Our RV Adventures

I woke up at 7 am this morning to call Brock’s Automotive and explain why there was a strange truck on a trailer in their parking lot. And that I would be in later to take care of it.

Then I went back to sleep.

We headed out about 10:30 for a day of errands. And our first stop was at the park office to see if we could stay where we were, or not.

Apparently it’s, “or not.”

There is someone coming into this site tomorrow so we’ll have to move over to site 4 in the center area in front of the office. Then as soon as it’s open, we’ll move into in site 77.

Site 77 is on the water, and about halfway between our two past sites, 80 and 73. But it has two problems.

This site is configured for a 5th wheel as a back-in, so if we want to have our windshield facing the water, I’ll have to run our hookups underneath the rig. Not a big problem, but I’ll probably have to buy another section of sewer hose.

The real problem is that the site may be too short. It looks like that if we park far enough back so that we’re not sticking out in the street, my wheels will be at the edge of the concrete pad and my levelers will be on the grass. Not good.

I’ve got a 100 ft tape measure in one of the bays so I may dig it out and measure the site and see.

Otherwise we could wait until December 10th when we could move into site 81, right next to where we were parked the first two years.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Our next stop was lunch at Monterey’s Little Mexico, one of our favorite local Mexican places. After a few months on the road we start to crave their Chicken Tortilla Soup. We’ve had good Tortilla Soup other places, but none quite measures up to Monterey’s.

Then we headed up to Brock’s Automotive to take care of the truck and the trailer. I got the truck off the trailer and turned in to Brock’s and then hooked up the trailer to the Toyota Tundra we’re borrowing from our son-in-law Lowell, and then headed back past the U-Haul place and on to the RV park.

As it turns out, I realized that I had left the U-Haul paperwork back in the rig, so we had to go back to the park to get it before we could turn the trailer in. After that was done we headed home for the afternoon.

After a nice nap, Jan and I met our son Chris, and his wife Linda, at Tookies, a fabled local hamburger place where we’ve been eating since we moved to Houston in 1978. However it was badly damaged by Hurricane Ike in 2008 while we were in Alaska, and it never reopened.

But it was purchased by a new owner, refurbished, and reopened this past July. And we found it certainly lived up to its past reputation.

Their Double-Meat Burgers are a full pound of hand-formed lean ground beef, loaded with your choice of goodies, like bacon ground in with the beef, burgers soaked in wine, covered with jalapenos, mushrooms, cheese, onions, picante sauce, BBQ sauce, or chili.

Your choice of artery-clogging, heart-stopping, stomach-filling meaty goodness.

Tookie’s is back!

On another note, we traveled 9,924 miles this year, for a total of 47,455 since we picked up the coach January 6th, 2008. We traveled more the first two years since we went to Alaska in 2008, and Newfoundland in 2009.

And since the coach had 62511 miles on it when we bought it, we’ve now got 109,966 total miles on the coach.

So far, so good.

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Thought for the Day:

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” – Oscar Wilde

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We were up about 7:30 for our last day on the road for several months. After Wally-Docking in Breaux Bridge, LA we had a 225 mile run back to our winter site at Galveston Bay RV Park in Dickinson, TX.

I started the generator to make coffee, and while Jan microwaved our breakfast sandwiches, I went outside to put some air in my slightly-leaky tire. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered since it wasn’t down that much, but since I had an extra 750 pounds on the rear tires due to the weight of the trailer, I didn’t want to take any chances.

We pulled out of the Wal-Mart about 9 am and headed west on I-10.

After a smooth trip we pulled into the parking lot  of Brocks Automotive about 2 pm. Brock’s have been my mechanics for about 20 years, so I wanted them to take a look at it. They’re not open on the weekends, so we just parked the trailer with the truck still on it in their lot. I’ll call them tomorrow morning and let them know.

About 2:30, Brandi, Lowell, and Landon showed up to meet us. They’re loaning us Lowell’s truck for a few days, while we’re having ours fixed, so they were dropping it off.

After getting in our hugs with Landon, we headed down to our park, but our first stop was at a Buc-ee’s on SR 96. Having seen diesel prices as high as $4.04 in Louisiana, I was very happy to find it here for $3.65, the lowest I’ve seen for a good while. And I’ve seen Unleaded here for as low as $2.99.

It’s great to be back in Texas!

I put in 130 gallons, having traveled 1071 miles since we last filled up 10 days ago on November 10th in Bowling Green, KY. But we actually only used about 120 gallons for traveling. The rest was for about 10 hours of generator time.

This means that on this last tank I’ve average a little over 8.9 mpg. Not bad. Driving 55 mph really works.

One thing that surprised me over the last two days is that pulling the extra 2200 pounds of the car trailer, I was still able to get almost 9.2 mpg on the flat terrain between Gulf Shores and here.

We got to the park a little before 4 pm, and trying to pull into the site we had been given over a month ago, only to find a 5th wheel already parked there. And it looks like they had been there a while.

Making a quick loop around this section, I found site 72 open, and on the bayou side as we had really wanted anyway. And it’s right next door to where we were parked last year.

So I took the empty site. After all, someone took my site, so I get to take someone else’s.

Right? Isn’t that the way it works?

Since the park office isn’t open on Sunday, I’ll have to hash it out tomorrow.

We did a quick and dirty setup, just power and satellite, since we were meeting some of the kids at King Food, our all-time favorite Chinese restaurant. We met Brandi, Lowell, and of course, Landon there, along with our other grandchild, our granddaughter Piper.

Here’s Landon finding out he really likes Lo Mein and Pan Fried Crispy Noodles. He would put the end of the noodle in his mouth and then suck it in just like spaghetti.

We had a great time seeing everyone again, and tomorrow we’ll have dinner with Piper’s parents, our son Chris and our daughter-in-law Linda who couldn’t make it tonight.

More fun!

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Thought for the Day:

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell

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