Family Travels
Where have we been?
We live in our 2020 Grand Design Momentum 376TH "Toybox". We carry our 2019 H-D Ultra Classic motorcycle in the 'garage' and we pull our home with our 2019 RAM 3500 dually. This is our tiny home on wheels.
We left Tucson, AZ on 09 March 2023 heading east.
NM and TX - We traveled through eastern AZ and NM to get to our first big stop in the Hill Country of TX, specifically Canyon Lake. Coming across NM we encountered a lot of wind and some rain, so we didn't do too much in the way of sightseeing. We spent a few days in Deming and poked around there a bit, but it was more of a 'downtime' stop while on the road rather than a place to do a lot. We did see three different state parks as well as made a day trip to Silver City. This was a quaint little town that looked interesting but the weather was not too cooperative, so maybe we will make that a longer duration stop on another trip. Sonora and Van Horn TX were our other stops on our way into Canyon Lake and the Hill Country. Again, the weather was not real cooperative and though we did get the bike out for a real nice ride to Fredericksburg, we didn't get a lot of bike time. Road trips in the truck to The Twisted Sisters, Luckenbach (where everybody is somebody) and Wimberly, and visited with some friends in Boerne and in Georgetown. We found an interesting little distillery called Chapline Distillery in Bulverde, TX. They make a real nice Texas bourbon that I really enjoy. We attended our nephew's graduation from USAF Basic Training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio and took him and his mother into San Antonio for lunch and a walk around The Alamo and the River Walk. We drove into Canyon Lake in the rain, had rain most of the time we were there, and left Canyon Lake in the rain. Will we ever dry out? Houston was next and the campground was great. Houston is a big old mess as far as traffic, so we didn't do much in Houston, but we did wander around the area north of Houston. We did meet our niece and her boyfriend on weekend day in downtown Houston to look at some mural artwork on some buildings and had a nice time. Some friends from D-M AFB FamCamp in Tucson met us at our campground for an evening. We later met them in Livingston on a road trip (we rode the bike!!) and had a great time with them. We ate a LOT of great food at our campground in Porter, TX. The place was called Dunn Right RV Campground and they sure did it right! We had a great time there. Left Houston enroute to Baton Rouge.
LA - We had quite an interesting drive from Houston to Baton Rouge. Diana loved driving over the swampland, all the rivers, lakes and water. Horrendous traffic coming through Baton Rouge and then going north to our campground at Denham Springs. We got together with an old Navy friend of mine from my first duty station (Rota, Spain). He was my sponsor when I arrived at the squadron and we ended up being roommates. I hadn't seen him in more than 40 years, but we had a great time and he showed us around Madisonville, LA. We took a truck trip (with the dogs to Venice LA (the end of the earth!) and ate lunch at a fish market / boat yard. Also took a great motorcycle trip into lower rural LA and had a great time. We met our niece and her boyfriend for dinner one night and we enjoyed that. We rode the bike across a good portion of the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and Diana was fascinated, as was I. We did not care much for the KOA we were in (it was too tight between sites) but we were still sad to leave LA.
MS - Our next stop was just outside of Vicksburg, MS at Rivertown Rose Campground. had a really interesting visit in Vicksburg and ate some great BBQ. Rode the bike down south to Port Gibson and picked up the Natchez Trace Parkway and rode that to Natchez. Had lunch in Natchez and we rode back to Port Gibson on the Trace then home. Another day we went into the Vicksburg National Military Park. What an experience that was. That is something everyone should do, whether you have an interest in the Civil War or not. It was quite sobering. We also visited the RR Depot Museum and the Mississippi River Museum in Vicksburg. We had a real nice dinner at The Biscuit Company in Vicksburg with a beautiful view of the Mississippi. Vicksburg is full of some very old and very beautiful homes. Quite a place.
AR and TN - Next stop was Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, AR. Not much to do in the town but the campground is probably my favorite of all we have stayed in. It is RIGHT on the Mississippi and there are always barge floats and towboats going up and down the River. I could sit outside all day long and all night long, if I could stand the skeeters and no-see-ums!! We went into Memphis quite a bit and one day had lunch at the historic Arcade Restaurant then we walked on Beale Street. We decided in the future we would open our wallets, get a hotel near Beale Street and spend a night listening to music down there. Don't feel like driving back to the campground after a night on the Street. Memphis is an old, dirty, poor town, but we still enjoyed it. We had a nice lunch way up on top of the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid with magnificent views of Memphis. We had a good time in AR and TN.
MO and IL - Sikeston, MO (SE Missouri) is not much of a town, but we were here for a week. We ate a few times at Lambert's "Home of the Throwed Rolls' Cafe. The food was REALLY good. Nice campground right off the highway. We did some truck road trips to Cairo, IL and Cape Girardeau, MO with some pass-throughs of other little towns in the area, such as Charleston, Jackson, Orran and a few others. Cairo was a sad experience but we both really enjoyed our day in Cape Girardeau. Cape Girardeau has a really nice series of mural paintings on the levee wall that talk about the history of the area and the town. This was a fascinating town to visit. I was able to visit the historic Depot museum in Sikeston. There I learned that, during the Second World War, there was an aviation training school (part of the Parks Aviation School system) that trained cadets for pilot duty in the US Army Air Corps. This facility turned into the Sikeston Municipal Airport after the war. There was also a POW Camp for German and Italian Officers in the local area, and they, among other things, worked the local farm fields. Many of them stayed here after the War and became local citizens, or married local women and returned to their home country. Pretty interesting.
We stayed in Belleville, IL at Scott AFB FamCamp for about a week and had some good times with Jon's cousins. Of course, we had to get an oil change and some tires on the truck so that took time away from having fun, but it was necessary maintenance. We didn't have a long reservation at Scott, so we had to move mid-stay over to MO to "370 Lakeside Park" in St. Peters, MO. This is a combination community recreation area and RV campground. It also has a large covered pavilion. We were lucky in that there was a band set to play on the day we checked in. They played zydeco music, in honor of the upcoming Mardi Gras and they had some food trucks that , of course, were selling jambalaya and shrimp and grits. Needless to say, we had some cajun food for dinner and we really enjoyed the music. This park also has a large lake (4.4 mile perimeter) that we walked along. This was a very nice park and I think we will try to come back and stay here again. While we were here, we went to a baseball game with my cousins. The Cards were playing the K.C. Royals. It sure was a pitchers game and the final score was 2-1 with St. Louis prevailing. St. Louis made the first score in the sixth inning. It was a good game and we had a lot of fun. We need to come back and spend some more time in southern IL / eastern MO very soon.
IA - We had a short stay in Sperry, IA at a county park that included an RV campground. We had a nice spacious site and there were trees all around us.
WI
IN
OH and KY
PA
MD
VA
NC and SC
GA
TN
OK
TX
NM
AZ