April 6, 2024 - April 26, 2024 -- Paris, TX to Thousand Trails Lake Conroe, TX
Written By: Wendy
After all the sicknesses of the past month, we were desperately ready to come out of the fog and reintroduce ourselves to society and get some much needed socialization at the Escapees Solar Eclipse Event. We planned to meet up with our friends from Bash, and we were all so excited to see them! We were staying at the fairgrounds, first come first serve style, so we we timed our arrivals to get there at the same time. We pulled in right behind our friends and greeted them with whoops of excitement, giant smiles, and big hugs. We also warmly greeted two other families that we had been to three other events with. After spending so much time together, we had grown closer, and both families felt almost like relatives that you see regularly throughout the year. It was comforting to see them again and catch up on where we'd all been since we last saw them about 6 weeks ago.
The next day was an all day lot crawl. Like at Bash, each section had a designated time and type of food to make and share with fellow event goers. The only difference was that this lot crawl was scheduled to last all day, as opposed to only one evening like at Bash. Our section was deemed with making breakfast. I made rocket ship fruit skewers and was grateful to get our cooking out of the way early on so that we could enjoy the rest of the day and just stuff ourselves silly. We spent the day wandering around the fairgrounds, seeing others dressed up in alien and astronaut attire to go with the theme while sampling different space food and drinks.
The following day was the big event that we are all there for: the total solar eclipse. To be completely honest, I was only mildly excited for the eclipse. I had seen two partial solar eclipses before, and they were cool, but not even close to incredible in my opinion. So when we woke up to clouds that morning and everyone was anxiously talking about driving elsewhere to find clear skies, I shrugged it off and was just happy to be spending a week with friends. During the start of the eclipse, we all gathered in the central field to view the eclipse together. It was mostly cloudy, so we had fleeting glimpses when the clouds would part for a few moments before disappearing again. It made the hype of the eclipse more exciting to hear a crowd of a couple hundred people cheer for a few seconds when they could finally catch a glimpse. The kids played happily together with rockets and glow sticks, and ate space themes cupcakes while we counted down the minutes. We looked all around us and, as far as we could see, thick clouds surrounded us. I was still not feeling all that disappointed and enjoyed the camaraderie of the whole group together. As the minutes ticked by, the skies started to darken slightly and the temperature started just barely cooling off. It was getting closer to total eclipse time. Then about five minutes before the start of the total eclipse, the skies suddenly opened up and it was complete blue skies. The entire group erupted in cheers and whistles. Finally, the moon completely covered the sun, and it was a total solar eclipse. I took off my glasses since it was now safe, and, well, to be completely honest, my mind was totally and utterly blown. It was one of the absolutely coolest things I have ever seen in my entire life. There was a fiery rim around a black sun, and it was purely beautiful. It looked like dusk outside, and the glow sticks that the kids were playing with were actually needed to be able to see. Parker was twirling in circles yelling, “Is this the magic?!! THIS. IS. THE. MAAAAGIC!!!” We were all cheering and speechless about the wonder that we were witnessing. It was four minutes of stunned amazement. Then the moon shifted, and the total eclipse was over. We all put our glasses back on and wandered back to our RVs in a daze to continue on with our day.
The rest of the week was spent hanging out with our friends and exploring downtown Paris. We relished in the extra help with our kids that our friends provided. Our kids all played so well together that we could all go for long stretches without parental involvement and just let them play. We traded off kid duties and did a mom's night out and dad's night out and each had a date afternoon with our spouses. For trivia one evening, we recruited our same trusty babysitter from the West Coast Reunion Event we went to in Winterhaven. He and a friend watched all 4 of our kiddos while the adults enjoyed trivia and happy hour across the street. The community feel of raising kids and having support throughout the day everyday was a breath of fresh air in the slough that parenting tends to be when kids are little. Our babysitter, a 12 year old boy, even came over a few times to ask if Parker and Caroline could come out to play, and then off he would run with the two of them for half an hour or so before returning them home. Or our kids would wander into our friends trailer and play for 20 minutes while I cleaned the dishes in peace. The moments of silence was amazingly restorative, and it made us never want to leave all our friends! So we pulled out our calendars and compared dates and things we wanted to see, and we planned a full 3 months of travel with our close friends and their two kids for the summer and fall. Problem solved!
Our pizza party that week was another smashing success! The crowd at the event this week was mostly older retirees that we hadn't interacted with a ton yet, so we weren't sure how many people would show up. When you say free food, though, people always come running! We had our longest line yet and served probably close to 100 people that sunny afternoon. It was Parker's birthday the following week, so we had a little birthday celebration with singing and a cookie cake. The other kids at the event were all so sweet and gave him homemade cards with drawings of pirates and treasure. They are pictures that he still cherishes in his treasure chest. People mingled and talked with others that they hadn't yet met at the event, kids laughed and ran around chasing other and collecting bugs and grass to put in Parker's new bug catcher. As the crowds dwindled and the last pieces of pizza and mixed berry pie were eaten, we knew that we had once again had a successful day that fulfilled our mission of bringing people together and spreading kindness so that others would pass it along. The only unsuccessful moment of the day was after all the other kids had run back home and the sun was starting to set, Parker crawled into his bed well before his bedtime looking miserable. He had a fever and was complaining about his ear hurting. It looked like we were in for another ear infection and not completely out of the sickness woods yet.
A few days later, on a cloudy morning, we gave hugs all around and said good bye to all our friends. We had no other upcoming events planned, so we knew that the two families that we had been to now 4 events with, we wouldn't be seeing anytime soon. They had slowly become such good friends and reassuring faces during this new adventure and time of uncertainty, so we were sad to see both those families go unsure of when we'd see each other again. Our other friends who had kids the same age as us were planning to meet back up with us in Bentonville, AR in about 6 weeks. We were sad to leave them as well, but at least we knew we'd see them again in the not so far off future. We packed up, hitched up, and waved good bye.
Our next stop was Thousand Trails Lake Conroe, about an hour north of Houston for 2 weeks. We weren't expecting to know anyone, but while we were pulling in, we saw a cute little family playing outside, and we just happened to know that cute little family! Scott stopped the truck, and I immediately jumped out and ran over to say hi. We had met them at the West Coast Family Reunion in Winterhaven and they had kids around our kids' ages and our kids had spent hours and hours playing together. We found a nice large spot near theirs and were excited to spend time with more friends. It was crazy to us the number of people that we knew on the road after only having traveled for about 6 months and that we kept running into people we knew in random places.
Parker's ear infection cleared up after a couple of days, and we met another family with two kids around the same age as well that were camped only a few sites away. Between our three families, there was always a kiddo knocking on our door or one of our kids was running off to someone else's RV to play. I once again enjoyed the communal style of living and shared responsibility of taking care of the kids. One day, one family had a sick baby, so we took their other two daughters for a chunk of the morning. Another day, I had a lot of meetings for work, so our kids went to their RV to play. The support was welcomed, and the amount of time spent together over those two weeks help to nurture quick friendships.
The highlight of our time at Lake Conroe was Parker's fifth birthday. Scott and I had been planning this day for months. Back in January, when we were route planning and Scott was searching the area, he just happened to come across a pirate ship ride, the Jolly Adventure Ship, on the lake that was about 15 minutes from our campground. If you haven't already gleaned it from reading our other blog posts, Parker is obsessed with pirates. For the past several months, he has lived and breathed pirates. He wears his pirate vest, hat, and eye patch daily and insists on calling everyone matey and him being called captain. He at times will even wear only sock because that obviously means that that foot is now a peg leg. Some friends we met a while back said that he was essentially a method actor for a pirate. And a very good method actor might I add. Needless to say, when Scott and I found the Jolly Adventure Ship we were ecstatic. When we arrived at the pirate ship, we were greeted by several pirates, decked in full pirate attire and talking just like swashbuckling sailors. Parker was in awe. We set sail and throughout the ride, we danced like pirates, searched for treasure and found it with mermaid who was sailing on a small raft at sea, had a water gun fight, sword fought, sang songs, and were sworn in as real pirates. It was 90 minutes of pure pirate heaven for Parker, and we were sad to leave the ship when it docked.
After we said good bye to our new pirate friends, we realized that there was a restaurant right next to the pirate ship that had a playground, (This is a major thing in Texas - we went to so many restaurants that had playgrounds next to the outdoor seating, and personally, I think that this should be a standard for any restaurants that deems themsleves as "family friendly," but I digress...), live music, and a crawfish boil, which Scott is obsessed with. The two pounds of crawfish with the live country music playing in the background while the kids played on the playground was the perfect birthday afternoon for all of us. After we had our fill of crawfish and pop songs that we redone in country (think Britney Spears with some twang), we headed back to our campground because our birthday festivities were not over yet! We invited our new friends over for a pirate pizza party. It was one of our smallest 50 pies parties so far, but it was nice to have an intimate party where we were actually able to sit and chat and enjoy the company of new friends. It also poured rain during part of the party, but the adults were safely covered under our awning and the trees, while the kids danced and twirled in the rain like kids do. They splashed in puddles and floated Parker's new fleet of foam pirate ships in the rivers that were forming. We ate pizza, sang happy birthday, and had chocolate cake, and when Parker went to bed that night, he asked if we could have the same birthday next year. I think that means it was a success.
The next week at Lake Conroe continued in the same way as the previous week. We played with friends, explored nearby trails, and finished up some projects. As the week came to a close, we once again said good-bye to new friends with plans to see them down the road in the fall or winter. As we drove out of Texas, Scott and I surprisingly felt some sadness. We had been in Texas for the past 6 weeks, and now we were leaving. We had really enjoyed our time in Texas, but felt like we still left so much unseen, so we knew that we'd be back. We were excited for the next part of our journey into Southern Louisiana. We loved New Orleans when we had gone several years ago, and we were excited to go back. And we would have our first visitors come to meet us since we started traveling - my parents were coming to Baton Rogue for a week with us. So we said good bye to the desert, cactus, hills, and forests of Texas and hello to swamps and buoys of Louisiana.