Rain, rain, go away!

I guess the country needs the rain, but we sure don't like driving in it.  The thunder and lightning started around 3am while we were parked in the Walmart lot in Eureka, Missouri for the night.  We weren't excited when it was still going on at 9am as we were ready to hit the road.  The car battery performed well, but we had a small delay with concern about the "idiot light" for the security/theft system which was constantly flashing on the dash of the Escape.  It had not done that previously.  We made calls to Bryan Ford and to the service department we had visited in Indianapolis yesterday and were told not to worry about it for now.  Okay!  We later heard from our Palm Creek friend who tows an Escape that his does the same thing.  We continued our drive west with a couple stops at rest areas and arrived at Downstream Casino just west of Joplin, MO around 4:00 local time.  From the freeway we saw little of the damage from last spring's tornado.  We have stayed here a couple times in the past....free water and electric hookups and a shuttle to the casino if we so desire.  They are counting on that, I suppose, but we usually don't spend any money inside.  This is the place that the casino is in Oklahoma, the hotel is in Kansas and the parking lot is in Missouri.  :-)   This will give us a chance to catch up on some laundry.  And, WOW, the sun came out as we were getting hooked up.

Dead battery!

This morning's start was not the best.....the new car had a dead battery when we went out to start it and get ready to tow it away.  We had faithfully followed all the directions for towing requested by Ford.  Since we were in the Walmart parking lot we went into the Auto Center and checked out the options there.  They offer no service but do sell "Instant Starters".  We thought about purchasing one of those, but they have to be plugged in for 24 hours before they can be used.  So, we called AAA and they were there within minutes.  We drove the car to a local Ford dealer and discussed the situation with their service guy and the opinion of Ford and the AAA guy is that we need another wiring job to connect the car and the RV while on the road.  We'll look into that at some point soon.  Meanwhile we finally got on the road around 11:15 and arrived in Eureka, MO west of St. Louis around 5:00 Central time.  We made several stops along the way and while at Flying J, besides dropping $430 for fuel, we ran the car for about half an hour.  It started again when we got to Eureka, so we'll see what happens in the morning.  We sailed right through downtown St. Louis on the early side of rush hour and will continue our trek in the morning...batteries permitting.

Texas is a big state!

We've driven across Texas quite a few times in the last ten years...we think it got bigger!  Man, is there a lot of nothing as you drive across I-10.  We did notice the difference in color...it got far greener as we headed east.  And, as we got closer to San Antonio, there were the famous wildflowers along the highway, but they were definitely past their prime - as in mostly brown.  We stopped for the night in Kerrville where we had stayed 4 years ago at Walmart.  We thought of the McCurdy's as we faced our dinner dilema.  Within 100 yards of our parking spot we had McDonald's, Wendy's, Chilli's, Sonic, Starbucks, Quizno's, Culver's and CiCi's.  Big spenders as we are, we ate dinner in the midst of a 12 year old's softball team awards dinner at CiCi's.  It was actually quite tasty.  More of Texas to come on Thursday.