May 1 to May 4

On Friday we visited the U.S.S. Lexington in Corpus Christi. We entered the ship on the hanger deck, a huge open area where they worked on the planes. There were many exhibits throughout the ship, but on the hanger deck there was a ship's store, a cafe, and a large theater where we watched one of two movies included in the admission price. We explored the flight deck and below decks too. We were told it would take four hours to really see it all, but we did not feel we had that much time since Toby was in the RV under the same bridge where we parked when we went to the aquarium. Charlie was a little disappointed because the whole ship was converted to a museum and there were very few areas that were as they had been when it was an active ship. But the shear size of it was impressive, and we learned some of the history of the Lexington and her crew, about other ships, and about Pearl Harbor. So it was a great experience. We were thinking of visiting San Antonio but the big city was rather daunting when it came to the RV and keeping Toby comfortable. So we went on to Fort Stockton on Saturday. Charlie sent another e-mail to David after we arrived in Fort Stockton, TX, so I am copying from him again.... “The air sure feels and breathes great here. Its warm but it will cool down a lot after dark. Its 9pm now in Florida, but its almost sunny enough to get a tan here. I have to get a gas cap tomorrow, I left it on the pump. I hope I didn't loose too much gas. Now it's up to $2.05. This is mostly a mobile home park with way more space than usual between the homes. A 2 acre corner of the park is for the RVers. Its a good spot for 14 bucks. It was humid all the way past San Antonio for maybe 100 miles and was even drizzling. Then slowly the clouds thinned and the land looked dryer. Our neighbor that pulled in after us is traveling circle ways around the country, they started in Wisconsin back a few months ago, must have been to California already, and are now heading to Florida and then home. They are older and have been doing this for years and have had a bunch of different trailers and SUV's. Now they have a suburban and are pulling a thirty foot Dutchmen trailer that the guy says has given him nothing but trouble since it was new. He says he is almost ready to junk it. He is getting better than 9 mpg with a lot more room than we have though; plus he has something smaller to drive to sightsee. That's the way I may be going but I'm going to do a lot of research and thorough inspections of any trailer. This RV is comfortable to stay in but the seats are very tiring to sit in longer than 4 hours, and its real hard to see from a left side angle when I have to yield.” ...... Then today Charlie wrote.... “We went in the Carlsbad Caverns for almost 2 hours and did the big room loop. That's the best part of the caverns. I got our parks pass there for 80 bucks and that covered the 12 buck entrance fee. Now I have to take advantage of it and I don't have any national park visits planned other than Mammoth Caverns in Kentucky. Our neighbors last night are from Sebastian, Florida. Ron is a retired Florida Highway Patrolman and Cindy works part time. They have a 13 year old male dog named Cisco who is one third wolf and half white shepherd. He has hip displasia and they have a ramp for him to get in the nice sized fifth wheel. They also get around 9 mpg and have a GM truck which I think is a 2 ton four door. Now we are at the Carlsbad RV Park where stayed 2 years ago. Its hot and I hope the amps are high enough for the air conditioner thats running now. It seems slow. This morning I defrosted the fridge because it wasn't chilling in the lower part enough and there was a lot of frost. It defrosted pretty fast, under 3 hours, and now its working good but I smelled something funny after we got hooked up. It smelled like ammonia and I had heard a faint bubbling sound as the fridge was defrosting. Hopefully its nothing. Tomorrow I think we will go to another state park near Roswell called Bottomless Lake State Park. Leigh got the brochure on it, it looks interesting, and we haven't been to Roswell before. We won't have Internet there”...... The fridge and Air conditioner are working okay so far tonight. We are meeting a lot of people from Florida!