I went out for dinner this evening, found a car wash (you’d never guess that I just hosed down the truck, but at least the salt is off it for sure), and headed to Walmart.

It took 20 minutes to get what I needed and then I spent at least 40 minutes in line waiting to check out. By the time I realised it was going to take that long, it would have been stupid to walk out and lose all that time I just spent shopping and waiting, but all my melted frozen food got left at the cash. I’m not exaggerating, I was there long enough that all the frozen food was mush by the time I got to the front of the line. I had another half hour to get home. I wasn’t going to refreeze that stuff and possibly get sick.

The store was PACKED. Lines literally ran the whole length of the store. How many cashiers did they have on? THREE. Why does Walmart bother having 50 billion lines when it never has more than three cashiers on at a time?!

To add insult, my teller was the customer service MANAGER and she was completely oblivious to how inadequate she was. Instead of noticing the mile-long (and I’m only slightly exaggerating) line of increasingly angry people, she just took her sweet time slowly scanning one item at a time and chatted with her colleagues. I’ve been a cashier. I know that you can process people MUCH more quickly than that. There were no issues with items not scanning or price checks or payment methods not working. She just had no idea how to manage a busy till.

When I saw that the lines were long, I grabbed a big pile of magazines and then staked my spot. It took three magazines for me to get annoyed, six for me to be frustrated, and eleven to start bitching with the other customers. The woman behind me with TWO full carts and about five screaming and crying children finally walked out. Not that Walmart will care.

Now, I love Walmart because of its of policy about overnight RV parking. But, seriously, hire more cashiers. And better train the ones you have.

Woohoo, we have blue sky!

I’m a full 10AH up from where I was this morning and have 1.5 to 3A coming in. Still not great and nowhere near a full charge, but a huge improvement over this morning!

I’ve got another reason to love Panera Bread, they have hazelnut coffee. Not hazelnut creamer, but hazelnut-infused beans. So I can have my black coffee with just a hint of skim milk and still get that hazelnut flavour without all the nasty chemicals and calories. I don’t even want to think about how much caffeine I’ve had today. 😀

It has been disgustingly grey out most of the time I have been here. Thankfully, there have been some nice sunny patches, but it’s mostly been icky and the humidity has been increasing. It looks like we will finally get some rain tonight. I hope it’s not too much or I will have to move to higher ground.

If I didn’t have my solenoid, I would have had to move back into the RV park by now. Between it and the weak sun, I’m holding steady between 30 and 40AH down. So I’m fine, but my batteries sure would like a full charge sooner rather than later…

Mail will determine whether or not I leave on Thursday. I still haven’t figured out where I’m going next. I’ve pretty much decided not to stop in Austin. I’ve been told several times that I need to check it out, but I’m not into the music scene and nothing about the city is calling my name while there are things I want to see in Dallas. But Dallas is even more of a challenging in terms of finding an overnighting spot, much less somewhere that I can stay for several nights at little to no charge. I may just have to bite the bullet and stay at an RV park for a couple of nights.

That said, if I end up staying here later than Thursday and into the weekend, I will consider going to Austin on a day trip. An extended stay here would put me really behind schedule, so then I will probably overnight somewhere before Dallas, stop in Dallas for the afternoon (as long as I can find a place to drop the rig), and then overnight after Dallas.

I can’t believe I absolutely need to be back in Canada in 45 days, but I am aiming for no more than 40. April is going to SPEED by.