Category: Daily Life

It was not a good night at WalMart. A truck came to pick up the semi-trailer parked next to us during the wee hours of the morning. Next time maybe we’ll remember to park by only RVs not trucks.

Since we didn’t have hookups I decided to try another water saving device. Dave had discovered he could dip the soap into water rather than wetting his whole body before washing it so I decided to try my version of that. When taking my morning shower I just dipped my washcloth in water in the pitcher left over from his shower the night before. Brrrr. That was a cold wash. But, at least I didn’t have to turn on the water until I was ready to rinse. I am determined to find ways to use less water so when we get to places we want to boondock for a long time we’ll be able to do so.

We also used pocket inverters to run our computers off the 12 volt system until Dave started to worry about draining the batteries. Then we powered up the generator to recharge everything. WalMart parking lots are good places to run generators since no one minds the noise there. As a bonus, we ran it long enough to cook breakfast. It’s important to run the generator under load at least an hour a month to keep it functioning properly. We have trouble remembering to do that since we hook up to shore power electricity most of the time.

For our first tourist stop in Carthage, Missouri, we visited their Civil War Museum. It’s hard to remember that the war came this far west but it did. In fact the first full scale land battle took place here on July 5, 1861 preceding First Bull Run by 16 days. The displays are interesting but the descriptions they wrote are hard to read so I didn’t get to learn everything I wanted to before my eyes gave up on me.

Then we drove by some of Carthage’s places of the past. Check out that glass block ticket booth at the drive in.  They are still showing movies there in the summer.

   

From Carthage we headed west into Kansas. We stopped in Galena, Kansas, at the former KanOtex station for lunch. This place is being rehabbed by a group calling themselves Four Women on the Route. They have great plans for what they want to do here. I think they are doing fine already; don’t you? Check out the vehicles that were the inspiration for some of the ones in the movie Cars.

  

In Riverton we stopped to take pictures of The Eisler Brothers’ Old Riverton Store.  

 

Since we didn’t need to buy anything we didn’t go in. We probably should have, though, since the owner of the KanOtex station grill made it clear she watches everyone who stops to take a picture to see if she’s going to get any business from them. I like to support the people who are trying to keep Route 66 alive but we don’t have room to store something from every shop along the way so we mostly buy food we can consume rather than store. But, we filled our larder at WalMart last night then ate lunch out so we have no place even for food right now.

Then we drove across the rainbow bridge. This place is known locally as graffiti bridge since this is where the youth come to record their conquests. Apparently, we got here just after the town gave them a clean slate to start on again.

 

Finally, we drove into Baxter Springs, Kansas, where we decided to stop early for a change. We are parked at a city campground here that charges $10 for electric and water hookups. That provided us lots of time and energy for me to do some more research and Dave to play his piano. We are content.

TTYL,

Linda

Today was a catch up day.  We had stopped at the post office in Lebanon, Missouri, yesterday and picked up three boxes of mail.  One of them was a box of forwarded mail and the other two contained our new Wilson Trucker’s Antenna and booster which are, we hope, going to help us stay connected to the world in places where the signal may not be so great.

So today we processed lots of mail and spent hours crawling around the RV figuring out where we could place the outside antenna, inside antenna, and booster box so as to get the best reception.  These all have to connect to one another by cables.  Figuring out where we can safely run those cables is challenging, to say the least.  We could hire someone to install all that but that’s not nearly as much fun.  Of course, we might not think it was so much fun if we ever actually finish this task.  For now, we are still thinking about the best way to do it.

We did install our new Instant Off Water Saver.

 

This thing is designed to let you leave the water turned on low but the water doesn’t flow until you push against the rod hanging from the faucet.  The idea for us is that I could quit getting the handle soapy when I turned the water back on after washing my hands and I could quit dripping water all over the sink when turning off the water or washing the soap off the handles.  It might work well for a sink where the faucet is located down in the sink but this one sprayed the whole counter.  I tried several times to make it work but got tired of cleaning up the messes I was making so we took it off again.  Oh, well, another “good” idea gone by the wayside.

The final task of the day was to set up and learn to use this new blog site.  How am I doing?

TTYL,

Linda

Monday was a work day for me.  I use multiple sources for gathering information about what is, or was, along Route 66.  Some of my sources are books about Route 66, websites about Route 66, websites about towns along the route, various camping guides, my mapping software’s points-of-interest files, brochures I pick up here and there, and places we hear about from people we meet on the road.

The best way for me to then make sense of all that data is to put it in a spreadsheet where I can sort it various ways until I figure out what should come in what order.  Then I map that order to get an overall sense of what is where.

I used to print out those maps until we learned how unreliable they are.  Now we follow the turn by turn guide in one of my books along with a printout of my spreadsheet to tell us what to look for along those turns.

After hours of doing all that–just for the rest of Missouri–we took a break and cut my hair.  What?! Some of you are now yelling?  They cut her hair?!

Yup.  With barber clippers.  I have a #12 guide that goes on our Wahl Hair Clippers which keeps the clippers 1 1/2 inches from my head.  We run that every which way over my scalp until the hair stops falling.  Then Dave uses a barber scissors to trim around my ears and across the nape. At the end I look pretty well shorn but it sure makes it easy to take care of my hair until it grows too long to manage well then we do it again.

When that was done we decided we should drive up to the dump.  The grey water holding tank was getting full enough that I was afraid it would start backing up the shower drain when I was washing off all that loose hair.

Then we decide we had earned a treat so we went to the Big Chief Dakota Steakhouse for dinner.  This is another one of those Route 66 institutions that now goes my some other name but the neon sign is still there and the building feels authentic.  

 

And I have one of my favorite things–leftover steak!

TTYL,

Linda