Texas Vacation - Day Two - Making It

Sorry I've been a little slow with these recaps. I'm really looking forward to writing about all of the cool things from our vacation to Texas. But in order to get to the cool stuff we have to get through the boring stuff. 

And honestly Day 2 is kind of boring. 

But if we get through this quick we can move onto the more interesting days. 

Okay here we go. 

Saturday April 6 

We the night at a TravelLodge in Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis is about 10 miles away from the New Mexico/Texas Border. That border is also a Time Zone Change. We'd lose an hour as soon as wer crossed the border. 

Brandon and I had agreed to wake up at 7:00 and be on the road by 8:00. I'd even set my alarm for 7:00 - or so I thought. I'd set it for a weekday. Not a Saturday. I actually woke up around 7:15 when a strong wind started whistling up against the side of the building. 

Brandon and Derrick came over to our hotel room for bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. Then we took all our backpacks to the car and got ready to keep driving. I took one last picture of the Travellodge. 

We were on the road by 8:00, but that became 9:00 as soon as we went over the boarder. 

We had about 9 hours of driving to do that day. We were going to drive into our old stomping ground around Fort Hood. We were hoping to get on post to see our old house. Then we'd keep driving to Buescher State Park where we would be camping with my sister Lindsey. 

The first part of the drive was very uneventful. We turned on Jurassic Park and listened to that for a long time that morning. The wind was still very strong so when we did stop for gas we'd hurry out and then back in. There wasn't really anything to stop and see anyway. 

Here's an elephant that Lydia crocheted while we drove.

There were lots of windmills - oh and lots of dust too. The wind kicked up a lot of dust. 

Here's what the road looked like a lot.

Lots of windmills. There were so many more than I remembered from this drive before. 

Actually I was doing some mental calculations and realized that I avoided driving this direction on this route during all my road trips to and from Texas. 

We'd driven out of Texas on this route when I drove back to Utah with Brandon in December of 2013. Also when I drove back to Utah with my inlaws in 2014 when Brandon was in Korea. And then again when I caravanned to Utah with Lindsey for Billy's wedding in 2015.

But the only time I'd driven through Texas on this route was during the disaster move to Texas at the end of 2012.  At the end of 2013 we'd gone through Arizona to visit Brandon's brother and then took a more southern route through Texas. And in 2014 I'd gone home through Colorado and then Amarillo. In 2015 we'd gone through  New Mexico and then to Amerillo and then on to North Carolina. (We were in Alabama at the time so we stopped at my sister Emily's house before going back down to Alabama.)  

It's like I actively avoided this route. 

Eventually the landscape changed from prairie to more of the hill country. There were lots of cedar trees. It's a good thing we weren't here in January when they boardcast pollen everywhere. Brandon is terribly allergic to Cedar Pollen and was always miserable in January when we lived here. 

I'd been searching for any sign on Blue Bonnet flowers. I was hoping we hadn't missed them. So it was exciting to see them. (You might be able to see them in this picture. )

I was surprised by all the pink flowers. I don't remember these from before. They were such a pretty color. 

We'd driven for about 5 hours when we started to see signs with familiar city names. Lampasas! Kemper! Copperas Cove!

We were getting closer to Fort Hood. (Which is actually now called Fort Cavazos, but I'm going to call it Fort Hood for old times sake.) I had no idea how long it would take for us to get on post so I wanted to make sure we ate before we tried. The kids said they wanted Burger King so I looked up on on our google maps. There was one in Lampasas. So we stopped there. 

Derrick was excited about the crowns and put one right on.  The kids liked eating in this little sitting area. 

Here's my meal. It was great!

Here are the kids hanging out some more. 

Then we got back in the car and started driving. We passed lots of RV parks that were packed full of campers. We were passing through a totality zone for the eclipse. People were arriving and getting ready. 

Our GPS wanted to route us on the bypass around Copperas Cove. That road was completed just a few months before we moved away. But I wanted to drive on the business route. So we took that. 

And all of a sudden we were driving by so many memories. 

That was the clinic where my pregnancy with Veronica was confirmed.  

There's the turn for the library. 

That's the scary HEB (I didn't know a new one was opening and they were selling off all the merchandise without restocking. I was like, "What is going on with this store?")

The laundrymat where we did laundry when we were waiting for our stuff was down that road.

There's the turn off for the church. That church was so hard to find.

There the real HEB. Wow there's so much built up around it. 

And then we passed by the exit for "our" gate. The gate we passed through to get to our home on West Fort Hood. It looked so familiar and yet it also felt like revisiting a memory from a dream. As we passed it I was like, "Did we really live here?"

We weren't going to the West Fort Hood gate yet because we had to go to the visitor center to get a gate pass. I remember this being a terrible hassle, but I'd been assured that it was an easier process now. 

So we drove down the highway about 3 more miles to the visitor center. We got out and went into the center. The center was open, but there were signs on the doors. The Fort was closed to visitors until the eclipse was over.  I tried explaining our case to a very nice Army Guy. But there was nothing he could do. 

That meant that we couldn't get on post. We couldn't drive on streets with funny names like, "Hell on Wheels Ave." We couldn't drive by the parade field where we were reunited with Brandon after he came home from Korea. We couldn't see our old house. 

We settled for a picture of the 1st Cav parade ground (from far away.)

And a picture of the hospital where they took me and Veronica after she was born. 

We were told that the fort would reopen at 6:00 PM on Monday. So there was a chance we could go back there. But I didn't think we'd make it back. 

Still I'm glad we tried. 

And it was kind of nice because now we'd be seeing Lindsey sooner. We got back in the car and kept driving East. 

We were passing more familiar things. 

There's the sketchy HEB.

There's where we bought the Honda. 

There's the Walmart where Brandon shaved and changed when we first got to Fort Hood. 

There's the Target we'd go to.

We made it to Belton and got on the I-35 and then quickly got of that and took some country roads to Highway 95. Derrick called it the Lightning McQueen Highway.

Here's a picture Veronica colored while we were driving. 

We followed the Highway south. I kept trying to get pictures of Blue Bonnets. 

It's kind of hard to see, but the watertower in this picture has a smiley face. 

That last bit of the drive felt really long. But eventually we arrived at Buescher State Park and found the campsite where Lindsey was waiting for us. 

We had separate campsites. Ours was up a small hill from Lindsey's. The campsites allowed two tents so we just set our tent up by Lindsey's. 

Lindsey was there with her kids Rocky, Knoxx, and Eliza. Her husband John was on call for work so couldn't come. My kids were so excited to see their cousins. 

Lindsey made taco soup for us. She had so much food. She was using this trip as a test run of sorts for girls camp so over the next few days she made a lot of good food. 

The campground was full of so many campers. I assumed everyone was like us and was there for the eclipse. But most everyone packed up the next morning. So maybe they were all just enjoying the weekend. 

Here's the bathroom. Check out those huge Live Oaks around the building. You can't see it very well, but there was spanish moss hanging in the trees. I was so happy to see that. 

The air was also very humid and warm. That night when we all went to bed we ended up basically sleeping on top of our unzipped sleeping bags. 

It felt so good to have finally made it to Texas. We'd done over 24 hours of driving in the last 3 days, and we'd finally made it. We didn't have to go ANYWHERE the next day.