Does this look familiar?

When I saw this blimp in the middle of the west Texas desert, I had no idea what it was, then it shows up in the Denver newspaper. Huh. Customs surveillance – who would’ve guessed?

It’s time to say goodbye to Texas for a while.

I’m excited to get back to my journey, but I was a little sad to leave this beautiful person, and surprisingly, her dogs! I shed a few tears while driving away. It was a struggle to get out of there. Getting all my stuff together, I completely forgot about my water filtration container sitting on the drawers in the camper. It was full, and when I moved the camper to load it up, of course it fell over and spilled water everywhere! Here’s a free tip for you: even if you are only moving the camper a few yards, make sure everything is hunkered down BEFORE you hook it up! Ugh.

Goodbye for now Texas, and Texas peeps, feel free to keep in touch: call, text, Facebook, blog, whatever.

My next stop was Lafayette, LA to see my friend Janet. I thought it would be a quick and cheap stop, but hah! No. My car did a couple of odd electrical things last week, and the next morning after getting here – totally dead. Instead of just replacing the battery, I took it into the dealer, which might have been a mistake and cost me a lot more since it did turn out to be a bad battery, but now I know all systems are A-OK! They did note that my tires were close to bald (I knew this but was putting off buying new ones), but it turns out that stuff in Louisiana costs less than many other states, so I went to Costco and bought tires too! For those of you concerned about my safety, I am good to go for the rest of my trip after this costly stay in LA.

Oh, crazy thing! If you have ever been to a Subaru dealer in Colorado, it is mayhem and you are lucky to get your one hour service visit done in one day and there is NO possible way you can get a same day appointment! In Lafayette, they got me right in, and when I showed up at the dealer, the service bay was completely empty! Same at Costco – got me right in and out in an hour! Unheard of in CO.

Lafayette is close to Baton Rouge, and I wanted to go on a mission. Even though she had been feeling like crap, I knew Janet would be up for it, so off we went. We revisted the sphere

Then we turned into Bowling Groupies! Yes, we went to a bowling tournament. Hey – it was free entertainment!

I know, it doesn’t seem like an exciting adventure, but we got a kick out of it. It was cool how they transformed this conference center into a huge bowling alley. I actually know somebody who is competing here, but over the next couple of months, there will be 50,000+ bowlers here, so I didn’t think we would run into him, but we were on the lookout. Bowlers are an interesting bunch – I’ll just leave it at that 😉

Tip of the day: When they are forecasting rain at 9AM in Texas, be prepared early!! At 3AM I heard a couple of rain drops and thought “oh, that’s peaceful” and then, “Oh no! My windows are open!”. Peaceful raindrops one minute turned into a severe thunderstorm one minute later. I ran out to the camper in my jammies, through pouring rain, thunder and lightening, and heavy winds. That may have been a mistake, because when I opened the door to close the windows, a ton of rain blew in, BUT I got the windows closed. I was soaked.