Rykal's Retired and Traveling

Aug 4th 2017
It has been a busy week! Lots of miles put on and have seen a lot of the country we have never been to before. We stayed at a PA campground outside of Topeka one night and listened to the very loud circada's. Then we moved on to Dodge City Kanas. Tom wanted to see the town that one of his favorite shows Gunsmoke was based. We happened to get there during their Dodge City Days celebration and were pretty excited because we figured there would be lots to keep us busy. What a bust! Their 10 day celebration could have been condensed into 2 0r 3 and still had time to spare. Minong Summer days had a lot more going for it. The historic downtown appears to be dying. We stayed at the Gunsmoke Rv park which was nice. $36 a night with good sams discount, full hookups. we stayed 3 nights only because we knew that we were pretty far ahead of schedule. We left on tues morning the 1st and headed for New Mexico. We stayed in Logan NM at Arrowhead RV park. $20 with PA. A very rustic park at best, but the owner was nice. Park could use some considerable clean up but we did have full hookups. Between Dodge City and Logan we topped a hill and nearly rearended the cars in front of us due to an accident up the road. No warning from police at all just bang there it was! How tom kept the truck and camper on the road without overturning or crashing into the car ahead of us I will never know! It took my heart a long time to beat normally again After leaving Logan NM the roads were nice and wide with light traffic so I made the suggestion that I should drive for a while. I have not driven with the camper since the day we bought it so I had to relearn a few things. Just as I was starting to feel comfortable BANG. At first I thought the trailer fell off of the truck and when I checked the mirror I noted it was still behind us and then I thought BLOWOUT. I pulled over to the side of the road as quickly as possible and we could then smell the blownout tire. Of course, there was no cell service on hwy 70 so we had to change it ourselves. Fortunately, tom was very prepared and had everything we needed to get it done in under an hour. So off we continue to Carlsbad NM. We needed to stop at the closest Walmart which was in Roswell NM and get another tire. At the Walmart a nice gentleman was helping us and when the old tire was taken out of the truck he asked us to move the truck/camper and tom did so forgetting that the tailgate was down and the tailgate tore the shit out of the front basement door. Good lord. What next. upon leaving the Walmart with the new tire, we got turned wrong on a street and tom quickly corrected to get us on the right street, but I am sure we were close to causing an accident. Finally, we got to our campground in Carlsbad NM...I was so glad to get here. We stayed at Carlsbad RV park. $42 a night with good sams. Nice campground and happened to be next door to the only RV repair shop in Carlsbad. We had them come over and look at the damage caused by the blowout. they did the next day. The gentleman said that he thought we were ok to continue on with the trip and said he could tack down the loose parts. Which he did and didn't charge us anything!! While in Carlsbad we went the Carlsbad NP and did a cave tour which was amazing! We returned in the evening to watch the Bat Flight. 400,000 or so bats leave the cave nightly to go hunt insects. It was pretty awesome to see. Today we were going to go to Guadalupe NP, but it is so hot here we decided to go instead to the Sitting Bull Falls park. Pretty park with a nice waterfall out in the middle of the desert. One would not expect to find something like that out there. Tomorrow we are off to Albuquerque . Brad and Mallory along with Brett will be arriving also. We are going to stay for 5 nights at Leisure Rv park. Hopefully, brett will want to stay with us and we are going to do some sightseeing around ABQ and meet Mallory's parents.

It is a dry heat they say. Yeah right! Its HOT