Changes

It's been a relaxing couple of days with many changes. We are staying in a tiny town called Fort Davis. It is named after the Fort that was built as a base during the days of the final frontier, when American soldiers were protecting people from / fighting with the Apache. We went to visit the site of the Fort and spent a few hours wandering around, going into the old hospital and buildings, and learning about life in those days. The hospital was very interesting. It had lists of the soldiers that died there, and what they died from, which the kids enjoyed reading. The place was very educational, and free with our America The Beautiful pass. Little Barney completed a junior rangers book and was awarded with a certificate and junior rangers badge.


We have been here three days, and apart from a walk through the town (it is really tiny, a small village really), the visit to the fort, and a trip to the play park, we have spent a lot of time in the RV. The weather here has been a shock since our stint in the desert. It's windy here , feels more like home. Although we haven't had all the rain and floods that other places in Texas have suffered from. With the weather here being cold we decided to look into the temperatures for the places we are heading to, and had a bit of a shock. Tomorrow we head north into New Mexico, which will be a bit colder than here. But after that we had intended to visit Colorado, even further north. It has been a dream of mine all my life to see The Rockies. But we were disappointed to find out that it is still covered in snow and we could be subjected to bellow freezing temperatures. So a sudden change of route was in order.

We have spent hours over the last few days, with maps out, researching, plotting and planning. Thank goodness for the Internet and google! Our route has completely changed and we will cover even more miles now, in order to remain warm. We had booked and paid for the RV for four months with the idea that we may stay for six months. We decided yesterday that we can't afford to hire it for six months, as it really isn't cheap, so we came to a compromise of 5 months. At that point we had been here 7 weeks and had 10 weeks left. Dan realised that we needed to book the flights home before they got any more expensive, so it was time to really sit down and plan. Dan phoned Cruise America (the RV hire company) and said that we'd like to keep the RV for one extra month, only to be told by the lady on the phone that our RV is going out on hire the day we are due to return it (31st May), and that they have no other RV's left for hire. It was really disappointing, and we decided to book our flights home after 4 months as there was nothing to be done.

But this morning Dan decided to go onto the Cruise America website and try to book the RV online. We were shocked to discover that we could hire an RV online, for the dates we requested, and that the lady on the phone had not told us the truth! Could she just not be bothered to sort it out for us? Dan immediately phoned the San Francisco branch of Cruise America where we are due to return the RV and asked to add another month onto it. They said that we could, but we'd have to go to San Francisco on 31st May to sign the new contract, and then return the RV to San Francisco on 28th June to return the RV. That was no use at all. We are due in California in about 3 weeks time, so theres no way we could be there on 31st May and then again on 28th June. But they said there was no way around it. So Dan, being the man he is, phoned the manager of Cruise America and told her the situation. She said not to worry, she would just extend our hire without all that silly fuss, and we only have to return it on the 28th without doing extra trips. So now we are staying an extra month! (14 more weeks from now!)


We have booked our flights home for the 3rd July, San Francisco to Dublin, a 13 hour flight. Our new route will take us from New Mexico, westard into Arizona, up to the Grand Canyon and into Nevada, through LA into the southern part of California, much much sooner than expected. From there we have two options... option A drive right up California into Oregon then East toward Yellowstone Park, down into Colorado and then west into Utah, coming back into California to hand the RV back and fly home, option B drive half way up California, head east into Utah, miss out Colorado due to weather, head north and drive west back to Oregon, then down into the north of California, ending in San Francisco. Which route we take will be dependant on the weather at the time. That was probably really hard to understand if you haven't been sitting with a map all day like I have, so here are two maps. Option A and Option B. The red lines are where we have already traveled, black dots are where we have stayed. The green lines are an extremely rough plan of where we will be going from here. But it's all subject to change. Click on the little maps to see the full size image.


By the way, if you are looking for the newest photos, they are in Texas Album 2.