Last time I made an entry here we were in Louisiana heading for Texas. The DW had plans of obtaining temporary employment for a few months to build up the old bank account before continuing our travels. Once again the God of fate snatch us by the shirt collar and said think again on those plans. Upon arriving in Texas Dw applied for her nurse licence. She was assured this was a very simple process, apply, get a temporary license and work well the permenent license was process.
We set up camp a Lake Livingston State Park in the Piney Woods portion of Texas, what a beautiful location.
We had 4 fantastic days of of lounging around, enjoying nature and it's beauty when we here informed by the rangers that the park was sold out for the weekend to a rally group and we'd have to leave. So much for Texas hospitality.
After a search of area campgrounds for available and affordable space we decided to move westward about 80 miles to Huntsville. Huntsville is the prison capital of Texas something like 6 prisons along with the Texas State Prison Museum are located there.
Huntsville is a nice small town with lots to do and we availed ourselves of their many attractions. First we visited the museum, It really was quite interesting with the history of the prisons, art and crafts created by inmates over the years, guns made of soap. knives made of toilet paper. my guess on that one is it was self cleaning, soaked up the blood as it killed no mess to clean up afterward, also they had the original "Old Sparky" the first Texas electric chair. I personally found that fascinating, the DW on the other hand was a little unnerved by the site and the fact I enjoyed it. It took the rest of the day to convince the DW that the reason I was smiling well view the chair was not that I was picturing how she'd look sitting there.
We also visited Sam Houston's home and he's grave in the local cemetery. If you have no idea who Sam Houston is look it up online I'm writing this to tell our history not his.
At this point we're feeling good just killing time waiting for the license approval. Bam, God of fate jerks us back. Seems that Dw's finger prints were unreadable, therefore she needs to submit another set before issuing a license. No problem, can do. Submitted another set of prints and they also were unreadable. I thought it was a great idea to sand off our finger prints when we started robbing banks with hindsight I see now that created problems. Durnig this time Dw had received word that lots of jobs were available in the California prisons. After much thought and careful planning we decided to start toward California well waiting for Texas to approve her license. Now if you every traveled across Texas you will know it takes about 3 days of hard driving and in a motor home it takes 5 days so we figure we would have 5 days in which to either get the Texas license or leave Texas for California, sort of our way of fence straddling. By the time we reach El Paso Texas once again rejected the finger prints as unreadable and suggest live-scan fingerprinting which is suppose to be foolproof. Yup you guessed it, the DW fooled them and the live-scan prints were unreadable. Now we're not dealing with some had core master criminal here, seems like the DW had been taught as a child the cleanliness is next to Godliness so she was here hands frequently and has washed away her finger prints. I vote for really robbing banks now. Texas says the next step is a complete background and name check with the FBI which can take up to 3 moths, Goodbye Texas!
