Days 6 & 7 – heading home
I’m sorry to leave you hanging. I got a little behind on my blogging. If you’re the kind of person that reads the last page of the book first and want to jump to the end … SPOILER ALERT … we made it home.
Bruce got the RV unhooked and ready to head out while I lollygagged drinking my coffee and taking a shower in the RV park bathroom. This RV park had 3 individual bathrooms with showers that had great water pressure and hot water. Very nice. Plus it was weirdly close to both of our Harvey parking spots. I say weirdly because our spots were not close to each other, but both were really close to the pool/bathroom/shower area.
Anyhoo Bruce drove while I had breakfast and practiced my Swahili and basically solved all the world’s problems. Once I had finished that, I hopped up into the passenger side front seat and casually said, “I’m happy to drive if you want.” Bruce declined. But then as we were passing through a town and stopped at a stoplight, Bruce says “how quickly can you get into my seat?” as he’s unbuckling. Luckily I am fast at seat swapping and we were able to complete our Chinese fire drill before the light turned green. So the next thing you know, I’m driving to Waco and Bruce is financially advising at the table in the back.
In Waco we stopped at Magnolia Market for a bit. It was a little different than I expected. I’m not sure why I expected it to be anything but shops with overpriced but really cool decorating paraphernalia. We stopped at the BackYard Bar & Grill for nachos on the way in, mainly because we were walking past it and because Mary & Stew were already eating lunch there. But also because we assumed that any food on the Magnolia Market complex would be really expensive. We were wrong about that too. They had lots of little food trucks around that were decently priced and looked like they had some pretty yummy food. Oh well. Why settle for chicken & waffles, gourmet grilled cheese or a bougie hotdog when you can have mediocre nachos? We peeked in each little shop, usually deciding we weren’t interested, until we had covered the whole complex. Bruce was with Stew & Mary, a little ahead of me, apparently screaming for ice cream. The cutest little boy came up to him and pointed to a place across the complex that sold ice cream. At that point we had no choice. We headed over and bought some.
When we’d had enough Magnolia Market we headed to Dallas. We plugged in at Carmilla’s RV Park. Wish I had a pic. It’s a good thing she lives on a corner. Mary & Stew parked in front and Harvey parked along the side. I’m sure the neighbors loved it. Chelsea (who we have always called Wangui or Baby Doll, but who is about to head to college and has decided to use her first name now) wanted us to go to a restaurant called Babe’s because she thought it represented Texas. They had only 3 things on their verbal menu: chicken tenders, fried chicken on the bone or chicken fried steak. They served it all family style with corn, biscuits, potatoes & salad. Did I mention that Chelsea is a vegetarian? Celinda and David also met us there for dinner. David found out he had cancer shortly after we saw them in 2020. He has now been cancer-free for almost a year. He’s a walking miracle!
I didn’t take a single picture on the last day. We left Carmilla’s around 8:30 and headed back to Wichita. Stew was going on to Table Rock Lake so Mary rode home with us. We got home around 4:00. I unloaded the food, clothes and other stuff from Harvey because Bruce had some work stuff he needed to take care of as well as a meeting at church. At some point during the week I developed a sore muscle along the side of my leg which caused me to limp whenever I walked. Certain positions were no problem, but certain positions caused intense pain. It seemed to be worse when I had been sitting or when I first woke up. So I’m sure I was quite the sight hobbling back and forth unloading Harvey after I had been sitting for 6 hours. But mission accomplished!
