Wow, OK, it is catch up time. The last time I posted something, we were in Van Horn with the road runners and it was a KOA which was pretty good. Dark, quiet, peaceful ... the kind of place we like. Then we decided to head off to the east a bit. The next day was uneventful and the trip from Van Horn to Big Spring was a nice drive and the park in Big Spring was very good and we had a pretty uneventful night there. Then, unfortunately, we decided to head off for the Dallas area on Tuesday.

The run from Big Spring to Arlington was about 275 miles, which by our standards, would be a long day anyway. But early on, as we are heading due east, we picked up a solid side wind from the left or north which plagued us all day. Once we got out of the park in Big Spring we realized that the wind was so strong that we stayed on the access road at about 40 MPH for the first 100 miles to keep from being blown into the ditch.

The winds approached 55 miles per hour directly from the left side of the Flying Scotsman trying to push us into the gutter all the way. You could taste the blowing sand. We wondered why we only saw a couple of other fools in big rigs like ours ... duh. All the way, we kept looking at parks to stop at, but kept on truckin along. After Abilene, I finally got up the courage to stay on the Interstate at about 50 MPH and it seemed to work OK, but we were right at the edge of control every time we were slammed with another 60 MPH gust from the side.

As we neared Fort Worth from the west, the winds had caused a multi-car pile-up on IH 20 and those wrecks caused a grass fire to start, eventually burning several thousand acres. The area to the right in this photo was on fire and was burning as far as you could see.

Anyway, we are now safely parked in the Treetops RV park in Arlington and visiting with our daughter Leighanne and her husband Brooks who live in Dallas.

Our plan is to leave here on Tuesday and head for College Station and my parents house, spend a few days there and then head south for New Braunfels.