Cold

Winter comes to Texas when a cold front comes through I found out.  Yesterday and today being good examples.  The high today was to be 57 which is not bad, but tonight it will get down to 21 degrees.  The good news is that Sunday it will be a high of 72 and low of 48 so winter won't last long.

When the lows get in the 20's I need to take some precautions with my water system in my RV.  I make sure my fresh water tank is full and disconnect the hose and put it away.  The inline filter needs to come inside since it cannot handle freezing.  If I have a full hookup site as I do now, I connect up the sewer hose and open the grey water valve so nothing will be sitting in the pipes to freeze.  The black water tank pipe is a larger pipe and I usually do not worry about that if the cold spell is a short one. I can't leave the black water valve open and still use the bathroom so only in extreme situations will I leave it open.  It is usually fine if the temps get well above freezing during the day.  On the inside, if I open a few cabinet doors, all my plumbing will be kept warm.

Between my small electric heater and the propane furnace, I can keep nice and warm.  I usually wear extra clothes so I don't need to use much electricity or propane.

I am currently near San Antonio now so this is as far south as I will be going. I hope it doesn't get too cold and stay that way for long.  No extra protection has been done on any of the water pipes here so either that is a good sign or they will have a lot of frozen pipes before winter is over.

There is a herd of deer that seems to live in this park.  They are rather small, fortunately, and just wander around the place.  They are not afraid and I can walk right past them and they just stand there.  Here are some pictures of them in and around my campsite.

This is across the road from my site. I think someone spread something for them to eat at that site because they spent a lot of time nosing around in the gravel.

Here is a doe wandering through my site.  I am standing at my RV taking this picture.

This is about as big as they get.










I took a walk today on one of the trails in the park. It was well marked and there were no other trails connecting with it so it was real easy to follow.  Here is a picture of the trail.

There are taller trees here than at the last place I was at and it is not so rocky. It was totally quiet on the trail, no highway sounds or campground sounds and I felt like I was far removed from civilization.






I just arrived at this park yesterday so I have some more exploring to do.  It is on Lake Medina but the lake seems to have disappeared. There is a small stream running through where the lake was but that is all.  I will hike around that area and take some pictures on another day.

Quiet times

Things have been very quiet around here.  A few people coming and going now and then.  Getting lots of knitting done as well as some reading.  They have a good book exchange here so I have lots of free books to read.  Free is good.  I haven't been doing much driving to keep expenses down.  If I go out I end up at a mall or book store or something and spend too much money.  I will take a trip to town next week to pick up my mail and maybe some groceries.  There are interesting trails to walk right here so I have no reason to go anywhere.

Life is good.

Air Chair

I spent some time today taking pictures of my air chair that I have set up to hang from my RV.  I love this chair!  It is like having a comfortable swivel rocker outside.  I bought the air chair many years ago when I still had a house.  I bought my chair from Hammocks.com.  Here is the link:  Air Chair

I had the chair hanging on my back porch and when I sold the house I kept the chair hoping I could find a way to use it with my RV.  This spring before I hit the road again I checked on Hammocks.com to see if there was a stand for the chair that would be reasonable for traveling and I found one that will slide into a hitch receiver.  I tried to find it on Hammocks.com just now but could not find it.  They have this one now that might work.  I did a Google search on "tailgate chair stand" and found several places that have it.  Here is one.  Two arms come with this stand but I left one in my storage place since I only have one chair.

 Here the chair is hanging from the hitch on my car.  This worked fine but I needed to remove it every time I wanted to drive the car.  Also it was often hanging in the sun.  My brother came up with the idea of installing a hitch receiver on the RV under the awning so it would be in the shade.  When I set up at a site I am staying at for a while, I put the metal piece up and I can leave it there until I break camp.

My brother's son-in-law has a welding business and he checked to see if it was possible.  It was!
He fabricated the receiver and bolted it to the frame.  There was nothing to bolt or weld the hitch to at the edge so it bowed a bit.  We decided it would be best to put a brace there.  I found that a step stabilizer from Camping World works great.  It can be adjusted for the difference in height if the ground is uneven or if the wheels are blocked up.

So here is what the whole thing looks like with me in it doing some knitting.  I have the yarn in the plastic bag hanging from the bar so it travels with me as I swivel around to keep track of everything going on around me.

Here it is set up under the awning.

The chair S hook can be hung on the opening on the stand but I found I had to adjust the ropes based on the distance to the ground if the ground slopes down or up from where the RV is.  I purchased a short piece of chain and an S hook to hang from the stand.  Now I just hook the chair S hook in whichever link in the chain I need to get it at the correct level so I can touch the ground while sitting in the chair.

Christmas already?

Temp up to 80 today and I was invited to help decorate the family center for Christmas.  Having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit.

Washed the back of the motor home today which didn't take too long so I went into town for groceries and did some knitting when I returned.

Washing and hiking

Today I did the second installment on washing my RV.  Since most campgrounds do not allow typical washing of vehicles, I use Protect All Quick and Easy Wash.  No hose, no rinsing.  Using about half to one gallon of water, I can wash a very dirty side of my RV.  If it is not very dirty, one gallon can do the entire RV.  This time my RV is very dirty since I have not washed it for a long time.  Each day I detail one side washing it thoroughly, removing all tar and oil if any around the bottom, and cleaning inside the outside storage areas.  Yesterday I did the front getting all the bugs off. Today I did the drivers side getting it looking like new again.

After finishing my work for the day, I walked up to the ranger station to return the coffee I have been getting in the morning with my newspaper.  I was unable to catch them in the morning.  They sneak in without me hearing them.  Maybe they came really early and I was still asleep.  Anyway, I told them I don't drink coffee so they need not bother giving my any.  The ranger on duty thank me for letting them know and made a note not to leave any at my site.  Not sure if that work and I hate asking them to make an exception for me but I also hate to waste the coffee and throw it away. If I still get it I can just put them in a pile and return them once in a while.  Not a big deal.

I walked down the road going to the ranger station and checked out the trails on the way back.  The trails are marked on the campground map but I have learned not to rely on them as they are not to scale and usually not accurate.  True to form, it was hard to determine where the trail started and there were several trails not marked on the map and no signs at intersections.  This is why when I am in an unfamiliar area I always take my hiking GPS unit.  With it I can always find my way back if necessary by following the track it logs as I go.  It also keeps track of mileage, time and speed.  Before leaving I set a mark for the RV or car and I can use that to determine the direction and distance back to them.  Of course the distance is as the crow flies so I need to take that into consideration.

Here are some of the pictures I took along the walk.

Some pretty plants despite the fact that it is the end of November so most plants are dried up and there are no flowers.

Bright red oak looking leaves.  Kind of shocking when most everything else was brown or green.

This is what the trail was like in places.  More of an ATV track than a hiking trail.  This is typical of a trail at the Thousand Trail Preservers where most people get around with golf carts.

Lets all line up in a row guys.

Up the hill.  Some sections were steep and rocky making for an interesting hike.  Glad I had my Leki poles with me.

Came back to camp where my crock pot was making dinner for me.  Smells good.  Time to eat.

Texas Thousand Trails Preserves

Left Wisconsin after my son's wedding in early October.  Just in time as the weather was getting extremely cold.  Any longer and I would have needed to winterize my RV.  Stayed a couple of weeks near Norman, OK at Lake Thunderbird State Park to visit with family in the area.  I stayed at the south side of the lake in the Turkey Run section and all sites had a new concrete slab for $25 a night.  If over 62 you get $2 off a night.

This is my RV at Lake Thunderbird with my hanging chair under the awning.  I will submit a post later describing the chair.

I have had to pay for camping all summer except when I was at my brother's lot and it has been adding up.  I was looking forward to getting to Texas and Thousand Trails Preserves where I camp for free.  Finally on October 24 I headed for Texas.



The first Thousand Trails Preserve I visited was Lake Texoma.  Was I ever disappointed.  Almost all sites were either seasonal rentals or set aside for seasonal rentals.  I had not been to a Thousand Trails Preserve since 2009 and that was in Oregon.  I knew they had started offering a limited number of seasonal sites at that time but there were not too many yet.  There were only a few sites available here and they were not very good.  It didn't help that it was just before the Halloween weekend celebration so there were a lot of campers coming in.  I took a site that was not ideal but at least it was a full hookup site so I was happy to get it.

Everything is brown here in Texas.  Guess they did not have much rain this summer.  This is my first time in Texas so I don't know if this is normal or not but I would guess it is not.  All of the lakes and rivers I have seen are very low.  Lots of boat ramps are closed because the ramps are no longer in the lakes.

Anyway, I spent 3 weeks here free of charge at least.  After the first weekend, everyone left and I felt like I was camped in an RV storage yard.  Lots of RVs, no people.

I did meet and talked for a long time with a woman in the adult center and she told me this was the worst of the Thousand Trail Preserves in Texas.  Apparently the others do not have so many seasonal sites.  That made me feel a little better.  I had purchased a VIP membership in Thousand Trails looking ahead to using them after I had retired.  I took a chance on them based on facts I had available at the time and in effect prepaying for my camping.  I can stay 3 weeks at each preserve and then move on to the next one with no time out.  So, for instance, I will be staying in Texas all winter and will not pay much of anything for camping.  I will be paying for maybe two days because some of the preserves are too far apart.  I like to keep my driving to 150 miles or less so I will overnight at other campgrounds a couple of times.

Leaving Lake Texoma, I moved on to Bay Landing.  Here I found lots of sites fortunately.  So many sites in fact, it was hard to pick one.  There were very few full hookup sites and they were all taken so I ended up with a water and electric site.  Not really a problem as I had that all summer in Wisconsin.  I can easily go one week on one tank of fresh water and dumping once.  Since I was only going to be here 2 weeks I just needed to drive to the dump station once.

These were pretty nice sites with lots of space and a concrete pad for the table.  Not very many trees however.  Since the temps only got up around 70 each day, the sun felt good.  I don't think I would want to be here in the summer though.

I was feeling much better about my future camping plans at this point.  My daily newspaper was placed on my picnic table every morning unlike the last place where when I did get one it was thrown on the ground somewhere.

There were lots of ATV trails and roads to walk here so I did quite a bit of walking.  All flat though so it was not much exercise.

Different vegetation here.  Of course after living in Oregon most of my life, I have not seen cactus plants much.

After two weeks in Bay Landing we come to the present time.  I pulled in to Whitney Lake last Wednesday and it is a great place to camp.  Lots of sites to choose from and most of them are full hookups.  A lot of them would have been just fine so I just took a convenient one when I found a place to pull over and unhook the car.  This whole section has WiFi so I do not need to go to whatever building has WiFi access.  My laptop works okay but my iPad has problems. It doesn't seem to be very good at picking up a signal.  It is the original iPad so hopefully Apple has improved on that with the more recent ones.

 This site has lots of trees as do all in this section which makes it seem more private.

There is no one close by me so I feel as if I have the place to myself.

My picnic table has an open knothole which makes a convenient place to put my solar light.

My morning paper had a sample coffee packet in it. Kind of a problem as I don't drink coffee.  I will try to catch them tomorrow morning when they bring the paper and return it and ask them  not to waste anymore coffee on me.

I think I am going to enjoy my next 3 weeks here. Full hookup, WiFi, morning paper and lots of peace and quiet.  Ahhh.....Life is Good.

Moving into the motor home again

Guess I should get things up to date here. It may take a few posts to get to current. My Mom passed away in January. Since this was Wisconsin, I planned on moving out of the apartment and hitting the road May 1. By that time some campgrounds would be open and water should be turned on. The apartment I lived in with my Mom was in a retirement community and fortunately, though we had a lease, they were very flexible so I could just leave whenever as long as I gave them notice. So I let them know I would be out by May 1 and they started showing the apartment. Just a few weeks after they started showing it, a women and her daughter saw it and decided they would take it for the Mother. Shortly after that the daughter wanted to know if her Mom could move in sooner as she was stressing out over the move. I said sure, I could be out by April 1.

 Yikes! I needed to get serious about getting rid of stuff and packing things up. Fortunately, I had lived in my RV for years while I was still working so I still had what I used then and knew what would fit and where. So I hurried up and brought the RV into town from my brothers where it was stored and parked it in the apartment parking lot and moved into it. I just got everything out, cleaned the apartment and had my inspection and found out the next day that the woman who would be moving in had a stroke and would not be able to live by herself. How sad for her and her daughter.

 I was now parked in the apartment building lot with an electrical cord going into my sister's apartment so I had heat but no water and far from level so no refrigerator. I needed to organize everything that I had thrown in and remove some stuff I didn't have room for or want. After things settled in a bit, I moved out to my brothers place so I could de-winterize and check out my water lines. Had a problem with the automatic valve on the top of the water heater that took awhile and several parts to fix and the outside shower hand thingy was broken and needed to be replaced but everything else was fine. Hope I never need to winterize again!

Left my brothers place and went to a State Park that was open all year and I was on my way again. The rest of the summer was spent in Wisconsin except for a trip to OK delivering stuff to my son and a trip to South Dakota to get my drivers license. I attended a Kayak Symposium in Door County put on by Rutabaga that was awesome. Hopefully I can attend one again somewhere.

I will finish up the rest of the summer in another post. I am currently in Texas enjoying the warm weather and lots of time to relax with my knitting and reading along with lots of walking.

On The Road Again!

My circumstances have changed and I will be on the road again and traveling around this great country starting May 1, 2012.

I am rethinking a lot of stuff this time around and mixing things up a bit. I am going with a South Dakota home base this time so I will be spending some time there to begin with. I am still looking into internet access. I would like to get away from the 5G limit but not having much luck yet. My RV and car are still good to go. I need to do some maintenance on the RV but nothing too bad. I will need to work on the dull finish on the roof so I need to get some products for that.

So now I am busy going through all my stuff and paring it down. I will just have a small storage area at my sister's place. I want to go lighter this time so I need to get rid of lots of stuff. I may get rid of my kayaks but I haven't decided on that yet. It would sure get rid of a lot of stuff though.

Fun times again!