Our RV Adventures

Hardly A Man Is Now Alive.

Two things of note that happened today. One was that I stopped off at Due’s RV on my way to work this morning and picked up a new latch for our shower door. The latch itself is cast aluminum, which doesn’t rust. But there is a steel spring inside the handle, the part that’s inside the shower, that only lasts about 5 years or so before it rusts out, and the latch doesn’t latch anymore.

Then getting home this afternoon I had it changed out in about 5 minutes. With Jan’s help, of course.

The second one, and the best one, was that while we were defrosting the freezer this past weekend, we discovered a large bag of Jan’s World-Famous Chili tucked away. So it was a delicious supper tonight.

Yumm!

And here’s what was happening in our life 12 years ago today.

April 18, 2010

The The Tar Tar Pits . . .

This late breaking news just in…

We just found out our upcoming grandchild is a BOY!

His name is Landon.

Today we visited the La Brea Tar Pits, which strangely enough, is in the middle of Beverly Hills. And even stranger, or maybe funnier, The La Brea Tar Pits, actually translates as The The Tar Tar Pits, since “La Brea” means “The Tar”’ in Spanish. Thus the title of this blog.

Anyway, we got there about 11 and decided to eat lunch first at a Marie Callenders right next door, or as they call it in Beverly Hills, just ‘”Callenders”. Apparently ‘Marie’” isn’t fancy enough.

And this is not your average Marie Callenders.

And the food was really upscale too. We both had the Trio lunch plate, which consisted of a gorgonzola-pear salad with walnuts and cranberries, a choice of soup, (Jan had potato cheese, I had chicken tortilla) and a warm turkey/cheese sandwich on focaccia bread. It was all really good. And we were so full we didn’t even have room for pie…then.

After lunch we walked next door to the Tar Pits. Before we even crossed the street we could smell the asphalt in the air. And walking into the park we could see the results of the asphalt, or al least, the simulated results.

The tar, along with methane gas, bubbles up from the ground and forms large pools. And it’s been doing this for tens of thousands of years. The oldest fossil found here has been dated to 38,000 years ago.

Then rainwater and dirt/grass/leaves accumulate on the surface, masking the tar. Animals com down to drink and get mired in the muck. And sometimes predators come to feast on the “stuckees” and get stuck themselves. Thus a wide range or predators and prey have been excavated from the tar here.

Here is an excavation that’s been under way for years, and tens of thousands of fossils have been found.

Here are the bones of a sabretooth cat that are in the process of being removed.

Many of these animals were much larger than their contemporaries. Here is a medium-sized sloth. And being medium-size, this sloth was only 7 feet high and weighed 1800 pounds!

And again,this ancient bison was much larger than the ones that live today.

This is an American camel, that become extinct over ten thousand years ago.

This is a mother Mastodon and her baby, found together in the tar.

And this is “Zed”, a 13 foot tall Columbian Mammoth, bigger than any elephant alive today

These are the bones of an American Lion, that was larger than any lion or tiger of today, and larger than the sabretooth cat from its own era.

This is the skeleton of a horse. What’s different about this is that horses died out in the Americas thousands of years ago, and didn’t return until brought over by the Spanish explorers in the 1500’s.

This short-faced bear was enormous. Larger than any bear today, it was a foot taller than any grizzly and probably weighed a thousand pounds more.

And this is the sabretooth cat. Sometimes incorrectly called a sabretooth tiger, it is actually closer to today’s housecats, rather than tigers.

This diorama shows a sabretooth trying to munch on a short-faced bear. I think the cat will probably end up as bear chow.

It was really amazing walking around here, thinking about all this going on right where we were standing 20 or 30 thousand years ago.

Leaving the Tar Pits we drove about a mile away to cruise the famous Rodeo Drive.

We saw a lot of expensive cars, and a lot of shops with names we couldn’t pronounce.

Guess I should have been more impressed, but I wasn’t. Then coming back by Callender’s we got pie to go.

Tomorrow we’ll be attending two tapings of the Bonnie Hunt Show that will be shown Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

Thought For The Day:

Not A Lot of Difference!

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Jan and I were on our way up to Webster and the Saltgrass Steakhouse about 1:30 for our Easter dinner. And even though they were very busy with people waiting, our 2pm reservation got us seated immediately.

We both started off with our usual Wedge Salads, always delicious.

Next up, Jan got her usual Center Cut Filet with Grilled Green Beans,

while I got my fav 16oz Ribeye, again with the Green Beans.

And of course we had to close out the meal by sharing a piece of their Carrot Cake.

And here’s my favorite personal Easter Bunny.

Hippity Hop!

I thought I’d catch you up on our Gate Guarding adventures this month back in 2012.

April 22, 2012

Out of Touch with the World . . .

or Two Flat Tires in One Day.

Wednesday, April 18th

Today was the last day of operation for our rig. So it was a busy day with all the equipment pulling out.

In other news, I had two flat tires today on the ‘dirt road from hell’. The 8 miles was bad enough, but then on Tuesday they brought a road grater in to smooth out the bumps.

Well, it did that all right, but it also traded the worn-down rocks with new, sharper rocks underneath. So I ended up with a second flat before I could get the first one fixed.

This means we’re kind of stranded here I until I can get someone to bring me two new tires. Both of the old ones have cuts in them, not punctures. Almost like someone had stuck a knife in them, so I doubt they can be repaired.

Thursday, April 19th

Since our drill rig and crew pulled out yesterday, we didn’t think we’d have much traffic this morning, but the day turned out to be relatively busy.

I had kind of expected Larry, our supervisor, to show up and tell us to move out

I tried to patch my leaky tires, but without success. Although they’re slow leaks, the nearest town is 35 miles away, and I don’t think I can make it that far.

We also found out why we haven’t been told to move. I was told by a consultant coming through the gate that a new rig on a new site is coming in next Tuesday, and should be operating for about a month. After that, we’ll see.

Friday, April 20th

Although I had the gate open about 5:45, the first vehicle didn’t show up until about 8am. Fine by me. I’ve read 6 books and four magazines since we got here last Sunday. Finally starting to whittle down that stack.

Our supervisor, Larry, showed up today to top off our diesel and water tanks, and also fix a couple of things.

The pump in our sewer system wasn’t working, so the liquid was filling up the collection tank (the small green tank) and not being pumped up into the big green storage tank. This meant everything was just backing up into our grey tank.

I had checked things out and the pump (a submersible macerator pump) had just died. It only took Larry about 10 minutes to replace the pump and test it out.

The other thing that needed repairing was our vehicle alarm bell. It’s one of those old-time gas station bells that rings when you drive over the rubber hoses. Replacing the bell unit fixed the problem.

Then later in the afternoon, we had a weather trifecta . . . rain, hail, and high winds. But our canopy and awnings all came through OK.

Tomorrow I hope I can get our tires replaced so I can get this posted. I also plan to order us a cell phone booster to see if we can get cell/Internet service with it.

And so it goes.

April 28, 2012

Well, after 12 days in the wilderness, we’re back in civilization.

Kind of.

The one main problem with where our gate was, was the fact that we had no cell phone or Internet service. But after days of trying, I finally found a solution.

I bought a Wilson DB 65 Pro amplifier and antenna, and then put the antenna on top of a 30 foot pole mounted to the ladder on our RV. And lo and behold, we had cell and Internet service.

Ten minutes later we got our first call from the outside world.

And of course, it was the Gate Guard Services office telling us to get packed up because we were moving to a new gate. Don’t know what they would have done if I hadn’t had the booster up and running.

So now we had to take everything down and get packed up.

Finally we pulled out about 2:50 for the 8 mile trip on the dirt road from Hell. This road is so bad we can only do about 5 mph in the rig. So it only took us about an hour and ten minutes to go the 8 miles. But once on the highway we made good time.

We pulled into our new location a little after 6 pm and got set up. Or rather I set up and Jan was already running the gate.

And unlike our other gate where the drilling rig was 3 miles away, here we’re up close and personal.

And boy is it windy here. But we do have cell and Internet, so that’s a plus.

I’ll have more later with pictures from our old gate and our new one.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and concerns when we kind of disappeared for a while. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more regularly now.

April 30, 2012

Settling In at a new Gate . . .

Well, we’re finally starting to settle in here at our new gate. We’ve got our canopy up (held down by 5 40 pound buckets. The wind here never stops.) and are getting used to the routine.

Although this is a 24 hour gate, overall it’s not that busy. We did about 90 vehicles yesterday which is less than we had some days at our old gate. But then our old gate was shut down between 10pm and 6am.

When we got here, they were cementing the casing, but now they’re drilling again so there’s a lot more activity on the rig. And noise.

The noise never stops. It’s a dull roar from the generators, coolers, chillers, and all the other equipment they use. In fact, all the power for the site comes from their own generators. There is no power coming in from outside.

We’re now located about 8 miles west of Karnes City about 3 miles off FM 99. And the road is so much better than our other gate. You can actually drive 30-40 mph on it with no problems.

Here’s what it looks like directly across from our site.

They’re hard to see, but there are two more drilling rigs visible in this photo to the right of the big tree. We don’t have near the wildlife here as we did the other gate, but Jan has killed two brown scorpions. I guess they count as wildlife too.

Our generator here runs slow, frequency-wise. It’s running at 57.5 Hz instead of 60, so our AC powered clocks lose about an hour a day. I’ve looked for a frequency adjustment on the generator, but haven’t found one yet. I’ll ask our support guy, Mark, when he comes by.

I’ll probably only be posting every other day while we’re at this gate, and I’m still going through the over 1100 emails that accumulated while we were off the grid, so it will take me a while to get back to everyone.

Thought For The Day:

Lord, please give me patience because if you give me strength I’m probably gonna need bail money too.

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