Travels with Gunther and Kara

We got up early Saturday morning, went over and nagged the guys to finish up the final fix on the rig before we left (they moved our internal cell phone booster antenna under warranty and had to patch the hole in the inside ceiling. It’s not a material you can patch so they just installed an addition smoke detector over the hole and it looks like it was always there. After that was fixed we hitched up and were on the road by about 0830. We had a 277 mile trip today of which 276 were on I-70…we had a half mile from Camp Horizons to the freeway and another half mile once we got off at exit 19, US-24 in Goodland, KS. We got a nice pull through site 62 at the Goodland KOA for 30 bucks; there’s a nice guy with a german accent that runs the place. We crossed into the Mountain Time Zone shortly before getting to Goodland (in fact, we’re so close to the time zone boundary that our phones still think it’s Central Time) and were parked, front jacks down, and electric/water hooked up by 3PM. Neil went on a bike ride…Goodland is a nice little town…and we’re going to Mass this evening followed by dinner at the local Chinese joint since we’ve been wanting some Chinese food for a couple of weeks. The China Garden here in Goodland (there must be 10,000 Chinese restaurants named China Garden) has a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews on Yelp and Google…hopefully it’s pretty good. Here is a shot of our campsite…this is really a quite nice little park, about 90 spaces or so and there were at least 4 or 5 RVs parked for the night.

Neil talked to our friend Linda Payne…she and Howard are in Colorado Springs already and confirmed the location for our rig weighing tomorrow. We’ve got another 180 odd miles to go and can’t get into the campground until 1730 tomorrow afternoon since Prince Harry is at the Air Force Academy in the afternoon. We’ll plan on getting rolling about 1000 or so which with a nice stop for lunch will put us at the weighing location about 1400. Figure an hour for the weighing and we’ll find a Walmart or Camping World to park in for a couple hours and go find a beer or something while we wait.

Sunday turned out to be (a) a lot more exciting than we thought and (b) quite a tiring day even though it was only a 180 mile travel day. Since we only had 180 miles to go and couldn’t get into the Air Force Academy to park until 1730…we ate breakfast, Neil went on a run and we headed out at 1000. After a quick stop for lunch we continued on to Limon, CO about 60 miles from our destination and left I-70…which is when the fun started. As we exited Limon and turned onto US-24 for the final 60 miles of our day we passed a sign that said No Services next 56 miles…so we sort of knew the road would be relatively deserted. We quickly conferred via our walkie talkies and decided that since BAT’s trip computer said we still had 100 miles of fuel remaining not to turn around and go on a diesel hunt in Limon (we had not seen any stations on the way through town and while there were surely some there we would have had to look…which given our 45 mile cushion seemed like plenty). We continued down US-24 and the miles were counting down to the next turn…when at about 40 miles to go we passed what turned out to be US-24 on the right turning off but it was unmarked and looked more like the dozen or so side roads into ranches we had already passed. Right after that the GPS with no “Turn right now” message went into the dreaded “Recalculating” mode. It didn’t tell us to make a U turn but calculated a new route to Colorado Springs that was now 93 miles left instead of 46 miles…and BAT’s trip counter was down to about 70 miles of fuel remaining. We pulled over at the first place we could find a space about 9 miles down the road (the road had no shoulders and ditches on both sides) and essentially blocked a side road while we again conferred. We decided that the road we passed shortly before Recalculating was actually US-24 so we made a U turn and headed back. Nine miles back up the road we turned onto the unmarked road and the GPS immediately went back into 40 miles remaining to our destination…so we had found the correct road. The bad news was that now the difference between fuel remaining and destination only gave us a cushion of 13 miles since we had wasted 20 or so miles of fuel with our unscheduled sightseeing trip into the unpopulated sections of Colorado. By this time the road also started getting hilly since we had one section of low mountains to get over before descending into the valley where Colorado Springs is located…which means that BAT’s mileage decreased a bit which meant that our 13 mile cushion started decreasing. We started looking for fuel in all of the towns we were passing but most of them were towns in name only. After passing through 3 or 4 of these and with our cushion down to 9 miles we entered Calhan CO about 20 miles short of Colorado Springs which luckily had a truck stop so we were able to fuel up. Took 33 gallons so Neil remarked that we had a whole 4 gallons left and would have made it to Colorado Springs with almost 2 gallons or 19 miles to spare. It was a lot closer than we wanted to cut it so we immediately decided to always fill up at 100 miles remaining for the duration of our time out here in the west and also to stop at Home Depot today and grab a couple of 5 gallon cans we can fill with diesel and stow in the bed…that will give us an extra 95 miles of emergency fuel; we’ll just have to remember to put diesel stabilizer in them and use the fuel in the cans every couple months and refill them since diesel can grow mold if left sitting for long periods.

With that crisis averted we continued on into Colorado Springs to Pikes Peak Travel Land where our friends Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams are parked for the weekend. Linda came out and unlocked the gate for us and we got the rig weighed. As expected; all of our weights except the rear axle of BAT were fine and as we feared the rear axle is overloaded by about 700 pounds. We’ll have to do some shifting of some of our heavy stuff within the coach to correct the overload condition but it won’t be too hard. We can move our 120 pound safe from the front closet to sit next to the couch at the rear of the coach…this alone will correct over 240 pounds of the overload. We’ll move our 100 or so pounds of toolboxes from the basement to sit in the front passenger side of BAT on the floor since the front axle is way under the limit…between the two of those we’ll correct most of the overload. The remainder isn’t something we can fix so we’ll just live with it.

Howard and Linda also recommended lowering our trailer tire pressure from 125 to 100-110; we’ll still be well within the weight limits of the tires at the lower pressure, they’ll last longer, and the ride will improve since they will be less like balloons bouncing the trailer up and down. They recommended we increase the rear tire pressure on BAT from the factory recommended 60 to 70-75; this will make the rear tires the same pressure as the front tires are at factory recommendation so is well within the capacity of the tires. Doing this will make sure that the tire loads on BAT’s rear axle are well within specs so the only overload will be on the rear axle itself by a couple hundred pounds and we’ll just have to live with this or else buy a bigger t ruck and we’re not ready to do that at this point…although the possibility is still under review since we haven’t been in the mountains yet. We did hit a couple of 7 or 8 percent grades for a mile or so yesterday and had no issues with braking and controlling speed but will continue to evaluate this the rest of the travel season.

After our weighing was complete we headed out…it was only about 1530 by that time so we stopped at Walmart to kill time. Connie got her nails done while we waited…when that was finished we got back on the road and headed up Academy Boulevard the last 5 miles to the campsite. The road had been reopened by that time so we got to the Fam Camp and quickly checked into site 84. This wasn’t our original site but when we told the young lady at the counter we had a 39 foot rig she said that a 40 foot site would be a bit cramped so she changed us to the pull through site 84. Plenty of space, pull through instead of back in, and has a nice hole in exactly the right location through the trees so we can get satellite visibility for the TV. Here’s a picture of our site once we got setup (although Neil took this the next morning).

We quickly decided to just do the minimum setup and leave the house cleaning and outside setup until tomorrow since we were tired. So it was utilities only then we went in, baked a pizza for dinner, and watched a little TV. We did catch a really neat show on National Geographic Wild channel on Canyonlands National Park…which is one of the places we will be visiting later in the summer after we leave WA/OR/CA and start heading east through UT and CO…so we got a lot of good tips on things to see while we are there.

Today Neil is going off to get his recliner fixed and run a couple more errands while Connie gets some work done. She has a dental cleaning at 1330 and then we’re spending the rest of today and probably tomorrow cleaning, putting things back after our work last week, and rest up as we have been going pretty hard for the past two weeks or so and need to rest up a little before we start doing fun stuff.

Cyas.

This has turned out to be a pretty busy week. After our arrival here at Camp Horizons in Junction City…we’ve been getting up every day at 0530 so we’ll have coffee, breakfast and be ready for workers by 0700…I gotta admit we’re getting tired of getting up that early. In between workers coming in we hung out in the lounge, made two trips over to Manhattan to get BAT’s air springs installed, went to Fort Riley to the Commissary and Package Stores, and today had a nice hike.

We got all our work done (except for a minor hole in our inside ceiling but Neil’s gonna head over in the morning and grab Chris to get it fixed before we pull out.

• Leaky window fixed
• Gray tank indicator replaced
• Pendant lights over island replaced and a brace for travel built
• Cell phone booster antenna relocated
• Multiplex light switches upgraded to the model you can actually read
• Thermostat replaced
• Air springs installed on BAT. This was actually accomplished by a truck place named Film at Eleven over in Manhattan about 20 miles or so away
• Fixed a couple of minor valence and trim mounting issues
• MorRYDE axles greased and brake pads inspected

Quite a lot of work but it seemed like we had a lot of time standing around waiting. That’s the way it is I guess.

Anyway; with all our work done and Connie finished working for the week we headed out about 1200 or so after lunch to visit the Nature Conservancy preserve named Konza Prairie; this is about 10 miles away towards Manhattan. We had a nice 3.6 mile hike around the prairie and woods and actually saw a fairly decent amount of wildlife…the hike was a lot better than we thought it would be.

First up was a rickety bridge over this creek

and right after we got over that we spotted an Eastern Phoebe, some wildflowers, and a Summer Tanager (originally identified as a Cardinal but sharp eyed reader Jim Mullins correctly called the actual species and a quick check with Peterson verified the corrected ID…thanks Jim.)

along with some nice views of the prairie after climbing up a couple hundred feet onto a ridge.

After coming down from the ridge we wandered through an old homestead from back in the day; here are shots of the remnants of the barn and the plow they planted their crops with.

Heading back towards the car we spotted a beautiful Red Headed Woodpecker; brilliant white underbelly, black back and bright red head. Gorgeous. Neil took 2 shots so you can see both the front and back.

We heard but did not see a turkey several times…we peered carefully down into the bottoms by the pond where the call was coming from but just could not find it. We also know there are deer (probably Mule Deer) in the area since we spotted their hoof prints

as well as at least a couple of bobcats as we spotted at least 3 separate sets of their tracks. Based on the info we found on the web; this is most likely a hind footprint of a female since the larger heel pad is smaller than it would be on a male. The heel pad is the one in the 2 o’clock position. We had no idea what this was until we got boom and googled it.

After that we headed home via Walmart where we picked up a couple of things we needed; some new camp chairs and a pizza for tomorrow night’s dinner after our travel day. We are planning on getting out of here by about 0800 or so (or as soon as Chris finishes the ceiling repair, I think he’s just going to install an additional smoke detector over it since that won’t look out of place and anything else would. We’ve got about 280 miles to go tomorrow but all but about a mile of it is on I-70. We’ve already fueled up and don’t have much camp breakdown; unhook power and water, hitch up BAT, drive around behind the building to dump tanks and hit the road. It should be a pretty easy transit…the speed limit is 75 out here in the west but we usually stick to about 58 or 59 to improve BAT’s fuel mileage and put less strain on everything up and down the hills. We changed our travel order and Neil goes in front on freeways to prevent cars from running up onto her bumper. We’ve had many cars in previous travels (with Neil/BAT in the rear) that blew by BAT and pulled back into the right lane not realizing that Connie was a hundred yards or so ahead also going slow…with the result that they car runs up on Connie’s bumper before realizing she’s slower and slamming on the brakes. We found out that with her in the back on freeways it causes her much less stress since they see her going slower and then just pass both of us. The only drawback is that Neil has a harder time seeing her to keep track of her but we’re going to get us some CB radios once we get into Colorado Springs…that will give us a much longer talking range than the walkie talkies do. We have a pair picked out on Amazon and will order them as soon as we arrive on Sunday. We’re also meeting our friends Howard and LInda Payne when we get there to get the house weighed and make sure we are within our limits.

Cyas.

Monday was an excellent travel day. We got up at 0630, had coffee and a bowl of instant oatmeal, finished up hitching the rig and hit the road by about 0800. Ardmore, OK was reached a mere 392.6 miles later and we have a very, very, very long pull through at site 47 in the Hidden Lake RV Campground. Here’s a picture of the site; you could probably park 2 fifth wheels in this site without not much trouble.

We dropped the front jacks, hooked up water and electric, and didn’t bother unhitching since we’re just staying overnight. We headed out to the Brew House for dinner and found out they were closed on Mondays so ended up at the Catfish Corner restaurant. Both of us had fried fish…man was it good. Coated with cornmeal and deep fried…it was quite yummy. The decor in the restaurant was quite eclectic; here are a couple of shots of the interior. 

We got up early Tuesday morning, broke camp and hit the road. First stop was McDonalds about 4 miles up the road for breakfast and coffee (we didn’t even make any). After that it was 80 miles or so up the road where we bought fuel for BAT right outside of Norman, OK. We then continued up I-35 until time to stop for lunch. Neil spotted a Travel Stop that had a Dairy Queen so we had a chili cheese dog and a caramel milkshake (well, actually we had one each of each of those for a total of 2 of each of them total) and right over the border into Kansas got off the freeway to avoid the toll roads in Kansas. We headed east about 15 miles, avoided the bridge with a clearance of 12 feet six inches (we are 13 feet 6 inches tall so we definitely couldn’t make it under that overpass) and then proceeded on several 2 and 4 lane roads (pretty decent actually except for not being limited access freeways) all the way to Junction City, KS. The only bad part is that we only go 58 or so miles an hour so you end up with traffic piling up behind you with a speed limit of 70 or 75 and then they come flying past you…curves or double yellow lines or no passing zones mean nothing to the other idiots on the road.

We arrived here at Camp Horizons (otherwise known as the New Horizons factory, dumped our holding tanks which were 25% or so full from our two days of travel with no hookups since we plan on being parked here until Saturday morning and there are no sewer hookups; then got parked in our assigned spot in front of the service building. Here’s a photo of our house (with the tarp up over the window since it’s supposed to rain tonight, hopefully they’ll get that fixed in the next couple of days).

Neil went on a bike ride and had a shower then we headed out to the local Elks Lodge for beer and dinner…which consisted of some Fried Mushrooms and Jalapeño Poppers since we were pretty full from lunch.

Then it was home and early to bed since we have to be up early tomorrow…we have to have finished coffee, breakfast, and be ready for worker bees at 0700 so that means the alarm will go off at 0530. I thought we were done with that craziness since we are retired now…but it seems like we are at least as busy now as we were when we were still working. I don’t know how we got everything done back in those days.

Anyway; there will be no fun this week…after talking to the repair folks in the morning we’re headed over to Film at Eleven (strange name for a truck modification shop, isn’t it?) to drop BAT off for installation of air springs on the rear suspension. Then we’ll do laundry or Connie will work or we’ll hang out in the lobby of New Horizons depending on the work schedule for the rig.

Wednesday morning we met with Ken about 0730 who said they would get right on our work. After that we drove over to Manhattan to drop off BAT at Film at Eleven for the air spring install; getting back to Camp Horizons about 1045 and the house was still sitting where we left it…so much for getting right to it. We’ll hang out in the lounge, go eat some lunch, and probably run back over to pick up BAT later on today; they said it was a 3 hour job and would easily be done today.

Cyas.

This has been a really fun week even though we were only able to spend a single day out and about while here in the Kerrville Area. Our trip here was to attend the New Horizons Owners Group (that’s N hog for those in the know)  which ran from last Monday through Friday. The rally was attended by 39 couples of which all but 3 already owned a New Horizons. Our friends Lyn and Ed from New Jersey were here and really loved both the workshops and especially the walk throughs of various rigs so they can make final determinations about what to order in their purchase next summer. The 36 rigs here were both new and old although the majority are Majestics which are the larger, more luxurious models…there were a dozen or so Summits and even one specialized 26 foot or so travel trailer type which was pretty nice as well.

Our friends made us feel very welcome from the beginning…Marny was over to welcome us almost as soon as we arrived and Tim and Carolyn the rally masters shortly thereafter. Social hours were held daily both before and after dinners.

There were workshops during the day; 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon with a nice lunch break in the middle. Neil gave a couple of them on technology for the RV lifestyle and we attended other workshops from backing up tips to gadgets to maintenance checklists.

We had a catered dinners Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was a free day for doing other stuff and then more workshops and a closing pot luck on Friday. Neil made roasted garlic (7 heads worth) and a couple of loaves of French Bread as our contribution…it must have been a hit because it all disappeared pretty quickly.

Pro tip: The next time we do this Neil will drag the Breville oven out on the picnic table instead of baking the garlic inside the rig…we baked it Thursday evening after we went out to dinner with Lyn and Ed ad it took us 2 full days to get the garlic smell to dissipate.

Each evening after dinner (except Friday) we had a Great Places Show and Tell where couples brought pictures from their travels and talked about the Great Places they had been. Friday evening we had a White Elephant Gift Exchange with humorous gifts. When your number came up you could pick an wrapped present from the table or steal anything that had already been unwrapped…although each gift could only be stolen twice as the second thief got to keep it. Needless to say the wine and outdoor solar light decorations were quickly stolen twice (too bad, we wanted both of them) so we ended up with a chicken shaped egg poacher and a do rag kerchief to put over your head. Neil did his best to get somebody to steal it but alas, it came home with us.

We volunteered to be on the Rally Committee for the next rally which will be in September of 2014 at a location we an’t reveal yet…but suffice it to say that it fits into our winter 13-14 and spring/summer 14 plans perfectly location wise. It will only be a few hundred miles transit from where we will be spending our summer and will fit perfectly to make our transit either back to Fort Myers or to southern California if we change our mind and go there instead.

Neil finally got around to editing the last couple pictures we wanted to post from our visit to San Antonio the other day…they are both pictures of the memorial to the rising spirits of the Alamo Heros. First is the side view of the monument…you can’t get to the front to take a picture because of the trees; and second is the inscription on the rear of the base. Quite a cool statue although Neil did have to some judicious editing to remove the power line that was across the photo as well as the antenna on the building in the back that appeared to be growing out of it’s head. The front of the memorial is the rising spirit (it’s an old Indian/Texas tradition thing I guess) of the slain Patriots (that’s what they call them down here) during the Texas Revolutionary War (when they broke away from Mexico). The area was named Tejas back in those days which is the Mexican way to spell Texas.

Anywho; that’s about it for now. Today is tank dumping, camp breaking, Connie working, Neil doing computer stuff and all that typical jazz. We head out early tomorrow morning 400 miles to our overnight stop in Ardmore, OK and then another 380 miles on Tuesday to Junction City to Camp New Horizons for our warranty and upgrade work.

We really hope the internet is better there…Neil has some system updates and stuff he needs to do and service (although free) has been pretty lousy here in Buckhorn Lake RV Resort. Too many people using too little bandwidth is the issue.

Not real great photos I know…but sometimes you just an’t really get one any better. To orient you a bit; the Alamo itself is immediately behind where Neil was standing for the first photo about 30 yards or so…he was almost up against the wall of the Long Barracks which was the location of the last stand I talked about in the post the other day. The corner of the fortified area where we took the pictures the other day is off to the left and across the street behind the first photo and to the right towards the building you can see in the second photo.

Cyas.

Well; we’ve been working pretty hard on having a good time at the rally but today was a free day from rally activities. Last evening it started blowing and cooling down and it was down into the 50’s by this morning with 25-35 knots almost all night and through the day today. Nonetheless; today represented our only opportunity to do something in this area so we passed on the wine tour truck pool and headed off instead to San Antonio; which is about 60 miles or so from here at the park in Kerrville.

We got there in the late morning and our first stop was the Alamo…this was one of the three great battles of the Texas Revolutionary War when they broke away from Mexico. The Alamo was originally a mission but it was fortified in the late 1700’s and used first by the Mexican army and then later by the Texan Army. On March 6, 1836 Mexican forces of about 5000 over ran and massacred the 189 defenders in the Alamo including Davy Crocket and Colonel Travis. Only one man survived (a slave) as well as the women and children inside the fort.

This picture is taken from the southeast corner of what was the fortified portion of the mission looking to the northwest. The church is on the right side and housed the wounded and women and children during the final battle. The low building on the left was the barracks and was (along with the church) the fall back point after the Mexican forces breached the wall and gained entry to the mission both where this picture was taken from and on the far side of the barracks building about where the building with the red roof is located.

This is the original mission bell; it was remounted in the museum that was constructed for the 100th anniversary of the battle.

We wandered around the mission for an hour or so; quite a moving story and well documented with how and why the war was fought and the particulars about the battle.

Next we wandered around the corner and visited St. Josephs church; this was built by the German settlers in San Antonio in 1868 and is the oldest church in the city. We really liked the inside of the sanctuary with it’s stained glass and gold around the altar.

After that we headed around the Riverwalk which is an isolated portion of the San Antonio River. It was isolated for flood control purposes and has a controlled water level with a lot of really nice hotels, shops, pubs, and other tourist stuff on the shores.

We stopped for lunch at Durdy Nellie’s Irish Pub and had sandwiches and Guinness then continued around to the San Antonio Cathedral where Davy Crocket’s bones are interred. The cathedral was built in 1938 or so and while bigger than St Joseph’s isn’t as nice inside.

After that we headed again down the Riverwalk and lo and behold saw a site I would never have believed we would see. Right on the bank of the Riverwalk we spotted a male Mallard Duck (quite common) and a Yellow Crowned Night Heron. If you had told me this morning we would see this normally very skittish bird in the middle of downtown San Antonio and he would let you walk up to within 10 feet of him I would not have believed you.

That first picture was taken from across the river which is 30 feet or so wide. Neil walked around closer to him and got this second shot from about 10 feet away.

By this time we were getting tired and were back to the car anyway so we came home. Our friends Lyn and Ed from New Jersey came over and we went to Grape Juice here in Kerrville for dinner. I would not have figured a town this size had a wine bar but they do and the wine was pretty good…although Neil had some Toasted Coconut Porter which was mighty tasty instead of wine. Following that; we came home, had the evening rally get together/social hour, then headed home. Neil’s roasting garlic for tomorrow’s pot luck…garlic roasted in olive oil and french bread makes a mighty fine contribution.

Tomorrow we have a few more rally educational sessions to attend and the final pot luck and closing get together then rally participants start pulling out Saturday AM although we aren’t leaving until Monday. Connie has some work stuff to do on Saturday and Sunday at this point we haven’t gotten the jello out of the package yet so I can’t stir it to see what we might do.

Cyas.

Man, time has slipped by on me…so let me catch you up on what happened the past couple of days; they have been pretty busy.

Saturday afternoon we packed up for our transit down to Kerville, TX; then we had the Saint Saëns Organ Symphony concert in Plano in the evening. For a small civic orchestra; the Plano Symphony was actually pretty good. The performance was in St Andrews United Methodist Church which had a huge organ with the pipes behind the sacristy area. We were sitting on the aisle about 10 or 15 rows back. Here’s a picture of the organ taken from our seat in the pew. Before the concert we had dinner at Roy’s nearby. Connie had Macadamia Encrusted Mahi Mahi and Neil had Poached Scallops with Corn Risotto. Both were quite yummy followed by a hot chocolate mousse cake thing for dessert…then it was off to the concert. The concert was great; the organ fit the acoustics of the hall extremely well and was well balanced with the orchestra. One of the better performances we have heard overall…much better than we expected.

Sunday morning we hitched up and headed off…306 miles later we pulled into Buckhorn Lake RV Resort, checked in, and got settled into site 6059. Here’s a picture of us; we’re parked next to another Majestic that has the same color scheme as we do. Funny though…on walking around there are probably a half dozen or more that look just like us. Most of them don’t have a matching pickup through; white seems to be pretty popular; although there is one a bit up with a heavy duty truck painted to match the dark color on the rig. It’s got a SmartCar storage place on the back of the truck as well so they just drive it up when they’re ready to roll. I’ll grab some pictures of the various rigs and trucks during the walk around tomorrow.

Before we even got unhitched (much less setup) we had 3 or 4 other New Horizons owners stop over to chat/welcome/kibitz…I realize that people are trying to be friendly and really do like talking to other RVers but it’s always struck us as funny that the folks already in the campground haven’t figured out that you have stuff to do right after arrival. I mean really, don’t they have to set things up on arrival just like we do. Maybe we’re just not smart enough yet. I dunno.

Anyway; we got setup, Neil got in a quick ride down Goat Creek Road past the ranches and 77 acre ‘estates’ in the area then it was pizza for dinner, TV, and bed. A bunch of rally folks were heading out for Chinese…but given our travel day Connie was pretty tired so we passed on it and ate our pepperoni pizza from Walmart.

Monday morning was Connie doing some work, Neil running, Neil kibitzing with other rally folks (no, not the ones trying to setup), and getting checked into the rally HQ. By that time it was happy hour so we had a brew then headed off to the BBQ (burgers and hotdogs) provided by the rally and the evening get together/welcome/introduction stuff. We also visited a bit with our friends Lyn and Ed from New Jersey who are here still checking out rigs for their purchase a year or so from now; and visited with Lee and Ken Marks. Lee and Ken have the rig that came off the production line right in front of ours and we’ve been chatting via email with them for months on various topics. It’s nice to finally put a face to the name.

Tuesday we start the rally sessions themselves; there are 2 morning and 2 afternoon sessions of about an hour and fifteen minutes each. Topics range from RVing in Alaska to Computers for RV Lifestyle (Neil’s giving that one) to How to Back and Park Your Rig. Essentially each presenter has some expertise in whatever area he’s talking about and most of the sessions are on topics that rally attendees asked to have. Sessions continue Wednesday then Thursday is a free day…but most of the rally attendees are going on a car/truck caravan to wineries. Road Trip!!

Sessions continue Friday with a final potluck dinner and wrap up Friday evening. We’re staying through the weekend; with a trip over to San Antonio for some fun stuff on Saturday; then Monday we’re off to Junction City for warranty work and some upgrades. I’ll make sure Neil takes some pictures of all that to put in the blog

Cyas.

I can report that we have nothing to report for the past two days. We were going to go to the Audubon Society Preserve about 30 miles away yesterday…but Connie woke up with a headache and her sinuses hurt…so she just laid in the recliner most of the day. We ended up having a couple of pot pies for dinner…we’ve always been fans of Marie Calendar Brand but found a couple that were Corn Chowder Chicken Pot Pies in Walmart a couple weeks back; we ate these and they were even better than most of Marie’s offerings.

Today was a work day for Connie; she had some stuff left over that needed to be finished soon but ran out of hours and hence had to get it done today on the first day of the new pay period. By the time she was done it was 1615; Neil had gone on a ride, and he dumped the gray tank and did a little cleaning of our fan and air conditioning filters. Between that, laundry this morning, and listening to a couple of podcasts the day pretty much went by.

Tomorrow morning we’re headed off to Walmart for groceries (or maybe tonight depending on when we decide will have fewer people in the store) and we’ve gotta pack up to move tomorrow afternoon. In the evening we’re headed down to Plano for Mass (since we’ll be traveling Sunday), we’re having dinner at a steak place named Roy’s and then we’ve got a Saint Säens concert tomorrow evening. Then Sunday we’re off early to Kerville TX for a week for the New Horizons Rally. Then we’re off to Junction City, Kansas for our warranty repairs; we’ve got that all scheduled so hopefully all will go smoothly.

In the meantime; here’s a photo from one of our earlier hikes to keep you visually stimulated. It’s a pair of Snowy Egrets from our trip to Hagerman NWR. The bird stalks along in shallow water and in a different hunting sequence from a Great Egret (which stands very still until something swims close then it strikes quickly) it shuffles it’s gold feet along the bottom so that the bright color will flush prey from the bottom and then it grabs lunch.

We did discover that there are a total of 3 New Horizons RVs in this park; two others besides ourselves. We’ve seen a max of one in any other park and that not all too frequently. One is a 2010 Majestic but it’s white with no paint; the owners like to spend the summer in Northern Idaho and appreciate the little bit of extra heat gain the white gives them. The other one is a 32 footer or so and is maybe 10 years old. There is also a 53 foot fifth wheel with 8 slides in the park; it’s a custom Travel Unit and has a grand total of 2 windows that we could see. Must be like a tomb in there; somebody in the laundry told Neil today it’s a couple and two young girls. I imagine finding a place to park that behemoth is pretty challenging. 

Cyas.

Today was supposed to be a pretty nice day so about 1100 or so we headed off for a hike. We were originally going to an National Audubon Society bird preserve but they turned out to be closed on Monday so our second choice was the Rocky Point Trail about 25 miles away in Flower Mound, TX.

The trail itself was pretty unremarkable; mostly overgrown and sorely in need of some trail maintenance. We heard a few birds but saw few of them. We carefully kept our eyes open and the wildlife for the day consisted of this beetle which we could not identify even though it was a nice green metallic color. Examination of the Beetles of Texas website indicated there were 690 species it could have been an Neil was too lazy to individually load each page to look at the pictures so it’s just your regular old green beetle.

The second highlight of the day wildlife wise was this Northern Pearly Eye Butterfly caterpillar. It on the other hand was much easier to identify using the Caterpillars of Northern Texas website.

That was pretty much it. We had a decent hike of about 3.5 miles but there were no views or vistas. About 2 miles of it was along this little creek and we kept looking for trout or other fish but never saw any. We did see a single jogger trail running about 1/2 mile into our hike.

By the time we got back to the car we were hot and tired so we headed home for a shower. Dinner was fried chicken and leftover mashed potatoes and stroganoff noodles from the past couple of nights along with a wine cooler.

Connie is really struggling with the students in this class…they continue to ask really, really, really dumb questions. Even worse than being dumb is they’re asking her to waive college prerequisite requirements or clinical site immunization requirements when neither is going to happen, particularly since she has nothing to do with those things…all she does is schedule the clinical rotations.

Oh well, it’s going to be colder tomorrow; the high is 61 degrees at 0100 tonight and it’s supposed to be down in the 40’s by lunchtime. At least it isn’t supposed to rain.

Cyas.

Connie was tired of working and declared that today was a a no work day; so after breakfast and waiting on the weather to warm up a bit from the overnight low in the 30’s we headed off to the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge about 67 miles from Denton. On our arrival we stopped by the visitor center and discovered that most of the hiking trails were closed today for a bow and arrow turkey hunt. However; there were 2 trails that were open…the Harris Creek Trail (where we saw nothing) and the Crow Hill Trail (where we saw a little more). We patched these two hikes together with the Wildlife Drive and it was the most successful of all.

Most of the Harris Creek Trail was still closed but we were able to do the first third or so around the pond. We heard some ducks but didn’t see them. Moving along to the Crow Hill Trail…we heard but did not see the namesake Crows that give the hill it’s name. We also discovered it was pretty muddy.; but did spot some cool looking dragonflies part way through.

After that we headed off on the Wildlife Drive…which is a 4 or so mile driving trail around the refuge. Our first stop was near a bridge where we spotted a Golden Yellowlegs

and then a bunch of Cliff Swallows nesting underneath the bridge. We shot about 2 dozen photos but they move so fast even in large flocks that this is the only decent shot of the bunch.

On the other side of the bridge away out in the lake we spotted what we first thought were wood storks but on a better look identified them as White Pelicans.

We spotted a Great Egret and then some Blue Winged Teal.

Then we spotted right next to the road this beautiful specimen…it’s a Scissor Tailed Flycatcher. Really beautiful, isn’t it.

There were entire flocks of Rusty Headed Oil Wells scattered throughout the refuge.

On the way back in towards the visitor center we saw some Northern Shovelers

and finally right up near the visitor center spotted some Snowy Egrets including one still in his breeding plumage

as well as a Lesser Yellowlegs on the edge of another bridge.

By this time we were getting tired so headed back for home. We stopped by Walmart and got a few groceries we were almost out of then got stuck in rush hour for awhile. Getting home we made a wine cooler (or two) and baked some Stouffer’s Lasagna for dinner…we discovered years ago that Stouffer’s is almost as good as home made and a whole whole whole lot easier to make. Add in a couple of Italian Ices for dessert and life is good.

Don’t know what the weekend holds. Neil made some more reservations for our western swing today as well as capturing some hike maps, things to do in some of the national parks we’re visiting, and other fun stuff planning.

Cyas.