TEXAS & LOUISIANA: San Antonio to Baton Rouge

Ahhhh!  Finally we got at good 7 hours of sleep and I feel so refreshed.  The Dahlingers have been wonderful hosts and it’s been such a joy to see them.  I’m so happy for their new life in San Antonio, but I will truly miss them again.  I teared up saying goodbye!!  1 Thessalonians 1:2 says “We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers.”

On the road again, trekking on down to the swamp land of Louisiana.  It’s only an 8 hour day today, Praise God.  It seems short compared to the incredibly long 16 hour days of driving!!  Dave called about an hour after we had been on the road and reminded us to check the oil.  Oops . . . that is something we forgot about, but very important.  Although, I have to say that any kind of car mechanics is not my gift.  Dave told me to call him so he could walk me through it when we stopped for gas and I did immediately at the next stop.  We told all the kids to get out of the RV because they were going to have a lesson, with us, on changing the oil.  When called Dave he told me to hold on and he’ll call me right back – the nerve of him!! 

I knew how to pop the lid, but as we all starred at the front of the car, reaching our hand into the hood to try to open it, we must of looked like a bunch of “blonds”!!  As much as we tried we couldn’t get the hood open. 

 Laughing at ourselves, we attracted a nice Texan gentleman who immediately said “Do you’all need some help?”  We laughed again and told him we didn’t know how to open the hood.  At the same time Dave called me back and was trying to talk me through it.  The gentleman finally was able to find the latch and release the hood.  We thanked him and acted like we knew what to do from there!

Then Dave talked us through measuring the amount of oil – oops!  We were extremely low . . . another RV traveling factor that we have to remember to do!  But we didn’t know where to pour to oil into the engine!  The nice gentleman came out of the store and noticed that we were still staring at the engine, as well of the another gentleman who said he used to work on Ford engines.  With a sigh of relief, he took over, found the tubing to pour the oil in!  We were incredibly thankful for their good deed, and thanked them profusely! 

Three hours later we arrived at the border of Louisiana!!  We have now made it a ritual to pull over if we can to take a picture.  The moment we ran out today and stood under the sign for just about 3 minutes we immediately were attacked by a mob of mosquito’s.   Yes, this is truly in the swamp land!!

With an uneventful couple more hours of driving we approached our campground.  A Walgreens was perfectly situated right at the corner of the campground and we decided that we better get some bug spray.  As we reached the check out stand we were talking with this adorable, young African-American gal about their bugs in Louisiana, and we told her that we were from California and driving across America.  She replied “Are you going to Africa?”  We started laughing because I really thought she was joking, but she looked at us with a puzzled look and I realized that she was serious.  Then her co-worker piped in to nicely remind her that Africa is a different country.   She started laughing too, and we all had a good laugh.

We approached the KOA campground and I realized that this was the first time that we would be hooking everything is up.    Of course, it started to rain just as we pulled in.    I called Dave and he walked me through each step with phone and flashlight in hand.  Everything went well, besides a little excess spill over of grey water  when I  wasn’t holding the tubing straight (hee hee), and realized that it’s not quite as bad as I thought!   In the mean time everyone got ready for bed and the moment we all were tucked in tight, it started pouring rain!!  Wow!  It sounded like Indians pounding on their drums it was so loud.  Hopefully nothing will leak!!