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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

On The Road (post script)

After logging on 476 miles today, we pulled into a Walmart at Benton, Illinois for the evening.

Whenever we hit the road, we try to make our first night at a Walmart and treat ourselves to a rotisserie chicken dinner from the deli!  I got in the store, and there was only ONE chicken left, so I snatched it up, along with a few other things we needed.

Once I checked out, I asked at the service desk if we could overnight in the lot. We always try to ask and I jot the name of the manager on the sales slip, just in case there is a problem later after a shift change.   The lot is posted "NO TRUCK OR TRAILER PARKING- TOWED AWAY AT OWNER'S EXPENSE" along with a sign showing a semi truck being towed.  This manager told me that their parking lot has very thin layer of blacktop and semi trucks will damage it, so they will allow RVs but not semis.  How nice for us!  I put our "Parked With Management's Permission" signs in our windows and we settled in for the night.   That way parking security doesn't have to come and knock on our door during the night if there is even the slightest doubt of us being there.

Went back to the rig where Steveio was waiting with the dogs for our dinner...  ahhh life on the road.

(dontcha love my table topper from Paula?) 

After a nice dinner and bottle of wine, we checked the weather channel for the area and watched the national news too.  Seems the storms coming across will be still west of us in the morning and north of us as we head south early.  Hope to be around Memphis by noon and perhaps Baton Rouge or therabouts by evening.  If we run into rain that is okay, we just want to get below the freezing area of ice and sleet.

The temps are about 35 now, and dropping yet tonight to mid-20's.  One of us has to take out the dogs one more time, and I am thinking we should flip a coin.  I would rather get in my flannel jammies and head to bed.  Our heater is keeping us comfy and we are well off with fully charge batteries and enough power to run the tv, 2 computers, the tablet as our router and anything else we want.   I finished putting away a few things we had tossed in at the last minute, and now we are pretty well organized and things stowed for the rest of the trip.

Oh, before getting settled in our parking spot, we also filled up the diesel tank, as this was the lowest price we have seen for diesel so far.

71 gallons at $4.07 a gallon.  Ouch.. almost $300 bucks!

We traveled 476 miles today, but we already had 96 miles used from that tank.  Now we are filled up for the next leg of the journey!



10 comments:

  1. Very nice table topper. So happy that you are on the road! Today in Q we have had rain, sleet, hail, snow and wind. Tomorrow, we are gettin out of Dodge and heading to California. Happy trails, you two.

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  2. Continued safe travels as you make your way south.

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  3. Love your table topper. It's beautiful. Glad you are getting out of the cold. If you are heading west on I-10 out of Baton Rouge, there is a great rest area at Atchafalaya with a completely separate parking area for RVs. Great place to overnight with no semi's running next to you. They have a museum and serve coffee too.

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    1. Thanks! We might aim for that as our overnight tonight! ... good advice!

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  4. Stayed at the Benton KOA across the Interstate from the Wal mart last summer. Had to work in the area for a few days so the company let me travel down from Central IL with our Jayco and stay there. They even let me take the wife. I wish I had known the area better, I could have stayed at the State Park by Rend Lake. Have a good trip and get south quickly. Be safe. Curt

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  5. You sure did put some miles behind you today. I can understand wanting to get out of the bad weather. They are predicting some really bad storms to come through here in the morning with the possibility of a tornado and hail. Hope they are wrong. Hope the rest of your trip goes as good as the start of it. Be safe.

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  6. Glad you made it that far safely. It started snowing here around 8:30. Just lightly but supposed to get much heavier early in the morning. Hope it gets bad really early so people don't get to work and then get dumped on and have a dangerous trip home. Plus, I REALLY want my snow day!! Yes, I do like your table topper. You stylin'

    I hit a wrong key and had to start over, so if this is a duplicate, please just delete the earlier attempt.

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  7. Happy to hear you are settled for the night. Don't ya just love those chickens? we do also.
    Stay warm and safe travels tomorrow.
    BTW: I love that table topper!

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  8. Glad to hear you arrived safely. I was wondering where you would spend the night. I guess Walmart is fine as long as you're nice and warm and have a full belly! Watch the weather, I think I heard some tornado possibilities in Louisiana and Arkansas.

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  9. It hailed in Quartzsite yesterday and that storm is headed east to don't take too big a breath of relief just yet.

    Love the table topper. My kind of colors.

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