Busy Monday

As I mentioned at the end of yesterday's blog (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/12/weve-arrived-in-texas-and-still.html), the primary reason we came to Livingston (Polk County) was to resolve the issue with the Jeep's registration.

Some background: in Texas, in order to renew your registration, your vehicle needs to pass a safety inspection. However, this can be waived if the vehicle is not in Texas at time of registration renewal - you just need to certify that you will get the safety inspection completed when the vehicle returns to Texas. I have renewed registration multiple times on both the Jeep and motorhomes with no issues... until this year... I was able to submit the renewal request on Gracie with no problem, but the system would not allow me to submit a renewal request on the Jeep. I contacted the state of Texas phone number that was listed; the lady there said, "Well, it looks like you haven't gotten the vehicle inspected yet." I concurred, but that I would have it done when I returned to Texas. She gave me the opinion that if I was in Texas that infrequently, I should get the vehicle registered in the state where I was living. I decided at that point that she was not going to be much help to me, so I contacted Polk County (where they understand fulltime RVers, at least a little!). The lady I spoke with there said that the state controls the website and they cannot help me if the website would not allow me to renew the registration, that my only recourse was to come to Polk County. We were trying to avoid the additional miles that coming to Polk County would involve. So in October, I wrote a letter to the Tax Assessor/Collector in Polk County, explained my situation, calculated, as best I could, the cost of the registration renewal, sent a check, and asked if there was something they could do. Unfortunately, in the last mail package that we had gotten in mid-November, there was no registration sticker for the Jeep, so... we figured we had better plan a visit to Polk County. We thought that we would need to get the Jeep inspected and then go to the county office in Livingston to renew the registration.

On Sunday evening, I checked our checking account and found that the check that I had sent to the Tax Assessor/Collector had been paid out of our checking account at the end of October. This made me think that maybe they *had* taken care of the renewal. So, Monday morning, before heading to the inspection station, we went to the mail service and picked up our bundle of mail. To our great relief, there was a letter from the Tax Assessor/Collector's office (interestingly with no postage or cancellation stamp - they must bring the mail directly to the mail service rather than paying postage!). The Jeep's renewed registration was here!

We still needed to get the Jeep inspected, and we had heard from a couple of folks that the best place to go was just a couple of miles away - so we called to make sure that he was open on Monday, headed over there, and had the inspection completed and the new registration sticker on the Jeep in just a few minutes! What we had thought might take us all day was completed by 9am!

It was like we had been given a gift of additional time. Since we're on full hookups here, we've done several loads of laundry and did a thorough vacuuming job to clear out as much of the dirt that we'd tracked in over the last week or so. We went out for lunch to a Mexican restaurant that we like in town.

We were also able to get together with our friend, Marjorie, who lives here at the CARE center:

Patti and Marjorie

So... it turned out that we didn't need to make the trip to Livingston after all... but... we're thankful to have the Jeep "legal" now!