Friday July 10th 2020

The temperature peaked three degrees cooler than Thursday, but when your talking about 104 vs. 107 it really doesn’t mean much. The humidity is in the mid thirty percent range and climbing. This morning there was some wind to keep things a little cooler. The first four hours of the afternoon were pretty much dead still. It was very uncomfortable. Almost on the stroke of 4PM a very strong wind out of the southwest arrived to stir up the heat. It has been blowing strong ever since.

One of the down sides of travel in this virus avoiding time, is there aren’t any inside tourist attractions to visit when it doesn’t make sense to visit outside attractions. Either the inside ones are closed or they represent a higher risk experience than I want to visit. That is the situation I found myself in today. My original plan was to visit the Palo Duro Canyon State Park, but the forecast temperature in the canyon was ten degrees higher than Amarillo. I don’t need heat stroke.

I spent the day working on travel planning and reservations. It is a real challenge in these uncertain times. Each state and in some cases each county is making decisions based on their own ideas of the best interest of their citizens. All of a sudden some arbitrary public health threshold is reached and they establish a new set of restrictions. When it comes to travel it is most often a quarantine of some sort. Every quarantine is different. You need to study the “guidance” or order carefully. In some states the executive order has the force of law and in others it seems to be much weaker. Either way, once they establish the rule, they don’t want me so I don’t want them.

Right now there are no travel restrictions on my intended path for the next few weeks, but it could change at a moments notice. While I was in New Mexico last week the governor decided travelers weren’t welcome. It could happen again. Once I leave here next Tuesday I plan to spend ten days in Oklahoma followed by a couple weeks or more in Arkansas. The reservation in Arkansas is too far out to be comfortable. I’d give the odds at fifty fifty on being able to keep the whole reservation.

Most of the RVs that stop at this park only stay a night or two. They come from all over the country. Many may be very new to RV travel. In addition to rental units there are many with temporary tags. I am seeing a lot of new things. This morning my neighbor got out a set of weights and proceeded to spend an hour with them. This was a full dumbbell set. He would do a couple of lifts at one weight then take a break before changing the weight and repeating the cycle. The guy didn’t look particularly buff. I wonder if his trailer was overloaded with all the weight.