October 29, 2009. Day 102 Traveling to Logan NM.

On October 29th, while staying in our Topeka KS campground, we woke up at 1:50 in the morning to the wind blowing so hard that our full slide-out awning was flapping so bad that we were unable to sleep. It is an awning that covers the roof of the slide-out to keep rain and other things like leaves off so that when you pull it back into the RV stuff doesn’t come in with it. It is usually tight but also has some play in it to allow for some wind. With the wind like it was though the entire extra part of the awning was opening up and acting like a sail. It was shaking the RV back and forth and making loud thumping sounds. After almost an hour of trying to sleep with all that commotion we finally had to wake the kids up and pull the slide-out in so we could sleep the rest of the night. That worked and we all went back to sleep but it made for a very hard night. We were still trying to get to Albuquerque a day earlier than planned because our refrigerator had not been working right for a few days but now it seemed to be working again. Just in case, we wanted to get back soon anyway. We left Topeka, Kansas and drove 531 miles in 9 hours to Ute Lake State Park in Logan, New Mexico. Since we have a NM State Parks camping pass we can camp with hookups for only $4. We were surprised when we got there that the campground was due to close the following day and we were only one of two coaches staying in the entire park. This had been the longest drive we had made on the trip so far and it rained very hard all day even snowing for a while thru Texas and then NM. The wind was blowing hard too so all this made for a very hard day’s drive.