Monthly Archives: August 2017

Nana To The Rescue . . .

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Although Fall doesn’t officially start until September 22, according to the forecasts for next week, it’s sneaking in a little early. And it’s going to help all the folks who still don’t electricity for AC’s, and probably won’t by next week either.

Although it hit 90° today, and we’re looking at 91° tomorrow and Saturday, Sunday the temps start dropping until were looking at the low 80’s/high 70’s by next weekend. But even better we’ve got nighttime temperatures in the low 60’s/high 50’s.

Very, very nice.

There’s been a lot of talk on Facebook about the new Trails Collection membership now being offered to Thousand Trails members. If you haven’t noticed the link on your TT members page, it’s at the bottom of your Account Information On the face it looks to be a good deal, but as seems to be usual with TT deals, there’s a few gotchas.

The Trails Collection is $199 per year and gives you access to 106 TT and Encore parks, with 13 on the list having an extra $20 per night.

Trails Collection Map

As you can see, the new parks are mostly clustered in 8 areas around the country.




Now for some of the fine print gotchas.

1. Your Trails Collection membership runs concurrent with your TT membership. And if you buy it at another time, it’s not prorated. So if your TT membership renews April 1st,  and you buy your TC membership on February 1st for $199, then when your TT membership renews in two months later, you owe another $199.

2. You can stay for two weeks at an Affiliated Park but you can not then move to another Affiliated Park. So you can’t go from park to park under the TC plan.

If my current Thousand Trails membership agreement allows me to go park-to-park among the Thousand Trails preserves, will I be able to go park-to-park among the Affiliated Resorts in Program?

No, if you stay more than four nights at an Affiliated Resort in the Program, you will need to wait seven days before visiting another Affiliated Resort in the Program.

But then the question comes up, can you move directly to or from a TT park to an Affiliated Park. And that’s where it gets a little fuzzy. Based on this paragraph in the Frequently Asked Questions, you can’t.

Can I go directly from a Thousand Trails preserve to an Affiliated Resort in the Program? Likewise, can I go directly from an Affiliated Resort in the Program to a Thousand Trails preserve?

No, if you stay more than four nights at an Affiliated Resort in the Program or a Thousand Trails preserve, you will need to wait seven days before visiting another Affiliated Resort in the Program or a Thousand Trails preserve.



So this morning I put in a call to TT to ask about just this fact and here’s what Latoya said.

If your TT membership presently allows you go to got park to park, then you can go directly to/from an Affiliated Park to a TT park.

When I ask why the website doesn’t say that, she said she was told that it was because the majority of TT memberships are now Zone Passes, and they don’t allow park to park.

Big surprise.

Jus to double-check, I asked again, “So there are now more Zone Pass members than regular TT members”, and she said yes.

When I asked her why they didn’t clarify this difference in the FAQ file, she said she didn’t know, but she wished they would, since it’s the most asked question by callers.

3. No matter how far ahead you can book a park under your TT membership (for us it’s 210 days), you can only book 60 days under your TC membership.

4. Finally, good luck actually booking a TC park, as there are only about 10 sites at each park reserved for TC members.

Our daughter Brandi called this afternoon to see if Nana could babysit Landon next week. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) announced today that school will not start back until Monday week, the 11th, so they need someone to watch Landon next Tuesday through Friday.

Talk about throwing Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch.

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So I will drop her off sometime Monday afternoon and pick her up probably Friday afternoon. And it looks like it will be just me and Karma next week.



Thought for the Day:
 

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”

gsfdg

Orange Beef and Little Debbie . . .

Well, the rains have moved on from the Houston area, but the flooding continues in many places due to overflowing dikes and levees.




And in some places, the flooding is unfortunately deliberate. The Corp of Engineers has had to release water from the Barker and Addicks reservoirs which caused flooding in areas that hadn’t flooded from the storm. But the reservoir release was necessary to prevent the levees from failing and causing even more catastrophic flooding.

Again, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

And here, according to the official Lake Conroe Kitty Litter Rain Gauge, we had at least 28” of rain here at the park.

Kitty Bucket Water Level

Accuracy not guaranteed.

in case you didn’t bookmark it before, here’s the link again that shows road closures and flooding in real-time. Just refresh the page as necessary to see the changes.

Houston Traffic Overlay

Houston Traffic Overlay

I had a couple of comments and emails with questions about my use of the Wireless 4 Channel Remote Control Unit, wanting more info about how to wire it up for their use.

Remote Control for Slide and AC 2

So if you have any questions about these modules, just let me know.




A little after 4pm Jan and I headed into Conroe to meet up with Debi and Ed Hurlburt at China Delight, our favorite local Chinese place.

Debi and Ed Hurlburt 2

Jan and I again both had the Spicy Orange Beef.

China Delight Beef with Orange Peel

Delicious and big enough servings that we had more to bring home than we ate there.

As seems to be normal with our Hurlburt get-togethers we once again spent over 3 hours for dinner. It’s amazing how much we can find to talk about each time.



Coming back to the park, we again saw these Code 3 Animal Rescue trucks that are staging here at the park.

Code 3 Animal Rescue

But rather than rescuing dogs and cats, they’re handling horses and cows. Don’t know where they’re putting them though.

Wrapping up, regular readers know that Jan has a thing for pumpkin . . . anything pumpkin. So when we were at Kroger’s yesterday she grabbed up these Little Debbie’s

Little Debbie Pumpkin Spice Rolls

Later, as I was waiting to check out, I read though the ingredient list on the back of the package.

Little Debbie Pumpkin Spice Rolls Ingredients

Note that the word ‘Pumpkin’ does not appear anywhere on the list.

I guess it you parse it correctly, the box says they’re ‘Pumpkin Spice Rolls, not Pumpkin Rolls. And it does have pumpkin spices in it – cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. But I think the reason they’re pretty tasty is that the first two ingredients are Corn Syrup and Sugar.

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But I still think Little Debbie is a liar.



Thought for the Day:
 

“God is a comic playing to an audience that’s afraid to laugh.” – Voltaire (1694-1778)

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