Ok, the trip starts today! Let’s get an early start! Just so we will, last night I set the alarm clock for 6:00 AM. Can’t wait!

You know, sometimes things don’t work out quite according to plan … Oh, the alarm went off at 6:00, like it was supposed to. And I hit snooze, like I knew I would … and only once, quite unlike what I thought I’d do! So yes, we’re up early, raring to go. Gotta finish loading up, and hit the road.

But first.

There are quite a few “but first”s today. Won’t bore you with it, but finally, at 11:30 (yes – almost noon!) we’ve loaded the truck, moved the tree (several hundred pounds worth – don’t ask!), and took the pop-up so it can stay where we keep the new trailer, instead of at the house. Yes, eventually it will park at the house, but we have to put in the pad for it to park on. That will happen when we return. FINALLY, we are on the road. Truck mileage is 191,550. Wonder how many miles we’ll drive this time? Who knows … but she’s not saying!

The drive is fairly uneventful – there’s some construction (Really? Wow! Who knew!) but not bad at all. I like uneventful drives. Of course, it turns out we’re not going to make the 17:00 closing time at the park, so we’ll have to hope they post our assigned spot for us. Oh, well – if that’s the biggest snag we hit today, I’m certainly fine with it.

Oh – we would have made it, but needed to fill up along the way. Getting worse mileage than I figured, not sure why. We started with a real strong tail-wind, but maybe it turned on us. So we pull in about 17:20, but there’s a very pleasant ranger who greets us outside the now-closed visitor’s center, tells us what slot we’re in, and even goes into the visitor’s center to get us a couple of different maps. Who said rangers can’t be nice? This guy was great!

Camping area A, site 12. VERY nice site, plenty long and wide, with a place to park the truck. We can even see the lake from here! And, unlike in Texas, this lake has water in it! I’d forgot what lakes are supposed to look like. It’s nice!

Gotta go into town to get some things we forgot, but no big deal. At least the trip’s begun!

Here’s my only start-of-trip photo: