Travel Towards Family

Traveling to visit family is always one of the highlights of our year. In the Spring, as we our going through tornado alley, we always expect to encounter some bad weather. Fortunately, we just experienced a lot of thunderstorms and tornado watches this year. Our first stop after leaving the beach was San Antonio, a city we love for the biking trails, Riverwalk, The Alamo, Missions, and so much more. This year our daughter met us there, and when it wasn’t storming, we went to the San Antonio Botanical Garden, which was truly beautiful. In Austin, we tried a new RV Park, Austonia RV Resort. It had big sites with full hook-ups and was all concrete, but wasn’t anything special. Mike did take me on another “fun” date to the Austin water treatment centers; seriously! Actually, the Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory is located in the water utility center. We actually saw an unbelievable amount of butterflies and some interesting birds in the woods and lagoons along the Colorado River. All in all, not a bad date! We stayed in two new to us RV Parks in Dallas; Cedar Hill State Park and Lake Shore RV Resort. Cedar Hill was a nice park; however, the weather was pretty yucky while we were there, so we did not get to enjoy it very much. The Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center was just down the street, next to great biking trails, and shopping. Hopefully, we will get to stay there again in good weather. We really enjoyed Lake Shore RV Resort in Garland, TX; especially because it was so much closer to family. We definitely went out to eat a lot at many great restaurants located on the lake in nearby Rockwall with Erica and Shane, and my sister Laurie and her husband Mark. Mike and Erica had a great birding trip at White Rock. Erica finally saw her first painted bunting, one of our favorite birds! She was so excited! Erica and I did a lot of shopping and took a fun road trip to Tyler, Texas to see their famous Rose Garden. Next we stayed at Arrowhead State Park in Canadian, OK again. Mike spotted a Texas Brown Tarantula in our campsite. Yuck!!! We stopped in Joplin, MO for Mike to take a driving break, and I took the truck to stay with my mom a couple of extra days. Mike drove the RV by himself to our Lees Summit, Mo campground, to get our RV oil changed, to another campground in KC, and to our Omaha campsite. It was really nice for me to stay with my mom for 11 days, and get all kinds of chores, appointments, errands, etc. completed for her. I really appreciate his willingness to do all the hard work to give me quality time with my mom and family. Fortunately, he had some nice down time and was able to relax and check out several birding locations. My visit with my family was wonderful, with four out of five of my Mom’s children getting to spend Mother’s Day with her. Our next stop was a brand new county RV park in Omaha in Lake Cunningham. It was truly a wonderful private, large, concreate site nestled in the trees. The park has a very nice walking, biking trail, lake, canoe/paddleboard rentals, fishing and lots of family activities. The park was so nice, Mike’s family or friends came to visit every day! I did leave once to visit my college girlfriends and do some grocery shopping. We definitely will stay at Lake Cunningham campground again!

Next we are heading to Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.