November 2018 – After we left the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana, it was late fall and high time to head to the southwest to warm up and dry off. Buddy has written about our stay in New Mexico, but there were some highlights before that I’d like to fill in.

A beautiful sunset filled the sky as we headed west and south.

The first was along I-70 between Indianapolis and St. Louis. Most interstate rest areas are nothing to write home about, but we’ve found a few in our travels that are unique, and such was the case at the Cumberland Road Rest Area in Marshall, Illinois.

Cumberland Road Rest Area in Marshall, Illinois

As we walked towards the building we noticed a small group of people staring at something on the ground right by the entrance door — with smiles on their faces. When we got closer we realized they were all looking at a beautiful black cat.

A small crowd by the entrance was admiring this beautiful black cat.

The cat was just sitting there by the door, blinking slowly in the bright morning sunlight. People were wondering aloud if he was a lost pet or a runaway or if he was waiting for his owner to finish up in the bathroom.

He seemed very calm and quietly sat there blinking in the bright morning sun.

Then a fellow joined the group and explained that as a trucker who had come to the rest area many times before, he knew this beautiful feline.

His name was Ghost, the Rest Area Cat. Just like the trucker, the cat had a regular route, going from one farm house to the next in the area.

But he seemed to like the digs (and mice) at the rest area best, so he hung around the rest area a lot and made friends with the regulars and the transients. His human friends kept a good eye on him, though, and gave him a collar and a very cool nametag.

His nametag says: “Ghost – Rest Area Employee.”

If your travels ever take you on I-70 westbound, stop at the rest area that’s about 10 miles west of Terre Haute and say hello to Ghost!

We got back on the interstate and the scenery buzzed by our windows in a blur. We all got white line fever and the places we drove by all began to blend together.

But a brief stop at Fort Gibson Lake in Oklahoma stood out. This is a popular boating and fishing spot for local sailors and anglers and it’s a lovely spot for photography.

In the midst of enjoying the views, we suddenly heard the whoosh of madly flapping wings and rapidly slapping webbed feet on the water. We looked up to see a huge flock of cormorants flying in from around the point and landing in the bay in front of us.

Wave upon wave of cormorants kept flying around the point and splash landing in the water. We’ve never seen so many cormorants in a single flock.

For at least five minutes the birds kept coming, until the whole bay in front of us was completely filled with birds bobbing in the water.

And then after another vigorous round of splashing and flapping, they flew off and the water became calm again!

Throngs of cormorants flew into the bay. This is just a few of them!

We got off the interstate and traveled on a slew of secondary roads that took us through lots of small towns. As we approached Albany, Texas, we decided to have a look around. What a neat little find this town turned out to be!

We’d crossed a few states since leaving Indiana, but we knew we were in Texas when we saw the big Texas star on the side of a building.

The building turned out to be the Whitney Theater, home of the Dance Theater Company. Albany is a small town in size but it is big into the arts!

The Texas star!

Whitney Theater, home of the Dance Theater Company.

The old jail house in Albany is now a modern art museum with a renowned collection. Outside the Old Jail Art Center there were lots of interesting sculptures. One was “Tex the Roustabout.” He got Buddy’s attention!

The Old Jail House Art Center has a well renowned collection of modern art. Tex the Roustabout stood outside, pipe wrench in hand.

Albany is is the county seat for Shackleford County and has a pretty courthouse.

The county courthouse for Shackleford County is in Albany, Texas.

Our favorite spot in Albany was Sander’s Drug Store. As we walked across the antique mosaic sign on the ground, we felt like we were walking into another era.

Sander’s Drug Store was the highlight of our visit and gave us a glimpse of another time.

Inside there were people enjoying refreshments at tables and the antique looking pharmacy was out back.

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Not just “Prescriptions” but “Radio Phonographs” too!

We got a latte and took a seat outside the store to watch the world go by on Main Street. The couple at the next table started chatting with us and telling us how much they love this little town and that it’s their favorite weekend getaway spot from their home in Abilene 35 miles away.

A nice spot out front to while away the hours.

Albany may be a cute and artsy town today, but its roots are in cattle and oil. High up on a wall inside Sander’s Drug Store a Texas Longhorn looked down at us.

A Texas Longhorn.

When we began wandering the streets of town again we found a metal sculpture of a Texas longhorn too as well as a plaque memorializing the Texas Cattle Trails of 1875 to 1890. Cattle herds from Texas were driven up to the railheads in Kansas along these routes.

The arts in Albany pay homage to the Texas Cattle Trail history of the area.

Petroleum production was the other big industry in the area and still is. A replica oil pump outside an oilfield services office sported the high school Albany Lions football team helmet.

An oil services company has a huge oil pumper out front with a football helmet on top!

As we walked around town we came to a stand of trees that had dropped the most enormous acorns we had ever seen. These things were huuuuge!

Well, as they say, everything is bigger in Texas, even the acorns!

Everything is bigger in Texas!

Even though we blasted across a few states to get back to the warm and dry southwest quickly, these few stops along the way made for some great memories.

We scooted along pretty quickly for a thousand miles, but we’ll remember these special places and moments!

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A little more info:

• Albany, Texas
• RV camping near Albany, Texas
• Where are these places?

Our RV travels in Oklahoma and Texas

• Welch OK is A-Okay for a Fun Fall Fair in Oklahoma

• Cross-Country Highlights on an RV trip from Indiana to Texas
• Rainbow’s End – Escapees RV Club Headquarters!
• Caverns of Sonora – Enchanting Caves in Texas
• Boquillas del Carmen – A Taste of Mexico in Big Bend TX
• Terlingua, Texas – A Living Ghost Town in Big Bend
• Boondocking at Big Bend National Park – Cheap & Scenic RV Camping
• Big Bend National Park – Mountain, River & Desert Hikes
• Big Bend National Park TX – Vast and Varied with Views!
• Casita Travel Trailers – Lots of RV in a Tiny Package
• Slip Sliding Away – An Ice Storm in Texas
• A Glimpse of Big Bend National Park in Texas
• Big Bend Bound – To Texas!!

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March, 2015 – We have been members of Escapees RV Club since our first year of RVing full-time, and we have always wanted to visit the Escapees headquarters in Livingston, Texas, just north of Houston.

After visiting the stunning Caverns of Sonora in south-central Texas and getting a disc brake conversion done on our trailer in Forth Worth, we scooted east, stopping at the Casita Travel Trailer factory for a quickie tour, before spending five days at the Rainbow’s End RV Park on the huge Escapees campus.

Escapees RV Club headquarters in Livingston, Texas

Escapees RV Club is an amazing organization that is as varied as any club could possibly be. Drawing together RVers of all shapes and sizes and ages and interests, Escapees provides a huge range of services for all of us, from bootcamp training sessions for new RVers to specialized RV weighing stations to overnight RV accommodations of just about every variety (ownership, long and short term RV site rentals, cheap dry camping, park model rentals, etc.), assisted RV living for the elderly, mail forwarding services, an RV magazine, and on and on.

Rainbow’s End RV Park in Livingston, Texas

When we arrived at the Livingston, Texas, headquarters, the annual Escapees rally called Escapade was taking place in Tucson, Arizona. At that event, an exciting new facet of Escapees was introduced — Xscapers — a new branch of the club that is dedicated to younger RVers.

This is an exciting development in a very dynamic club that has always sought to find new and creative ways to support the RV lifestyle.

We arrive at the park.

Escapees was founded by Kay and Joe Peterson, a couple that was among the pioneers of the full-time RV lifestyle many decades ago. They were avid “boondockers,” and they overnighted in their RV without hookups to electricity or water on a regular basis.

With boondocking in its roots, most Escapees RV parks offer dry camping sites, usually for $5 per night (a little more for non-members). We were delighted to find that the Escapees Rainbow’s End RV Park in Livingston has three wonderful dry camping sites to choose from. After we walked to each site to check it out (none were in use — and we were told they rarely are!), we settled on a nice, big site called “Dry Camp A.” Unlike the smaller full hookup sites, this site was big and had a great feeling of privacy with lots of trees bounding two sides.

Dry Camp A — a super deal at $5/night!

Ironically, the heavens did nothing but pour pitchforks on us for our entire stay. After taking one sunny pic of our RV set up in its Rainbow’s End RV Park home, we saw nothing but driving rain for five more days! Mark started calling our site “Wet Camp A.”

If nothing else, at least all that rain gave us great opportunity to use soft rainwater to wash our buggy and clean off the road grime from the nasty ice storm we’d driven through!

The redbud trees were in bloom all around the Escapees campus

The Escapees compound in Livingston is enormous. Not only is there the expansive Rainbow’s End RV Park, but there are park model homes and stick-built homes on sites scattered all around the outskirts of the park, plus the CARE RV-based assisted living center and its affiliated RV sites at one end, and, of course, company headquarters and offices at the mammoth mail sorting facility.

Smack in the middle of all this is a tiny ice cream shop called the Rest Stop.

The Rest Stop Ice Cream Shop is in the middle of it all.

We had assumed that everyone on the Escapees property was an RVer, so it was a big surprise to find that quite a few people live there in houses without RVs. We got chatting with Theresa at the Rest Stop as she scooped our ice cream, and discovered that although she has dreams of casting off in an RV someday, for right now she enjoys living in a house in the community and hearing the travel tales from RVers who stop in for ice cream. She warmly recounted meeting an RVing family with lots of kids who came by.

Theresa gave us a warm welcome and yummy ice cream at the Rest Stop

Escapees Corporate Headquarters was just steps from our site, “Wet Camp A,” and we stopped in for a tour. Because almost the entire Escapees staff was at the Escapade rally in Tucson at the time, there was just a skeleton crew working, but the group taking the tour numbered 12 or so people anyway! These free tours are offered twice a week.

Escapees RV Club Headquarters

One of the most impressive aspects of the tour was seeing the Escapees mail sorting facility. Escapees forwards such a large volume of mail to its mail forwarding clients everyday that a US Mail semi-tractor trailer truck has to deliver it all. Escapees even has their own zip code, and they get more mail than the post office in Livingston! Everyday, the mail truck backs up to the sorting facility, triggering a daylong flurry of activity for some 20 people.

We watched an enormous machine presort the mail and then walked through a big room filled with filing cabinets where each client has a folder holding their mail. It was a very impressive operation!

A US Mail semi trailer rolls up with the day’s mail.

We learned that Escapees will soon be offering a service where clients can view a scanned image of each envelope they receive and then opt to have it opened or shredded. This could come in very handy for time-sensitive or important documents that you’re waiting to receive.

The Escapees community tour usually includes a trolly ride all around the campus, but the trolley driver was at Escapade, so we didn’t see that part of the tour. Next time!!

A cute trolley takes visitors on tours of the Escapees Rainbow’s End campus

But we did see the plaque honoring founders Joe and Kay Peterson when they were voted into the RV / MH Hall of Fame in 2001. We had seen this plaque at the RV / MH Museum in Elkhart, Indiana, where all the leaders and innovators in the RV industry are honored (if you are ever near Elkhart, a stop at that museum to see the vintage trailers on their Road Back in Time is a must! Our blog post is here).

Joe and Kay Peterson, founders of Escapees, were honored by the RV / MH Hall of Fame

Out in the lobby, our guide showed us two really fun little sticky note pads that used to be included in new members’ packets. These were mini invitations to “Friendship Hours” that you could fill out and stick on your RV neighbors’ doors to invite them to a potluck or other gathering. What a neat idea that was!!

Sticky notes to invite friends over…

…the modern day equivalent is RVillage.com

Nowadays RVers rely on social media to reach out to both nearby neighbors and RVing friends many miles away. But there was something very homey, cozy and friendly about those little sticky note pads, and I wasn’t the only one in the group who said, “Wow… Where can I get some?” Unfortunately, Escapees doesn’t make them any more.

Up on a wall in the main mail sorting room there is a wonderful display of dozens of issues of Escapees Magazine, and I was proud to see a few of our covers in the mix.

Escapees Magazine covers on display in the mail sorting facility

Escapees Magazine is written by members for members, and the editors are always looking for beautiful photos and technical “How To” types of articles to include. If you are an Escapees member, and you’ve learned something on the road that you want to share, write it up and send it in!

We saw a few of our cover photos in the mix

I wandered down to the CARE facility one afternoon, curious to learn more about this unique program. “CARE” stands for Continued Assistance for Retired Escapees. Participants in CARE live in their own RV in a site next to the big CARE clubhouse, and for $874 a month they get an RV site, help with dumping and propane tanks, three meals a day, housekeeping and laundry services, transportation to doctor’s appointments in town and weekly transportation to grocery shopping as well. What an amazing deal!

Escapees CARE Center

The clubhouse is the hub for CARE participants, and when I poked my head in one room, a group was enjoying watching a live concert being streamed in from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, on a huge flat screen TV. I was told that CARE will be offering adult daycare to elderly residents in the general Livingston area soon too.

Many of the RVs in the CARE RV sites have big, beautiful, permanent porches built out front. One of these with two huge wooden rocking chairs really got my attention. It just looked so inviting!

Many RVs in the CARE center have beautiful big porches built out front

As I was admiring it, an elderly woman came out on the porch in a bright red sweater and waved to me. Her name was Nedra, and we ended up chatting for quite some time. I asked her about CARE and she said, “Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the clubhouse!” and off we went. She proudly showed me the dining hall, which is a big, open, cheery room. She told me the food was wonderful! Visitors can enjoy an inexpensive meal there too if they let the dining room know by 10:30 a.m.

The Dining Room at the Escapees CARE clubhouse

RVers can workamp at CARE as well, and I talked with several RVers who really enjoy helping out this way, either in the dining hall or driving residents around town. Couples work together in teams, and in exchange for a minimum one month commitment to work 28-36 hours a week (per person), you get a free RV site at Rainbow’s End (with metered electricity) and you also get three free meals a day at CARE. If you work in the summertime, you receive a stipend to cover electricity for air conditioning.

Workampers can also work at the other end of the Escapees campus at the Rainbow’s End RV park. I was told that if you work at least 20 hours a week for a month or more, you receive a certificate good for a free night’s stay at any Escapees Rainbow RV Park for every 20 hours you work. We chatted with an RVing couple who really enjoyed defraying their travel costs this way, working at three or four different Escapees RV parks each year.

Kay and Joe Peterson’s immense creativity has built an incredible company that caters to the many unusual and unique needs of RVers

We really enjoyed our stay at Rainbow’s End, and after spending some time in Livingston, Texas, we came away even more impressed by the diversity of the Escapees RV Club than ever. Thank you, Kay and Joe, for creating a special virtual home — and a true community — for all RV travelers!!

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More info about Escapees:

• Join Escapees RV Club – And say you were referred by “Roads Less Traveled” (if the spirit moves you!)
• Escapees CARE Program (Continued Assistance for Retired Escapees)
• Xscapers – Escapees resources for young RVers
• Kay Peterson – The Inspiring Life Story of a Full-time RVing pioneer & the Co-founder of Escapees

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