Launch day finally arrived and we departed in style, i.e. under cover of darkness at 6:00 am when no one was around.
First Stop, Bucees! And the beginning of my mileage tracking… I’ve been telling people I get about 7MPG in this beast, but that was based off of one rough calculation and I don’t believe I was towing the jeep. Now I’ve got a few days worth of data and the results are astounding. I’ll add a running average, MPG gauge over in the right panel. My goal is to find that elusive and mythical 7MPG that I believe I saw once (I also think I saw Bigfoot once, too).
Next stop, lunch with my old former boss & his wife in Dallas. We had a great time catching up, getting a free meal and taking a tour of “North Fork”. Damon says, “Hey!” to all you former colleagues and friends. Driving through Dallas we noticed that it was still very wet everywhere. Water levels in the lakes and rivers were still high after all that rain from a couple of weeks ago.
Heading out of Dallas we make it across the Red River and just a few miles into OK we had the tire blowout excitement. See this post for detail. After losing a couple of hours to roadside tire repair we headed to OKC. Oklahoma is also still very wet and appears to have high water in many places.
We continued to Arcadia for dinner at Pops on route 66! Wait for it…… That’s right, we got our kicks on route 66! Burger and chili fries not so great, but still a neat gas station/soda pop market. Sodas from around the world. I even saw bottles of the famous bacon soda that I was given a few years ago. That had to be the worst soda on earth. But at POPS you could find even more bizarre and disgusting sodas. We tried a couple of the more normal cream sodas.
Finally made it to our overnight accommodations, the Hotel Walmart in Edmond. This was a long first day! We need to slow this trip down a little bit. It’s not like I have to get back to work next week or anything. Day one has been so hot, though, we’re trying to get up to the northern latitudes to find some cooler, drier weather as soon as possible.
Day two started with a run for Tina and shopping in Walmart for me. We headed for a famous Round Barn past Pops on route 66. This one has been restored. I guess these are rare so we took a quick look. It was interesting.
Then we headed to our main destination for the day, the Zena Suri Alpaca Ranch. Oh brother did Google Maps fail me! It took us through the backwoods, over hills and hollers. I’m not kidding… I’m sure I heard a creepy version of dueling banjos echoing through the woods. We kept losing signal which caused us to miss a turn and have to retrace our path. The roads were narrow and trees hung low over them. 
The hills were steep and the turns sharp. I busted one of my skid wheels on the back of the RV and I know exactly which dip in the road caused it. Finally we crossed the dam in Disney. That is a narrow dam. Not sure if I was even supposed to be on that bridge! And what’s the deal with little cars that hug the center line when a huge RV is heading at them? They’ve got 3 feet of extra space, I’ve got 3 inches!
We found the Zena Suri Alpaca Ranch through Harvest Hosts. Your membership in Harvest Hosts allows you access to some interesting places where you can park your RV and spend the night while also getting a tour of a fruit and vegetable farm, a goat ranch, an aviation museum an Alpaca farm and much more. We had a great time here.
For my part I herded Alpaca’s, shoveled Alpaca poo, was spit on, kicked and caught a snake! Does life get any better than that?!
It was great!
Pro Tip: For you aspiring young Alpaca poo pellet picker-uppers here is some sage advice: Before heading out to pick up your Alpaca poo pellets take a moment to think about footwear. That’s right, put on a pair of old shoes. Oh I know that sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed at how fast common sense flies out the window when the moment arrives. There he is. The Alpaca rancher is walking by with his snow shovel headed out for some poo pellet scooping action. This is your big chance to help scoop poo pellets and you don’t want to miss a moment so you charge out the door to catch him. Slow down there, buckaroo. Believe me, you have plenty of time to change your shoes. Alpaca poo pellets are profuse.
Also, Tina got to sheer a llama:
I caught a snake in the barn just moments after arriving at the ranch.
I had to put the snake down to hand Tina my phone to capture this action packed video clip of snake wrangling.
Watch the dog take a whack on the face! BAM!
We found out later from Stacy, the Llama owner who works on the ranch, that the snake is Todd. He keeps the mice under control in the barn.
OK Zoe, keep an eye on those Alpaca’s! That black one over there almost kicked me, hard! and the white with tan in the middle spit on me. I just happened to be in the line of fire when one Alpaca spit on another. Nice green grassy spittle on my T-shirt. And I was told the black ones are sometime aggressive and grumpy. 
I had to find out for myself so I walked up behind that black one and gave her a pat on the rump! BAM! Her hind legs kicked faster than you would believe. Fortunately, as opposed to popular belief, I am smarter than an Alpaca. I was standing just to one side when she kicked, no damage to my shins.
As we left the Alpaca ranch we stopped at DQ for lunch and I learned a valuable lesson that I share with you men out there. Apparently there is an unwritten rule that when your wife asks you to hold her ice cream cone that it is absolutely verboten to take the first bite, especially that little curly tail on the very top. I have adjusted the Marriage Meter accordingly.
We traveled from OK to MO and passed through Joplin for a quick look at what an F5 tornado can do. You can still see the results. Then back to KS and north to IA to spend Friday night in Council Bluffs outside Omaha.
Saturday morning we stopped by a local farmers market before heading on through Nebraska to South Dakota and a day at Lewis and Clark Recreation area along the Missouri River. 
We spent some time Saturday and Sunday repairing broken stuff and swimming in the Missouri River.
Next, on to the Badlands of South Dakota.
It’s a bit cooler now and no tropical storms are looming up here. I think we can slow down and smell the Kuchen.