Another long day of driving. Original plan was to stop in Mt. Pleasant TX just west of Texarkana but it was early and I still felt pretty good. Figured the extra 1 1/2 hours drive to get to Dallas wouldn't be bad. The drive wasn't bad, I just was glad to get here. The whole day was great, blue skies with no clouds and it got up to 52. Roads were decent and traffic was light so I was able to make good time.

You'll notice the picture of the campground shows it is getting dark. I got here about 4:30 and decided to de-winterize the 5er. That involves hooking up the fresh water and flushing out all of the water lines. Since I've never done it before it took a bit to figure out the bypass valve to the water heater wasn't letting it fill up. Once I found it I let the water run until all the "pink stuff" (antifreeze) was flushed out of the lines. Then open the water heater relief valve to flush the water heater, fill the water tank to flush the water pump, then run each facet again just to make sure everything is clear.

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Despite the best efforts of my alarm clock, I made it to Memphis today. OK, it's not REALLY Memphis but Marion AR which is just across the river from Memphis. I set my Blackberry alarm for 7am. It went off and I hit the snooze for 10 more minutes of sleep. I found out at 8:30am that the snooze didn't work. That means no time for biscuits and gravy, just a cup of coffee and a muffin then hit the road.

This reminds me, I have to start a new page that I'm going to title "RVing According To Hank". It'll be bits of wisdom, points to ponder and little known facts about RVing.... mostly just things you never figure will happen until they happen to you. Look for the link on side menu once I get it started... and it'll be updated as I have more.

I drove about 400 miles today. More then I really want to drive but I felt this need to get to someplace where there wasn't going to be any snow. This also means I had to fill up twice today. Just a bit of advice: Do everything you can to never purchase any of gasohol in that corn lovin' state of Indiana. Your gas mileage will be in the crapper! Speaking of MPG, I found out I can get 1.5 better MPG if I follow another RV. The last 10 miles before I stopped for the night I followed another 5th wheel that passed me. I had to speed up from 61 to 64 to keep up and my MPG when up from 8.5 to 10. Something to file away for the future.

I have gotten this love/hate relationship with KOA campgrounds. I'm not sure they are a place I would go to to stay for a weekend or more. The sites are packed pretty close together and aren't "campy" enough for my tastes. They also tend to have a bit of highway noise since most are located for easy access. But then this easy access does make them ideal for over night stops when traveling someplace else. Most camp sites are pull through sites for easy setup, most have WiFi, offer some type of breakfast in the morning, nice clean showers and are generally well kept up. Kind of like the Holiday Inn... no big surprises no matter what one you go to but not someplace you really get excited about.

OK, so I'm now about 650 miles into the 1500 or so total miles to get to RGV and nothing eventful has happened. Let's keep it that way!

And it begins: Believe it or not, I was able to leave home at 7am. Even surprised myself as I didn't get to bed until 1am and didn't get to sleep until about 3am. The roads were nice a dry and not very much traffic. I made it to Terre Haute about 1pm and decided to stop at the KOA for the night. I could have driven a couple more hours but figured that it would be best to try and get a decent nights rest before the next leg.

The Terre Haute KOA is a bit expensive ($40) but it is one of the few campgrounds open this far north. Since it's 30 deg. outside not much is usable at the campground but it does look like it would be a nice place to stay in the summer.

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