COAST-2-COAST REPOSITIONING - PART 2 of 3

SATURDAY﹠SUNDAY - So far we've traveled from near the Atlantic Coast in Jacksonville, FL to halfway across the country in Central Texas with travel days of 297, 317, 209 and 234-miles.

Today's travel day of 334-miles had us arriving at Monahans Sandhills State Park in West Texas. It's our 3rd of "four in a row" Texas State Park visits. At 334-miles it's also going to be our longest 1-day travel of the entire Coast-2-Coast journey.

While in Jacksonville we purchased a new budget friendly "dash cam" which takes decent photographs using voice command, but the video quality leaves a lot to be desired. It takes video in 4K resolution, but only at 30 frames per second.

It's just one more chance to share a different perspective of the scenery as we pass by. We're still trying to figure out what it can and can't do well, so bear with us for a while.

Today in Texas we found ourselves following behind a 1933 Ford "ZZ Top" kind of car.
BTW - All future dash cam photos and videos will feature this special "orange" border!

We arrived at the Monahans Sandhills State Park at 4:36PM, six minutes too late to officially check-in for our campsite. I guess we'll just have to drive the 2-miles back to the gate in the morning when they open.

MONAHANS SANDHILLS STATE PARK

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A pretty grand entrance for a state park.
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Our "no frills" campsite, but it does have water and electric for a reasonable price.
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Now you know why "Sandhills" is in the name of the park.
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LOOK! Two other Airstreams showed up at the campground for tonight.

MONDAY﹠TUESDAY - Our 267-mile drive today went fairly well, that was until we reached the city limits of El Paso, TX.

At the halfway point of the drive we stopped for fuel in Van Horn, TX at an EZ-OFF and EZ- ON Love's Fuel Station at Exit 140B of Interstate 10. They have extra wide lanes for trucks with trailers to fuel up at, instead of us having to fight for position with all the other cars purchasing fuel.

Like I said, everything was going great until we reached the city limits of El Paso where we soon were caught up traveling in 55MPH traffic with people cutting in and out trying not to miss their exit.

One car in particular came very close to clipping the front right fender of ROVER as they merged onto the highway. This is the reason we broke down and finally purchased a dashcam.

Watch the short video below. It felt a lot closer than what you see from the perspective of the dashcam.

If the car had clipped us, the front of ROVER would probably look a lot like this, or worse!

That's not AI. I clipped the campsite post trying to maneuver THE POD into our site yesterday.

You can see the campsite post in this photo, well below my line of sight over ROVER's hood.

This photo shows exactly how unlevel our Site #RV5 is here.

We've been here at Franklin Mountains State Park once before in January of 2024. As a matter of fact we had this exact same campsite. There are only 5 sites here that are designated for RVs. All the other sites are for tent campers only.

FRANKLIN MOUNTAINS STATE PARK

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At the very back of the campground is this scenic overlook/picnic area with a view!
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Stand up grills, picnic tables and shade, what more do you need to have a good time?
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Need to walk off some of that BBQ? The hiking trails here range from 5.9-15.5 miles long.
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I put a white arrow pointing down at THE POD as seen from the overlook.

WEDNESDAY - Today will be another 263-miles travel day. We will begin just north of El Paso, TX and pass through the entire state of New Mexico before we land at a Walmart parking lot for the night in Benson, AZ.

That doesn't mean we won't be stopping in New Mexico, as a matter of fact we have three stops to make there.

First and foremost is to stop in Las Cruces, NM for gas. For some reason it's 45¢ a gallon cheaper just 10-miles on the other side of the state line from Texas.

Next we'll be stopping to fill up one of our propane tanks because for the next 11-days we'll be without electricity to run our little space heater at night to stay warm. We'll also be cooking some of our meals in the oven, but for our stove top meals we can used our induction cooktop and run it off the batteries. I doubt we could run through our other two tanks in that amount of time, but why take the chance.

Lastly, it will be lunch time so as long as we are already off the highway why not let someone else prepare lunch?

It's nothing fancy, but the price is right, FREE!

THURSDAY - We've got about ¼-tank of gas left which means in about 90-miles we are going to run out of gas. If our Gas Buddy app is correct there is a Costco Gas Station just 45-miles north of here outside of Tucson, AZ. Since Costco Gas is always the least expensive gas around I hope it's true that today's price is a mere $2.39 a gallon.

I'd be willing to bet that is the cheapest gas we will be able to purchase between now and late October, when we come back through Arizona as we head back to Florida.

Since we left Florida 12-days ago we've spent $632 on gas and the month isn't even half over!

We only budget $500 a month for gas and most of the time that is enough. This year is going to be a little bit different.

I get a chuckle every time I see this billboard on the side of Interstate 10 when traveling north between Tucson and Phoenix.

It's either a clever marketing strategy, or a complete waste of advertising dollars, because most local people will never drive 979-miles away from home, let alone just to see a Buc-ee's.

This is our FREE campsite for tonight out in the Sonoran Desert National Monument.

Today was only a 136-mile travel day, much shorter than what we've been doing for the last 12-days. The good news is, we only have one more 100+ mile travel day before we reach the end of our Coast-2-Coast repostioning on February 23rd. The bad news is, we will soon be paying in excess of $4.00 a gallon for our gasoline.

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COAST-2-COAST REPOSITIONING - PART 1 of 3

SUNDAY - We got off to a pretty rough start this morning. At our scheduled departure time it was 23°F outside so we pushed our start back to 9:15AM, not that it changed much temperature wise.

We then made it over to the Blue Beacon Truck Wash where we waited nearly 30-minutes to get inside of the heated wash bay. So shortly after 10:00AM we hopped onto the I-295 Bypass around Jacksonville and headed south before transfering onto I-10 to begin our westward travels. We would remain on I-10 for the rest of the day.

About an hour down the road I realized we were bucking a 20-25MPH headwind and became curious about what that was doing to our gas mileage. Turns out, instead of our normal 10-11MPG, we were only getting 6.5MPG, that's not going to work very well into our budget.

Certainly the wind couldn't cause that big off a drop in our mileage, so I started to consider what else had changed since we arrived in town a month ago.

We did get all new tires on THE POD and ROVER. I remembered the FORD guy said I could run the truck tires at 55PSI on the front and 65PSI on the rear (to help compensate for the trailer tongue weight) for a smoother ride.

So that's where we set the PSI, but we used to run these same tires at 75PSI (80PSI max) before now. At the next rest area we passed we pulled in and added 10PSI to all the truck tires. We got three of the four tires done when our 7½-year old, $350 portable tire inflator just quit working. No blown fuse or overheating this time, both have occured to us before, so we drove 11-miles up the road to the next exit to find a gas station with an air pump.

100-miles further down the road we realized the extra air in the tires only minimally increased the MPG, so we're hoping tomorrow we'll have lighter winds and finally get our 10MPG back.

We traveled just over 300-miles today and didn't even make it out of the state of Forida. We did however manage to leave the Eastern Time Zone behind when we crossed over the Apalachicola River and entered into the Central Time Zone.

MONDAY - Today we drove completely across the state of Alabama without a single stop and came within 5-miles of crossing over the state of Mississippi too. With lighter winds and traveling 55MPH instead of 65MPH like yesterday, we did manage to get our fuel mileage back up to 9MPG.

I also figured out that FORD did not adjust my speedometer/odometer to compensate for the larger tires we put on the truck, so I imagine we are actually getting close to our normal 10MPG now.

When we arrived at the Walmart just south of Jackson, MS (where we planned to stay tonight) we found that two full rows of their parking lot were being used to store their overflow garden center inventory. Another two rows were being resurfaced by some heavy equipment, which was creating tons of dust.

We filled up with their inexpensive gas, but decided not to try and stay there overnight.

We then called the next Walmart along our route, just 11-miles away, but couldn't get anyone to answer the phone. So instead of waiting on someone to pick up the phone we just drove over there.

We arrived to a nice and big, half empty parking lot. When we asked inside about staying overnight we were told SORRY, NO! We were welcome to stay in the parking lot until the store closed at 11:00PM, but then the security personnel would ask us to leave.

I phoned ahead to the next Walmart up the road, but was also told "no overnight parking" allowed. It was then I called ahead to a Cracker Barrel 37-miles away in Vicksburg and was told it would not be a problem.

At least I know where we'll be enjoying breakfast in the morning!

This sign, which can be seen from Interstate 20, is just yards away from where we are parked.

All tucked in for the night on the side of the Vicksburg, MS Cracker Barrel parking lot.

TUESDAY﹠WEDNESDAY - The extra 40+ miles we drove yesterday just means we have a shorter 209-mile distance to drive today.

Today's route has us driving completely across the state of Louisiana and arriving in Texas at one one their top state parks for a 2-day breather.

Caddo Lake State Park was voted one of Texas' Top State Parks by National Geographic.

We are here in the off-season and have the whole place just about to ourselves, but I can see how this place gets busy and would be a perfect destination in the spring and fall seasons, when you can take advantage of all the water activities.

The park offers canoe rentals for the paddling trails, miles of hiking trails and plenty of places to throw a line into the water to catch some fish. There is no swimming however, this is still alligator country.

CADDO LAKE STATE PARK ★

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There is a nice long dock to launch your canoes and kayaks from.
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There is plenty of nice flat water to paddle on.
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There is also a boat ramp here to launch all types of motorboats from.
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There is also a huge fishing pier where you can try your luck fishing.
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One thing there is no shortage of here are cyprus knees.

THURSDAY﹠FRIDAY - With our route covering 234-miles across Texas today we knew we'd be stopping at least once to grab some lunch.

Traveling west on Interstate 20 we started thinking about lunch around 11:30AM. That's when we saw it, a Buc-ee's billboard on the side of the road which read "I'll have the BBQ", just 33-miles ahead. At least I know what I'll be having for lunch.

Buc-ee's is known for having the cleanest bathrooms and best BBQ of any gas station chain, but they are not known for having the cheapest gasoline around. By driving just 2 exits further west on the Interstate we saved 40¢ a gallon at just $2.29 a gallon. That 40¢ may not seem like much, but it adds up when you multiply it by 32 gallons (40¢ x 32 = $12.80).

After lunch and filling up with gas we still had another 100+ miles to drive before we reached our destination of Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, TX which is about 60-miles southwest of Dallas/Fort Worth.

We were still 14-miles from the park, but I knew we were on the right road
when I saw these baby dinosaurs playing in a field next to the road.

This is our 2nd of "four in a row" Texas State Park visits. With most of the overnight lows below freezing, we figured it might be a good idea to book a few reservations where we have electricity to run our little space heater during the day, instead of burning through all of our propane using the furnace to keep warm.

We do however still have to run the furnace at night when the temps go below 32°F to keep our external water and waste tanks from freezing.

DINOSAUR VALLEY STATE PARK ★

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We are not going to get any solar or satellite signal while we're on this site.
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In order to see the dinosaur tracks we'll first have to cross the Paluxy River.
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The sign says we're looking at the tracks, but all I see are round depressions in the riverbed.
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Now this side view reveals some three-toed footprints.
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You can clearly make out a right and left hand footprint in this closeup.
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I'd estimate these prints were at least 24-30" across.
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Walking along the river we saw more depressions, but nothing that we would call tracks.
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Then the water got so deep we couldn't even see the bottom.
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These two weren't too hard to spot hanging around the gift shop and picnic area.

A FEW PARTING SHOTS FROM TRICIA'S MORNING WALK BEFORE IT'S TIME FOR US TO GET BACK ON THE ROAD FOR ANOTHER 300+ MILE DAY!

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They look even scarier in the dark!
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Just outside of the front gate to the park is Dinosaur World.
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They have their own, much more realistic, T-Rex on display out front.
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We saw the stonework on the building when we drove by, but it's much nicer with the lights on.
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Tricia is back inside of the state park now.
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The deer seem more interested in Tricia than the pair of dinosaurs behind them?

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