Our RV Adventures

and Very, Very Tasty.

First off, Jan and I want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!  We hope you enjoyed your day as much as we enjoyed ours.

After we were up and had our coffee about 8:30, we headed out about 10am, with our first stop the Cracker Barrel right down I-45 in Conroe. I had called them on Tuesday to pre-order our Thanksgiving Meal To-Go that we were to pick up.

The restaurant itself was already jam-packed, but they had the whole take-out process streamlined. Signs first pointed me inside to a special line where I quickly paid the $65 for my order. Then it was back to the truck and around back to get in line to pick up our order. But here’s where the process kind of broke down.

The pickup area was a canopy at the backdoor where you could drive up and get your meal, but they didn’t have the direction really defined, so some people were trying to pull in from one direction and some from the other. And then while that was being worked out, other people were parking off to the side, and then walking up.

And this resulted in some upsetness (my new word) to the people in the cars who were there first, because the walkups were getting served ahead of them. Finally the lady in the car behind us got out and started complaining, and things quickly got straightened out.

But even with all this drama, it was less than 15 minutes before we were back on the road heading down to the Clear Lake area. As I said, pretty painless.

Traffic was about what I expected for a Thanksgiving morning, with the usual slowdown around the Pierce Elevated, but it freed up pretty quickly. We did luck up on our side of the freeway, because as we came down off the Pierce we saw that there had been an accident on the other side, with two cars having spun around and scattered large pieces of themselves all over the roadway. The result of this was 5 lanes of traffic backed up for several miles down the Interstate.

Getting into the Clear Lake area we were surprised to see how many changes had been done to the Interstate since we were here this past August for a few days. The El Dorado interchange was completely rearranged from before and the traffic flow is very different.

We arrived at Chris’ about 11:30 and got the food inside and unpacked, still warm, from the large, heavy cardboard box.

Inside the box everything was laid out, labeled, and ready to go.

And as I said, still warm.

And following up on our easy peezy Thanksgiving theme, everyone just served their plates from the containers and popped them in the microwave for a minute or so. Then all we had to do was sit down around the table and enjoy our meal.

And it was very, very tasty. We all agreed that Cracker Barrel does a great Turkey Dinner. In fact, we often go to CB on a normal Thursday just so Jan can have their Turkey and Dressing.

As Jan said, “We didn’t cook for two days, spend 20 minutes eating, and then two hours cleaning up.” When we were done, the containers went in the fridge, the plates and silverware went into the dishwasher, and we were done. Then for dessert we all had some of the pumpkin pie that Chris baked, and some of the Coconut Cream Pie we got from the Fish Pond Restaurant yesterday.

Like I said, pretty painless, and very, very tasty. Easy peezy.

After dinner, while we were watching the dog show, and then the Panthers – Cowboys game (a 33 – 14 blowout leaving Panthers 11 – 0 for the season), I checked online to see what it will entail to replace the broken glass screen on Chris’ Galaxy S5 phone. And it looks like there are two different ways to go. A cheap, difficult way, and an expensive, easy way.

The screen itself only costs about $10, but looks be a difficult  2 – 3 hour job, mostly due to having to separate the glass from the LCD screen. And if you accidently crack the LCD in doing this, you get to move on to the bonus round, and have to take the $150 expensive, easy route anyway, $150 being what a new LCD display with glass costs. So we’ll have to decide what we’re going to do before we’re together next time.

Wrapping up, another reminder about Landon’s Gingerbread Man project.

To recap, Landon’s class needs picture postcards from around the country mailed to his class describing sightings of the missing Gingerbread Man.

You can mail them to:

Traci Blocker
Keiko Davidson Elementary
26906 Pine Mill Ranch Drive
Katy, Texas 77494

Thanks for your help.

And once again, Jan and I hope your Thanksgiving was as nice as ours.

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Thought for the Day:

“Girls have an unfair advantage over boys: If they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb.” ~ Yul Brynner

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Today ended up being a nice ‘just putter around the rig’ day.

After coffee in our repaired Mr. Coffee (it’s still working fine) and a couple of slices of pumpkin bread, I started going through some bins looking for a couple of things I need for projects.

Once we move over to Colorado River TT in a couple of weeks, I’ve got a extended plumbing project planned. And since I’ll have the water shut off for a while, I’ll send Jan off to stay with Brandi, Lowell, and Landon for a day or so.

First I want to replace the flush ball mechanism in our Sealand Traveler toilet. Since while we were on the gate, we’ve actually been flushing it with a pair of locking pliers. The plastic shaft finally rounded off and the spring cartridge and the foot pedal would no longer flush it.

And while I’ve got it apart, I want to replace the seal kit, and that’s one of the things I’m looking for in the bins. I bought a seal kit a while back as a spare, but so far it isn’t where I thought it should be, so today I’ll be looking in places it’s not supposed to be.

My second project is to replace the lavatory faucet. I’ve got all the parts, so it’s just a matter of taking care of it when the water is off.

But the last one is probably going to be the tricky one. For a while now we’ve had a small leak in our shower, apparently at the back of the shower faucet itself. I’m assuming it’s on the input side to the faucet since it seems to leak whether we actually use the shower or not.

The real complication is that fact that there’s no access panel to the rear of the faucet from the bedroom. There’s supposed to be one. American Coach said so.

When I called them, they said the access panel was right behind the mirror on that wall. I said there wasn’t a mirror on that wall, and there wasn’t any access panel, either.

Their answer to this, “Well,there should be.”

Thanks for your help.

So this means I’m going to have to cut my own access panel, and then come up with some sort of cover for the hole. Presently we have a large picture hung there, but right now it’s hung too high to cover the area where the hole will have to be, and it wouldn’t look right if we hung it lower.

But the important thing is to first fix the leak.

Next chore was to install my new vehicle tags. My present ones run out the end of November so I wanted to get them on before I forget about them. Normally I just get the stickers, but my tags are 8 years old, and are getting pretty beat up, especially the one on the front of the rig which is mounted down fairly low. So this year I paid the extra $10 each and got new tags, and of course new numbers.

Another thing on my list was to install some cable clamps in my electrical bay. Unlike newer rigs that control the engine block heater with a switch, mine has to be plugged in. And it seems like the cord is always hidden away behind the coils of my shore power cord.

So I installed some cable clamps to hold the block heater cord up out of the way.

Sometimes the easy chores are good too.

About 4 Jan and I went into Conroe to have dinner at the local Culver’s. While Jan had a burger and fries, I guess I finally burned out on all the Whataburgers we had on the gate, so I went the soup and salad route, with their Cranberry Bacon Bleu Cheese Salad and a cup of  Cheesy Tortilla Soup.

I don’t normally care for Bleu Cheese, but the crumbles in this salad add a nice touch of tartness against he sweetness of the cranberries. Very good.

Tomorrow we’ll head down to Chris and Linda’s in Friendswood to have Thanksgiving dinner. With Brandi, Lowell, and Landon in Oklahoma for the week, we debated what to do for Thanksgiving.

No one really wanted to cook, and no one really wanted to fight the crowds at a restaurant, so we compromised and did a little of both. On our way down to Chris’, we’ll stop off at the Conroe Cracker Barrel to pick up  their Thanksgiving To-Go meal for six.

It comes Turkey and Dressing, Ham, Three Quarts of Sides (for us it was Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Green Beans, and Mac & Cheese), Cranberry Relish, Biscuits, and Corn Muffins.

Linda has fixed some of her delicious Cranberry Salad and a Pumpkin Pie, and we’re also bringing a homemade Coconut Cream Pie from yesterday’s visit to the Fish Pond Restaurant.

So no crowds and easy cleanup.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One last reminder about Landon’s Gingerbread Man project.

To recap yesterday’s post, Landon’s class needs picture postcards from around the country mailed to his class describing sightings of the missing Gingerbread Man.

You can mail them to:

Traci Blocker
Keiko Davidson Elementary
26906 Pine Mill Ranch Drive
Katy, Texas 77494

Thanks for your help.

_______________________________________________

Thought for the Day:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle

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