Everything's Bigger in Texas, including Car Trouble

Howdy, y’all. It’s been a while since I last wrote, but we haven’t actually done all that much other than dealing with truck problems. It’s definitely been the hardest and most frustrating part of the trip, but we’re hopefully back on track now (fingers and toes crossed).

• The trouble began just outside of Valentine, TX, or roughly the middle of nowhere: the truck started to rapidly overheat and the engine light came on. In three very big slices of fortune, there was somewhere safe to pull over, there was cellphone reception, and it wasn’t crazy hot: there haven’t been too many occasions while driving through Texas that we’ve had all three at once!

Cue thousands of boring 'but is it art?' conversations

• As an extra bonus, we’d broken down literally right outside Prada Marfa, an art installation of a replica Prada store complete with merchandise, in the middle of the desert.

• We’d signed up for the Good Sam Roadside Assistance scheme (roughly like the AA for RVs) before we left, which meant they organised a free tow for us. It took a couple of hours to arrive, but the massive tow truck took our truck on its bed, and then pulled the caravan behind, with us all squeezed into the tow truck cab. To add an extra degree of difficulty, we were treated to a huge hail and dust storm along the way. We got the caravan towed to the RV park we were meant to be staying at in Marfa, TX, and then the truck towed to the local garage.

Because why wouldn't there be an amazing Greek food truck in small town Texas?

• Marfa is a cool little town. It used to be a small rural cowboy town, until a famous New York artist set up an installation of his minimalist sculpture in some abandoned buildings on the outskirts of town in the 70s. Several decades later, it’s still a small rural cowboy town, but mixed in are chic galleries and hipstery food trucks. It’s a really unique place, and we got a little of the feel of it, although doing it all on foot while the truck was in the shop was hard work for the kids in the heat.

• The problem with the truck was the water pump, and Armando the very overworked mechanic got it replaced. We were back on the road! The adventure continues…

You really don't want to break down when it's this hot outside

• …until we break down again later that evening. We’d driven for close to four hours on the hottest day we’ve had in the States (38 outside when we stopped for lunch, and a frankly nutso 43 outside the car while driving later on). After stopping to check in at our RV park in Sonora, TX, the truck wouldn’t start. This time there was no cell reception, and it was still boiling hot at 7pm. Another call to Roadside Assistance on the office landline, another long wait, and we eventually got it started: a suspected case of ‘vapor lock’.

If you have to break down, do it with a nice sunset behind you

• We tried to carry on in the morning but it was clear the truck wasn’t right, so instead of following the spreadsheet to some city fun time in Austin, we headed for San Angelo, the closest place with a Ford dealer. The diagnosis this time was a dodgy fuel pump, and the contingency line in our budget took another hammering.

• There are two schools of thought about people: folks are generally good, or folks are generally dicks. I mostly like to follow the former, and it’s always nice to get some supporting evidence: it was a pretty tiring and stressful few days, but everyone we encountered, from mechanics to fellow campers, did their best to help us out.

• When planning the trip, we’d made the call to lock the itinerary in and book all our campsites in advance: you lose the sense of road trip spontaneity, but we figured that with kids we didn’t need the hassle of having to figure it out on the fly, and a lot of the good sites get booked out during the US summer holidays. The truck issues had put us four days behind schedule: to avoid having to change weeks of bookings, we needed to try and catch back up as quickly as we could, so unfortunately we had to chop Austin down from four nights to one.

Batting lineup

• Our super-condensed Austin experience was still a pretty good one: the classic bats and donuts evening. Having been foiled by a thunderstorm in Carlsbad, resident bat enthusiast Mo wasn’t about to miss out again, so we headed for Congress Bridge, where a million or so of the little critters roost and come out after sunset to feast on bugs. Bat-fanciers line the bridge looking down, and families in the park below jostle for the best picnic blanket position. Mo brought along a sign that she had made to hold up to the bats. We didn’t quite get the swarm that apparently occurs later in the year, but we did ok.

You say doughnut, I say donut

• I bloody love Voodoo Doughnut, and we’ve been lucky enough to chow down in Portland and Denver in previous visits to the States. They have a 24-hour location in the middle of Austin’s party district, and it was full of post-bat or mid-drinking punters. This one isn’t quite as good as the others: the shop is fun but so big it loses the sense of lo-fi quirk, and the donuts themselves seemed like they’d been Texas supersized too. But I still ordered enough that we were still eating them a couple of days later.

• Having been truckless for much of our time in Texas, we didn’t eat as much Bar-B-Q as anticipated, and had to skip the trip to Lockhart, the official BBQ capital of Texas. I vow to make up for it later on in the trip, and I’m probably post-rationalising a little bit here, but I think I prefer the regional styles further east: Texas BBQ is typically dry-rub and no sauce, and I’m all about the sauce. We did have a decent crack at the Bar-B-Q joint within walking distance of our San Angelo RV Park: Mo and Kitty dig the sides, and gave their mac’n’cheese, beans, and mashed potato a highly commended.

• I don’t feel like we gave Texas a fair go, and there’s heaps of places I’d like to have a look at another time. That said, it felt really good to be rolling over into Louisiana this afternoon and hopefully leaving all our truck trouble behind in the Lone Star State.

• I’m just going to write this down here, because saying it out loud in real life doesn’t seem to be working: Mo, for goodness sake, it’s really late so can you please try and go to sleep!

BEERWATCH: I wasn't super impressed with the Texas breweries we tried, so there’s a couple of bronze equals and then a clear winner from out of state. Shiner is a very big brand in the these parts, best known for their bock, which is a very easy-drinking take on the German style. Their Bohemian Black Lager is tastier, and shares 3rd place with Revolver Brewing’s weird-in-a-good-way “Blood and Honey”, a strong blonde ale with orange peel, honey, and spices. Comfortably the best brew this week comes from Florida’s Cigar City, whose “Guayabera” Citra Pale Ale is bloody delicious and at 5.5% practically a session beer by US standards. I’m looking forward to working through the Cigar City range as we head east.

San Angelo Grand Prix

MOMO’S PLAYGROUND REVIEWS: The RV park in Marfa wasn’t the best for kids: no pool, no playground and blimming hot, although Mo gave it a bonus point for having lots of resident rabbits. Kitty and Mo resorted to having a makeshift swim in our laundry tub. The San Angelo KoA on the other hand was well set up for mucking about while your truck gets fixed: a decent playground, a rec room with both Elvis pinball and an air conditioner way gruntier than our caravan’s, a very mini mini golf course, four-wheel bikes for hire, and a pool temperature just a notch below bath.

TUNEWATCH: This week’s guest DJ is little Kitty, whose clear favourite song is “Funky Town” by Pseudo Echo, especially if you change the words to “Mango Town” while feeding her frozen mango. Any lull in conversation and she’ll start pointing at the stereo in the van and doing her Jersey Shore Fist Pump dance.