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.