I’ve Got Plenty of Nothing

November 7, 2023 – Day 40

Nothing happened today. We drove, we got gas, somewhere in there lunch was had, we drove some more.

There’s something surreal about the photo, the bugs on the windshield, the odd reflections on the glass. We guess it fits in with the otherworldly landscape that is the rural southwest.

We didn’t have nothing all day. In addition to buying gas, we got to see them process the oil. This operation isn’t nearly as big as the miles of refinery you see in Houston. It smells just as bad though. It’s the kind of bad that gets so far up in your sinuses that even though you’ve left the area, you’ll still smell it for a while.

We happily and uneventfully pulled into Cedar Hill State Park just south of Dallas. It was a horrible, frustrating exercise in getting level there. It was at least as bad, if not worse, than the Valley of Fire site a few weeks ago. There we at least had the space for options in parking the coach. Here, there was just about enough space to park the coach with a couple feet around it to walk and that was it. Stray from that and you were, quite literally in the bushes. It’s not ideal to do but eventually we had to lift the front tires off the ground with the leveling jacks, put wooden planks under them, and then lower the tires onto the planks. (susan here: I was inside operating the buttons and to say it felt spooky being up like that is an understatement. It’s also bad to do. Your stabilizer jacks could break/slip and then the whole of your 26,000 pounds of coach plops hard onto the ground.)

Paul setup the radio but used it inside the coach. The drone of traffic noise was dreadful and the picnic table was covered in bird poo. We heard sirens for several minutes. As previously mentioned the greenery was encroaching the parking area. Actually the whole site could have used tidying up. This is the farthest one could be from a blissful state park experience. It isn’t a park we’ll come back to.

Daily: 332

Return Total: 1,220

Return Overall Miles/Day: 305

Return Driving Miles/Day: 174

Overall Total: 4,356

Total Driving Miles/Day: 335

mpg: 6.8