Back in the Lone Star State
After New Orleans on the 10th we decided to take the road less traveled again and headed northwest to Baton Rouge and then down a scenic byway called LA 1 toward Marksville. This was indeed scenic and you get to see rural Louisiana at its finest. This is a huge sugar cane and cotton area and you really get into the Spanish moss and live oak plantation atmosphere along this route.
We stuck a pin in the map and arrived at the Paragon Casino and RV Resort in Marksville. Well not much of either here. The park is about 20 years old and while there are a lot of spaces there's basically no reason to be here. We had a decent back-in but most of the sites are either permanent or frequent visitors as I think the majority of the folks here came from within a 50 mile radius of this small casino to spend the weekend or a couple of days.
After a quiet night we launched off toward Alexandria and then Shreveport where we caught I-20 to the west toward Dallas. When we started up we noticed a really loud metal grinding noise from the engine room in the Flying Scotsman and stopped a couple of times to try to see what might be causing it.
Having a pretty good expressway day we logged about 300 miles, longest so far on this trip, and came to rest at he Bluebonnet Ridge RV park near Terrell Texas. Again a new park for us but very nice and really near I-20 for an enroute stop. It's about 40 miles east of Dallas so we haven't stayed in the past; but were tired. Really nice place with long pull-throughs and super hosts.
So on the 12th we arrived after the latest 2100 mile run in the charming place called Sandy Lake park in Carrollton to clean out the bus and move stuff to the apartment. The Sandy Lake park management and personnel are wonderful and will do anything for you but they just have a really crummy park design and infrastructure. Hot and humid.
So we are here in the Big D and will try to move some stuff back into the burglarized apartment and see what adventure lies ahead for the Flying Scotsman and her crew. As soon as that was accomplished we took the bus some 30 miles south of Dallas to the Freightliner repair place to get the fried alternator replaced where it is still sitting today the 22nd.
Ok what stays in the bus and what do we need at the apartment?
