Fort Worth, y'all!!

My daughter has a very precious friend in the outskirts of Fort Worth.  We decided we all needed a rest from the two back to back one-nighters in Albuquerque and Amarillo.  We chose a campsite close to her friend.  It's basically a trailer park with mostly full timers.  It doesn't feel like camping.  It feels like we are in a trailer park, including a domestic dispute that woke most of us up a few nights ago.  Thankfully we are just here for five nights and we are spending some quality time (not packing up) just catching up on rest, enduring high temps, some social time with Liz's friends who had us for dinner, some self-care (pedicures and a quilt shop stop), some sewing and blogging time for me and a bit of computer work online for a realtor friend (I'm his admin on an as needed basis).

There was a pretty bad thunderstorm/lighting and hard rain a few nights ago, but we saw a beautiful sunrise the next morning...storm over.  It's so interesting observing the weather on this journey.  I know...call me a weirdo.  I just notice stuff is all.

Our pack up consists of:  clearing and stowing all the kitchen stuff, bringing in all the bucket chairs and storing them in our master bedroom, bringing in Aidan's bicycle and storing it in our master bedroom, stowing the living plants in the shower stall and pulling in the 'miscellaneous' bins into the bathroom.  Vacuum.  Pull in the three slides.  Outside:  We need to disconnect the water hose and stow it away, empty the gray and black tanks and stow the sewer hose away, unplug the very heavy electrical cord and stow it away.  Then Liz will back up the truck and go through all the necessary things to attach Harriet to Max the truck. Store the tire chalks and any levelling blocks (we call them lego blocks). From there she checks the tires with the torque wrench and then we are good to go.  It takes about an hour to go from living in the trailer to being ready to move on.  I have a basket that goes from the trailer to the truck with all the maps, the calendar and my note book.  Fill the cooler with cold drinks and it's WHEELS UP!!

We found a Costco in Fort Worth where we finally purchased some kitchen upgrades that we have been researching.  I truly thought an air fryer was a luxury/fad before our adventure.  What I didn't know when we were considering living full time in an RV is that the oven interior is only about 4" high.  This means no baking of bread and no roasting of chickens.  We have talked to a lot of 'neighbours' at different campgrounds who have all added to our 'field research'.  What we decided on was a Ninja Smart Air Fryer (two baskets) and a Ninja Air Crisper.  We want to make bread and we also want to make Pizza for our Erev Shabbat tradition.

Last night we had broccoli, rice and salmon.  We did the rice in the microwave but used the two baskets in the air fryer to cook the broccoli and the salmon.  It was delicious!  We have had a hard time finding our kitchen mojo since being on the road, but it's most likely because we've been using one burner and the microwave which can seriously dampen the cooking spirit.  We've had our share of fast food on the journey and we were all craving real food.   And last night we got it!

We roll out of here on Sunday morning and are heading to Tennessee.  We are all looking forward to that stop which will be six nights.  We are hoping to source out some great music while we are there.  Tony should enjoy that!  In fact, we all will!

Thanks for staying with us on this journey.

Mavis