We have been at the Altus AFB Famcamp for a few days now and it has been gloomy and rainy for most of that time. Most of this moisture has been the remnants of a tropical storm out of Mexico and to make all this worse, we are supposed to get some strong northerly winds today. We were only scheduled to spend three days here but due to the weather we will be staying today and possibly tomorrow as well.
Yesterday we made a road trip down to Wichita Falls, TX. to pick up some clothes Joyce had ordered then we had lunch a Chili’s then we drove out to Sheppard AFB.
Both Joyce and I have been to Sheppard. After basic training at Lackland AFB (now part of Joint Base San Antonio) in August 1966 they put me on a bus bound for Sheppard where I trained as an aircraft mechanic on the C-130. I returned to attend C-5 school late in 1969 then came back in 1978 for basic flight engineer school. Joyce came to Sheppard for basic loadmaster training in 1981. A lot of memories were brought back driving around the base.
October 15, 2018
Man, the wind can blow in Oklahoma. It started blowing about 2:30 yesterday afternoon and has been steady all night with gusts up to 40 MPH. It’s supposed to die down sometime this afternoon.
We went to see the new movie out “First Man” which is about Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon. We both thought the movie was a bit boring.
October 18, 2018
Yes, we’re still at Altus AFB waiting until some of the bad weather clears up down in Texas. There’s a lot of flooding going on down that way. In fact, we had a reservation for the Speegleville Park but yesterday I got an email from recreation.gov telling me that the park was closing due to flooding and all folks there were told to leave immediately. We were fortunate to be able to stay for additional days.
Given all of the weather we have made several changes to our travel plans. We won’t be going to College Station to visit the President George H. W. Bush Library until later in the year. We’ll probably make a trip over there while we are in San Antonio. We still plan to head over to Goliad, TX unless the flooding affects that area later in the week. As we always say, “all our plans are written in Jello”.
On Monday evening we had supper at Fat Daddy’s with my good friend Charlie Anderson who was a C-5 flight engineer. Thanks for meeting up with us Charlie and especially for picking up the tab.
Yesterday we decided to drive over to Fort Sill which is just outside of Lawton. Sill is a huge Army post with a lot more amenities than at Altus. Of course we made the oblatory exchange and commissary run.
C-141 Display and Memorial
October 22, 2018
We finally left Altus on Saturday and headed down to Mineral Wells, TX where we spent one night at the Rocker D RV Park. After getting set up in our site we decided to go have lunch and found Mi Fiesta Mexican Restaurant. Very authentic and delicious food with excellent service.
Y’all may recall that we have been having some trouble with our front leveling jack not working. Since the company that made our jacks has gone out of business parts are becoming very hard to find anywhere. After much searching the internet and some phone calls I finally found a solenoid at Colaw RV Salvage in Carthage, MO. that set us back $250 plus shipping.
Well, just for grins I tried it when leveling and it worked as advertised. I moved it up and down several times with no problem so we hope it will be good for awhile. We’re probably going to keep the solenoid just in case.
We left Mineral Wells about 10:30 and headed east on I-20 then picking up I-37W outside of Fort Worth and eventually hooked up to I-35. I-35 is one of the heaviest traveled stretch of interstate in the country making the driving tense most of the way. Given the speed limit is 75 MPH doesn’t make it any easier either. We finally made it to Elm Mott and the I-35 RV Park & Resort around 1 PM.
After getting tucked into our parking space we decided to drive out to the Speegleville Park where we intended to stay until all of the flooding happened at lake Waco. And flooded it did in a big way.
Speegleville Park flooding
The red things are fire ants nesting on the water.
Joyce and I get our mail sent to a mail forwarding service in Brookings, OR. When we want our mail sent we just call them and give them the address for them to send whatever is in our mailbox. Sometimes we have the mail sent to a “general delivery” address so we always try to use a small town post office to make everything easier. All that said, we chose McGregor, TX which is south of Waco since we had planned to camp just outside of the city. The drive to McGregor was twenty-five miles so yesterday we drove down there and picked up the package.
After completing that chore we stopped at a Great Clips in Waco for haircuts and had lunch a a great seafood place, The Catch. They had the best catfish we have had in a very long time.
After lunch we got pedicures done at a little shop next to The Catch.
October 24, 2018
We left Waco about 10 AM and headed down to the Colorado Landing RV Park in La Grange, TX. The drive down was fairly easy considering we were on the two lane US-77. La Grange is the county seat of Fayette County and a great little town. We have been here before when we were volunteering at Goliad State Historical Park. The park staff asked if we would help out with the Christmas program at Monument Hill & Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites.
While here we visited the Texas Quilt Museum which we thought was fantastic. If it had been open we would have toured there again.
After getting set up in our very long back in site we drove into town looking for a place to get some forms notarized and faxed. Later we had a nice supper at the Sealand Seafood and Steak restaurant.
Later.
Barry & Joyce
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