We arrived in lovely Lubbock on Sunday evening in time to make a quick stop at Prairie Dog Town.

We loved their little yips and their flapping little tails! We also found it extremely amusing to see the golf course next door fighting a losing battle to keep the little diggers off their greens.

This is a hole in the ground. I thought I was taking a photo of a cute little Dog poking out of a hole, but there was too much glare so I got confused on which hole to focus on.

This is a Prairie Dog eating a carrot that Vivian hurled at it. She used the word “hurled,” which made me giggle.

We made it to our RV park just in time to get in, hooked up, and connected to not-the-greatest wifi. But it was sufficient to allow me to teach my childbirth class. I am so committed to childbirth education, I brought my pelvis and baby along on my vacation.

After my class, we had dinner and went to bed. All good!

BUT THEN. At 4am we woke up frozen solid. It was in the twenties in Lubbock that night, and our heater had gone out!!! We piled on extra clothes and tried to get more sleep. But really, this was the beginning of The Longest Day of My Life.

We gave up on sleep by 7am, got up and starting messaging Gary, the RV guy. Who didn’t immediately return my messages. We didn’t know what to do. Should we turn back? We were still able to light our gas stove top burners, and Gary told me the tank was full when I got the RV. Surely we didn’t run out of propane? We were so lost and confused. And really, really cold.

I called my bestie, who is working in San Francisco. I knew I was waking her up, but we were desperate. She and her bf are the only RVers I know. Plus her bf is super handy. I needed to talk to him. Unfortunately, he was as stumped as we were. But, they gave us the golden suggestion to get a space heater. Since we are camping at RV parks and have electricity, we could just use a space heater and not freeze. AND we could continue with our trip!

Gary the RV guy finally got back to me, and he said all we needed was more propane. Which I tried to do! The dang Love’s down the road had a broken pump, which I found out after wasting 20 minutes waiting on the guy to come out to fill the tank. I figured we could find some propane on the way, so we struck out for Taos.

Only all this dithering about the heat put us a couple of hours behind schedule. So I called ahead and spoke with the manager at the RV park in Taos. John was extremely kind and said he would meet us up there an hour or so after the office closed to let us in. He did ask what route we would be taking and mentioned a chance of snow, but I was having a hard time understanding him, so I just said we’d see him and carried on with what Google maps told me to do.

It turns out there’s hardly anything in between Lubbock and Taos by way of actual towns. We rolled into Clovis, New Mexico, STARVING and cranky. We stopped at the slowest IHOP in existence. I was getting nervous, because our schedule was already tight, and John was waiting for us!

Google lied to me and said that Wal-mart in Clovis had space heaters. They did NOT. More time wasted. Feeling a little panicky now, I ran into Lowe’s and bought the very last space heater in Clovis.

Meet Heaty, the tiniest space heater ever.

We were really pressed for time now and couldn’t justify stopping for propane, so we carried on toward Taos.

This little trip was meant to be a practice run for a much longer trip I’ll be taking later with just me and the kids. We thought it would be smart to work out the bugs and figure a few things out with another adult around, before I try doing this as the only person over 12 years old. Here are some things I have already learned:

Six hours is too far to drive in one day, especially if you’ve driven that far the day before as well. And that is six hours according to Google (whom we have already established as a liar). RVs are slower than regular cars. Also, children have to stop to pee a lot. So, it is much more than six hours on the road.
You should buy propane when you can.
Space heaters do work, but the floor is still EXTREMELY cold.
Listen to the man who is trying to tell you not to drive through the mountains during a snowstorm.

The drive from Clovis to Taos is empty of people (though there are plenty of feedlots packed with a lot of cows and giant piles of manure covered with huge sheets of plastic held down with old tires) but it is lovely. It changes from cotton fields to desert to low hills to mountains.

By the time we got to the mountains, it was getting pretty late. And also, it was starting to snow.

What followed was an extremely harrowing drive through darkening mountain passes that were starting to accumulate snow. And I was driving a big ol RV full of my family. It was frankly terrifying, and something I never want to experience again.

We finally got to our RV park, fully two hours after closing, in the pitch dark, in a snowstorm. But there was faithful John, who was so nice and really was just glad we hadn’t died getting there. Same, John. Same.