Moving further West

We spent our last day at Hord’s Creek doing exactly what we wanted. We had a late, relatively large breakfast, went in to Coleman to pirate some Wi-Fi (last blog update ws published then) but ended up at the library just using their Wi-Fi. I always forget they usually have that available. We then finished our Coleman visit with chocolate Dairy Queen shakes and a quick stop at the grocery store for eggs. We sped back to camp and spent the remaining part of Friday just lazing around doing what each of us wanted. Bruce read a book and indulged in adult beverages and I completed work on my tracking spreadsheet to use to document the expenses on this trip – always nice to know how much and what you spent your money for- (yeah – I know you can take the girl out of the technology work environment but you can’t take the computer from the girl). Then I read a book and we both watched all of the Friday camper arrivals – backing into trees, hitting their 5th wheel tongues, etc. – always quite a show. We finished the evening with this wonderful sunset. As we were leaving early the next morning- we had already cleaned up the camp site. All we had to do Saturday morning, if all went to plan, was make the coffee, unhook the water & electric, run in the slides, go and dump the tanks and get on the way. We were hoping to beat the heat and the ever increasing wind you experience as you move west.

It is Saturday afternoon, we have already eaten lunch and are sitting in our site at Brantley Lake State Park in Carlsbad, NM and I have internet access again. Yes, it comes and goes, but it does connect- not like in the boondocks of Texas. This update is as fresh as it gets- as are the accompanying pictures I already have. All went as planned- but speaking of wind- we must have been through the windiest part of Texas- there were electric wind generation windmills for miles and miles just south of Sweetwater. Didn’t get the picture I wanted as the camera was in the car- being towed behind us and I didn’t want to suggest to Bruce that he pull over, let me find my keys and then let me find the camera and take 1-2 pictures that we probably wouldn’t recognize when we saw them later - although he did offer to stop and let me go and find everything if I really wanted those pictures. Not! I have learned something in 32 years. After seeing the miles & miles of windmills, most not moving at the time made me very glad that we had been on the road by 6:50am. I can’t imagine driving the big brick on wheels (The Beast) if all of those babies had been truning at full speed, we would have been all over the road. The biggest event of the morning was trying to get diesel fuel in a less than RV accommodating station in Big Springs. We did accomplish the feat- and it wasn’t as costly as it could have been- and got back on US 87 to Lamesa where we hit US190 and stayed on it until we hit Carlsbad. The drive itself was uneventful and was much better on the back roads than on the interstate- more to see- if you could call acres of wheat, cotton and desert more to see (visions of 1987 driving through Kansas Jeremy- if you remember).

Looks like we might be in the path for a little weather so will get this posted and my computer shut down just in case. See you all later!

For all of you that get an email notification of my updates- if you don’t want it- please let me know so I can add someone else. The # I can notify that way is limited- so if you don’t want the update (either because you already check regularly, you get too much email and don’t want more or you just don’t care to follow along) please let me know and I will remove your notification.

VERIZONless in West Texas at least for the computer??

The trip to Hord?s Creek Lake went smoothly and we arrived approximately 4 hours after leaving- although we did go to the wrong park entrance originally. Apparently the park has several entrances, but in the summer months they shut the connection between the Lakeside Park and the park across the Dam ? Flat Rocks. Not knowing this, we entered at the first Hord?s Creek Lake COE entrance we came to and had to U-turn and drive another mile west for the Lake Side entrance. This is obviously a common issue since we have seen a few other campers doing the same thing- even today when we visited Flat Rocks. The Lake Side park is nicer in our opinion ? sites are larger and completely paved parking where Flat rock still ahs some gravel parking sites- more for smaller campers and tenters I think. Also, the rest room facilities and showers are not as up to date- although we did discover that there are sites at both parks with full hook-ups ? news to us. Since the cats are traveling in our shower- we prefer to use the campground facilities when available. The park is a COE park like most others- although I am at a loss at to why there is one in this area. I have not been able to get online here yet (we are in a hole surrounded by hills and ranch country) so haven?t done all the requisite research to provide any real historical info on this park. Maybe it is like Optima Lake in OK ? there was a flood once, someone put the creek on the list for control and the Corp had money and built a dam. Not the first time things like that have happened- the bureaucratic train is hard to stop once it has started, even if something may no longer be really necessary- but who knows until I can look it up.

Speaking of facilities here -this is the first set of showers I have experienced that have motion detector technology running the shower water. You had better be standing in front of that little gizmo or you have no water. I realized very quickly that by using the handicap stall with the bars all around and propping the shampoo bottle on the bar in front of the sensor I could pretty much circumvent that system. Bruce on the other had did not have a large enough bottle so he had to make do with staying in the sensor?s path. The little things we have to deal with.

We spent today touring the area and then the park across the small lake. I found a nice Quilt Shop called the Quilting Patch in Santa Ana and Bruce found a wonderful military surplus junk yard. I can already tell something new will be coming to our house in the next year. He will just have to decide which something and when to come and get it I guess. He told me that I just needed to shop at 3-4 more Quilt stores and he could get a new to him jeep ? I think he is dreaming. I haven?t spent that much money.

I am pretty sure this is an area where there are plenty of Winter Texans each year - that translates to snowbirds for us Floridians ? based on the size of this CORP park, the new pull-through and 50 amp service sites they have added and my real observation , there are too many antique malls for a small place like Coleman, TX to support. I guess the hunters could be avid antiquers- but I really can?t see them spending a whole lot of their hunting season in these places. Prices were pretty high too, so the locals wouldn?t have been their support either and the area does not seem to be unique and/or picturesque enough (German towns, rafters, hill country, etc.) for the yuppie crowd. Unlike Canyon Lake, the CORP owns the whole thing and all of the surrounding land- so there are no waterfront homes, and no thriving downstream river (Hord?s Creek) community that we could identify. The area seems to be mostly farming and/or ranching (Show goats, cattle, horses). Guess us oldies (traveling retirees) are the ones buying their wares- but obviously oldies with more money than Bruce and I.

Bruce is currently observing the activities on the opposite shore- it is always fun to watch new people arrive, set up and get themselves situated. The weather is wonderful tonight, about 78 and clear. Yesterday it was a scorcher for May- in the 90s when we arrived around 2 but the breeze made it bearable. Later that evening we had an awful thunderstorm ? I thought I might need to watch for Tornados since most of it was lightening, thunder and wind. The rain that fell was not enough to materially raise the level of the Lake. I am sure the Texas drought is affecting this area also. We woke to clear skies and 65 degrees with a breeze that required a sweatshirt be donned for morning coffee. It was so beautiful that we moved all of our various cooking utensils outside and hope to keep them there for the duration of this stay. We are really roughing it- we had the electric frying pan and the electric griddle out for breakfast and used the Air Baker convection oven to cook a wonderful Tex-Mex casserole for dinner. We used one of the bags of pulled pork we cooked Sunday (last of the defrosted pork). Mix cooked pork, green chili sauce, tomatoes, cheese and flour tortillas together in any dish and it tastes wonderful. Jeremy- I will have to send you this recipe I made up - it is fast, easy and tastes great. Bruce doesn?t think I can duplicate this and that it was just dump and mix but I am going to show him, the recipe will be in an email to you tomorrow (or whenever I get service) The same outside area (picnic table) is our library and office too- as long as the weather holds.

Tomorrow is laundry day- so I will take this with me and hopefully finish posting and adding some of my pictures. Then we are off to Brownwood for some junking, camping world if available for some various needed items and lunch out. Will be adding more later.

Addendum: No Verizon connection in Brownwood and have not called them to see if there is a problem. When this posts it will be because I went to the public library in Coleman on Friday. Pictures will come later.

Potter's Creek Park, Canyon Lake, TX

It has been a few days since I wrote the last entry- and we have almost reached the end of our time here at Potter’s Creek. We leave tomorrow for Hords Creek near Coleman, TX. It is truly a good thing that I reserved this site when I did- this park was sold out for Memorial Day weekend and I am pretty sure that most of the tent sites has over the limit. We were awash with tents, boats, campers, trailers, jet skis and tubers. Apparently it is very popular to tube the Guadalupe River and the proximity of this river to Austin, San Antonio and San Marcos makes it a mecca for college kids and families who want to get out to the country on the river. There is not much water in the river, but apparently that did not stop anyone. Besides the tubing, the Hill County is beautiful just to ride through- and the motorcyclists were out in the beautiful weather. Even rain did not deter anyone- the sites were filled to capacity every where Bruce & I went- and this picture is just an example of what the 20 miles of the Guadalupe River looked like on River Road (between Sattler and New Braunfels) when we drove it early Sunday morning. If someone had a piece of land along that 20 mile stretch, they had turned it into camp grounds and tubing entry/exit areas. Seems these areas are really big on the holiday weekends and all through the summer.

We have explored all around the lake- although we never made it to the Museum of the Texas Hill County to see the dinosaur tracks. We just ran out of time- and to get anywhere you have to go around the Lake. We did visit the Canyon Dam, walked over and back with Hazel (1.6 mi) and the on the nature trail downstream. The deer are prolific here, and there are fawns everywhere. We tried to take a picture of one up at the top of the dam, hidden by its mother in the tall grass, but that did not work very well. See if you can find the hidden fawn – this is much like our moose pictures when we went to Yellowstone in 87 – lots of vegetation but no real discernible animals in the pictures.

Have met some very nice people here and hope we can keep in touch as we continue to roam the country. The couple next door to us were an ex-farmer/welder and a nurse. He had recently been diagnosed with MS and was finding out what was still possible and she is still working as a case discharge nurse for one of the big insurance companies. We learned quite a bit about the Texas area, farming and their home town of Hutto (just NE of Austin). Very nice folks and full of good information. Who knows, we may meet them again when we come this way next time = and we will come again. This is a wonderful area, although getting here was over smaller Texas roads that caused The Beast to twist and turn a bit. As a result- we no longer have a working ice-maker. Seems the water supply tube has finally disintegrated. Once we discovered that we had water leaking into the bins, Bruce took the access panel off and discovered that the tube was broken. We have found what we thought were viable replacements – but once he cut into the insulation covering the tube- he realized we would be unable to fix this problem- the age and heat had taken their toll and the brittle tube just comes apart in his hands. Guess we will do without until we find someone who can run a new line- or just do without until we get back home. Ice trays work fine.

The defrosted food has all been taken care of- either cooked or we found it a place in the freezer.. I made pulled pork with the various pork cuts and beef stew with whatever beef was defrosted. Those can go in the frig as we seem to have room there and they will get eaten pretty quickly. We cooked the Italian sausages to eat later with onions and peppers fair-style and we grilled the nice London broil to slice for sandwiches. I shouldn’t have to cook for the next week – except of course for breakfast. Yea!!! – vacation coming up.

The animals are doing fine- Wolfy has gotten used to coming outside when all is quiet for awhile and Samantha is even getting up during the day to lie in the passenger chair and look out the windows. I think they are starting to adapt. Hazel of course has her own routine and that means so do we. Trying to keep her from gaining weight may be the best thing for us- although I still need to get to a Wal-Mart to pick up a set of scales. You can’t be too careful.

Check out the album associated with this blog for more pictures. Have to stop and help Bruce get The Beast ready for it’s trip tomorrow- with time for us to relax under the awning with some wine or a drink. More will follow.