THURSDAY |
TRAVEL DAY |
We had a relatively short and easy moving day today. Speegleville Park is 80 miles due north on I-35 from our previous campsite at Cedar Breaks Park, both are Army Corp of Engineers parks which means they are half price for us to visit.
Speegleville Park is on the western shores of Lake Waco. On the eastern shores is where you will find the city of Waco, TX which is famous for a number of things, some good, some not so good!
First let's talk about one of the not so good things. In 1993 there was an incident between a religious sect called the Branch Davidians and the agents of the FBI and ATF. Many members died in a suspicious fire and several members and agents died from gunshot wounds, it was dubbed The Waco Siege. But that's not why we're here!
Also, Waco is home to Baylor University, who very recently have had much success with their football program. Also, not why we're here!
Why we are here is to visit the Waco Mammoth National Monument. Unfortunately, due to the threat of the Coronavirus all NPS museums, visitor centers and administrative offices were closed to the public for an indefinite period of time as of yesterday. I understand and agree with their reasoning for doing so, but it still makes us sad we won't be able to visit the site.
Our second reason for visiting Waco is to see the area known as Magnolia Marketplace. Anyone who is a fan of the HGTV series Fixer Upper will be familiar with Chip and Joanna Gaines' retail empire which encompasses two city blocks right in the middle of downtown Waco. Unfortunately that too closed earlier this week for at least the rest of the month.
We will be moving on down the road on Monday and like I said we got shutout, 0 for 2, on the reasons we scheduled a stop here near Waco, TX. Guess we'll just have to come back through the area, maybe sometime next year.
FRIDAY - I spent all morning at Pickup Outfitters, a custom accessories shop for pickup trucks here in Waco, because once again the Airlift air shocks we installed on ROVER stopped performing properly. The compressor was unable to inflate the shocks and keep them inflated while traveling down the road. Their purpose is to help level out the trailer and truck to make it safer and smoother while towing THE POD down the road.
At a cost of nearly $1000 we had them install an entirely new system. Now we can mail the failing parts to Airlift, have them repair or replace what's not working and return the entire package back to me so we can have a complete working system to install if anything fails to work properly again. All this is done under a 4-year warranty but we are constantly having to pay the labor costs involved because we are no longer using the shop in Miami where the system was originally installed.
Just one of the added costs of living this nomadic lifestyle!
SATURDAY - Another added cost of living this nomadic lifestyle is how to maintain receiving prescription medications. Since we no longer have a "home base", we no longer have a primary care physician to visit for getting prescriptions written.
So our solution is to find a sympathetic physician at a clinic or urgent care center to write an extension to my current medications. Sometimes the physician is willing to write a 90-day extension after hearing our current nomadic situation, but most times they only want to write a prescription for a 30-day supply. With my current healthcare insurance it costs $75 to visit such a facility, so when I only receive a 30-day supply that factors in heavily to the cost of my healthcare.
Today a received a 90-day supply, so I'm good for a while! Hopefully it will get me to the other side of the current Coronavirus outbreak.
AFFECT • EFFECT • RESPECT • INFECT
But with the closure of some of the campgrounds we were planning to visit in the next few months the coronavirus is having an effect on our route planning. We were planning to start taking advantage of our newly installed solar equipment and start visiting free camping sites along our route. There are no reservations available at these sites and our fear is if they close them with too short of a notice we would have no backup plan on where to stay.
So for the next three weeks we've decided to stay only where campgrounds are currently open and accepting advanced reservations. That will make our visits a little more expensive, but we'll have the assurance of a place to live each and every night.
Please respect the CDC's recommendations on how to best secure your health during this coronavirus threat and limit your exposure to having the virus infect you!
To end this blog post with a happy thought here are a few photos of our current campsite at Speegleville Park just outside of Waco, TX. We have this place almost to ourselves!
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