10 People, 4 Cars, 3 Hotels, and A
Partridge In A Pear Tree.
Well, no partridge, so how about a peacock?
After a very fun day at the Animal World & Snake Farm in New Braunfels, and then a really fun meal at Magic Time Machine last night, we wrapped things up this morning with a breakfast wrap-up at Domingo’s, a really good restaurant right on the Riverwalk.
Located in the Canopy Hotel, we all met there at 9am for a great meal, though I’m not sure quite sure about the whole Broom motif thing of the dining room.
Jan had what she said was probably the best Avocado Toast she’s ever had.
I got their Breakfast Burrito, also very tasty with egg, bacon, jalapenos, cheese, onions, and a bunch of other stuff.
Several of us got their Churro Waffles, which it seems they’re somewhat famous for.
They shared a couple of bites with Jan and I, and boy was it good.
And probably 3000 calories.
We got some time to talk with Miss Piper & Derek since they were sitting across from Jan and I.
Piper is now doing psychological counseling and interviews for prospective foster families, and is looking at starting down the Master’s/Ph.D. path. Derek is hoping to have his Master Electrician License soon. So maybe a two Master’s family.
Note no Landon or Sophie. It seems that they were still sound asleep back at the hotel. So they really missed out.
After a lot of hugs and goodbye’s, we went our separate ways from Domingo’s, with everyone ready to head home after a really fun family get-together.
Tomorrow I’ll go back and start catching you up on Saturday’s adventures.
Thought For The Day:
“Meow…or…maybe not” — Schrödinger’s cat.
October 16, 2010
Dams and Taxes, or Dam Taxes . . .
After getting home so late after the Alvin Opry, Jan and I both slept late, really late. We were lucky to be up before noon.
It’s not really the Opry that goes so late – it’s over by about 10:15 or so – but after it’s over, a bunch of us drive about 20 minutes away to an IHOP and grab a late bite to eat. Then from there it’s about 40 miles back to the rig.
Friday for me was Tax Day, since I always file for an extension. I never like to give the government my money any earlier than I have to. And because of the way I have things laid out, I only had to send them an extra $82 this year. The reason I always file for an extension is that I have read from several former IRS agents that by filing later you are less likely to be audited. So far, it’s worked for me.
Here’s the latest Landon pic. Brandi said he was sleeping soundly until Kitty, the 105 pound Black Lab, came over and woke him up. Probably with a big, sloppy kiss.
Saw in the news a couple of days ago that they’ve finally finished the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. After next week when it formally opens, you will no longer be able to drive over the dam itself. Glad we got to do it several times in the last few years.
This photo shows it under construction. Note that, at this point they haven’t even started on the actual bridge roadway.
Based on what I saw I always thought it was a type of suspension bridge, like the Fred Hartman Bridge here in Houston.
But it turns out it’s not. The towers and cables were just to hold up the arch and roadway until everything was finished.
This is what the bridge looks like now.
It looks like it’ll be fun to drive over when we’re out there next year. Actually, I don’t think my wife Jan will be too happy.
I mean, what can I say. She doesn’t even like roller coasters.
And at Busch Gardens, this is considered the ‘kitty coaster’.
About 4:30 we headed up to Kemah to have dinner at Chili’s, and then after a quick stop at a client’s in Clear Lake, we did the weekly WalMart thing, and stocked up on stuff. Somehow, we keep buying stuff, using stuff, running out of stuff, and buying more stuff. It’s a viscous cycle, and personally I think ‘Big Stuff’ is behind it all. You know, like ‘Big Oil’, or ‘Big Tobacco’.
‘Big Stuff’, it makes sense, right? I mean, somebody got to be to blame.
Well, the guy didn’t move out off our old site today, so I guess he re-upped for another month. I told Jan she might as well resign herself that Site 73 is going to be our home for the next 3-4 months, and not site 80.
Here’s our old site 80.
And here’s site 73 where we are now.
Jan likes the the island out there in front of 80 because she see more birds.
We’ll have to see what happens.
Elkhart, IN
October 16, 2011
He be’s Busy . . .
Well, we’re now in our 4th day of rain and wind, and we finally got a small leak coming in under the slide. I suspect all the high wind has blown some water past the slide seals. Not enough to worry about though.
The RV/MH Hall of Fame is closed on Sunday, so since I couldn’t work there, I mostly goofed off on the Internet.
Today was a Landon-Skyping Sunday, but since he had a late nap, we didn’t get started until almost 5:30, but of course, better late than never in Landon-Skyping.
Our son-in-law Lowell got a new iPhone4S with the front and back cameras and is now using it to Skype. And the difference in picture quality is amazing.
One thing we can really see better is how much hair he actually has now, but it’s so blond it’s hard to see. Hopefully he inherited his father’s hair, and not his grandpa’s.
The other thing we noticed is how he never stops. He just runs everywhere. And this looks like something he did inherit from his grandpa.
When I was just a little older than Landon is now, my parents owned a motel on the beach at Gulf Shores, AL. One day my mother asked Annie May, one of the maids who helped her clean the cottages if she had seen me.
Annie May replied, “No, M’am, but where ever he be’s, he be’s busy!”
And so is Landon.
A little while after we finished Skyping, we headed over to the North China Buffet to meet Al Hesselbart for dinner. With the addition of King Wha, we now have two favorite Chinese places here in Elkhart.
And now for another installment of . . .
Things Every RV’er should have:
You’ve probably all seen one of these, but may not have know what it’s for. It’s a AC Receptacle Tester, and should be used any time you plug your rig into a 20 or 30 amp AC receptacle.
Of course if you plug it into 30 amp, you’ll need to use a 30 to 20 amp adapter like one of these.
But however you plug it in, it will tell you if your outlet is wired correctly and safe to use. Depending on the age of your rig, and how the outlet is wired or mis-wired, it can be dangerous to plug into an outlet that has the hot and neutral wires reversed. There can also be a similar problem if your outlet has a open ground.
Either of these conditions can possibly cause the metal in your rig to become hot and give you a shock if you touch it while grounded.
The tester is very simple to use. Just plug it in and check the 3 lights on the end.. If you have 2 yellow lights, you’re good to go. Any other pattern of lights indicates a problem. And the light code is printed on the side of the tester so It’s easy to know what’s going on.
If no lights are visible, then the outlet is dead. Used this way inside your rig, it makes it easy to find the popped GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) or circuit breaker controlling the dead outlet,
You can get a tester from Amazon for less than $8. AC Receptacle Tester
And you can also find them at your local hardware store.
If you don’ t have 30 to 20 Amp Adapter, you can get one from Amazon also.
Still In Elkhart, IN
October 16, 2012
More Chinese Food
The other day when we were visiting the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitors Center, we saw this little mini CruiseAmerica Class C. I didn’t realize they even made them this small.
The one we rented back in 2007 for our first RV trip was a good bit bigger. And it was small enough to ensure that we wanted a 40ft coach.
Our Internet access has been slow here so I decided to put up my Wilson db Pro 65 Amplifier & Antenna system to see if it would help.
After getting it set up, it does seem to have sped things up.
Tomorrow I’ll spend some time trying to aim it toward a different cell tower. I think the one we’re connecting to is overloaded, thus slowing down our speed.
Hopefully I can speed things up even more tomorrow.
Around 2pm the park guy came by to tell us that the park water would be off this evening and tomorrow due to a pump problem, and that we needed to fill our fresh water tanks to get us by.
Low water pressure has been a continuing problem since we’ve been here. Hopefully this repair will help things.
Around 5pm we all headed out for dinner, along with Janis and Lenny Thomas, on our way to Dockside Grill for some more good seafood. However when we got there we found them closed on Tuesdays. So it was back to Hunan Chinese for some more great Chinese food.
October 16, 2014
Nice, but Busy . . .
Very, Very, Busy.
Once the rain passed through the other day, we’ve had a string of very nice days, with more to come on the horizon. With temps in the mid-70’s to low 80’s, and low humidity, it makes ideal gate weather. And the nighttime temps in the 50’s still aren’t bad either.
But the gate traffic has been . . . well, let’s just say, HEAVY. But the end is in sight.
After a couple of days in the 320+ range, yesterday and today tapered off a little to around 290. But it looks like one frack job is finishing up, and they’ve already started to pull equipment out, so we should see a sharp drop-off in the next day or two. At least the sand trucks have stopped coming in for that frack. But the other frack has about another week to go, or so we’ve been told. We’ll see.
I was feeling a little under the weather this morning so no grocery run today, but I’m pretty sure I’ll go tomorrow. We’ve gotten so much delicious catered food from Ama’s that we haven’t used much of our own, so we don’t need a lot.
And according to our logs, Ama’s has been going to the frack that’s got a week to go, so hopefully our food drop-offs have a week to go also. We can only hope.
With the nicer weather, Mister is spending more time outside with me in the afternoons. Of course this is how he spends it.
Not really great company, though.
We had another cattle stampede this afternoon. A herd of them came down the road, milled around for a while, and then headed along the berm beside the rig.
Then they headed back along the fence line and out of sight.
October 16, 2015
A Last Minute Change of Heart . . .
When I got up about 10:30 am, I found that ‘Billy’ Claus had delivered my packages from Amazon. So, resisting the temptation to open the box that contained my new Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ70 camera (easy to tell which one it was because it had a big ‘Lithium-Ion Battery’ warning label on it), I opened the one with my replacement Mighty Mule Driveway Alarm in it first. Then it was off down the road to get it installed.
It only took about 5 minutes to change out the sensor and the transmitter, since I just reused the mounting poles. Getting it all squared away, I came back to the rig and plugged in the new receiver and power supply. But then in hurry up and wait mode, it was almost 15 minutes before a vehicle came past that showed it was now working. Hopefully that’ll be it for a while.
Today being Friday, it was another Wal-Mart/Lunch day. Before I went in to sleep at 7am, Jan had said she wanted a Sonic Chili Cheese Coney and an order of Ched’R Peppers for lunch, but by the time I was ready to head into Carthage about 11:15, the call of the burger was just too strong, so it was off to Whataburger instead.
The Wal-Mart here in Carthage is one of those ‘mini’ SuperCenters, so it’s laid out kind of weird, but now that I’ve finally got the hang of the place I can get in and out pretty quickly now. So I was at Whataburger by a little after noon.
But this time, for the first time, they completely screwed up our order. Jan and I each order a #6 Double Meat Whataburger Jr. w/Cheese, and I add Bacon to mine. But what we got wasn’t that.
Jan got a big Whataburger (Sr.??), but a single meat, and with no cheese. I got my Whataburger Jr., but also a single with no cheese. So, a disappointment, but still delicious.
Later in the afternoon, I finally had a chance to open the new camera box. As I mentioned before, it’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ70 like this.
The first thing I did was to get the battery charging while I threaded the strap and the lens cap onto the camera. Then I perused the manual for a while, waiting to get enough charge on the battery to try it out.
And I found a lot of neat, new features, like a built-in Panorama function with a guide line to help you keep the camera level as you pan it. And I’m sure you’ve seen those ‘artsy’ shots where the subject is in sharp focus in front of a blurred background. Well without getting into a bunch technical stuff about aperture and depth of field, the FZ70 has a quick and simple way to do this on the fly. Neat.
One thing I hope they’ve improved is a better (easier) manual focus. Manual focus is usually needed when you’re trying to take picture of an animal behind cage bars or a chain link fence. The camera generally tries focus on the fence, and not on the animal. But with manual focus you can almost make the bars or fence fade out.
But the one on my old FZ28 was kind of clumsy to use. So hopefully this FZ70 will be better.
By now I had enough charge on the battery to check things out, so inserting my new 128GB memory card and the battery, I gave it a try. And I was VERY impressed.
The lens on here is really good, and the image stabilization is fantastic. I’ll have some shots in the next few days showing the difference between my old Lumix and my new one.
One thing I noticed was that the camera says that my 128GB card will hold 19,803 pictures. WOW! This is almost as many photos as we took in the entire seven years we had the FZ28 Lumix.
With that one we’ve taken 23,629 photos in that time, averaging a little more than 9 per day. Of course that’s more like 150 one day, and then none for the next week.
But it’s still a lot.
Jan had been taking a few pictures recently, some with the old camera, and some with the new one.
Here’s a sunset she took with the old camera about a week ago.
And here’s a few she took with the new one this evening when some visitors passed by. The landowner had released some cows and donkeys out into our pasture area, and Jan got a few shots as they came by the canopy. One thing to note is that it was after 7pm when these were taken with the new camera.
And a couple of donkey’s wandered by too.
The landowner’s son said the gray one is almost 45 years old. He said they bought it when he was 15, and the donkey was 21 years old. Now Billy’s in his late 30’s, and the donkey’s still going strong, although he had lost all his teeth. He looks like he’s still eating pretty good, though.
I didn’t realize donkey’s could live that long, but Google says 30 to 50 years. Who knew.
October 16, 2016
On Pins and Needles . . .
We’re still hoping to hear from the SiteWatch guy tomorrow morning, and I guess it’s possible that we could be on our way down to the Karnes City / Kenedy area tomorrow afternoon.
So I spent some time this afternoon looking over RV parks in that area in case we have move in a hurry,
Debbie Clark did post a photo of one of Gate Guard Services guard shacks (I didn’t even know that GGS had guard shacks)
Seems a little small. I really hope ours is a little larger. Someone else who works for Guard 1 says theirs is 10 x 12. Now that’s more like it.
I wonder if we’ll get a flag too.
Speaking of possibly traveling tomorrow, Miss Karma has finally gotten used to traveling in the rig. This last trip over from Lake Conroe she spent a large part of the trip sleeping on the floor between Jan and I.
Much different than her first trip from Colorado River back over to Lake Conroe right after we adopted her back in February. Then she spent the entire trip hiding under the dining table, yowling most of the time.
About 4pm Jan and I headed into Columbus to have dinner at Los Cabos, a really good local Mexican place. Earlier in the afternoon, knowing he was ‘batching’ it this week, I walked over to Dick and Judy Mott’s to see if Dick wanted to go with us, but he was otherwise occupied, but we did spend a good while before I headed back home.
Jan got her favorite Fajita Beef Stuffed Avocado, with rice and a cup of tortilla soup.
For my part, I got the Beef Fajita Poblanos, a dish I haven’t had for a while, but always really enjoy.
And of course, Los Cabos more than meets my minimum Mexican restaurant requirements.
They’ve got to have good iced tea with no off-flavors or taste.
And they’ve got to have good chips and salsa.
If they cover these, I can forgive a lot.
October 16, 2018
Starry, Starry Night . . .
About 1pm we headed out for Mt. Dora, FL, about 75 miles away. Jan wanted to check off another item on her bucket list.
She’s been wanting to see the Starry Night house, I.e. The Van Gogh house, there. (Hey, what can I say? She’s checked off so many things over the years, it’s getting to be a short list).
Initially the owners painted just the wall in front of the house with a replica of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” to please and ‘soothe’ their 25 year old autistic son. The city of Mt. Dora immediately tried to force them to paint over the wall, fining them $100 a day until it was done.
Told that the wall had to match the rest of the house, the owner’s took them at their word . . . and painted the rest of the house to match the wall.
At various times the city tried to label the house a ‘sign’ and then also ‘graffiti’. After winning a couple of initial court tussles, the Pacific Legal Foundation stepped in on the side of the owner’s, citing Free Speech rights, and the dominos started falling.
And by the time the last one ‘plopped’ down, the city was out almost $60,000 in legal fees, and paid the owner’s $15,000.
Oh, and also cancelled the $10,000 of $100 daily fees, too.
So now the house is all Van Gogh all the time.
Jan and I, both Van Gogh fans, think it’s really neat.
I wonder how our RV would look painted like that?
After hitting a couple of antique mall/stores, where Jan added to her cloud of octopuses with a couple of new additions, it was on back over to Sanford where we had dinner at the Longhorn Steakhouse there.
