Me and Zollie outside the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature. The sculpture is based on the book “David Gets in Trouble” by David Shannon.

Today we drove from Lubbock to Dallas, leaving behind the dry west Texas for nearly continuous rain. (See Saturday’s Trip from New Mexico | See Monday’s Trip in Forth Worth & Dallas)

Our path from Lubbock, to Abilene, to Dallas (rented a car for two days), and then to Roanoke for the night.

We left our Walmart “camp site”, which proved to be quiet and restful for the four hours I slept, at the break of dawn. I wanted to push us a bit, because I felt Abilene would take a few hours to see and we also had to rent a car and locate an RV park for the next two night. I’ll just say it right now: traveling in our jeep and using motels is SOOOOO much easier than dealing with this big motorhome for multiple reasons. Sure, we can save money a few nights staying at Walmarts (or state parks, some of which allow free camping due to Ann’s disability status). However, eventually we have to shower, especially in all this humid weather. I sweat just thinking about getting out of bed!

Anyhow, I digress. As we left the Walmart parking lot we quickly ran across this oddly named place: Bone Daddys. We weren’t sure whether it was a BBQ restaurant or some kind of sex shop. It sure was colorful on the outside!

Almost immediately after Lubbock we hit rain, light in some cases, heavier in others, that trailed us into Abilene.

Fortunately, the rain stopped just long enough to let us look around the Storybook garden area of downtown Abilene where we took these photos. We had the whole place to ourselves (Abilene is dead on Sunday mornings, which is great for parking the motorhome!

Me, Ann, and Zollie (named for the drug Zoloft). Zollie is her PTSD dog, though he’s so skittish she spends more time calming him than he her. He’s quite smart, but more cat than dog.

Ann getting her Suess on.

Mr. Green Eggs & Ham seemed perfect for the cook.

Rosemary fiddling with her video camera/iphone combo.

Ann’s mother Rosemary quickly grew bored of the downtown characters, so we went on our own. We soon found this Flamingo.

And, we found some flooding, which didn’t surprise us given the rain.

I’m sure glad we did, because we stumbled upon this jeep that was part of a 12th Armory display. It looks like it spent much of its time outdoors with the other vehicles.

We also walked around The National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature. There Ann took a photo with St. Nick.

When we finished with downtown it was only noon. We still had an hour to go before we could take Rosemary to the Frontier Texas! Museum. So, we killed some time at the Lowes hardware store buying a power inverter so Rosemary can watch movies on her computer as we drive.

We made it back to Frontier Texas! by 1pm, just in time for the clouds to open and rain to pour. We were very happy to have an indoor activity so we could avoid the rain. Ann’s mom seemed to enjoy the museum, but quickly ran out of steam, so we strolled through the gift shop on the way out, finding this coffee cup that could only be from Texas:

Monday we plan to tour Fort Worth and see a museum there. We also plan to make a couple quick trips that will feature (I hope) some jeeps.

 (See Saturday’s Trip from New Mexico | See Monday’s Trip in Forth Worth & Dallas)