Road Trip Plus . . .
Tomorrow begins our 2nd busy weekend starting with the Three Acre Food Truck Pumpkin Spice Market about 10am, a birthday party about noon, and then a 2 hour trip up to Trinity for a weekend with our friend’s Debi & Ed Hurlburt and Janice & Dave Evans.
And then it continues during the next week with Jan’s birthday on Tuesday, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch on Friday (that one’s for me) and then the Wings Over Houston Airshow on Saturday.
Unlike last year, this year we sprung for the Family Chalet tickets, which comes with both covered
and uncovered table seating,
and even better, free food and drinks. That includes breakfast with fruit, pastries, and kolaches, and hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, as well as soda, juice, and water.
Looking forward to it all.
Thought For The Day:
A good answer today is usually better than the right answer next week.
October 21, 2009
Yellow Trees and Red Bushes…
Today was another road trip day.
Once again we headed up into Michigan, or really Michiana, as it’s called around here.
We headed off in a different direction than last time, toward Niles, MI. We were looking for a place to have breakfast / lunch and then take a drive through the country, checking out the fall foliage.
Coming in to Niles, we saw the Blueberry Hill House of Pancakes and decided to stop. It’s a breakfast and lunch only type of place and was really good.
Jan had the blueberry pancakes, and I had something I’ve never had before, a Hawaiian Omelet. It had pineapple, bananas, and pecans drizzled with honey inside, and topped with strawberry topping. And, strange as it sounds, it was really good.
After breakfast, we came across a Tractor Supply Store and stopped in. Jan was looking for a magazine that she only finds there, and I needed to restock on some glues that had leaked and I had thrown away.
Leaving there, we headed out into the countryside and saw some great foliage displays with red, orange, and yellow trees…
And these beautiful red bushes.
Coming back home, I did some outside cleaning and repair work, while Jan sat out and keep an eye on Mister as he wandered around, checking out the park.
About 5:30, Jan, and I went out to dinner at our favorite Mexican place, El Marguey.
We had so much fun talking, we didn’t get back until almost 8 pm.
Great times…
October 21, 2010
BBQ and Family . . .
We left the rig about 9:30 this morning heading up to Brandi’s so Jan could go with her downtown for Landon’s two month checkup.
While they were gone, I hit the bank, Starbucks, the storage rooms, several clients, and then ended up at Home Depot.
I’m trying to repair the knob on our shower. It broke while we were in Elkhart a couple of months ago. It’s a Moen faucet and I figured I wouldn’t have any problems finding a replacement. I checked with Home Depot and Lowe’s, but they didn’t have one that would fit. Finally a guy working there, who used to work for one of the RV manufacturers there in Elkhart told me that for some reason the RV faucets were not the same size as the home models.
I figured that with all the RV surplus places in the Elkhart area I wouldn’t have any problem finding one. But I bombed out there too.
I then called American Coach, who referred me to Moen. Moen told me they don’t have any parts left for that model.
So I figured we might be stuck with the small pair of Vice-Grips that are presently performing the knob replacement function.
But when I was looking at the zip lock bag of parts last night, I suddenly got an idea on how to possibly repair the broken one, hence my trip to Home Depot to find a small piece of brass pipe to act as a reinforcement sleeve for the knob. I found something that I think will work. I’ll try it out this weekend and see.
About 5:30 I met Jan, Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Chris at the new Spring Creek BBQ on I-45 in the League City / Victory Oaks area. This one just opened this past Monday, so it was our first time here, but we’ve eaten at the one in Pearland several times last year. And as before, it was great. The ribs were really meaty, and the sides, Jan and I had the green beans and the pinto beans, were all great too. Brandi really likes the Mac N Cheese. We finally headed home about 6:45 pm. We missed having Linda and Piper there with us, but unfortunately they both had to work. Hopefully we’ll get together with them next time.
October 21, 2011
Doves and Deeres . . .
Well it looks like the doves have come back with the olive branch and the sun is trying to peek through the clouds. It’s actually supposed to be pretty nice until Tuesday. Hopefully things will be able to dry out by them.
After the usual coffee and lunch I headed over once again to the RV/MH Hall of Fame. I’m hoping to finish up tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. But then I’ve said that before.
I got back to the rig about 5:15, and about 15 minutes later, Jan and I headed over to El Maguey for our Mexican fix. Dave and Jean Damon, vendors of Aerospace 303, who are also staying here at the park, followed us over, where we all met up with Al Hesselbart for some great Mexican food.
Brandi, Lowell, and Landon are visiting Lowell’s parents in Oklahoma, and they sent us these photos.
Here’s Landon and his daddy.
And Landon with his other Grannie and Papa.
And here’s Landon showing off his John Deere cowboy boots.
And now for another installment of . . .
Things Every RV’er should have:
Today’s topic is Aerospace 303 Protectant. As I mentioned above, our friends at dinner with us tonight, Dave and Jean Damon, are vendors for 303, and they turned me on to this stuff a couple of years ago. It’s been used in the aircraft and marine industry for years, but has only recently become widely known in the RV world.
303 is a UV protectant for any type of canvas, rubber, vinyl, latex, leather, fiberglass, or Neoprene. It is especially good on tires to help prevent the cracking and deterioration that shortens the life of your RV tires.
And applied to your awnings, it will increase their life and water repellency, while greatly reducing the fading.
If you can’t catch up with Dave and Jean at a rally, you can get it here on Amazon for Aerospace 303.
October 21, 2012
South of the Border . . .
Jan and I pulled out of our site at Harbor View Outdoor World Resort about 9am, early than normal because we had a long day ahead, since it was about 340 miles to our RV park in Dillon, SC.
We pulled down to the office parking lot to hook up our toad and then hit the road. Our first goal was about 40 miles away at I-95 South.
We took I-95 down to just north of Richmond where we got the east I-295 loop around the city and then hooked back up with I-95 again. Then it was I-95 all the the way to Dillon. Despite rumors to the contrary, the road was in good shape, the traffic wasn’t too heavy, and there was no construction sites.
Sometimes you can’t ask for more.
We made a couple of quick stops, one at a closed weigh station and another at a rest area.
We pulled into the Bass Lake RV Park in Dillon about 3:30 and I went into the office to get checked in. Surprisingly we found a very nice British couple who owned the park.
In addition we found a very nice park, especially for only $16 per night with Passport America for 50 amp full hookups. Bass Lake is nicely laid out with a lot of trees, but still open enough for good satellite access. Well recommended.
About a 100 miles from the NC/SC border we started seeing signs for South of the Border.
And about 5 miles before we reached our park turnoff we came across Pedro.
At least he’s supposed to be ‘Pedro’. He looks more Chinese to me.
The place seems to have a little of everything: a Ferris wheel and other carnival rides, a reptile zoo, a lot of shops, 2-18 hole miniature golf courses, a 200 foot high observation tower with a glass elevator to the top, and six restaurants.
And after we got set up at Bass Lake, we all headed back up the Interstate to have dinner at one of them – The Peddler Steak House.
The online reviews said that despite its location in a tourist attraction, this was a great place for “dead cow meat” (a direct quote). And according to Jan, a great place for mahi mahi too.
And it wasn’t just the steaks, the salad bar and the dressings were exceptional too.
Be aware, the place is NOT cheap, but it sure is good.
Tomorrow we’ve got an easy 200 mile run further south down I-95 to Hardeeville, SC, just north of Savannah, GA, where we’ll spend a week or so.
October 21, 2014
Sometimes you shake the Jell-O,
And sometimes the Jell-O shakes you.
As of 6pm this afternoon we are off the gate and parked in the Gate Guard Services yard near Buffalo, TX.
Chelsie, our Gate Guard Services sales rep, showed about noon today with some new clothes for us. We had been expecting her to show up with our new GGS shirts that we would be wearing along with the new work pants we recently brought. But what we got was something completely different.
As it turns out, MD America, the oil company we were working for, has decided that all workers must wear the complete FRC outfit, including coveralls, steel-toed boots, and hard hats.
Including us.
And not just us, who work right across the road from the rig, but the gate guards up the road from us, almost a mile away, also have to wear the outfit.
So at about 1:30pm I called Jamie and told him this wouldn’t work for us. Jan said she was pretty sure she’d never make it to the bathroom while trying to get out of the coveralls. He said he understood, and there was a couple here at the yard that would take over for us. So Jan and I started tearing down, And about 4:30, after briefing the new guards, Jan and I headed out for the GGS yard in Buffalo, TX, about 55 miles away. By 6pm we were parked, hooked up, and settled in.
After the busy afternoon, we were too tired to go anywhere for dinner, so we had one of Frack Food meals, Chicken and Beef Fajitas. Very good, especially considering there’s no more where that came from.
Tomorrow we’ll probably do our shopping trip that we had planned for this Saturday, just a few days early. It’s about the same distance to Waco or Bryan/College Station, so I imagine we’ll go back to B/CS since we kind of know the place.
But that remains to be seen.
You know, Jell-O, and all that.
October 21, 2015
In For The Long Haul . . .
Jan talked to one of the Company Men this morning, and right now it looks like we’ll be here until our optimum leave date of November 22nd. Rather than the workover rig up next as we’d been told before, flowback is coming in the next day or so, with the workover scheduled for a couple of weeks from now.
And we’re back on the gate starting tomorrow morning at 7am, so our brief respite is officially over. But in one last gasp of fun, we decided on another dinner out tonight.
After our morning coffee I started in on replacing the charger port on my ASUS laptop. As I figured it took me a little over an hour to get down to the base circuit board where the port was located. Here’s a pretty good video of the procedure if you’re interested.
Next up was to get the old port unsoldered from the board, and that proved to be much easier said than done.
The tip of my soldering iron is only 1/32” in width, but I still had trouble getting the tip and the solder wick in between the port and the parts on either side. I finally ended up using a pair of sharp cutter to clip the legs off so I could get the port case out of the way and get to the circuit board traces to clean off the old solder.
This should have been easy, but it seems they used some sort of high-temp solder on this board because my 100 watt iron had a hard time melting the solder joints to clean out the holes. My iron had no problem melting the rosin core solder I was using, so I know it was working OK.
By melting my solder on top of the circuit board joints, I was able to gradually dilute the high-temp stuff and get it off and the holes cleaned out so I could mount the new port. But because I had to take my time with this so I didn’t overheat the board, it took me several hours to finish this up.
By now it was getting close to dinner time, and finding I didn’t have rubbing alcohol to clean the sticky rosin gunk off the board, I put it aside until after supper.
And as far as dinner, where else but the Longhorn Grill for another great steak. And afterwards we were going to split a piece of their delicious Strawberry Cheesecake, but apparently it was so delicious that they were sold out. So instead we split an order of their Hot Peach Cobbler with Ice Cream. Also very good.
Coming home we made a quick stop at the HEB for a few things, including rubbing alcohol. Back at the rig I got back on the laptop project, cleaning off the rosin with the alcohol and preparing the board for the new part. Then the real problem started.
Although the Amazon listing said this port was OEM for the X53E (and several other similar models), it did not fit my board. The lead spacing was slightly wrong, and the leads themselves were too big for the holes in the board.
So for right now, I’m stuck with my laptop in pieces until I can come up with a solution. I could try another Amazon listing from a different vendor, or I might be able to come up with a kluge using pieces of wire to make new legs, or maybe using sharp cutters to trim the leads down to fit the circuit board holes
But I’ll have to think on it overnight.
October 21, 2016
Sunday Night?
After coffee and our Buc-ee’s Cranberry Nut muffins from our Wednesday trip down here, we were out the door to the Karnes County National Bank to get our business checking account under our DBA name.
Our first stop was the branch (1 of 2) here in Kenedy, but we found that the one person who could open this type of account had left for an early lunch. So we were off to the remaining branch over in Karnes City.
With this lost time we were starting to worry about being done before we needed to be at the Marathon Orientation Class about 10 miles away. But when we finally finished up al the paperwork almost two hours later, we made it to the class with 15 minutes to spare.
This was good because they lock the doors right at 1pm and won’t let anyone in. Then we’d have to wait until next Friday.
The class last for about two hours, and was actually pretty entertaining due to the skill of the instructors. Todd had told us to text him when we were done, and when we did, he said to meet him at the same McDonald’s where we met yesterday. Lucky for us it was only about 5 minutes away.
Todd was already waiting for us, and we quickly got right down to business. We went over all our paperwork, double-checking everything we’d done so far, and listing what we still needed to do. And now we have two new events on our calendar
We’re supposed to meet Todd and his wife Tam at a gate Tam is working just north of Kenedy on the way to Karnes City. We’ll spend a couple of hours going over the operation of the gate, working with the iPad and logging in some vehicles.
We’ll also get to check out the guard shack and how it operates, which Jan is really looking forward to.
And even better, we have our first gate scheduled. It’s a new gate, and Jan and I will work the 6pm to 6am shift together, and then we’ll where we go from there.
Jan and I both think this is kind of a test gate by Todd to see how we’ll do, and if we’ll even show up. He’s been burned a lot of times, including today. For example he was supposed to have about 8 potential guards at the class today, but it was only us and one other lady. And she didn’t text after the class like she was supposed to do.
It’s easy to see that Todd doesn’t like people who can’t following directions.
Since this might be our last chance for a night out in San Antonio, Jan and I headed back to the rig so could feed Miss Karma, and then headed into town to have dinner at one of our favorites, La Fonda on Main
We’ve eaten here a number of times and it’s one of our ‘go to’ place here in San Antonio. Opened by two sisters in 1930, it has grown (moved across the street in 1934) to one of the best Mexican restaurants in San Antonio.
Here’s what their website says about their history.
It is fascinating to hear how popular La Fonda has been as a dining spot of history’s most celebrated people. Every famous officer in World War II seems to have eaten here, including Generals Eisenhower, MacArthur and Hill. Even American presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed La Fonda’s fare. Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Yul Brenner, Veronica Lake, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, along with many other stars, visited this historic restaurant.
Today to celebrate, we started out with a Margarita, or half a Margarita, anyway. We split a Sangria Swirl ‘Rita, and unlike the one we had recently at Saltgrass, this one actually had some alcohol in it. Very good.
Jan’s favorite dish here is their Chile Relleno platter.
The egg-battered Poblano Chile is stuffed with beef tenderloin, salsa and pecans, and an enchilada Verde de Queso.
I tried something completely different this time with their Filete Regio, which is an Allen Bros. Oak-grilled choice beef tenderloin, papas rancheras, Oaxaca cheese, on a crisp chalupa, topped with ajillo Gulf shrimp, peppers, and avocado slices.
Very spicy and very good.
Both our portions were big enough that we were able to bring half of it home for later, and that also gave us enough room to split a piece of their delicious Tres Leches cake.
Really good.
Looks like it’s back to work in the next couple of days. We’re actually looking forward to it.
October 21, 2017
Running and Spiffing . . .
Although still not quite up to snuff, Jan was getting rig fever, so about 5pm she and I headed out to have dinner at Jason’s Deli right down in Conroe.
Jan just wanted a soup and sandwich, in this case a cup of Broccoli Cheese and a quarter Turkey Muffuletta.
I got my usual, a bowl of Southwest Chicken Chili and a small Reuben sandwich.
For a non-beef chili, this one is pretty much the best.
Coming home I stopped off at the Kroger’s for a Powerball lottery ticket. It’s up to $173 million, so I’ll spend a few bucks. I don’t smoke or drink, so I’ve got to waste my money on something. And there’s not a chance that smoking or drinking will make me a millionaire.
Unfortunately I always have to stand in line at the service desk because the machines don’t offer you a choice of cash payout or annual payments, just cash payout.
So if I want annual payments, and I do, I have to get it at the desk. And the reason I want annual payments is that with cash payout I’m giving up $64 million. That’s the difference between the annual payment total of $173 million and the cash payout of $109 million.
And it gets worse as the jackpot rises. In January 2016 there was a Powerball Jackpot of $1.6 BILLION. If you took the cash payout you would only get about $1 billion, giving up 600 million just to get the cash up front.
In the case of tonight’s jackpot, if you won in Texas (no state income tax) and took the 30 annual payments, you would get almost $3.5 million a year after taxes.
While if you took the cash, you would get a one time payout of a little over $65 million after taxes. Now honestly, what can I really do with $65 million that I can’t do with the $3.5 million. Yeah, I could invest it, but then I’d have to worry about it. And more than likely I’d be investing a large part of the 3.5 anyway. I mean, what can I actually spend it on, anyway. Jan and I’ve already said we wouldn’t get a new rig, but just get Beauty a new paint job and spiff her up a bit. Including those new blue window awnings.
On the Mega-Millions front, it looks like they’re finally increasing the cost of a ticket to $2 to keep up with Powerball’s pot sizes. Powerball went to $2 in Oct. 2015 which, along with decreasing the odds of winning, greatly increased pot sizes, leading to the $1.6 billion one I mentioned earlier.
As I always say, “Let’s run the numbers”.
October 21, 2018
Not Much Happened Today . . .
So Not Much Blog.
I had a headache a good part of the day so a short blog tonight.
We left the Riverside RV Park in Robertsdale, AL about 10am, and except for some unusually heavy Sunday traffic through Baton Rouge, it was smooth sailing all the way.
And not only was it smooth, it was also cool … almost cold, actually. The temps just barely made it into the 70’s, and we never even turn on the dash fans. In fact we hadn’t been on the road very long when Jan went back to get a long sleeve shirt.
We got in to Poche’s RV Park here in Breaux Bridge about 2:30, and parked in our usual pull-thru site.
Later we had dinner at Crazy ‘Bout Crawfish and then made a WalMart stop.
Tomorrow we’ve got a 245 mile run back to our site at the Petticoat Junction RV Park in Santa Fe, TX.
Looking forward to getting home.
October 21, 2019
Extra Perks . . .
This weekend we booked our 13 day Alaskan cruise for next September 1 – 13. I also separately booked our 7 day pre-cruise stay that Best Western – Pioneer Park for about half of what we would have paid if we had stayed at the Holland America Westmark Hotel. In fact, what we saved between the two hotels was enough to cover our airfare up and back.
Normally I probably wouldn’t booked this early, 10 months out, but the cruise on our same ship, right before ours, is already completely sold out. So we didn’t want to lose out. Plus by booking this early we get a bunch of extra perks like $600 ship credit that can be used for extra excursions, gift shop, etc.
We’re still looking at our air flights, trying to figure out the best deals. Kind of surprised that HAL doesn’t have something in place, but apparently not.
When we did our Alaskan cruise in 1998, our first night in Alaska, we stayed at the Alyeska Resort down in Girdwood about 30 miles from Anchorage.
Early in the morning we took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain to check it out, and also make reservations for the 4 Star restaurant at the top. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and the workers were putting out tables, chairs, and umbrellas for the guests.
I guess no one thought to check the weather, since when we came back up about 6 hours later, it looked like this.
And this was the middle of May.
October 21, 2021
Trading At Joe’s . . .
Jan and I were out the door and on our way up to the Spring area to meet up with long-time friend’s Debi and Ed Hurlburt at El Palenque Mexican Restaurant.
We were having so much fun talking that I forgot to get photos of the delicious food, so you’ll have to wait until next month when we’re meeting at El Palenque again.
Coming home we again made a detour by the Trader Joe’s so Jan could pick up a few things.
Located in the old Alabama Theater on Shepherd, we used to go to movies here back in the day.
We finally got home about 4:15 after deciding we were still too full for Cowboy Coffee.
