Friday, December 28, 2007  Sleep did not come easily last night as the excitement for our first trip to south Texas as snowbirds was upon us. Awakening at 5:00 AM, the finishing steps readying “Dunn Gone” for the trip were completed, as was last minute packing, or rather throwing things in that we thought might be needed. The chassis battery had run down because of the GPS and other toys had been plugged in for several days. It gave us an opportunity to try the house batteries to start the engine, and it started without a hitch. It was cold, hovering near 32 degrees, as we departed about 7:30 AM. The first hour was uneventful, but then we saw a rather large amount of snow on the side of the road south of Mountain View, and noted the temperature was occasionally below freezing; no ice on the road though, thankfully, though we took it slow and easy (see photo). We traveled AR Hwy 5 south to Cabot, then US Hwy 67/167 to North Little Rock, where we stopped at Sam’s Club at 10:30 AM to return a Christmas gift. While Kay was in the store, I filled up with gas, and noted we averaged slightly over 9.0 MPG, even though Dunn Gone had been started several times and the 4000W generator exercised a few times as well. After filling the tank, I met Kay in Sam’s Club where we shared a hot dog and soda. We departed at 11:00 AM taking US Hwy 67/167 to I-30, traveling south to Texarkana. We had intended to spend the night in Texarkana, but it was only 2:30 PM so we headed on down the road, taking US 59 south. By the way, the GPS—Garmini as Kay calls her—is great, and has kept us on the straight and narrow. Kay reprogrammed Garmini to reflect our changed stops. We are learning to write down addresses of our stops for programming purposes. Our next stop was at Palestine, TX, at Wal-Mart where we refueled (9.6 MPG), bought a knee brace, and spent the night dry-camping. It was our first time to dry-camp in a parking lot. I had read on RV.net that it was not polite to extend the slides so needless to say, we were a little cramped in our bed.