Slide Surprise and Clearance Fiasco

Saturday, March 15, 2014

About 4am, the wind started howling, and work us up. The cold front was moving into the area.  We checked our phones and watched the weather, and drifted off back to sleep for a while. We finally got up around 8am, and started getting the coach ready to go. The winds had died down some, and were not too bad as we hitched up and finally pulled out about 10:30. On the way, I saw deer and turkeys and antelope. We watched as clouds were building in front of us, and we had a nice tail wind, until we got to the Texas border... then, we drove through some light rain, and faced a a light cross/headwind. The storms were definitely firing up in front of us, we could see.

Eileen at Circle B RV Park, Ruidoso, NM

After a while we decided to stop for lunch in Plains, Texas, at the Dairy Queen, for steak fingers. These are like chicken-fried steak, but in a "finger" shape, served with white gravy. Tony went in to place our order, while I took the cats into the coach and put out the living/dining slide, so we could sit and eat. The cats and I waited, and waited, and finally Tony texted saying it was going to long wait, the workers were behind and confused. Tony waited approximately 30 minutes for our food and blizzards, but we finally got them, and the food was good.

Unfortunately, we were so disgruntled by the poor service, we missed pulling in the slide, and proceeded to pull out onto the highway and drive about a tenth of a mile before I looked out at the mirror and saw it protruding from the coach two feet! OMG OMG OMG! We pulled over and luckily there was no harm done. We can laugh about it now, but wow, I almost had a heart attack. Now we know our slide can withstand 63mph winds. LOL!

After that heart pounding excitement, we drove on just fine for a while, making jokes about our mishap. We stopped occasionally for restroom breaks, and then determined that the Windmill RV Park in Merkel, TX looked like a good stopping spot for the night. I called and made sure they had room, since many of the RV parks in west Texas are full of oilfield workers. They had room! So we planned to stop.

As we approached the town of Merkel, the GPS was showing our destination was many more miles down the road. We assumed it was wrong, and exited, like the person on the phone had directed. Using my iPhone with the address of the park, we turned south down the road it was located on, and proceeded to head out a few miles into ranch land -- and no RV park. Whoops, the iPhone was WRONG. I guess there's one glitch in the system, LOL!

We finally found a place to turn around, and I noticed what looked like snow on the shoulders of the road. Apparently, they had severe storm pass through that dropped enough tiny hail to cover the ground and wash into the bar-ditches, and it still had not melted.

We finally arrived at the park about 30 minutes later than we had planned. We realized what had happened. The GPS saw an underpass and deemed it "too low" for us to pass with the Mammoth, and had instead directed us to the next exit and return. However, in reality, the underpass was fine -- 14'3",  and we are right about 13', so we did not need to take the detour. The GPS fussed at us, saying "Height Restriction Violation", but we were already through the underpass! I guess she was just trying to do her job. Too bad we don't have enough confidence to trust it, and are considering a rival brand GPS in the future.

Once we got to the park, it was clear this park was set up and designed for "workers". No trees, no real amenities to speak of, next to a pipeline worksite, and within earshot of a train and the highway. Oh well, the sites were full hookup, VERY long, packed gravel and level, and the price was reasonable.

The owner was quick to greet us and guide us to a site. He said we could settle-up in the morning. We stayed hitched to the truck, but got set up and ate our leftover pizza from Cafe Rio. It was delicious! We were both very tired, so we hit the hay about 10:30 Central time, which was 9:30 Mountain time -- early for us. We saw via the phone that back home there were very heavy storms, but nothing too bad. However, if we had tried to get all the way home, we would have been in those storms for about half the drive. Not fun! We are glad we decided to take a slower journey.