Making Mistakes Like a Couple of Newbies!

It's hard to believe, but we are starting our fifth year of traveling around the country in our motor home and wandering His wonders! We have traveled from coast to coast and north to south in this big beautiful country, so we are obviously experienced RV travelers. But for some reason, we are making mistakes like a couple of newbies!

On our second day on the road, we drove three hours to get to Abilene, Texas to visit our niece and nephew. This is when we made newbie mistake #1. We forgot to take a picture of them! So just imagine a picture inserted here of a cute couple standing in front of their lovely country home--that's Jennifer and James.

Later, we realized that the only picture taken was of Denisa trying her hand at axe-throwing. They have a target set up in one of their barns, and Denisa soon found out she was no good at this new sport. For her to attempt to throw a sharp object should be counted as mistake #2.

Each time, as soon as she let go of the axe, she automatically ran to the side to take cover. That's evidence that she wasn't very accurate, when her instincts were to run for safety as soon as the axe left her hand.

We were so excited to visit with Jennifer and James and family, that when we first arrived we just jumped out of the motor home and went into their house. We had a great day with family, and it wasn't until night-fall that Mark remembered mistake #3. We had never put the tow car into park and pulled the key. So all day long, the car was sitting in the drive-way in the accessories key position, running down the battery. We were lucky that it started the next morning when it was time to leave.

We had a great time at their house, and we're already looking forward to the next time we have reason to stop by Abilene, Texas. But they needed to get to work, and we needed to get down the road, so we headed south. That's when we discovered mistake #4.  Mark always maps out our route before we drive in the motor home. He looks for low over-passes and checks google maps to be sure the roads look safe for the motor home. But our mistake #4 was driving off that morning without doing any of that pre-planning of our route. We were just glad that the lowest clearance bridge was 14 feet (instead of 13), and that Ranch Road 962 on our path was paved and reasonably wide.

We stopped in the little town of Brady, Texas, to get our annual Texas safety inspection completed. That's a necessary step that must be done before we can get our Texas vehicle tags renewed. The staff at Auto Techs was very friendly and efficient, and we would recommend them. But that's where we made mistake #5. Part of the safety inspection is making sure that all the blinkers, horns, wipers, and lights work. When Mark turned on the car lights for the inspection, he forgot to turn them off. So as we towed the car the rest of the three hour trip, they continued to drain the already weakened battery. When we arrived at our destination at Pedernales Falls State Park, we were taking pictures of the views across Texas hill country.

But when we unhooked the car to drive to our new campsite, the car wouldn't start. Mistake #5 would mean that one of the local park rangers had to give us a jump start so we could drive to our camp site. He would have never guessed that we had been RVing full-time for four years!

So, even though we have been making mistakes like a couple of newbies, our day actually ended fine. We realize that after being off the road for two months, our full-time travel skills are just a little rusty.