Finally being stationary for 2 weeks in a nice park in Washington where it’s more “our style” of camping. The KOA campgrounds are nice for passing through or overnight just off the highway types of places. The Army Corps of Engineers parks are much more our speed. Our site had a lot of shade over it from a nice tree and almost a yard outside our door. Our time at Plymouth Park was a chance to actually live as we want to in our RV. We had our new to us rug out in the gravel area outside our door, the canopy over our grill on the picnic table. We spent more time outside here than anywhere we have in a long time. Even though it was hot – and it was HOT we had several days over 100 degrees while there – because the humidity was so low and with our shady spot it was actually pleasant outside most times.

This particular campground was just off the highway so I got a great chance to watch a lot of campers coming and going to the park. I love seeing the different RV’s and it’s been very interesting seeing some different brands of RV’s that we haven’t seen more east of here. It’ve been intrigued by some of the new brands in this area and even spoke with a fellow camper at Plymouth about his brand I’d never seen before. They are actually made not far from where we were camping. They also made Keystone RV’s nearby (our brand of RV currently) but we didn’t get over to Pendelton.

Plymouth didn’t have any real town or shopping to be able to restock our grocery supplies. We crossed the Columbia River a few times to go to Hermiston, Oregon to get groceries and supplies. Hermiston was a cute town and where I had my first taste of Vietnamese food. Michael has had it several times but I had my first chance to try Pho and really enjoyed it a lot. We went to a county fair over the weekend and just spent a lot of time relaxing and enjoying watching people come and go at the park. We had some of the noisiest neighborss we’ve ever had with kids screaming at 6:30 am their first day there – thankfully there was no repeat of that.

Our biggest excitement of our stay was our early morning visitor Sunday morning. I was taking the pups out for a potty break when our little Bella girl almost stepped on a snake. As she was about to step I saw it slither and screamed. The lady across the road from us looked and I apologized for screaming and explained there was a snake. She came over to check it out and said it was a rattlesnake. After talking to her she told me the rangers prefer that those are killed – I’m not sure if its a big problem there but I called the ranger station and they were too far away at the time to come take care of it. I explained my husband had a machete and could do so if that’s what they wanted. She said please if you are fine doing that and can so Michael took care of it and I proceeded to try to find my pulse at a normal level again. I’d never seen a rattlesnake so it was a huge surprise – Oregon was not the place I had expected to see one. With all the camping we’ve done in Texas that is where I’d have expected to see a snake.

It seems like it’s been a long time coming for us to get to Washington State, but we finally did. I say finally because I feel like for almost the two and a half years we’ve been together we’ve talked about going to Washington. We’ve dreamed about the idea of moving there possibly and while Michael has actually lived in Washington twice I’d never been here at all. It felt like almost a dream crossing the border to come in to the state.

We didn’t get far in to the state – the Idaho border is about 5 miles away – our real journey into Washington begins on Wednesday 8/3. We have reservations at an Army Corps of Engineers campground in southern central Washington for two weeks. From the looks of the pictures of our site there we’ll have some trees around us. We seem to get antsy if we aren’t around trees and mountains often enough. It’s what’s drawn us to living in the RV and traveling here to the Pacific Northwest.

We woke up pretty early, got the dogs and the RV ready and hit the road by 10 am for Washington State. It was a beautiful drive again with the mountains all around us. This time we hit several 6% grade mountains that we were descending. With our old truck we’d have been nervous wrecks – with our new truck it is like a whole other experience. It felt like we’d just climb one mountain to descend it – with plenty of construction along the way for good measure. Michael says it’s a whole other experience towing the RV through the mountains with the new truck. It seems a bit less stressful for him so that makes me happy always.

We got to Washington just after the 2pm check in and settled in for the night. I made cubed steaks with a mushroom gravy in the foodie. A great dump ingredients in and hit the button recipe. We have a few of those which make having a hot meal on travel days much easier than before.

Tuesday – our full day to do whatever in Spokane we got some groceries topped off and went out to dinner at a restaurant called Tomato Street. When Michael was stationed here they went there occasionally – it was pretty decent food and it was nice having a date night again. I loved going to Fred Meyer – it is WAY MORE than just going to a grocery store. Ive been to Kroger – they are affiliated – a ton in Michigan – but there’s no jewelry store, shoes, clothing departments and full on hardware stores in a Kroger. This was shopping on a whole other level. I actually found a cute pair of shoes that I used some birthday money on. We also took advantage of the fact that KOA has laundry facilities and took the time in between outings to get our laundry caught up again. It was a good prep day – we got a lot done and got to rest as well.

Our trip out of Branson was much less winding and curvy as the route we went in there. We enjoyed a pretty uneventful drive to a cute little private RV park in St. Joseph, Missouri. We stayed at the AOK RV Park there. Smaller park owned by a family who is originally from Germany but have apparently (according to their info) have traveled all over the US and a few other countries before settling down to buy the park in Missouri. From the map you can see they’ve been making improvements. Nice pull through sites, just off the highway – very easy to access and it was a great overnight stop. We even put our bathing suits on and hit the pool for a bit of floating time to unwind from the day and the heat.

We left early the next morning for North Platte, Nebraska where we had reservations for 2 nights. This ride was rougher – the roads were terrible in spots, Moki was antsy and pacing at times, and my anxiety was no help. I’ve been practicing some breathing and grounding exercises and it’s helping some but I haven’t gotten a handle on it yet. We made it to Nebraska hot, tired and ready for a rest. We unhooked the trailer in case we decided to go out the next day while we were there. Right next to the campground was a cute 50’s style diner car restaurant that we spotted in our way in – we were pretty sure we wanted to go there so it made sense to unhook then.

Penny’s Diner was a cute little place to have lunch. Both of enjoyed a delicious meal of reuben’s and patty melt’s with fries and tots. Apparently it’s a chain of restaurants but it’s not all over like a McDonald’s they do have them in several states though. From there we went to the Fort Cody Trading Post. They had a lot of info on Buffalo Bill Cody and souvenirs and kitschy fun stuff to look at and see.

After our touristy stuff we fueled up the truck to leave the next morning and headed back to the RV to relax and enjoy the evening. We are totally enjoying using our Foodi on travel days for cooking. On Tuesday night we made pressure cooked potatoes and pork chops with a mushroom gravy in less than an hour and with very little work. Wednesday night in Nebraska I made this delicious Chicken Taco Soup that is super easy. It’s essentially putting in the chicken thighs (we prefer them to the breasts), dumping in with the liquid and all black beans, kidney beans, corn, tomato sauce, tomatoes, some taco seasoning and dry ranch seasoning. It pressure cooks in a half hour – after just shredding the chicken in the pot I added some cheese, sour cream and fritos and it is so good. We ended up having the leftovers on Thursday night while we listened to the wonderful rainstorm that came in. After so much dry weather it was amazing to have a bit of a thunderstorm – we love hearing the rain on the roof of our home.

Friday morning we got up and headed for a night in Wyoming. We got to the Douglas, Wyoming KOA around 4:30 and didn’t fit in to our spot. It was the weirdest experience we’ve ever had at a KOA. The office person was very snippy about the fact that when we reserved it we didn’t reference the fact that we didn’t want to unhook. We’ve stayed at 18 KOA campgrounds in the last 2 years – we have a few more booked this trip as well – we’ve NEVER had to indicate that we didn’t want to unhook in our site. We stuck out over the end of the site by about 10 feet. They finally put us in a longer site but not without some frustration and exasperation on both of our parts. I was waiting till we left but they are getting a not so wonderful review shortly about the rudeness of their staff and the fact that their website has nowhere to even put the information that you don’t want to unhook from your vehicle. This place was just trying to cram as many people in as they could. We managed to brush off the experience, plugged the RV in and enjoyed leftovers for dinner for the night. We called it a fairly early night so we could be up early to head to Montana Saturday morning.

Monday in Branson brought us to a day to prep for several days of travel in a row. We scheduled a pick up order for groceries at Walmart – that is one of our favorite things to do when traveling. In order to not have to do the shopping ourselves – therefore getting to spend more time doing the fun things we want to do – we’ve used curbside pickups whenever we can. It’s been a real treat to get online – set up the order and then just pick it up at the designated time.

We decided to have lunch at Paula Deen’s restaurant. As many know we are cooking show fanatics. We call it our “food porn” – essentially binging food shows. I remember years ago watching Paula Deen on the food network – she was one of my favorites at the time so getting to go to her restaurant was on my Branson bucket list. If you’ve never been they serve the meal family style – we ordered two of the main dishes fried chicken and chicken and dumplings – then we ordered 4 sides – green beans (with beef and potatoes), mac and cheese, candied yams, and broccoli casserole. They don’t allow doggy bags and the initial portions aren’t huge but they will continue to bring food out as you request. We ended up ordering a second helping of the fried chicken – mine was delicious – Michael’s wasn’t as crispy on the skin as mine was.

After lunch, gas refueling to leave and grocery pick up we spent a bit of time relaxing before getting a short visit with our friends who recently moved back to Missouri. It was wonderful to get to see Bri and Jeff and the boys for a quick visit and some hugs.

We loved Branson and we will be going back at some point. It is way more beautiful there landscape wise than we realized and there’s so many more things we want to do and see there. Returning there is definitely on our bucket list for the future. We finished prepping what we could for the night – unfortunately it was not a site we could hook up at the night before as we were at a very weird angle and could not do so safely. We also weren’t on full hook ups so we prepared to hit the dump station before traveling on Tuesday. I got our breakfast burritos out of the freezer to reheat for the next morning and made sandwiches to have for lunch on the way. We went to bed excited to start our trek to Montana.

Our Sunday in Branson, Missouri was pretty low key. We hid from the heat as much as we could and just relaxed after the previous night’s train ride adventure. We had light meals as we knew the portions at the Stampede were sizable. We left down the winding roads to the Stampede to be there a bit early and check everything out. We loved getting to see the horses on the Horse Walk in to the arena. It was probably the most crowded place we’ve ever been together. There were so many people there – it made us think about how many tourists get to Branson every year. We entered the arena a bit surprised by how large it was inside. We knew it was like 35,000 sq. feet but to actually see that I was impressed by the enormity of it. We found our designated seats – we had front row seats on the North side. I didn’t know that North and South were going to come in to play as part of the show when booking the tickets.

The emcee came out to start the show – sparkly jacket and a great singing voice on his horse – beautiful horse at that.

As he started to open the show we were served our creamy vegetable soup and delicious biscuits to start the meal. These were followed by a whole little chicken, a slice of pork loin, potato, and corn on the cob. It was a delicious meal (and kind of neat that gave bags to take leftovers home). The show emcee led through a very brief visual image of the settlers and Native Americans as they moved west – complete with a square dance on horseback. It was beautiful and very moving.

The final part of the show was a north side of the arena vs. south side. There was a chicken race with little kids chasing the chickens, pig races, dog races, trick riders. It was an amazing show and a wonderful evening. It hadn’t been on our initial plans – we kind of added this show in just before leaving and are so glad we did. It was a great addition to our visit in Branson.

After a crazy few weeks of marriage, Tessa’s flying to NY and back to see family, sickness, flu, covid and extreme heat causing some heat exhaustion – we got everything done we could possibly get done to be ready to leave. We put brand new tires on the driver’s side of the RV – we replaced both tires on the passenger side just about a year ago. All the axle bearings were greased to keep them from causing any problems like last year when we headed to Louisiana. The trailer hitch added to the new truck, step rails and a tonneau cover put on the new truck as well. Michael and his pop loaded all the stuff we had stored in the bed of the old truck into the new truck – grill, generator, potty wagon etc. All these things were done in 95+ degree heat and humidity in Oklahoma which made it grueling on Michael and his pop. But we did it – everything got done and loaded and on Friday July 15 we hit the road for Branson, Missouri.

We had a beautiful drive through the Ozarks in Arkansas heading into Missouri. The new truck pulls our 30 foot Ultra-Lite Travel Trailer like it’s not even back there. It was amazing coming through some of the mountains there was no pushing of the trailer on the truck as it’s a much heavier duty vehicle than the old one was. We had to make some stops on the way – Moki’s on prednisone for a few more days to help his allergies which means he needs more stops than usual. I had fixed breakfast burritos for travel and sandwiches for lunch along the way so we were set for meals on the road. I’d also made taco meat and chopped up lettuce for taco salad after we arrived and were setup in Missouri.

Until we got into Missouri and started hitting the Ozarks the ride was fairly uneventful. But holy moly – some of the turns, curves, twists, mountains and angles we hit in Missouri was insane. You’d just come out of a huge curve before heading up the mountain in another curvy road. There was no shoulder on either side – and my side of the road was a sheer cliff down. For someone battling anxiety in the vehicle these days who also has a fear of heights it was stressful. After about 40ish miles (it felt like a whole lot longer) of roads like this we found our little spot in the woods for the next several days. Being a weekend and a tourist area the campground is pretty full but still quiet and it feels so wonderful to be amongst the trees again. We can see peeks of the Table Rock Lake from our site and picked out a few sites we wouldn’t mind if we came back again. We’ve definitely decided we’d like to come back and see more stuff in this area and would totally camp here again for the price and how pretty it is.

On a more serious note – for the last several months I’ve been battling anxiety in the vehicle. Doesn’t matter what vehicle, who is driving – I’ve become almost a basket case as a passenger. I’m at the point where it’s affecting Michael when he drives because I’m freaking out in cases I shouldn’t be, it has me in tears because it’s got me terrified to ride as a passenger and because it’s upsetting to him as well. I’ve taken a huge step and am starting some therapy on Monday to see if I can’t find a way to work through this problem. I love our life and I love our travels but it happens even just riding around towns we know and it’s starting to become crippling to me. I can not function like this and so hopefully with the help of some counseling I can work through whatever has caused this anxiety inside me.

We’ve got some great adventures coming up that we can’t wait to share with y’all so stay tuned.

Well we did it – June 18 with some of our closest family and friends (both in person and on Zoom) we got married. It was a short and sweet ceremony filled with love and even a few tears (I get emotional – it’s normal for me). We enjoyed a wonderful lunch after with sandwiches, salads, and a delicious cake topped all off with a fun champagne fountain. After living together for 2 years you’d think it wouldn’t be much different but there are subtle differences – that joy of saying my husband/my wife being one of them. There’s also a little bit different connection that I know I feel with Michael – it’s hard to describe or explain.

A few days before the wedding we found our new truck. We picked her up the Tuesday after the wedding – we needed time to empty the old one out and have the wedding and Father’s day. We have a brand new Dodge Ram 2500 Big Horn. She’s a beauty.

Friday after the wedding I headed for New York to see my family. My uncle’s 70th birthday was the 25th and a great time to see most of my family in NY for the first time in many years. I flew in to Hartford and after a really bad hotel room that night I loved spending part of Saturday and Sunday with my family before heading back to Hartford to fly back to Oklahoma on Monday. It was a whirlwind trip and I’m still recovering from it. Anxiety and lack of sleep wore my immune system way down and I’ve been battling exhaustion and some sinus garbage. I’m on the way to feeling better but it’s taking it’s dang time to happen.

These next 10 days are going to be busy for us as we leave on the 15th for more adventures and some exciting plans coming up. Michael is at the clinic getting his eyes examined today, vet appointments for both dogs for yearly shots on Wed. and Thurs. afternoon (they are too complicated to take together), repacking the Travel Trailer bearings, and replacing 2 new tires (if they ever get here) are all on the agenda for this week. We want to get all our laundry cleaned up and we need to re-load all our stuff in the truck that we usually store in there. We put some step rails and a tonneau cover on the back to help try to keep our stuff protected from the elements. We want to make a few casseroles before we leave and head to Branson next week. I’m so excited to start getting to take some pictures of places I’ve never been before and update with posts on the new things we’re seeing. Make sure you follow our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to follow the photos that don’t make it to the blog. The links are on the main page here.

For those who keep coming back thank you so much. I love getting to share our adventures here with everyone.

This week in Oklahoma we’ve had amazing weather to enjoy. We were blessed with almost a full day and a half of rain – which after the dry weather we dealt with in South Texas was a joy to hear pitter patter on the roof of our home. It also brought a few days of cooler temperatures including a full day where we were able to leave the windows open the entire day – what a treat that was. We’re warming up a bit into the weekend but it’s been windy the last few days as well – nothing like the wind from Choke Canyon but definitely enough we can not put our awning out if we wanted to.

The RV park we are staying in during our 2 months in Ada has mostly long term RV people. Seems like some oil field and wind turbine workers along with a few nurses judging on the uniforms on some we’ve seen out walking the dogs. It’s not the prettiest place we’ve stayed but the convenience of being so close to family and the remarkably low price that includes: sewer, electric, water, cable and internet are wonderful. Also, the proximity to being able to do the things we want to do legally – this week Michael got his license here (I’m waiting till after the wedding and my trip to see my family in June to change mine) – changing the plates on the truck to the tribal plates, and just some odds and ends we need to take care of – this makes this an ideal place to stay.

This week we have a plan to go look at an RV we”ve been eyeing since Keystone RV Company announced it last January. They have one in Oklahoma City along with a few others that we want to check out. Because of the chip shortage and Covid – there’s a huge shortage on the 3500 trucks we’ve been thinking we would get. If we like these RV’s it would mean we can go with a bit smaller truck – bigger than current 1500 – either a 2500 or the 250’s and still be safe. There are many that tow huge 41 foot RV’s with a 2500 but the pin weight is over the limit on a 2500 and if there’s an accident the insurance company could refuse to pay because of being over the limit. We don’t want to have to worry about such a thing – we want to be safe while we travel. It’s a discussion we’ve had a lot over the last year and a half and we’re re-evaluating how we approach it.

We’re at almost 6 months full time in the RV and we’re seeing what works and what doesn’t work for us. The length of our current rig isn’t as big a deal as the width – if we had slideouts on both sides it would be a bit roomier and help us have a bit more room to manuever in. That being said – we’re both incredibly happy in our life and looking forward to our adventures in the coming months. We’ve revamped some of our plans – Labor Day we changed our reservations to a campground literally across the road from the Pacific Ocean and 20 miles from the top of the Redwoods area of California. It was a great find thanks to a post in an RV group we are in on Facebook. What a great resource for finding a place that looks incredible so far.

As we close this post we want to say thank you to all those who gave their lives in service of this country. We honor you and thank you for the blessings we have in this country because of your selfless service.