We got up at 7:30, did the pet stuff, had breakfast, hooked up the trailer, and were on the road by 8:30. It was raining pretty hard. In fact, it rained for the first 200+ miles of the trip. The truck and trailer are covered with guck.
The day was filled with small pains in the ass. We had a strong headwind all of the way. The best mileage we got was 7.8. Most of the way it was about 6.5. I actually had to stop twice to get fuel. To make it worse, both times it cost over $3/gal.
At one point Ellen told me to take a short cut. She didn't tell me whether to turn right or left. I turned the wrong way on a road with nowhere to turn around. That resulted in a multi-mile detour followed by driving through traffic in the outskirts of Abilene. How to add time and miles to a 400 mile day.
The final gotcha was one of the stabilizing bolts on the bike rack coming loose. I noticed it at a gas station, but forgot to fix it. By the time I remembered we were on a long stretch of road with zero shoulders. I drove 25 or 30 miles worrying about it falling off before I came to a place we could stop. I tightened both bolts and will check them each day from now on.
We got to the campground about 4:15. There was no sign, just parked trailers. There was no one at the office and no one answered the phone. One of the residents came by and told us to pick a place. So we did.
I was tired. I forgot to chock the tires when I unhooked and almost pulled the front jacks off their pads. I had to rehitch and back up to try again.
We left after unhooking to go to Wally World. We got fuel and some more DEF. We burned a whole box today. Then we stopped at Arby's for dinner. After dinner was surfing. There's no TV here.
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