Some more vehicle washing

We had wanted to get the outside of the casa (park model next to our RV lot) washed. We knew that there were folks who would do this work for us (for a price), but we decided to try using our own power washer to get it done...

The power washer did a good job...

Carl would get the siding wet with the power washer... I had a pump-up sprayer with a soap solution, and then Carl would use the brush to further dislodge the grime. 

He then followed with a rinse by the power washer.

We also power washed the patio. We had not cleaned the siding at all last season, and we had only swept the patio. It all looks a lot better now!

Since we had the soap and brush and power washer out, we decided to try to get some of the bugs off the front of Gracie. You may be able to see that the driver side is a little less buggy than the passenger side at this point. We by-no-means got all the bugs off, but we got at least some of them off!

The blowing dirt in Arizona causes a lot of filth to build up on anything left outside. We also cleaned the outdoor furniture (you can see a couple of the chairs behind Carl in the last picture) before we got the cushions out from the casa to complete the patio set.

The Jee-rage gets a bath!

We made it back to our RV lot in Venture Out in Mesa on Thursday afternoon, October 23. We've been busy with a lot of things while here!

One project was to give the Jeep a much-needed wash... 

"Before" -- it may not be obvious how much dust and dirt is on there, but, it was filthy! Being drug behind a motorhome for days upon days will do that to a toad!

Thankfully, Venture Out has a location for washing vehicles -- it isn't anything fancy, just a hose at a parking spot near the dog park, but it has good drainage and is designed for that purpose. We took our car washing brush and soap and dish pan for scrubbing, along with microfiber cloths for wiping it down after...

"After" -- it is much cleaner, although the finish is really in bad shape -- the clearcoat is coming off in multiple places, making it look very disreputable. But it still runs okay!

We are actually somewhat grateful that the Jeep is not in pristine condition -- it would be hard to subject it to the rigors of towing if it was a beautiful new vehicle!

Finishing up service!

The folks at Freedom RV worked on the "house" systems -- fixing the front passenger slide that had broken back in June, and putting a new slide "topper" on the front driver slide (I blogged about the problems caused by the topper not keeping the water off the top of the slide: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/09/continuation-of-roof-repair.html) -- on Wednesday. Our service advisor was hopeful that they may be able to complete all the service on Wednesday, but there was still some of the chassis service to complete so we spent the night in the service center parking lot.

In the morning, Gracie was all finished up before 10am on Thursday.

We really are happy to have found this service center where they seem to have technicians well-versed in working on Newmar motorhomes.

All hooked up and ready to head out to Mesa!

As we were on I-10 heading past Tucson, we passed this tractor trailer whose load definitely looked like it was not well secured... we were glad to get past it before the load shifted even further.

Thankfully not a long drive to Mesa to return to our winter location, Venture Out at Mesa!

Sweet Tomatoes

After getting Gracie checked in for service at Freedom RV, we headed out for lunch at Sweet Tomatoes. This is one of Carl's favorite eating places; he estimates that he and Sue ate at Sweet Tomatoes at least once a month for most of their married life. During COVID, the restaurants shut down and the chain closed. But one entrepreneurial fan of Sweet Tomatoes purchased the rights to use the name and the recipes and opened one of the former locations in Tucson. (I blogged about our visit last October when we were in Tucson for service too: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/10/onwards-to-tucson.html)

It has a GIANT salad bar!

They also have many varieties of soups and pasta offerings as well.

Since you can get up and get more, there is a sign to leave on the table that, on one side indicates you're not done yet (green), and on the other, notifies the server that you are finished (red).

Sign on the outside of the restaurant

We were hoping to meet up with niece Ginny for lunch, but various things conspired against that happening. We're hoping that Ginny and family may come up to visit us in Mesa.

Arizona! and a stop in Tucson

Not long after leaving Deming, NM, 

... we crossed in to Arizona!

We had an appointment at Freedom RV in Tucson for Wednesday,

... so we stopped at the Pima County Fairgrounds for the night before our morning appointment. This is a picture of our setup that reminds me of "the Clampetts" -- we were packed to the gills bringing things back from our container in Virginia as well as the stereo components from Carl's home theater system that Kim has had since Carl and Sue went fulltime.

Morning picture of Gracie in the campground at the Pima County Fairgrounds

Off to the service center!

And even more continuing west in Texas

As we continued west in Texas...

Now we were in the plains of west Texas...

...finally we got to El Paso...

... there are these "interesting" art pieces next to an overpass along I-10 -- it seems that the Airway Gateway sculpture is intended to be a visual welcome to visitors who have flown in to El Paso (this is at the Airway Blvd overpass) and who are likely be be finding their way on I-10 to get around. The sculptures are lit with different colors at night, and they contain wind turbines to produce the energy to run the lights (https://www.colorkinetics.com/global/showcase/el-paso-airway).

Just a few miles further and we were welcomed into New Mexico.

We drove to Deming for the night, where we stayed at a winery that is part of the Harvest Hosts program. 

We forgot to take pictures at the winery - but I took a picture after we left in the morning as we were passing by the building after we had gotten back on I-10. You might be able to just barely see the front windshield and side of a motorhome behind the building in the far left part of the picture. We had a nice night there, though we were very close to the interstate and there were train tracks just on the other side of the interstate - our HEPA air filter makes enough white noise that we don't get overly bothered by noises outside.

Just need to finish getting through New Mexico, and we'll be back in Arizona!

Continuing west in Texas

We left Medina Lake, outside of San Antonio, on Sunday. We didn't have specific plans on where to spend the night -- we wanted to make it at least as far as Fort Stockton (~300 miles), maybe to Balmorhea (~350 miles), or maybe to Van Horn (~415 miles). Now, I realize that if you're thinking about driving a car those distances, you're thinking, "Heck, they are wimps!" -- but it is challenging driving the RV, so we try to stay around 200 miles a day for our max. However, there aren't a lot of places to stop along I-10 once you pass San Antonio, so we knew our options were limited.

West of San Antonio is known as Texas Hill Country (the exit is for "Welfare", so if you want to get on Welfare, I guess this is where you do it!).

Last year, we visited The Cross at Kerrville (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-empty-cross.html) -- we just saw the cross from the freeway as we drove by this time.

We ended up making it all the way to Van Horn. It wasn't a luxurious campsite, but it had full hookups and was a pullthru. We didn't think there was enough room for others to be able to drive behind us if we left the Jeep hooked up, so we disconnected and parked it next to Gracie. 

It wasn't until the next day when I was looking at the pictures that we noticed what looked like a big wet spot under the Jeep and we got concerned that something may have broken loose in the radiator or coolant system -- so we checked, but it all looked okay. Guess the wet (discolored) spot was there before we parked. Thankful that it didn't indicate a problem with the Jeep!

Thousand Trails Medina Lake

We had stayed at Thousand Trails Medina Lake in 2024 before the Eclipse Rally in April. This year, we just were staying two nights before continuing west...

Thousand Trails has changed to "assigned sites" -- so we had reserved and were allocated a 50A Full Hook Up (FHU) site. It was relatively near the entrance to the park (this is a park that covers a couple of hundred acres) - so we didn't have to drive far inside the park to get to our site.

Not having to drive far is a good thing in Thousand Trails parks. Most of them are not "up" on infrastructure maintenance -- I don't know if you can see the potholes in this picture taken in front of our site...

... here's another pothole, looking the other way in front of our site. I call it "Thousand Trails, saving money on new speed bumps by creative use of potholes!"

There are also a large number of deer in this park.

When we were parking in our site, evidently there were quite a large number behind the back of the site. Carl could see them in the rearview mirrors -- I was busy trying to ensure that we didn't hit any of the trees or other obstacles around the site, so I didn't see them until we were parked, and by then, a number had left the area.

On our last evening, this buck and a doe came right by our rig -- I took this picture out of the window by our desk. They are not very scared of the campers -- they can certainly bound away much more quickly than we can drive on the roads!

Even with the infrastructure issues at Thousand Trails parks, they are still a good value for us as we can stay with no additional charges beyond our annual dues, which are $462.88/year (our dues were frozen when Dwayne's dad turned 65, so we pay less dues than many people do). If we wanted to do so, we could move from Thousand Trails park to Thousand Trails park, staying every night of the year at parks in the system, averaging less than $2/night for our campground stays ($462.88/365). Unfortunately, there are not Thousand Trails parks in all parts of the country - they are concentrated on the coasts and southwest - but it is nice to be able to use them when we can. For 2025, we have spent a total of 46 nights in Thousand Trails parks, so our cost has averaged out to $10.06/night.

Heading west in Texas

From Conroe, we started on our last long journey west toward Mesa...

... we got onto I-10 just a little west of Houston -- we would be on I-10 for just over 740 miles to get out of Texas!

We had reservations to stay at Thousand Trails Medina Lake, which is in Lakehills, TX, just west of San Antonio.

Now in the Texas Hill Country

As we were driving to the campground through Lakehills (not a major metropolis!), we saw signs for a BBQ Chicken Dinner coming up on Saturday at the local Methodist church...

... so we decided to partake! In addition to the chicken leg quarter, beans, and corn,

... there was a choice of apple cobbler, chocolate cake...

... or peach cobbler, and you could get whipped cream on your dessert if you wished!

We enjoyed our lunches (here, I am enjoying my chocolate cake).

There were a lot of folks serving at the church, and many folks were coming in and picking up meals to take to go.

We narrowly avoided taking home a free kitten that a lady had outside the church in the parking lot. There was a younger lady with the one who had the kittens who was doing an outstanding sell job, "You know you want a kitten, I can see you're struggling to walk away!"

Miss Kitty is still queen bee of the RV!

Finishing up pictures from Conroe

We've moved on from Conroe, Texas, but I'm behind on getting posts written! So this is a compilation of the last pictures we took while at Conroe:

We had picked up Carl's granddaughters from school a couple of days -- the second day, we brought them back to the campground and enjoy the pool and miniature golf...

Carl took them to the pool where they found other kids also in the pool (it was spring break week for many schools in Texas = lots of families in the campground), so the girls had a good time in the pool.

After they came back to the rig, Carl was ready for a nap, and the girls were interested in trying out mini golf. I took them over to the mini golf course... as is frequently the case at Thousand Trails campgrounds, the condition of the facilities (including the mini golf course and clubs) is not always great, but we found two clubs that worked for us, and the course wasn't in too bad shape (the pine tags that littered the greens were just additional "hazards" on the course!). We decided to stop counting the score for a hole at 6 (so the most you could score on a single hole was 6), and although we each scored different numbers of strokes for each different hole, our final scores were all 64 for the 18 hole course! 

On another day, Carl installed the new cord end: 

A final picture on the solution to one of the problems I had posted about earlier (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/10/some-projects-around-conroe-situation-2.html) -- Carl got the new power cord end and re-wired it. Hopefully the neutral wire won't end up being stretched/stressed too much.

On our last evening in Conroe, 

...we picked up pizza at a Chicago pizza place, Rosati's...

... and enjoyed it with Kim and Pamela and the grands!

Lianna impressed us with her prowess on the hoverboard -- Carl wishes they had had these when he was a kid, but thought that, if he tried using it now, it would likely result in an ER visit.

We headed over to the Ninja gym where the girls are learning all sorts of Ninja skills...

... warming up with balance tasks...

... doing various pull-ups...

... including bringing knees up to the bars!

They are so amazingly agile and strong!

We enjoyed having nice visits with Kim and Pamela and the girls throughout the week we were in Conroe!

Some projects while around Conroe - Situation 4 + 4A - wiper blades causing additional fix

Continuing with our fixes in Conroe...

Situation 4: We had ordered wiper blades for Gracie (she needs 32"), and wanted to get new wiper blades for the Jeep too and found them on special at Costco. So, on Wednesday, we set about to replace the wiper blades...

Carl had already replaced one of Gracie's wiper blades and had the second one off before I got a picture!

Replacing the second blade

Checking to be sure that it sits correctly on the windshield. (Jane and Jim -- if you're reading this, do you see the "Trust God" sign that you gave me displayed in the front window?!?!)

Carl showed me the condition of the wiper blades - not only were they split....

... but we were concerned that the metal may scrape the windshield if we tried to use it.

Next, to the Jeep... the design of the blade is different, but maybe it will be okay. We got the driver side blade installed...

... but unfortunately, when Carl got the old blade off, before he could put the new blade on, the arm slipped out of his hand and cracked the windshield! Oh no!

Side note: it is frustrating when you're trying to be a good steward and do tasks yourself instead of taking the car to TracAuto or wherever that you add work to your list... :-(

This leads us to Situation 4A, filling the crack in the windshield... 

We had a windshield repair kit in Gracie as there was already another chip we had wanted to fill...

... so Carl worked on the new crack...

... and also filled the other chip in the windshield.

View from the inside of the older chip getting filled.

We had to move the Jeep to a shady spot to do the filling. Hopefully this will keep the cracks from growing...