Becoming Texans

When we arrrived in Livingston last Monday, the Escapees RV Club gave us a map that contained all of the places we needed to go to get our driver's licenses, vehicle registrations, etc. We planned to take care of those things on Tuesday.

The site we got was in the old section of the park, in "the trees". Beautiful setting, but no way the Dish satellite would work. I tried unsuccessfully for 4 hours to find the elusive satellites, but to no avail. I even moved the dish 4 times, finally admitting defeat (the mosquitos won), and we watched fuzzy, snowy TV (remember, it's NOT camping, it's RV'ing!). On Tuesday, we asked to be moved out of the trees into the newer section of the park, where a few spots had opened up.

Since we had to move the rig, we decided to begin the process of becoming legal Texans...so, Escapees map in hand (no Garmin, since we had a map!), headed off to the inspection station to get our VIN numbers verified on the truck and 5th wheel. Guess what? The map was soooo bad, we missed the inspection place by several miles. Of course, they didn't have the addresses on the map, only a dot, name, and phone number. I called and found I was 5 miles north of them...after finally getting there, we got the VIN numbers verified, got our paperwork completed, and headed back to the park to get set up again. This time it took less than a minute to get the satellite working.

On Wednesday, we completed the process, by getting plates, and applying for drivers licenses. You have to do these things in a specific order: 1) get VINs verified; 2) get plates; and 3) get Driver's Licenses. Of course, it didn't tell us that on "the map". So we did 1, then 3...and oops, that didn't work. We were redirected to item 2. Lucky for us, because you needed to show them your actual SSN card, which we didn't have with us. So we were off to the tax assessor to get our plates, only to find that we needed a picture of the weight sticker on the 5th wheel. Another trip back to the rig to collect all of our missing information. Finally, after getting our plates, we headed back to the DL place. If you have a current DL, you just have to take an eye exam, fill out an affidavit, and pay your fees. I mentioned to the lady at the counter that I had had Lasik eye surgery, and that one eye saw close, and the other far. She said that might be a problem. The problem was that the close vision test was with the right eye, and my left eye is my close eye. It took me 20 minutes to read that line...and I only got it after she told me the first 2 letters were all I needed to get. She noticed I was struggling, and turned away from me (on purpose I think), and kept herself busy not watching me. I saw my chance, and snuck my left eye over into the right side and read the correct numbers.

We found out later, after talking with other campers, that everyone thinks the map is really, really, bad.

Saturday, the weather turned ugly. Low to mid-30's, rainy and cold. Quite a change from the 70's we had been experiencing. Today is Easter, the rains have departed, but it is still cloudy, with temperatures in the low 50's. I played chef today, and cooked up a shrimp dish, with cupcakes for dessert. Not bad!

We will be leaving tomorrow, heading Northeast. It's two weeks from our appointment at Carraige, in Millersburg, IN, to get our warranty work done. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!