Here’s another look at our recently-completed RV adventure across the US from our exclusive series for The Independent, highlighting the section of the journey across southern Arizona and into New Mexico, with amazing sights that included Sedona, Tucson, Tombstone and the stunning migratory sandhill cranes of the Willcox Playa Wildlife Area:
https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/us/american-road-trip-arizona-new-mexico-b2598440.html
See more of the sandhill cranes here:
(RIP Ruthie the Rescue, 2008-2024)
Now that we’re home again, we can finally pay a fitting farewell to our canine companion of the past 10 years. Here are Simon’s words…
I’ve never been lost for words before. You know, spoken, articulated words said out loud, to people. But that’s not it. I can still talk about many things, the important and the mundane. But not about our dog, and the grief it has generated having had to ask the vet to euthanize her.
OK, those are the words I can’t say. I cannot, under any circumstances, in the days and weeks following the act of taking another creature’s life, try to articulate anything about our Ruthie that doesn’t end in tears. And tissues. Lots of tissues. And eyes that feel like they’re full of sand and ash. And a heart that feels like it has a lead weight inside.
“It’s just a dog,” some might say and, in many ways, they are right. It is, or was, just a common or garden household pet. There are hundreds of them in the streets around us, every day, everywhere.
But it was a living, breathing, reactive pet who had been part of our household for nearly 10 years, claimed from a dog rescue center in 2015 and a permanent fixture with Susan and myself ever since.
At 4am on May 26 we had to end that life, that lovely canine companion, in the face of a growing distress that seemed to be escalating quickly and inexorably with no effective cure or palliative measure at hand. The vet agreed with us, but it was still our essential decision, our fateful, conscious act to end a life that had become a tale of torment. It was our call.
But that’s not the issue. Our Ruthie was 15 or 16 – no-one could be really sure; she had been a stray, and the vet’s best guess, from looking at X-rays that showed a fair bit of arthritic build-up, was that she was around six or seven when we adopted her – and that’s a pretty decent age for a labrador, a breed that is often ‘elderly’ by 10 and straight up old by 12. She had already beaten the odds and survived to an age where humans would be gasping for breath.
And that was the issue. She was gasping for breath, not constantly but regularly, and often at night, when everything sounds and feels worse amid the darkness that closes in and amplifies all your fears and concerns. It was a condition called laryngeal paralysis, something quite common in labradors, especially at such an advanced age. We knew it and had been aware of it for at least a year; Susan thinks a bit longer than that.
Either way, it had become a daily reality in recent months, not always obvious but a serious background issue to a dog that was still always up and about, ready for the next adventure, the next place to sniff. And oh, she loved to sniff. She lived to sniff. She spent much of her days sniffing anything and everything that didn’t move, and some that did. She would have been the ideal sniffer dog for the authorities, a regular bloodhound in labrador clothing.
She especially seemed to thrive on our travels, both in and around Florida and further afield on trips to Michigan and North Carolina. One of the reasons we decided to take off on our “A Year On The Road” RV escapade in the first place was so we could take Ruthie on the biggest adventure of her life, a chance to really sniff the open road and the vast array of olfactory delights to be had along the way.
In the multi-year planning of the trip, we weren’t sure she would even make it to the start line. Her vet was happy enough for us to take her, but we would need to see other vets along the way, keep her essential medications and vaccinations up to date, and seek out urgent medical advance if she showed major signs of distress.
She did, on two occasions, but both were related to upset stomachs, probably related to too many sniffs in transient dog parks where another dog had probably left trace contamination. On both occasions, she bounced back immediately with the aid of antibiotics, and she was soon ready for the next location, the next new set of sniffs.
But the laryngeal condition was still there, a background menace that occasionally flared into open distress in the form of a coughing fit or heavy panting. One vet described it as “like trying to breath through a straw.” But labs are tough old birds of a furry feather; they are masters at disguising their symptoms and hiding the underlying distress. And Ruthie rarely let her symptomatic guard down. She was a total trooper. To my eye, she had a few moments of concern but then bounced back to her normal nose-dependent best, an elderly example of her breed, sure, but still largely a fully functioning one.
OK, we’d had to compromise. Ruthie was no longer able to undergo any real workout, no more scenic walks and hikes. “Do not exercise this dog,” was the stern warning from her vet back in Orlando, so we had invested in a doggie cart from Petsmart, an $80 adjunct to outdoor adventuring without the strain. We could pull her along, get our own level of exercise, and still stop for plenty of sniffs along the way. On the beaches of Texas and the state park trails of Louisiana and Alabama, she got to admire the scenery while putting in zero effort. Reluctantly, of course, because no dog truly wants to travel without their paws on the ground, but orders were definitely orders, and exercise was strictly off the daily menu.
However, as the final few months of our extended road trip ticked away, Ruthie had trouble sleeping through the night. She developed moments of incontinence, which instigated the indignity of having to wear a doggy diaper when inside the RV, while her ability to shed great clumps of fur – her enduring canine super-power – seemed to increase. Her age was finally showing, but still she soldiered on, unwilling to sit things out when we reached a new campground and she could at least take her nose on new investigations of the immediate surroundings.
By the last week of our epic 12-month voyage around the country, we had reached the grand finale of a stay in Disney’s Fort Wilderness campground, a fitting exclamation point on our year-long adventure as well as a quiet celebratory moment in a 20-year journey for Susan and I in our Disney/Orlando writing career together. Ruthie met an armadillo and two extra-large chipmunks while also trundling around the extensive grounds in her wagon. Everything came together in one glorious Florida sunset.
Sadly, that sunset was also for Ruthie. Within a week of being home, the laryngeal paralysis was staking an ever-larger claim on our dog. The breathing issue was now flaring up significantly several times a day. Worse, the nerves in her back legs were inducing clear and distressing physical discomfort. The lack of any real exercise had caused her muscles to atrophy to the point where her hips were clearly visible through her fur. We took her to see her regular vet, who prescribed a strong pain-killer but also furnished us with a slightly chilling prognosis. The medication would help, she explained, but we were definitely on a final count-down. It might be two weeks, it might be as much as a year, but we needed to be alert to a point of no return.
As it turned out, she had two weeks.
After the long haul around the U.S., we had to take another long journey almost immediately up to Michigan on family business, something we had postponed in order to take our RV on the road but which was now a pressing concern. We packed a (small) bag and set off for the two-day journey, stopping off in Knoxville, Tennessee, overnight and completing the drive on a late Wednesday afternoon. To our relief, Ruthie slept most of the way, then was awake to some serious front-yard sniffing on reaching our destination. Equilibrium restored, we thought.
Thursday night told us otherwise. Awake and fussing to go out at 3am, Ruthie relieved herself but then struggled to get back to sleep, turning around in her bed multiple times in clear discomfort, and not the usual I’m-not-quite-sure-how-to-get-comfortable routine that most dogs do from time to time. This was the nerve problem writ large and unmistakable, a cry for help I still didn’t fully recognize. Susan was more alert to the issue but, with all the work we had to do on the house, Friday passed without either of us thinking another vet visit would probably be wise.
Friday night was worse. Again she needed to go out in the early hours, but the nerve issue wouldn’t abate for more than an hour, her back left leg twitching in involuntary spasms.
We, or I should say, I, still didn’t read the signs properly. It was the Memorial Day holiday weekend and there was more work to do. We could wait until Tuesday and go and see the vet then, avoiding the ‘emergency’ fees and, perhaps, getting stronger medication that would ease the nerve problem.
At 3am on Sunday that lack of foresight was shown up for the folly it was. Our dog was awake and in unmistakable distress bordering on agony. Even her labrador sensibilities of not showing any pain were wiped away in a clear message. Her twitching and breathing issues were at a head. Even though she couldn’t speak, the look in her eyes said everything. Help me, she articulated. Please help me.
It was a look that ripped at the shreds of our hearts, an urgent message of misery we could no longer ignore. We needed to find a vet, emergency hours or not, and it had to be now. I could curse myself later, but now I had to initiate a solution, the one I had ignored for much of the past week. Susan was readily in agreement.
Thankfully – and I do give thanks for this one piece of cold comfort – the attendant small animal clinic of Michigan State University was only 10 minutes away and fully staffed for just such a situation. We were in the car and on the way within a matter of moments (forgetting even to remove my retainer in a rush for the car keys).
Within five minutes we were checked in and awaiting the duty vet’s consultation, our Ruthie showing few signs of her immediate discomfort but agitated all the same (she hates the vet’s and can recognize one straight away). We knew what we had to say to the vet, but it’s the message that all dog owners fear to deliver. Should we or shouldn’t we? Are we reading the signs right? Do we ask the vet to take her life? Do we make The Decision?
The vet was calm and understanding personified. More medications might help, she said, but the fact the previous pain meds hadn’t worked was a clear sign that we had probably passed the point of no return. If that’s what we saw and thought, she would support our decision. We would euthanize.
Now comes the point where it’s hard even to type, let alone talk about it. I had gone through this routine with another dog, some 30 years previous, and it had been a terrible moment, a heart-crushing resolution. This was worse. Much worse. Were we, truly, correct in what we were seeing? Most of the symptoms Ruthie had been displaying had flickered off. There was no clear sign of what we had witnessed just half an hour earlier. Were we sure?
The vet then gave us the one, vital, piece of the puzzle we had been lacking. The laryngeal paralysis was primarily a nerve condition, she explained, and it affected both her breathing and her spine/hip issues, which accounted for the uncontrolled twitching and muscular spasms which made it look like she was trying to run away from her own body. This was the symptom that most alarmed us and which had brought us to the emergency moment.
And then there was The Look. The one that said ‘Help me’ in no uncertain terms. In this final, fateful moment, we had to decide that ‘help’ meant ending her life, not prolonging it. That level of distress was desperately real and desperately unavoidable. The Decision had to be acted upon.
While Susan and I were led to a “comfort” room where we could be with our pet for her final moments, Ruthie was led away to be prepped for the process. There, on a soft blanket printed with cuddly pandas, we communed with our pet. Petting and patting, stroking and soothing, we said our silent goodbye.
And then she licked my face.
Ruthie never licked us. That had never been part of her – many – charms. She could be affectionate in her own way, a kind of stand-offish sociability that never broke out into open affability. We called her The Moody Intellectual for this notable demeanor, a character trait we had grown to love and admire, and which, somehow, perfectly suited our relationship; a partnership in exploration and adventure.
Now she was indisputably saying goodbye with a gesture of pure love and affection that totally melted my heart and remains my abiding memory of a household pet that totally crossed the line from “just a dog” to a genuine family member, a being of real humanity. In the finality of her life, she simply laid down between us and let the life force leave her body, finally at peace with the awful condition that brought us to this terrible fate.
And that’s why I can’t even start to form the words about it without dissolving into more tears and inarticulate sobs – deep, racking sobs – that are my only defense against that terrible decision to take another creature’s life, whatever the evidence to justify it.
Fortunately, we have many, many friends and family members who have rallied around at our distress with an outpouring of love and understanding.
To them, I say a heartfelt ‘Thank you’, along with this (long) message of explanation why I can’t just talk about it. From The Look to The Lick, I was fortunate to have known our Ruthie, but that feeling of having a hole torn in my heart will be a long time in passing.
We’ve already highlighted how Texas really surprised us with the quality – and extent – of its beaches, and we thought it was worth underlining that element of our Year On The Road travels with another snapshot video. This is Whitecap Beach, Corpus Christi, heading towards Padre Island National Seashore (in our previous video). This is where we discovered an unexpected opportunity to go beach driving. So we did…
All in all, Texas boasts around 370 miles of beach delights (that’s about 40 miles longer than the distance from London to Edinburgh for our UK friends and followers!), and we thoroughly enjoyed practically every mile of it. The City of Corpus Christi was also a very pleasant discovery, and there was even more in store as we continued our north-easterly route along the coast.
The travel may be over (for now!), but we still have plenty of material to share from our recently-completed Year On The Road RV adventure, and here is another snapshot video from the Texas leg of the trip, highlighting the wild – and completely natural – Padre Island National Seashore. This pristine 66-mile stretch of barrier island along the south Texas coast is one of the few remaining coastal prairies in America and feels like a true wilderness in its own right, rich for exploring and packed with bird life:
This whole area was completely new to us and we would certainly come back this way again. With the happening city of Corpus Christi and miles of unspoilt, sandy beaches a metaphorical stone’s throw away, it is the ideal blend of urban setting and sheer nature. The video didn’t fully capture the wild spirit of the National Seashore, but you can still feel the windswept wonder of it all.
While we were in South Texas, you may remember we got the chance to visit Boca Chica Beach, home of the official Gateway to Mars. Well, official in the mind of Elon Musk, anyway. This is where you’ll find Starbase, which is Musk’s bid to create his own spaceport, capable ultimately of sending people to Mars. Starbase is currently the focus of his Starship heavy-launch project, and it was truly amazing that we were able to stand right next to it and take this video of the set-up…
Back in Orlando again, it’s time to tot up the final mileage and trace our entire route (in 2 maps) around the US. We reached West Glacier, Montana, at our furthest distance from Orlando at almost 2,700 miles away, albeit we reached there via a distinctly circuitous route that involved fully 12 states!
The “return journey” from there was also far from a straight line, taking in another 10 states before completing what was essentially a giant circle of the Midwest, the North, South West and Southern states. For much of the last 5 months we were close to the Gulf of Mexico before coming back into Florida via Pensacola and the Panhandle area, where we were definitely able to relax a bit (albeit keeping more than one eye on staying out of the way of some seriously stormy weather).
So, with no further ado and a bit of a fanfare – “Ta RA!!!!!” – our final mileage comes to, wait for it…35,186 miles since we left home on May 14, 2023. In our RV, Fati, we traveled a total distance of 9,846 miles, while in our trusty little Ford Fiesta, Nippy, we added a whopping additional 25,840.
Somehow, we’re all still in one piece, albeit Fati has been in for several repairs and 2 full services, while Nippy is heading for a fourth service today and has needed new tires, windshield wipers and two air filters (!). Needless to say, we are immensely proud of our Ford-engined Winnebago RV, as well as our little Fiesta, and they both now deserve a good rest.
Will we have more travels to report anytime soon? The debate is now on at Chez Veness! We DO have a fair bit of work to catch up on first, but there is already talk of an East Coast RV tour, as well as a possible trip out West to the areas we missed this time, namely Washington, Oregon and Northern California, as well as more of Colorado.
So, stay tuned for further travel bulletins, and, if you have liked and enjoyed our blogs, please leave us a comment and be sure to check out our YouTube channel for a series of snapshot videos of the trip on this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5dY0TcznDGkOY8BQUkpQg
Bye for now…!
As keen-eyed blog readers will know, we have just hit the 11 month mark in our grand “A Year On The Road” RV trek across the US. After Louisiana, we arrived in coastal Mississippi, our 23rd state in this epic voyage.
Since our last monthly update, we have covered another 181 miles – a totally sedate travel distance at this stage of our journey (especially when we covered more than 2,200 in the first month!).
In the last month we have moved from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Biloxi, Mississippi, and our traveling has been a lot more focused on the areas close by, rather than trying to cover vast distances quickly. Even including the last two months, we have only gone a total of 672 miles in our trusty Winnebago, Indefatigable (or Fati for short).
Mind you, we have still covered some territory in our trusty tow car, Nippy, putting an additional 2,534 miles on our little Ford Fiesta (and 3,991 in the past two months), which shows that we’ve completely changed the balance of our touring – going shorter distances in Fati but doing more exploration in Nippy.
Now, with just a month left of our travels (but still more than 550 miles from home), it definitely feels like the end of our grand adventure is firmly in sight, which is very hard to contemplate after such a prolonged – and intense – period of traveling.
In total, we have come 9,225 miles in Fati since leaving home, and another 24,604 in Nippy, for a grand total of 33,829 around this amazing country. Eat your heart out, Hardest Geezer!
Today marks ten months since we locked the door to our house in Florida and set off for a year-long adventure in an RV. Here’s what we learned during the past month:
When someone is trolling along the beach using a metal detector, all the RVers camping beachside lose their ever-lovin’ minds trying to figure out which alarm is going off in their rig, and shout, “What’s that beeping? I’ve never heard that beeping before!”
Oh, wait. No. Maybe that was only us.
“All hat and no cattle.” It’s a saying in Texas, and if it’s directed at you, it’s not a compliment. We don’t have the hats and would be gored to death in the first ten minutes if we tried to have the cattle, and when that became obvious, Texas stepped up. We continue to be amazed by the incredible kindness we’ve been shown, and we think we now understand what “Don’t Mess With Texas” is all about. Mess with one, you’re messin’ with ‘em all, and if one of them takes you into their fold, they’ve all got your back.
We now know how to diaper a dog in under 10 seconds. She now knows how to stand still for 10 seconds. And we shout and cheer about how beautiful she looks when she plays “dress up.” So far, she’s buyin’ it and is happy to wear her “fancy nappy.”
When you smash a mosquito on the inside of your windshield, don’t use hand sanitizer to wipe away its bloody carcass. You’ll only make it worse.
If you do use hand sanitizer and make it worse, tell yourself and everyone else you meant to create that big, nasty smear so you can revel continuously in the glory of your victory.
Louisiana! Home of the best crawfish, shrimp, and gumbo in the world! Big, steaming pots filled with boiling goodness all over the place! Happy families gathered on the front lawn around a table covered in a mountain of orangey-pink “mud bugs,” enjoying a gorgeous Sunday feast! But not for you. Because all of the restaurants are closed on Sunday, so you’re having a McDonald’s Kids Meal. At least you get a prize.
Covid sucks. I (Susan) am tempted to say it sucks more when you’re in a 36-foot space, but really, it sucks no matter where you are. That big pack of N95 masks we brought with us? Thank God for foresight, because they’re keeping Simon safer, and we’re grateful for that.
The end of Month Ten means there are just two more months left of your trip, and you have now entered some sort of freakish time warp in which days only last, like, 45 minutes, because surely we just posted our What We Learned During Our Ninth Month On The Road blog a week or so ago. What the actual hell…?
Somehow we’ve reached the three-quarter mark of our grand RV adventure, and we’re looking at another month of travel that completes nine full months on the roads of America.
January was very much a “rest” month, in which we were largely in one place, down in the southwest of Texas, but we got back under way again at the beginning of February, turning north and east to skirt along the Gulf Coast of the Lone Star State, a part of Texas we’d heard a lot about but had never visited before.
Setting out from Donna, close to the Mexican border, we drove due east to beautiful South Padre Island, part of the barrier island system along the coast that is laced with wide, open beaches. Here, we were lucky enough to find accommodation at the KOA Journey close to the long stretch of SPI Beach.
From there, we back-tracked slightly and then headed north for more coastal experiences, first at a tiny but lovely spot on Baffin Bay called Riviera (and the wonderfully natural Seawind RV Resort, part of the Kaufer Hubert Memorial Park), then it was on to the busy port city of Corpus Christi, where we were lucky enough to stay at the Colonia Del Rey RV Park, ideally situated between the beaches and the city itself.
Finally, the last week has brought us to another idyllic spot on the epic Texas seashore, Pioneer Beach RV Resort, where we are only a few hundred yards from the unbroken 18-mile stretch of gorgeous beach hideaway.
It is a total of 294 miles, which is barely a day’s drive under normal circumstances, but we’re looking to stay out of the way of all the winter weather immediately to the north and explore an area we’ve never been to before, hence the slow pace and the chance to really savor the journey at this stage.
That compares with 928 miles in Month 8, and takes us to a grand total of 8,536 miles since we left home.
However, we have managed an additional 945 miles in the past month in our little Ford Fiesta, Nippy, exploring the state parks, small towns and wonderful open countryside of this part of the world. Our extra mileage in the car is now at 20,653, and the grand total of miles covered in both Fati and Nippy has reached a whopping 29,189 across the USA, or enough to fly back and forth from Orlando to London almost four times!
We still have at least another 1,500 miles before we get back to our Florida base, and another three states to visit, but we can safely say at this stage that our grand RV adventure has definitely lived up to our expectations, and more besides!
Here we are at the two-thirds mark of our grand ‘A Year On The Road’ RV adventure, and we have reached deep south Texas. We are currently in Donna, TX, and we have traveled a full 928 miles in the last month from our December base in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Our route from Las Cruces took us down through El Paso to Van Horn, and then on to Alpine (for the magnificent Big Bend National Park), before heading further south to Del Rio and then Castroville for Christmas (just outside San Antonio). The New Year then took us southwest to Donna via Kingsville.
Our total RV mileage since we left home is now 8,242 and Texas is our 20th state (not counting Florida). That 928 miles probably doesn’t sound like much, but it is more than the total for months 6 and 7 combined, as we had started a significant slow-down in favor of being longer in one place and exploring further by car.
Our little Ford Fiesta, Nippy, has put in an additional 1,558 miles in the past month, giving her a total to date of 19,708. Combined with Fati, we have driven a grand total of 27,825 miles, or basically enough to have gone right the way round the world, plus an extra 2,924 miles!
In all honesty, we are not looking to break any long-distance records at this stage. We knew we had to get some miles under our belt by January as the weather becomes a major factor at this time of year, and we need to stay as far south as possible. RVs are not built to travel far during the depths of winter and, even being this far south has had its challenges, with temps dropping below freezing several times this month. Including the wind-chill, we hit 15F/-9.5C at its coldest and, living in what amounts to a glorified tin can, that gets REALLY cold, really quickly!
Our route from here will hug the Texas coast all the way to Louisiana in March, and we should just be warming up again by then!
Simon, Susan & Ruthie
Veness Travel Media 