Giddy-up

We have arrived ---- at Galveston Island State Park, that is. At the close of our third day here, I think I can say we finally feel like our vacation has begun.

The start of our trip was a bit rocky, a few hiccups in the giddy-up as Michael would say.

Roseate Spoonbills

We left Michigan 10 days ago, on Monday, January 9^th.

Great blue heron

Our first stop at an auto parts store was on the south side of Cincinnati, just across the river into Kentucky. O’Reilly’s. That’s where Michael bought and installed a new alternator belt after untwisting and removing the old one. The old one snapped off on our way there from the I-75 exit. The belt had whined loudly earlier in the day, but had settled down as we putzed along, so we kept going. Until Cinci. The repair slowed us down about an hour, so I called ahead to reserve a camp site at an RV Park near Georgetown, KY.

Great Egret

The next two nights we spent in Knoxville with my sister and brother-in-law. The Pickle rested after chugging up and down those steep grades between Lexington, KY, and Knoxville.

A long day of driving Thursday brought us to Village Creek State Park near Forrest City, AK, about 40 miles west of Memphis. That’s the night the temperature dropped from a balmy 69 degrees when we arrived in the early evening to 39 degrees the next morning. We studied weather.com to make sure we were going to miss Storm Jupiter which was predicted to shut down MO with a sheet of ice. It looked like the storm would track north of us so we continued on our southwesterly route toward Ft. Worth.

Campground birding habitat

Friday – hopefully the low point, the nadir of this trip. Engine noises all day. Power steering pump? More belts giving out? Fan clutch? Ah, perhaps! The fan clutch as the culprit was an afternoon decision, just after entering Texas, on the west side of Texarkana, after stopping for gas and upon starting back up, hearing the whirring/squealing noise louder than ever. Thinking we were in no shape to drive 65-70 mph on the interstate, we stuck to back roads, way back at times, circling around Culpepper’s Café at first, looking for the right back road that would take us to Cooper Lake State Park. Circuitous, you might say, was the route we took to arrive at our destination. (The helpfulness of the Google Maps app is, by the way, directly proportional to the map skills of the navigator.)

Michael just happened to be carrying an extra fan clutch for the Pickle so that became Saturday’s project at Cooper Lake about 70 miles northeast of Dallas/Ft. Worth. What started optimistically as a 2-hour activity turned into an “all-dayer,” lying on a mat in the red mud, 45 degree coldness, problems with getting bolts out of the old fan clutch and problems with getting them back into the new, with a trip into a Commerce, TX auto parts store in the afternoon to get more parts. About that time, amid bolts and missing washers and wrenches and the open engine compartment, it became clear there was no getting out of Cooper Lake Campground that night. I called the park office for an extension.

Sunday – The Pickle sounded good that foggy misty morning. No whining, no squealing and no loud  roaring from the engine as if it were stuck in 2^nd. (Hurrahs from the cheering section!) We drove in and out of rain showers to Huntsville State Park, a little south of Huntsville, TX, on Highway 19, a well-maintained quiet 4-lane road, just our style. Tires on wet roads were the concern that day as we slid into red lights on two different occasions, thanking the universe for our luck in missing that pick-up truck

And Monday – After a quick stop at an auto parts store in New Waverly just a few miles south of the campground to get brake cleaner, we drove south through Houston and out to Galveston Island. Now two and a half days of semi-sunshine, 70 degree temperatures, beach walking, bird watching, shrimp eating and general bumming, we’re feeling       smooth again.

Giddy-up.

Galveston beach