It is New Year’s Day and our preparations for 2018’s proposed adventures are almost complete. The tow vehicle, our 2008 Ford F-250 pickup truck dubbed “Charlotte” by our daughter, has had the brakes replaced, some exhaust sensor work, oil changed and some electrical conductor replacement. It should be good for the next 25,000 miles except for oil changes.
The trailer, reverentially referred to as the “Barbarian Invader”, goes into the shop on the 4th of January for a brake system check, the bearings will be repacked, the toilet will be replaced and some drain piping minor issues will be addressed. We should be able to pick the trailer up at the shop and leave town on the 9th. We will stock up on groceries and liquor while waiting for the trailer to be made sound. We will have seen all our homeland cronies at least once and it is time to bugger off on another tour through the U.S.
Our proposed strategy for this year is to move fast through places we have seen before and take our time with opportunities for exploring in strange locales. We have a problem, right off the bat, with this year’s winter travel. We have taken the road east from San Diego through El Centro, Yuma and Tucson several times and we have seen almost all we want to see. We have traveled to San Antonio a few times and we have seen that country, too. Unfortunately, we want to cross out of Texas into the City of Natchez, in Louisiana, around March 20 for our initial run up the Natchez Trace. We will need to be creative in order to chew up the 80-some days along routes we have recently traversed multiple times (2015 and winter 2016/2017) between San Diego and East Texas. I’m sure we will figure out something. In my mind, we are pretty resourceful in our dotage.
To show how creative we believe we are, our first leg will be all the way from San Diego to the Anza-Borrego State Park, a blip of a drive at about 58 miles. The road there passes through some rugged coastal mountain ranges before dropping down into the desert. It isn’t like we jumped in the rig and took off on a long drive the first day. After Borrego, we’ll see where we go next.