Apr 2 - Taking a Divot on the Drive

• Move from Rockport TX to Hondo TX
• Miles Today: 200
• Total Spring12 bus-house miles : 200
• Total Spring12 toad miles : 0
• Tonight's camp: SKP Lone Star Corral
• Weather: morning low 70, high 92, humid, partly cloudy, stiff breeze out of SE
• Notables: 1. First stone-bash in new windshield... caused by semi-truck going the other direction on TX-173 just south of Hondo. Dang!  2. Actually had the elusive tailwind for much of the drive today.  3. Felt so darn good to be on the road again.

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Stone bash compared to a nickel (couldn't find a quarter).

About 4am, a thunderstorm descended on Rockport... waking us, shaking the bus-house, almost constant lightning and thunder crashing all around, and torrential sheets of heavy rain over-filling streets, patios, and bus-house rain gutters.. It was too much to sleep through, so we got up and kept an eye on things for the half hour or so it took for the storm to ease, and then another similar period to relax enough  to doze back to sleep. The next thing I knew it was after 8am and the scramble was on to get things buttoned-up for departure target of 9am... which we relaxed back to 10-ish before too long. I mean... what's the rush?

After saying good-bye to the few remaining Winter-Texan friends, we pulled out of Sandollar RV Park a few minutes after 10am. We were both anxious to get moving... to be traveling and exploring again... and felt elated, free, to be "out there" again. What a great feeling. Our Spring12 travel leg will stretch from Texas to Washington and we'll probably touch the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada?, Idaho?, and Oregon. In six weeks we hope to knock a couple more State Capitols off our list, a handful of National Parks, and explore a bunch of country we've not been through before.

The drive today was good, marred only by a hard, head-on, flying stone bash that put the first divot in this new windshield... installed just a few months ago in Portland. It's larger than a 50-cent piece (for those who've never seen a half-buck... it's larger than a quarter)... the largest windshield bash we've ever had. I don't know if anyone will even attempt a repair. I'm going to look around tomorrow and see if I can find someone to at least stabilize it.  It's low, just a few inches off the bottom edge of the glass, and doesn't come into play for driver or passenger.. Even if someone does agree to try a repair it, it certainly won't disappear like smaller stone chips often do. Regardless how it looks, I'd be happy to keep it around for a while, as ugly as it is, as another sabbatical battle scar.

We pulled into SKP Lone Star Corral a little before 3pm, found a site, and parked. Will be here for 3 or 4 days, using the time to loosely plan the next few weeks.