Camping Trip from Hell? pt40

Here we are heading to Amarillo and eating. Things are looking up for us by now. As I was leaving the state I didn't really have any problems until I came to the branch off to head for Amarillo instead of Lubbock. I was in the wrong lane and I know I pissed off a few people because I switched lanes right in front of them, cutting them off in the process. I'd like to say I cared but I didn't, in fact I wasn't even thinking of them other than to make sure I didn't hit one of them.

After making the turn we settled in for the drive and surprisingly we fell back in to our routine again without a hitch. Things are going along pretty well when all of a sudden we are hit by a wave of horridness in the form of smell. I had thought the smell in Clovis was bad...it was nothing to the smell we ran head first into on this road. Since the trip I have found that the smell isn't always so bad but the time of day and year made it much worse that it normally is .

We were passing thousands of cows on different farms so you can imagine what it was like. At one point it had gotten so bad and over powering I had to stop the RV so I could go outside and call to Ralph a couple of times. Once that was done I picked up speed to get out of the stink zone as fast as possible. Eventually we did make it out and soon after found ourselves in Amarillo looking for I40.

Finding I40 is pretty easy there and the traffic was fairly light so we were making pretty good headway by now. I've driven this stretch of I40 on numorus occasions and felt comfortable with keeping my speed up. Once out of Amarillo my wife told me that her supervisor had mentioned that it would take us at least 3 days or more to get to Virgina from here. I glanced at my wife and said "that's because she doesn't know how to drive". Yep, just throw down that type of guantlet and I'll do everything I can to prove you wrong.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on the road, making pretty good time and having sandwiches again for dinner, still didn't know about the generator switch being off at this point. After a while of TV watching and game playing the kids were getting tired and was starting to fall out on the couch. My wife came up front and asked me when we'd be stopping for the night. I responded to her with "when I get to Arkansas". She looked at the map and the road signs but didn't say anything. She knew I was on a mission now.

Long after leaving Texas behind and almost 3/4 of the way through Oklahoma I started getting tired. I knew I wanted to make Arkansas but was starting to realize that we might not make it that far. I called out to the wife to come back up front to help find a campground as close to the line as possible and also a few that were closer to us than that just in case. She grabbed the book and a flashlight and began her search. While doing this she commented on the fact that for once we didn't get caught up in road construction while going through Oklahoma City. I couldn't help but laugh because it's a small, running joke with us about the Oklahoma city construction and how bad it makes getting around. Not having to drive the RV through that was a blessing indeed.

After a few minutes of searching, reading, muttering and one exhasperated sigh she found a few campgrounds that we could use. The one I was shooting for was in a little town called Sallisaw. She sat back and we chatted to help keep me awake and active while driving. We also were still making pretty good time so all in my world is pretty good. Then we hit Sallisaw.

Once we got to the campground we found that it was full, We had passed several other campgrounds along the way but I really didn't want to back track if at all possible so after leaving the campground I headed for a truckstop to fuel up and to give the wife time to find another place we could go that was close by.

This would be a mistake. As I pulled up to the truck stop we noticed a lot of bugs flying around. Huge swarm of bugs darting all around. My wife suggested we not stop but I really needed to fuel up and I wasn't sure how much further down the road another place was. So I pulled up to the gas pump and got out. I was in a small swarm by then but I had to get the gas so I continued on while trying to ignore the bugs. At one point I got hit in the face with a couple of them and as I batted them down I got my first real good look at them. They were "kissing bugs". While they can be irritating they usually don't bite so I just went back to ignoring them and pumping gas. Once finished I quickly got back into the RV and asked it she had found anything.

She told me there was one in the next town over named Muldrow. Ok we're sleeping in Muldrow tonight I said and pulled out of the truck stop trailing a swarm of bugs behind. They had gotten all over the windshield by this point as well so I spent the next couple of miles trying to clean the windshield with the wypers. They cleaned it up enough for me to drive along pretty well and I knew I'd need to finish the job the next morning. We made it to Muldrow without any other problems and found the campground to be about half empty. I picked out a spot and hooked up for the night while the wife was getting the beds ready. After everyone was tucked in and back asleep we headed into the back to rack out. Sleep came fast after this long day and it was a quiet sleep for good measure.

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