Site Meter On the Road in 2011 with Doug & Willie On the Road in 2011 with Doug & Willie

Thursday, August 25, 2011

 

Skylark Mobile Home Community, Lafayette, CO: 6/13-8/23

We enjoy staying at this well-kept mobile home park right off the main drag in Lafayette. We can stroll to the many shops and restaurants in Old Town and enjoy seeing the street art along the way. They have a playground with a sprayground and it's fun to watch the families stop by and play in the water. The adults are usually the last to join in the fun, but they love it as much as the children. We wish our niece & nephews were here to enjoy it too!!

Now we're settled in for a bit over two months in the Boulder area, where we can do our usual Boulder things -- line dancing, eating out with friends, visiting friends, seeing some of the Live in HD from the Met operas on Summer Encore that we previously missed, catch up on newer movies. To celebrate Doug's birthday, we went to a performance of "Cats" by Boulder's Dinner Theater. It was quite enjoyable, but we were surprised at how many of the company we recognized from so many years ago. Also, we must add that the food has definitely gone downhill, even though the price has gone uphill. I think we prefer theater without food!

We attended a performance of the Amazing Acro-Cats (www.circuscats.com), which was quite enjoyable and adorable. Two women dressed in black, slinky, cat-like outfits (including cat ears!) worked with several cats, a groundhog, some rats and an amazing hen. The cats all did various tricks (or not, depending on if they felt like it -- in typical cat-like fashion!). The hen (Hen-diana Jones) was pretty amazing and played the tambourine & cymbals with the Rock-Cats band. They showed briefly how to train your own cat. Pandora & Jasmine did not want to hear about it!

We will be celebrating Willie's 70th (!!) birthday on 8/2 with a party at a nearby park. Living that long seems worthy of a celebration! We hope the torrential thunderstorms that have been happening each afternoon recently will be a thing of the past by party time.

After our stay here, we are planning to arrive in Albuquerque around the first of September. We currently plan to stay at least 3 months. We also plan to look around at various more "permanent" living arrangements. Our thoughts change daily, ranging from getting a new rig and continuing to travel, to renting for a year to see how we like it, to buying something low-maintenance like a condo. We hope to get to our co-op RV lot in Benson some time between December and March, depending on the Albuquerque living situation. That's about as far out as we have planned.

The cats love it here. Our spot is nice & shady, which means that there are big trees surrounding us. In these trees are all sorts of creatures: birds, squirrels and even a few raccoons. The cats' eyes (and ours!) got very big when the raccoons came into view! Between running from window to window "chasing" the squirrels, and their new battery-powered string toy that fits on the bathroom doorknob, Pandora & Jasmine are getting quite a nice amount of exercise. Trixie is happy because it keeps them out of her way. We had Trixie's bloodwork done, and her thyroid meds are doing their job a little too well -- we had to cut back a bit. Definitely good news! Pandora is hoping that we stay here forever!

 

Brush City Park, Brush, CO: 6/11-12

This is a very nice little city park, where we have camped many times before. It has a great dump station, too!! The sites are a bit unlevel but easy to pull along into. It's a fine place to spend a night or two. The first night is free and after that it's $10/night (up to a week is allowed). I wish there were a lot more of these around the country. It is great for the local economy, too, since we almost always find somewhere to spend some money in these cute small towns.

 

Karrer Park, McCook, NE: 6/8-10

This was one city park we didn't give up, and we were very glad that we did not. McCook is a delightful town with interesting architecture and good restaurants. There is even a Frank Lloyd Wright house (not open to the public but interesting to view). The city park is free for up to 3 nights and has electricity at the sites and water nearby. Use of the dump station requires backing into it (We can't imagine what they were thinking!!), so we recommend planning ahead. We walked around the town one day and did errands and returned to a couple of restaurants the next day.

 

Mormon Island State Rec Area, Grand Island, NE: 6/5-7

Because the slideout was giving us such difficulty, and the weather was quite hot for Doug's struggles with it each time we moved, we changed our route slightly in order to eliminate one stop. We removed two small town city parks in NE in favor of one State Rec Area at the mid-point. This turned out to be a BIG MISTAKE (especially since there was a perfect alternative along our original route)! The route to Mormon Island SRA "skirted" Lincoln -- it looked small enough on the map! However, when we got near Lincoln, there was a truck detour that we thought it would be wise to take.
Another mistake. After following it for a while heading north, the detour signs disappeared (don't you love it when they do that??) and we were left to figure out how best to connect with I-80 to get to Grand Island. The GPS said turn left and go 8 miles straight to I-80, so we did. It was 8 miles right through downtown Lincoln at about 2 on Friday afternoon. SLOW GOING! But we finally made it to I-80 and onward to Mormon Island SRA. It was nice enough, but our pull-along spot left us parked almost in the middle of the road. Doug was too exhausted to go back to the office and request another spot, so we put out orange cones and settled in. Heck, we figured if someone ran into our slideout, part of our problem would be solved! This park was also more expensive than we like because a $4 entrance fee was added to the $18 camping fee.

We felt so "grumpy" towards the area that we did no sightseeing. We stayed home and used the air conditioner and did laundry (at least they had a laundromat). It was so hot & dry that we could hang out two loads a day, so we really got caught up! That made the stop almost worthwhile.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

 

Pioneer County Park, Clarinda, IA: 6/2-4

We had planned to stay at an IA state park near Creston, but after finding such unpleasant camping at two other SPs, we decided to find another alternative. Luckily, since there are so many campers in the plains states, there are plenty of campgrounds if you hunt around on the internet for them!

The literature says Pioneer Park is in Clarinda (birthplace of Glenn Miller), but it is actually closer to Shenandoah. The NPR station we get is from Maryville, MO. We are very close to the state lines of both MO and NE. This is a cute little park with about 12 RV sites with W&E. It is almost deserted during the week but fills up for the weekends, especially when there is a children's fishing derby, like this weekend. Nearby Shenandoah has one of the country's smallest Walmarts and a very nice library with WiFi, which came in handy, since we have less than one bar of Verizon service here. We also found a really good Mexican restaurant.

 

Winterset City Park, Winterset, IA: 5/30-6/1

Jan also recommended visiting Winterset and the nearby Bridges of Madison County, so we decided to make another stop after just 60 miles. It was well worth it. The city park has a nice campground, which had many empty spaces after the holiday weekend. The town square has been restored and is lovely. The courthouse in the center of the square was still being refurbished, and will be quite lovely when that is done. We enjoyed walking around the town and looking at the houses. We found a map to several painted quilt blocks that had been put on houses or garages. We also viewed the John Wayne birthplace home. Before the making of the movie about the bridges, John Wayne was the most famous thing to come from this town.

We got a map to the 6 remaining bridges and spent a day visiting them. They are each lovely in their own way. You can walk through them all, and you can drive through one. Because of the increase in tourism from the movie, funding is available to keep them well-maintained, and it is nice to see them looking so good. We learned that bridges were covered in order to protect the more-expensive floorboards from the elements. It was cheaper to cover the bridges than to replace the floorboards. The highway commission actually ordered all bridges to be covered for a period of time.

One of the bridges had been relocated to the City Park, and we visited it several times. Also in City Park was the Winterset Hedge Maze, designed like the hedge mazes in England. It was a delightful maze, with several decision points, and privet hedge "walls" of just the right height. At the center of the maze is an old English sundial purchased at an antique shop in London, England.

We also visited Pammel State Park, currently under the (mis)management of Madison County. We were quite thankful that we had decided not to camp here! There was road construction on the gravel road leading into the park, and the detours to it were not well-marked. It was easy to get onto roads that would have been quite problematic while towing. Once there, we found the cg had 2 parts, one a flat gravel open area that was quite unappealing and the other a wooded, crowded, gloomy area with very unlevel spots. Plus the two main attractions were closed! The Harmon Tunnel (the only highway tunnel in Iowa) was blocked off with orange tape & cones, and the Middle River Crossing, which you can normally drive across, or wade & play in the river (if you're so inclined) was gated due to the high water.

 

Marion County Park, Knoxville, IA: 5/24-29

We arrived at this lovely county park and found plenty of spots to choose from -- too many really because it took us over an hour to decide on the "perfect" one for our needs. After setting up and having lunch, we made a Walmart run and found a shop that could repair the truck. We settled in to enjoy ourselves and not worry about when we would get the truck back. Of course, this meant they were very fast, and the truck was back Thursday morning around 10.

When we mentioned our location on Facebook, we discovered that Knoxville is where our good friend Jan Redding's parents had lived and that they were buried in the cemetery we could see from our window. This was an amazing "small world" coincidence! We were able to visit the grave, add a few flower garlands to what was already there, and check that the engraving had been done to Jan's satisfaction. It was a nice Memorial weekend activity.

With the return of the truck, we could do some sightseeing. The small Dutch community of Pella was high on the list of recommendations, and we spent most of a day there, looking around at the interesting architecture (lots of windmills), doing a bit of shopping, eating out ("Dutch" seems to not be one of our favorite cuisines!) and visiting bakeries (On the other hand, their baked goods are divine!), where we made many purchases! We missed their annual tulip festival by a few weeks, but with our dislike of crowds, we were not totally sorry. Pella was also the boyhood home of Wyatt Earp, whose cabin was part of the historical village. On the drive up we stopped at the Red Rock Reservoir Visitor Center. This is Iowa's largest reservoir, made even larger this year by the record rainfall & flooding. We drove around and over another section on our way back to Knoxville.

For the actual holiday weekend days, we decided to mostly stay close to "home". The cg had gone from mostly empty to overflowingly full, with many family gatherings involving multiple cars, RVs and even large cooking grills mounted on trailers. Part of the park we were camped in was an historical town & museum, which were open on Saturday, with costumed interpreters and a small bake sale and some very home-spun musical entertainment.

Our last day here we visited the Knoxville Butterfly Garden (on the recommendation of Jan) and also walked around the historic Town Square. The Butterfly Garden has a number of small plots off of the main walk that individuals or families can lease & tend to their own personal likes. Jan's father had one of the plots for a number of years. The flowers were lovely, but it was a bit too early for the butterflies.

 

Lake Keomah SP, Oskaloosa, IA: 5/23

We started out this fairly short move with plenty of extra water along, just in case. That turned out to be a good thing, since Doug had to add water every 30 miles. Obviously the problem was not fixed, but Doug could see where the water was coming out (on top of the engine block). We made it to the SP where we had planned to camp for a few nights, but found nothing suitable that was available through the weekend. Since we didn't know how long the truck might be out of service, we wanted to get somewhere we could stay for the whole weekend.

This SP has only 3 non-reservable spaces with electricity. They were all available for the weekend, and they all involved difficult, if not impossible backing maneuvers. We tried backing into one, but Willie called it off since the truck was starting down the very steep hill off of the very narrow one-lane road. Doug also noticed a troubling clunking sound coming from the right front wheel of the truck. We called around and found a county park 30 miles down the road in Knoxville with available sites and decided to head there the next morning, despite our dislike of one-night stops.

 

Rock Island/Quad Cities KOA (formerly Camelot CG), Rock Island, IL: 5/20-22

With much sadness, we said goodbye to the family group in Morton and headed on to visit Mike, Kim & their son AJ (5), who also just graduated from pre-K. We spent our brief time here visiting at their house, watching the movie "Astro Boy" with AJ, who loved it, and playing "The Game of Life", which Doug won, and Willie came in last. AJ & Kim were in the middle, and Mike was busy catching up with work from his school teaching job. We went with Mike & Kim to see "Rent (School Edition)" performed by the Center for Living Arts in Rock Island. The cast were all local HS and college students. It was excellently done in an "in the round setting" in a small no-frills theater.

On the way here, the truck started overheating badly, and Doug discovered coolant was leaking out. He replaced a radiator hose, hoping that would fix the problem. There was no way to test this without towing so we had to wait until our next move.

 

Carl Spindler Marina & RV Park, East Peoria, IL: 4/18-5/19

The month here went by all too quickly! We played duplicate bridge twice a week, went to 3 Live in HD Met Opera performances, and saw the family as much as possible. We usually had dinner with Cathy & John twice a week, visiting Jennifer & the children for the rest of the evening. We saw Jennifer & the children several other times each week and were able to attend 3 musical performances that Devin (14)and Christian (10) were in. Devin plays bass in the Morton Jr. HS Orchestra, and Christian plays cello in the Sixth Grade Orchestra and sings in the Sixth Grade Choir. Morton has a very good music program, and Sophia (8) plans to start violin when she is in sixth grade (that's when music is first offered through the public schools). Aidan (5) is just "graduated" from pre-K and will be in Kindergarten next year. They actually have a graduation ceremony complete with cap & gown for this occurrence. It's quite adorable!!

The Live in HD performances we saw were Richard Strauss's "Capriccio" (with Jennifer), Verdi's "Il Trovatore", and the second opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle, "Die Walküre" (five hours long, and it started almost an hour late due to "technical difficulties" with the million-dollar mechanical stage thing). It is wonderful to get to see these performances at a reasonable price in the comfort of a local theater. We also saw a local production by the Peoria Players, a musical comedy entitled "The Drowsy Chaperone". It was hilariously funny, with excellent singing & dancing. We highly recommend it if it comes to a theater near you.

About a third of the campground was under water for much of our stay, but none of the flooding occurred near our campsite. It made the place a bit soggy, and all the campfires were smoldering instead of burning. We weren't much for campfires to begin with, and the constant smell of smoldering wood did nothing to make us feel differently! We had to hang our laundry inside because it was usually too smelly outside, since our neighbor was the obvious winner in the "Smelly Campfire" competition!

Friday, June 3, 2011

 

Carl Spindler Marina & RV Park, East Peoria, IL: 4/18-5/18

Our trailer has made it to our long stop in IL! The slideout has been a bit balky at times -- mostly when it's really wet/humid (When is it not in this part of the country??), but so far it continues to open & close. We will be here a month, visiting Willie's sister, Cathy Barry, Cathy's husband John Barry, Cathy's daughter, Jennifer Perez, and Jennifer's 4 children, Devin, Christian, Sophia and Aidan. What fun we have seeing all of them!

Our plans are to be here a month, with lots of family visits, a few Met Opera Live in HD performances, some duplicate bridge and maybe a bit of line dancing (So far, not looking good for line dancing using various web searches.) Last week was spring break in Morton, where everyone lives (about 12 miles from this cg), so we visited many hours every day. This will slow down now that the children will be back in school. We have also seen one Live in HD -- "Capriccio" by Richard Strauss, starring Renee Fleming. What an amazing performance!

After our time here, we will travel to Rock Island, IL, for a brief visit with Willie's nephew, Michael Barry, his wife Kim and their son AJ.

 

Robin Hood Woods CG, Shelbyville, IL: 4/15-17

Because it was too early in the season for the COE cgs at Lake Shelbyville to be open, we had to pay big bucks to stay at Robin Hood Woods, located about 6 miles from our friends Carole & Delbert Ulmer. It was well worth the extra money to get in such a nice visit. We played a lot of cards, chatted, and ate lots of good food.

 

Gun Creek COE CG, Rend Lake, IL: 4/12-14

This cg is one of several COE (Corps of Engineers) cgs, along with one IL State Park, located around Rend Lake. We picked the one closest to the interstate, mainly for convenience. There was some road noise, but it wasn't bad, and we had a really good phone signal. We had a nice, secluded spot with a distant view of the lake. After driving around the lake and checking out all the other cgs, we were quite happy with our choice. We decided this must be one of the COE's first efforts. We have never seen so many spots in COE cgs with various issues (not level, slanting way downhill, etc) as we saw in these. The state park was quite nice but of course also a lot more expensive.

This park contains a golf resort, with lodging and a restaurant, and the Illinois Artisans Shop & Gallery. We were lucky enough to view a wonderful display of quilts made during the time of the Civil War. The stories connected with the quilts were interesting, informative and heart-warming. The rest of the art on display was also quite interesting, and there were lots of almost irresistible items in the gift shop!

 

Daisy Holt's Driveway, Princeton, KY: 4/5-11

This should have been a really easy travel day. The roads were dry and relatively flat, without curves, and the route was easy to follow. We had a nice lunch at a Subway in Paris, TN (lunch in Paris -- how romantic is that?). When we were about 30 miles from Daisy's house we pulled into a truck overnight area for a quick bathroom stop. Willie started looking frantically around and quickly realized that she had left her purse in the Subway in Paris, TN. UGH! The purse contained our (only) cell phone, Willie's iPod Touch, and our Verizon Fivespot -- about $1000 worth of electronic gadgets plus all the usual valuables. In a panicky visit to the weigh station, we were able to call the Subway and verify that they had her purse. Then we had to drop the trailer in the lot and drive back 70 miles (each way) to get the purse. We arrived at Daisy's house about 7:15pm and were able to get set up before it was totally dark.

We had a really fun visit with Daisy. We started out with a visit to Paducah to do some big store shopping and attend the Live in HD Encore production of "Lucia de Lammermoor", which was EXCELLENT. We also had a delicious dinner at The Olive Garden. We took scenic drives around the Land Between the Lakes with Daisy. On Sunday, we went to Owensboro, KY, to meet our FB and Castle Age friend & mentor, Laura Dillander, at Moonlite Bar-B-Q. This was a fun experience and we lamented the fact that we could not get together more often. The food was tasty, with a really SUPERB dessert buffet. We also visited the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, one of the area's best kept secrets, and saw an interesting display of "The Divine in Art" which covered many centuries of religious art. They had a really well-done display of an entire set of stained glass windows rescued from a soon-to-be-demolished church.

 

Mousetail Landing SP, Linden, TN: 4/4

Rarely do we get off to an early start, but we really wanted to keep "on schedule", and the weather was predicted to deteriorate rapidly throughout the day, so we rushed and left Tishomingo SP about 8:30am. For us, this approaches miraculous! After a really pleasant drive along the Natchez Trace for about 50 miles, we made our way slowly through winding country roads, up hill and down dale, in lightly falling rain. It made for quite tense driving, and poor Pandora got carsick. We finally arrived at Mousetail Landing SP around noon, as the rain began to intensify. In order to reach the campground, we had to climb a short but VERY STEEP hill -- probably the steepest paved road we have ever driven. 2/3 of the way up Doug put the truck into 4WD since we had slowed to such a crawl he was afraid we might actually start slipping backwards on the rain-slicked road. Just over the crest of the hill we found a nice but rather bizarrely laid-out, completely empty campground. We picked the only pull-through spot and quickly set up. It was oriented so that we didn't have to unhook, which is really nice for a one-night stay. As we finished setting up, it started POURING. We hurried inside and got settled and into dry, warm clothes. Then it really started to storm and the power went off. Luckily, our batteries were fully charged! We were able to watch the storm progress over us and beyond and were quite relieved to see it receding. We were also relieved to have a visit from the park ranger checking to see if we were okay and assuring us that the power would be back on soon. It was. The rest of our stay here was uneventful. The following morning was nice & sunny, and the steep hill was much easier to negotiate when dry.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

 

Tishomingo State Park, Tishomingo, MS: 4/1-3

We decided to come to this state park (20 miles from Red Bay) instead of spending another night at McKinney's. For our sanity's sake & the cats' peace of mind we're spending 3 nights here, enjoying the peaceful beauty of this park which is located right off the Natchez Trace. We were also able to catch up on laundry, also way overdue.

The slideout itself is still "balky" -- we're basically back to where we were 3 or 4 years ago. In order to fix it, the slideout would have to be pulled out & the drive mechanism replaced completely -- WAAAAAYY too expensive -- probably more than a new/used trailer would cost. Now we have to make a decision -- live with our slideout, get a used 5W, or get a house in ABQ. Hmmmm.......

 

McKinney's RV Repair, Red Bay, AL: 3/30-31

We arrived here fairly late in the afternoon, so there was only time to get set up before they all left for the day. They parked us inside their repair building, which looks like an old airplane hangar filled with all sorts of RV parts from lamps to washing machines. This was our first time parked inside a building and it was VERY STRANGE. Still, the cats enjoyed looking out the windows at all the rolls of carpet, RVs in various stages of repair, etc, etc.

The first thing next morning the office manager knocked on our door and said it would take 3 weeks to get a new motor for the slideout. THREE WEEKS? I didn't know they made RV parts on the moon. We gave her another source to try, and she went away. Then a guy came by and said he had found some parts that would fit and that he thought he could rebuild the motor -- "if it was okay with us". OKAY WITH US??? YAY!! In about 2 hours the slide was moving in & out again.

Since they accomplished that task so well, we decided to have them grease our wheel bearings (somewhat overdue) and also get 4 new tires for the trailer (WAY overdue). This took most of Friday. We left a little poorer & considerably happier.

 

Legion State Park, Louisville, MS: 3/22-30

We finished our stay here uneventfully in our much smaller living space. We had wonderful visits with friends & relatives, including a pot luck & Domino game at Willie's parents' church, and hope we get to come back again some day. We played bridge twice, once in Columbus and once in Starkville. We came in first both times, so they were happy to see us leave!!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

 

Legion State Park, Louisville, MS: 3/22-30

We reserved one of our favorite spots for a week-long stay here visiting friends & relatives. We had a pleasant drive continuing up the Trace, with a lunch stop and 20-minute hike through a Cypress Swamp. There were no problems backing in or getting level. When we started sliding out the slide-outs, however, the problematic one started acting up again, went about halfway out, and then stopped completely. No amount of effort could get it to budge in or out, and we finally gave up & stuffed towels & blankets into the open gaps around the slide-out. Needless to say, the cats were enthralled by the latest change in their living environment.

After a little Internet research, we found a RV repair facility in Red Bay, Alabama, less than 10 miles from our planned route. They assured us that if we could manage to get our RV up there, they could fix it. (We have heard this before, but we're trying to believe them!) Then we called the Service Manager of now-defunct Travel Supreme, who Fred Lanoue had managed to track down on the Internet during our stay in Rockport. He said we could physically push the slide-out back in, but first we needed to remove a pin in the drive-train assembly, which is hidden away in a small compartment. We looked in & discovered 4 pins, so we took a picture of the assembly, labelled each of the pins in PhotoShop, and sent it off in an email. Then we talked with Ann Covington to see if she knew of someplace where we could hire a couple of big strong men to push the slide-out back in. She recommended a local auto-repair shop, whose owner couldn't help personally, but remembered his cousin Tim works on RVs. We drove home & less than 30 minutes later Tim drove up. After an unsuccessful half-hour trying to get the drive shaft unstuck, we discussed our options. He removed one of the pins & pushed on the slide-out, and to our delight it moved slightly. Doug went outside, and with the two men pushing & Willie pulling inside, we managed to get the slide-out all the way in.

We are now living in about 2/3 of our "normal" living space. Most of the kitchen cabinets & drawers are blocked by the recalcitrant slide-out, but Willie had the foresight to empty our most vital things from them before Tim showed up. The cats are now even more anxious as we have banana boxes filled with food & cooking implements occupying their precious lounging space. We plan to drive up to Red Bay on Wednesday. where hopefully they won't take one look at our trailer & turn us away -- although that would be preferable to the lying deceivers in Mathis, TX who promised us the stars as a way to con us into spending a month there. If they can work on it, that brings up the problem of where could we live while the trailer is being worked on, including our 3 rather bizarre cats. In the South, cats are not considered "indoor" pets.

 

Askew's Landing, Edwards, MS: 3/20-21

This is probably the first time that we have paid for a camping spot while traveling on the Natchez Trace Parkway. The NTP approximates the route of the historic Natchez Trace, a 440-mile path from Natchez to Nashville that traders in the 18th & early 19th centuries would take after rafting their goods to market the other direction. Parts of the actual Trace are still visible, sometimes worn down 5 or 6 feet into the soft fertile soil. The Parkway is a two-lane road with a maximum 50-mph speed limit and no stop lights or stop signs the entire way, making it perfect for pulling our trailer. It is overseen by the NPS and made famous by some of Nevada Barr's mysteries, and, of course, our blog.

We decided to skip the free campgrounds for a number of reasons: in the spring it is quite difficult to find a space since they are usually quite crowded with Canadians waiting for warmer weather; we have grown less enamored with dry camping over the years; and probably most important, we were afraid that our batteries would not have enough charge left to retract our balky slide-out after 2 days of dry camping.

Getting to Askew's Landing off of the Trace turned out to be more of an adventure than we thought. We had to drive about 12 miles on a rural Mississippi "one-and-a-half lane" road, then have the cognizance to avoid a brand-new bridge in town that went straight up, then straight down, and would have almost certainly caused damage to our trailer, and then bounce down a 2-mile slowly deteriorating dirt road. The cg itself, however, was worth it -- large, grassy sites by a lake, with free WiFi. We had a very relaxing, unproductive stay here, which is exactly what we were looking for.

 

Diamond T RV Park, Pollock, LA: 3/13-19

We each probably gained 10 pounds during our 6-day stay here, thanks to Marilyn's excellent cooking. The RV park itself is not the greatest setting in the world, basically a sloping field with hook-ups added when the owner decided to convert a cow pasture into an RV park. I don't think there is a level spot in the park, but we have plenty of leveling boards & blocks, and the cats enjoyed watching the birds that frequented our trailer, as well as listening to the numerous barn-yard animals next door. The hee-hawing of the donkeys was especially amusing (except during the night!).

Friday, April 8, 2011

 

Diamond T RV Park, Pollock, LA: 3/13-19

We stayed here two years ago and found it to be a great location for visiting Willie's cousins Joe & Marilyn, who live in Pineville. Pineville is a small college town next to Alexandria, which is where we do major shopping and play bridge. We always enjoy visiting Joe & Marilyn -- their company is excellent and we chat for hours on many subjects. Marilyn is an excellent cook, so we also look forward to that. The place hasn't changed a bit and is a fine place for the trailer to be parked while we visit for a week.

 

Pine Grove Estates, DeRidder, LA: 3/10-12

"Estates" is a real stretch for this place. It's behind a junk store, car wash and detail shop and has mostly permanent trailers. However, they think highly of themselves and wouldn't even allow us to hang our laundry out on our drying rack. What a joke! We have hooks that hold a clothesline inside, so we settled for that. We toured the town and walked around the historic district a bit, enjoying lunch at Cecil's, a local Cajun restaurant, where the Shrimp Po'Boys and sweet potato fries were among the best we have eaten. They have an interesting building called The Hanging Jail, built in 1914, that got its name because two murderers were executed by hanging above the spiral staircase in 1928. It is an interesting, really creepy-looking Gothic building.

 

Winnie Inn & RV Park, Winnie, TX: 3/7-9

Okay. I'll admit it -- we're Facebook addicts. Therefore, we like to have good, strong, reliable WiFi, which is difficult to judge from 100 miles away. We check out RV park reviews, but they frequently have contradictory opinions. So we often just go with gut feeling and hope for the best. This would have been a good choice if we had not been put in the very last row, as far from the WiFi antenna as possible. The signal was decent during the day but gradually faded to nothing as the evening progressed, at which point we would traipse up to the office and finish up there.

We came here in order to visit Anahuac Natl Wildlife Refuge. The first day we decided to drive over to the town of Anahuac and make a loop back through the refuge to get information for a visit the next day. We had an enjoyable drive, visiting some more interesting waterfront areas and even drove 25 miles out to desolate Smith Point, where we ate our lunch in the truck due to rain & wind outside. After stopping at the Anahuac NWR Visitor Center and getting the info on the park, we headed home, planning to return the next day. However, the next day we realized we were EXHAUSTED after 3 really long days of sightseeing, and we just couldn't imagine anything that would be better than staying home! The cats approved of this decision.

 

Safari Motorhome Community, League City, TX: 3/4-6

The main reason we booked into this Passport America park between Houston and Galveston was so we could make a return visit to Galveston, which we had enjoyed so much in 2001. While driving here and leafing through the AAA book, Willie discovered that we were less than 10 miles from the Johnson Space Center. There went our planned day off!! We went there when it opened on Saturday and spent most of the day there. It was less than ideal to visit on a weekend day, but we had no other choice. We took two different tram tours of the facility, one crowded, the other crowded with school kids. Our very favorite thing was the presentation "Living in Space" where every aspect of life in weightlessness was explained including intimate details of the bathroom facilities. Everything you always wanted to know was explained. The presenter was excellent with a nice sense of humor.

Sunday we visited Galveston, drove around some waterfront areas, looking for birdwatching areas that didn't charge admission, and walked along the beach at the north end of the island for a while. After we had worked up an appetite, we headed off to The Spot, a favorite restaurant from our time here before. It was a small, unassuming little place then. How things change!! Galveston still has a lot of evidence of the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Ike back in 2008, but not at The Spot. It has expanded somewhat, and this day happened to be the final Mardi Gras parade in Galveston. Luckily, we arrived after most of the excitement was over, but the crowds still remained. Without too much of a wait, we were able to get our Shrimp Po'Boys, onion rings and sweet potato fries and actually find a place to sit that wasn't too noisy. It was delicious and well worth the inconvenience.

 

Oceanside RV Park, Port Lavaca, TX: 3/1-3

This place was a pleasant surprise, very near Indianola Beach just south of Port Lavaca. There was a large boondock area where many RVs parked, and it looked delightful; however, we are still not convinced that the batteries will hold enough for the slideouts, so we are unwilling to try boondocking unless there is no alternative. There were several birdwatching places around the area, and we enjoyed visiting them and sightseeing. This is a Passport America park, with half price rates for 2 of the 3 nights and had excellent WiFi.

 

Rustic Cove, Rockport, TX: 2/1-28

We chose this park based on the suggestion of Fred & Linda, who live less than 2 miles from here & are pretty familiar with what we are looking for in an RV park. We were very happy here, so much so that we were sorry that we chose the shortest month to stay. The setting is hard to beat -- close to the water amid live oak trees arching over the roads & trailer sites but spaced well for maneuvering the rig.

Our first week here was so cold that we had to run off our water pump, filling our fresh-water holding tank whenever it warmed up enough to make the task bearable. We discovered a line dancing class in town, but the first day we drove to it it had been postponed one day due to a scheduling conflict -- a not uncommon occurrence since classes are held in the most popular facility in town and line-dance classes are evidently at the bottom of the pecking order for space rental. The next day we tried again, but there were cold-weather alerts all over and class had been cancelled. That afternoon it started to rain, and temps dropped below freezing at night, so the next morning everything was covered with ice. We didn't even try to go line dancing that day. We were able to attend the following Monday, and found it to be quite satisfactory -- 3 one-hour classes -- beginner, intermediate, and advanced (although the advanced was pretty intermediate) -- and you paid once and stayed as long as you liked. We enjoyed it so much, in fact, that we inked it into our schedule ahead of everything else.

In a serendipity fashion, Rockport's annual Sectional Bridge Tournament was held one weekend while we were here. We played in one game every day and finished well enough to gather enough silver points to meet that requirement for our Life Masters. Now we just need 7 more gold and about 80 more of any color to reach that goal. We also played once in their weekly game and finished first.

We visited Aransas National Wildlife Refuge with Fred & Linda twice during the month. They had volunteer responsibilities and we tagged along to enjoy the park. We did some good hiking, birdwatching and general sightseeing. We also visited Goose Island SP, one of our favorite places. We saw a family of Whooping Cranes in a field near the park, 2 adults and a juvenile -- a VERY close sighting of them. There was also an unusual Yellow-faced grassquit in the park, probably an escaped pet, but nevertheless interesting to see. It drew quite the crowds!

Other places of interest were the local fish market, many tasty restaurants, Rockport Aquarium, a Science on a Sphere presentation at the Bay Education Center, visits to Port Aransas, attending a jam at the Rialto Theater in Aransas Pass (where we met an old friend of one of Willie's first roommates) and an interesting meeting of the Aransas Bird & Nature Club. As you can see, the area has LOTS to do, and our month flew by rapidly. We wished we had been able to spend more time here, but once again, we are on a somewhat restrictive time schedule due to our April reservation in Peoria, IL.

In our move here, the slideout worked with its usual balkiness but nothing more. We are becoming more & more convinced that the only problem with it back in Mathis was that our battery was really low from our 2 days of boondocking in Hondo. We actually contacted another RV repair place in Rockport, but they were never even able to give any opinion on it. We have decided to just "wing it" for now.

 

Adventure Texas Resorts, Mathis, TX: 12/31/2010 - 1/31/2011

When we last wrote, we were stuck here waiting for work to be done on our slide-out. Well, the work never materialized, which may not have been such a bad thing. The more we talked with these people, the more it seemed like this "RV repair facility" was founded by a bunch of fishing buddies who thought it would be easy money. In retrospect we were pretty relieved that they didn't attempt to do the work, considering the poor job they did putting things back together after simply diagnosing the problem. They were very nice about it, and very apologetic, and only charged us for one hour's work, but we suspect they realized that our job was really beyond their capabilities and were embarrassed to have promised more than they could deliver. In our spare time, we drove into Corpus Christi to play bridge a few times, and out to Rockport to visit with friends Fred & Linda and Janet & Don, and spent numerous hours on-line competing in the Castle Age Arena, a once-a-year 3-week-long competition in a Facebook game we are both hooked on.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?