By far everyone’s favorite day was the one in which we didn’t drive for hours upon hours. The snowstorm I drove into the night before dumped a bunch of snow in the night, and we woke up to this:

This is the view out the front window of the RV.

And out the passenger side window. Note the child sized footprints in the snow, where the kids had already gone out to throw snowballs at each other.

After borrowing a ladder from John (good man!) and knocking the accumulated snow off the roof of our slide out so we could slide in (does it ALWAYS take an hour longer to leave camp than I think it will? Does that get better?), we drove into town for provisions. Thank you, New Mexico, for the liberal use of snowplows and sand on your roadways.

We paid the Catholics to park in their lot, wandered around the heart of Taos, and ate lunch in a nice restaurant. It was really lovely. More than one person insisted that we must view the Gorge Bridge, so we drove out to witness it:

Vivian took this picture and look at how amazing the colors are! And also the bridge is quite impressive, as is the extremely deep gorge that just appears out of nowhere.

And before we headed back to the RV park, we filled up the propane tank. Heaty had kept us from freezing the night before, but we weren’t what we’d call sufficiently warm. It turns out we were completely out of propane, and when we turned on the heater, it worked!

The next morning we moved on, back through the mountains—but a slightly different route that was not so terrifying. Many hours and empty fields later, we arrived in Amarillo. We didn’t let a little wind (ok, a LOT of wind) keep us from contributing to the weirdest and most wonderful art installation ever located in a random corn field: Cadillac Ranch. The kids were really into it.

The man who checked us into our RV park said that Amarillo is the windiest city in the US—even windier than Chicago. This doesn’t seem like it should be right, and probably them’s fightin words for Chicagoans, but I can attest to the fact that it was excessively windy.

As we were getting hooked up to the amenities, we solved the mystery of how in the heck we were able to burn through all of our propane before we had even spent one full night in the RV.

This is the photo I sent the RV rental guy. There’s no needle! How am I supposed to tell how much propane is in there?!?

I assumed that once I plugged the power cord in to both the RV and the plug at our site, then power would be flowing, and we would be all set. It seems logical, right? BUT NO. There is another step: you have to find the breaker switch on the post where you plug into the RV park’s power and TURN THE SWITCH ON, or else you are still running on propane and not getting any electricity at all. Total rookie move. I had no idea.

Thomas had figured out about the breaker switch by the time we hooked up in Taos and informed me of my oversight when we hooked up in Amarillo. Then the light bulb over my head switched on, and I realized what had gone wrong back in Lubbock. Sigh. Add it to the long list of Things Learned .

A friend who read the previous post asked if I was too traumatized and was going to cancel our big trip coming up. I responded with a resounding, “NEVER.” The Mega Midwest RV Jamboree is still on, folks! I have learned so much that will make the next go round even better. Watch this space for more RV blogging beginning the last week of April. I am going to make the kids write their own posts, so it will be extra entertaining. ♡