Our RV Adventures

Well, that’s what it’s turned out to be the last few days. The last truck leaves before 6pm, and the first one doesn’t come in until after 7pm. But during the day we’re pretty busy, actually a little busier than when we were going 24 hours.

Monday was our busiest day so far with 41 vehicles coming in, but then Tuesday was our slowest day with only 21. The difference being that Monday we had two crews here, the ones that had been working this past week and were finishing up, and the new crew that was coming in to do their thing. And Tuesday looked to be just the new crew.

Today was back up to 32, but a lot of that was just the same guys going in and out, bringing equipment, including a number of fluid trailers. We’re still hearing the frack will start sometime next week, but that’s only a rumor. So we’ll just have to wait and see.

Although it may seem strange, even with no nighttime traffic I’m still staying outside all night just like my normal schedule. One, it’s nice out here, and two, with the frack starting up soon, I don’t want to get off my sleep cycle and then have to get back on it when we get 24 hour busy again.

Both our new AC’s are still working well, the new Coleman 15K on the roof, and the window unit that we’re using under canopy outside. With the low 90’s temps we’ve been having, neither one is having to work very hard.

The last couple of days we’ve had power line people in here working on the high-voltage lines that are just off to our side.

They’ve painting some of the towers and spraying weed-killer around the tower bases and along the fence lines. These lines are probably 200,000 volts or more, and could be as much as 800,000. I was told they come from a power plant north of here and run all the way to Houston, and that’s over 180 miles.

At every gate guard site we’ve had for the last four years, we had coyotes in the area. It always seems that around 3 in the morning, different groups start yipping at each other, kind of a bark, that goes back and forth. Don’t know if it’s a wakeup call, or maybe just checking in to see what the other group caught and killed for dinner last night.

But out of all these times I’ve heard them, last night was the first time I’ve ever heard the stereotypical coyote howl, the one that goes with the picture of the coyote on the top of a mesa howling at the moon.

And it does send shivers down your spine.

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Thought for the Day:

Golf is probably the only game that the less of it you play, the better you are at it.

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Well, after thinking things might be slowing to a halt, today was actually busier than yesterday. A lot of new companies came in to do their thing, I guess getting ready for the frack crew to come in. Of course that time frame keeps changing.

At first we were told the frack would start in four or five days from last Tuesday, when we got here. Then yesterday we heard two to three weeks. But this afternoon, a guy who had just come from the frack site over in Louisiana said they should be finished up next week and then come over here. He also said that it could take two months to frack the three holes here.

Which brings up another thing. We were originally told there were two holes being fracked at this pad, but the guy said three. And when I drove down to the pad this afternoon after everyone left, there are three wells, so who knows

I also saw several pieces of equipment still on the pad, so that bodes well too.

If they do go two months or so here, that’ll be great, because the next frack after this one is scheduled for right up the road about 1/4 mile from here. If so, those next three wells should easily take us to the end of November when we’ll head back to Houston for the winter

Jan has kind of been worried about how busy this frack will be, mainly because of the ‘killer’ pace last year where we had almost 500 vehicles a day coming in through the gate each day, and of course, leaving later. That meant we had almost 1000 login/logouts in a 24 hour period. That’s about one every two minutes.

And then in 2013 we were on a frack gate for the entire three months, and were doing 250 to 350 vehicles a day coming in. But I reminded her that we’ve actually never been on a ‘single’ frack gate.

In 2013, besides the frack, they were hauling water out from our frack pond to another site, running two workover rigs, one drill rig, and building a pipeline. It wasn’t just a frack.

And last year, at its peak, we sometimes had two fracks, two workover rigs, and two drill rigs going at the same time. Of course we were making more than the standard $150 a day, but still . . .

I finally got a chance to check the water pressure at the well and only found about 20psi, which explains the weak showers we were getting. So I guess I’ll just use the well water to keep the tanks filled and not tried to run directly off it.

When I drove down to the pad this afternoon I also checked out one of the three frack ponds they have here.

Really big, bigger than others I’ve seen. In fact, this photo only shows about half of the pond anyway.

Jan’s decided to put off her hair cut trip into Carthage tomorrow, hoping we might get a day off later this week so we can go together and have dinner.

Of course she’s also afraid that the hair salons in a small town like Carthage won’t have her hair cut records anyway.

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Thought for the Day:

Your shadow is a confirmation that light has traveled from the sun nearly 93 million miles unobstructed, only to be deprived of reaching the ground in the final few feet, thanks to you.

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