Our RV Adventures

Today was another drop-off day for me, taking Jan back down to our daughter Brandi’s in Katy so she can drop off and pick up our grandson Landon at school until Wednesday when I’ll pick her up on my way back from Clear Lake.

Brandi is at a work conference in San Diego (notice how these ‘work conferences’ are never in Des Moines or Little Rock, but in Miami, Las Vegas or San Diego) and our son-in-law Lowell’s working late at the office this week, so Jan is once again Landon-sitting. Kind of like throwing Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch.

Leaving about 2pm, our first stop was the Kroger’s over in Willis for gas. No problems and I only had to wait for one car. Unleaded was $2.39 a gallon.

Our next stop was the IHOP about 10 miles south for brunch. before heading on to Katy. Jan got her favorite omelet, cheddar and mushroom, and said it was just stuffed full inside.

I decided to try their new Stuffed Donut French Toast, topped with Bacon and Maple Syrup.

It’s a donut filled with Bavarian cream, dipped in vanilla French toast batter, grilled, and then topped with crispy bacon pieces and maple glaze. Artery-clogging good.

Jan and I both ordered a side of bacon with our entrees. Unfortunately I got Jan’s bacon.

Well, not Jan’s exactly. It’s just that mine was prepared exactly like Jan’s.

Jan basically likes her bacon ‘burnt’, or as a waitress put it one time, ‘Glass Bacon’. You know, where you just touch it and it shatters into small pieces.

I like mine regular crispy, but more often than not, mine shows burnt just like Jan’s. And today was one of those days.

Taking the 99 Grand Parkway, the trip down to Katy was smooth with little traffic, so nice. But we had a couple of more stops before getting to Brandi’s. First up was the new Buc-ee’s that pretty much opened in the middle of hurricane Harvey.

We wanted to get some kolaches and muffins, but also wanted to check out their new car wash. At 255 feet long, it’s one of the longest ones in the world. Only one in Germany is possibly longer. They also have 120 gas pumps here, and it you choose the $16 wash, you get 20 cents a gallon off.

The cost is $9, $12, or $16. Don’t know what you get extra the $16 one, because the $12 version was great.

It got off the residual hydraulic fluid leftover from our recent rig unpleasantness in Louisiana, cleaned the wheels, and left the truck shiny white. Couldn’t have been much better.

After making our pastry stop inside, we drove another exit down to check out the Hamilton Metals rig count sign, which showed 949 rigs, down 5 since last week.

This pretty much reinforces what I’ve seen in the gate guarding field, since the last rig count we saw the middle of July was 952. So things are pretty stagnant.

Our next stop was the nearby Kroger’s for a few things for Jan and a few things for me to bring home. And while we were there we ran into Lowell and Landon doing their shopping too.

Finally heading toward Brandi’s, we made a quick drive-by of Landon’s school to be sure that she knew where it was. And then later this afternoon Lowell going to give her an in-service on Brandi’s Lexus, which is what Jan will be chauffeuring Landon in.

After dropping Jan off, I reversed course back to Conroe, getting home a little before 7pm. Coming back into the park, I noticed that sometime today they reinstalled the entrance gates that they took down for the repaving.

It was nice to be able to just drive through for a while.

Thought for the Day:

Maybe people would  be more likely to evacuate from hurricanes if we didn’t give them wussy, non-scary names, like Harvey or Irma. I’ll bet if you called a hurricane Megatron Death 2000, they’d get the hell out of town as fast as they could. 

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It was really great to have Jan home again, at least for a couple of days. I got tired of just talking to the cat.

Jan and I may be rethinking our winter stays here as we bounce back and forth between Lake Conroe and Colorado River. If I run the numbers (and I do like to run the numbers, especially when $$ are concerned), it looks like it would be cheaper to spend our out-week from Lake Conroe at the Hillcrest RV Park over in New Waverley about 20 miles away.

I talked about this a couple of days ago in relation to us going over to Medina Lake vs. staying here, while Colorado River is offline. But here’s how it works for Colorado River.

The round-trip over to Colorado River is 240 miles, so figuring 8mpg, that’s 30 gallons of diesel. At $2.50 a gallon, that’s $75.

Since we’re out of our 50 TT free days, we pay $5 per day, plus $3 a day for 50 amp, so that’s $112, and $187 total w/diesel for our stay.

Now for a stay here at Hillcrest, it’s

$14.50 a day x 7 = $102 + 40 miles / 8 = 5 x $2.50 = $12.50

So that’s $102 + 12.50 = $114.50 for our out-week.

That means a savings of $72.00, plus the wear and tear savings on the rig.

So now it kind of depends on how we like Hillcrest. I guess we’ll see.

And now I have another decision to make. The black ink cartridge in my HP 2542 printer is skipping and the color cartridge is running low as well. So I have a choice to make.

I can buy a set of of Black and Color XL cartridges from Amazon for $62, Or I can replace my 3-1/2 year old HP 2542 printer

with a brand-new HP 4650 . . . for only $70.

So $8 more gets me a new printer.

A new printer that’s faster, has automatic two-sided printing, a document feeder, a touchscreen, and does borderless printing.

Not bad for $8.

Of course I could try a set of these remanufactured LxTek cartridges that are guaranteed to work and not hurt the printer.

Only $20.

What to Do, What to Do?

Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to take Jan back down to Brandi’s where she’ll stay until Wednesday, when I’ll pick up on my way back from Clear Lake.

Finally, help fund Nick’s Escape from Irma!

Buy A Book!

Bg Lake Tragedy

Thought for the Day: 

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