Our RV Adventures

Today was a travel day, and if we didn’t get a last minute reprieve from the Gov . . . er, Galveston Bay RV Resort, we were heading back over to the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails for another two weeks.

Jan and I were up about 7:30, kind of early since we didn’t plan on leaving the park until around 11:30 or so (wanted to allow plenty of time for the phone call). Since we only had about a two hour trip to Conroe, we wanted to have breakfast at Schobel’s over in Columbus before we left. We eaten here a number of times and it’s always been good. We had ask our friend Randy to go with us, so we swung by his rig to pick him up about 9.

Jan had a Veggie omelet with a side of bacon (kinda defeats the whole veggie thing) and Randy and I both had the Spanish omelet. One thing I really like about Schobel’s omelets is that they pre-grill the ingredients.before folding them into the omelet. So the ham, onions, tomatoes, and jalapenos inside tasted really good.

This is probably the last time we’ll see Randy for awhile. When he leaves Colorado River, he’s heading over to Medina Lake for a few weeks, but I’m sure we’ll cross paths down the road.

We pulled out of the park about 11:30 with Jan following me in the toad since we were heading about 4 miles away to top of the diesel at the Colorado County Oil Co-op for $2.44 a gallon. On the way, we passed a Citgo that had diesel for $2.39, but I try not to use Citgo except when absolutely necessary.

According to GasBuddy, there’s an Exxon station up in La Grange, about 25 miles north of here that has diesel for $2.31 a gallon. I didn’t work it out on paper, but  the 13 cents a gallon I would have saved on the 40 gallons I bought, would not have paid for the 50 extra miles I would have traveled to get it cheaper.

After fueling up and hitching up, we were back on the road a few minutes before noon, and had a very smooth trip, with no slowdowns or traffic for the entire 125 miles. We got checked in a little after 2pm, and a few minutes later were parked in the same ‘stealth’ site we were in last time.

I call it a ‘stealth’ site because no one parks here because it looks so un-level and rough, mainly because of a big ridge of asphalt that is mounded up down the center. But if you just ignore that, and park anyway, you find that the site is almost perfectly level. All I had to do was just drop the levelers enough to stabilized the coach.

One thing I noticed as we came through Conroe was that the Kroger’s where we usually get gas has it for $1.67, the cheapest we’ve seen so far. I don’t know if we have any gas points left on our Kroger’s Card, but it would really be nice to fill up for 67 cents a gallon.

For dinner Jan refurbished our leftovers from Sealand Seafood the other night, and some of the delicious Broccoli-Cheese Casserole our daughter-in-law Linda sent me home with this past Saturday. Really Good.

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Thought for the Day:

Something done ‘quick and dirty’ usually turns out to be not nearly as quick as you’d hoped, and much, much dirtier.

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After working on some web stuff, I went outside to work on a couple of projects, one of which was to re-attach my tailpipe to my muffler. I had knocked it loose a while ago when I backed into an embankment behind our site while trying to not hit the overhanging limbs. I put a metal strap on it to keep it from falling completely off while I tried to come up with a way to re-attach it.

Finally came up with this: Two large stainless steel circle clamps holding four angle brackets around the base of the tailpipe (you can only see the top two). I’ve still got to put a screw the top left one, but I need to dig out my right-angle drill chuck so I can get a drill bit in there.

Then I pre-drilled holes through the brackets into the end of the muffler and screwed in large sheet metal screws. So actually it’s now more stable than it was to start with.

Then I went over to Randy’s Monaco to help with a leveler jack problem. He got stuck in the mud a couple of weeks ago when we were all at the Lake Conroe TT, as it pretty much rained the whole time we were there.

Since he was kind of sunk in, as he was being towed out, one of his leveler pads had the base pulled off of it.

His looks like this except his has four springs, not two. As it turns out, the pad is only held on to the hydraulic piston by the force on the springs. So the base pad was now just hanging off to the side.

It took a while but by using a pry bar and several large wrenches we were able to lever the pad down and over so that it popped back in place. Glad I could help.

About 4pm Jan and I drove into Columbus to have dinner at Nancy’s Steakhouse. We’d heard good things about the place ever since we started coming out here, but it was our first time. It was a plus for us that Nancy’s is owned by the same people that own Los Cabos Mexican Restaurant right across the street. But unfortunately, for us, that’s about as far as it went. Like I said, the salad bar was really good, but it was pretty much downhill after that.

Jan’s Sirloin Strip was definitely not the Medium-Well she ordered. More like just over the other side of Well, and tough and chewy with a lot of fat.

My 12oz Ribeye was done Medium-Rare as I ordered, but was not very tender and had a lot of gristle in it.  All in all, a pretty poor example of a $24 steak. Not anywhere near as good as our steaks a couple of weeks ago at Saltgrass, or Jan’s steak this past weekend at Longhorn Steakhouse.

In fact when we were at the Golden Corral in Conroe three weeks ago or so, they had 5oz Sirloin Ends that were delicious, some of the best steak I’ve had anywhere in a long time. Jan wondered why they would have steak that good on a $12 buffet. I figured that there’s not a big market for 5oz. Sirloin Ends in a restaurant.

If this was a cheaper place, we’d probably give them a second chance, but at over $60 for the meal (with tip), it’s not worth another try. Between Los Cabos, Sealand Seafood, Peter’s BBQ, and Schobel’s, there’s enough good places around here to make up for it.

And speaking of Schobel’s, Jan and I, along with Randy, are going to go have breakfast there tomorrow morning about 9am, before we head back to Conroe later in the day.

Coming home, I got gas in the truck for $1.71, and saw diesel for $2.39. Nice.

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Thought for the Day:

“I’m not questioning your honor…I’m denying its existence.” – Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones

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