It was hotter than heck and they were struggling with all the stuff they had acquired over the years.

Barbara finally got to see a Bucee's Gas Station/Store
A huge place full of junk, enough to please everyone! 

We arrived first but found the site we were on was very slanted front to back. We leveled as best we could but there was still a fair incline inside the rig.

OH JOY! Said Barb, another airplane museum

Apart from discomfort the big danger in having an RV off level is to the refrigerator.

RV refrigerators are completely different than household refrigerators. They work on an absorption principle that lets heat make cold! Honest!

I can explain the way it works if you have a quiet half hour.

No?

Didn’t think so, but take my word for it when I say that being too far out of level can cause the refrigerator catastrophic damage. A new one is over $3000.

Sweetie Pie Steakhouse

With Paul and Karen at Sweetie Pie's

I was pretty stressed out by that but we took a chance and luckily things were fine, but we decided to cut down our planned 2 weeks to 1 week and to go completely crazy and drive to Shreveport.

Yes 500 miles for a little metal pin!

The coveted pin!

Shreveport had full hookups, a nice FLAT concrete pad to park on, a pool, great welcoming Lodge that was open 7 days a week, food, a band on Friday and availability over the coming Labor Day long weekend.

We got the pin!

We explored the area and didn’t find an awful lot that interested us.

We visited a few museums, and a Steam Boat Casino that was awful. Did laundry, shopped and relaxed for a week while sketching out a route back to Casa Grande.

Our favorite road is Hwy 82 and we traveled it last year with the adventures/disasters that followed us. So Paris TX, Wichita Falls, Lubbock, Alamogordo and Las Cruces look like our stops again this year.

Our ambition is to collect 7 more Elks pins along the way to take our collection to 200.

We’ll see how that pans out.