Which Direction? & Random Thoughts

 Location: Heart of Haynesville RV Park; Mansfield, Louisiana

I've been back at my home-base since April 1st which is about 5 weeks. I've seen one doctor, did a little RV maintenance and a few visits with grandkids, kids and X-wife. Some of you readers may be shocked that I've visited with my X-wife, but we are friends. There isn't a lot wrong with that and it only makes be a little bit crazy for being friends with her. But golly-gee Batman, it is hard not to be friends with someone that you were married to for 28 years and raised three children. Oh well, my hope for ya'll with X's is that if you can't be friendly, at least be respectful because life is short.

I got lucky in getting my old campsite. I drains well, is level side to side and a view of the west out my door.

 

It is sad that I've only gotten one descent sunset out my door since I've been back.

There has been a few "strange" storms since I've been back. One storm blew a tree onto the slide-out of this RV in the campground. I haven't heard if anyone was hurt or not. It is only a few campsites from where the RV burned down when I was leaving on my last trip. Bad ju-ju in this part of the campground.

After five weeks in one place, even home-base is a long time for me. I don't have a bad case of "hitch-itch" yet and that has me a little concerned. I've registered for the very large Forest River RV Rally in Goshen, Indiana. This will be my fifth year to attend. It is scheduled to begin on August 11th and last one week. My plan is to leave here on June 1st before the heat sets in and take my time getting to Indiana. I'm having trouble coming up with a route to take.

For those who wanted to see some Cypress trees with Spanish moss, here you go. This is Clear Lake which is a local lake.

 

This is looking out at the Red River from the boat ramp near Lock & Dam #5. I'm still disappointed that the Corps of Engineers didn't build any campgrounds when building the L&D's on the Red. 

You can tell you've been a fulltime traveler for too long when you start thinking about things like,,, "I could head out west to see the Rockies, then swing east through the Badlands of the Dakotas and maybe go through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before dropping down to north east Indiana for the Rally." Then I start second guessing by saying, I've been to all of those places and do I really want to repeat? Or, "Maybe I could head east to the Outer Banks of North Carolina then up to Pennsylvania to check out the changes to the Flight 93 Memorial since the last time I was there before swinging over to Indiana for the Rally". Except for the Outer Banks, I've been to all of those places too. 

If I leave on June 1st, I need to start making campground reservations soon. After doing a quick review, I discovered the National Park campgrounds on the Outer Banks, the Indiana Dunes and Sleeping Bears Dunes park in Michigan do not have electricity at the campsite. In the summer, that is a big NO for me. Maybe in the off season, but not the summer. So that was a big disappointment. I looked at some private campgrounds near those National Parks but was shocked at the prices. Most started at $50.00 per night. Wow, I might do that for one or two nights in a very special place but not for 5 days or so. I then checked out some state parks and found the price for them had also went up since the last time I had stayed in that state. After looking at 3 or 4 states, the average price starts around $35.00 per night. For those of ya'll that are wondering, I can routinely get a great campsite with a perfect view and location at a Corps of Engineers campground for an average of $11.00 per night. I'm afraid that is going to change though and sooner or later, people like me will be priced out of traveling around the country. 

I still have the freedom to go where I please, whenever I want to go. I will never take that for granted because I know one day I will have to permanently park Liberty and hang the keys to Freedom up. I suspect that time will come suddenly and without much warning. That will be a tough time. It will be the opposite feeling of extreme freedom that I got when I first got my drivers license as a teenager. I am not looking forward to losing my Freedom and will hold on to it with both hands. Like Dylan Thomas wrote, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light". 

I started this post a few days ago and I still haven't began making reservations. Thoughts have crept into my head about postponing departure date until July 1st but when I look at the weather forecast for here in July and see 95+ degree days, I quickly revert back to June 1st. I am still "iffy" about the route but am leaning to heading up through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan then the Rally in Indiana. 

I will post my route with reserved campground in my next post.

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe, I'll Cya down the road.