Goliad State Park and Another Lesson Learned

Monday, March 29 

We left the house after lunch had a beautiful two and a half hour drive down hwy. 183 to Goliad. The sky was overcast but the patches of wildflowers along the road brightened up the view in spite of the overcast sky. 

Once we entered Gonzales County we began to see a lot more cattle in the pastures than we see up in the Hays/Travis area. We’ve been through here before but never noticed how many Brahma ranches there are, with a few short horns and miscellaneous breeds thrown in for color. With their cream colored hide they added a nice contrast as they munched along in those wildflower patches. 

Arriving at Goliad State Park, check-in was quick, our campsite, #13, is one of 21 spacious pull-thru’s in the Karankawa Camping area. It’s an appropriate name, as the Karankawa were a tribe that lived in the area. 

We ran through the usual set up routine, unhitching, connecting water and power etc. then leashed up the pooches for a walk around the loop. . . noting as we went which sites would be highly desirable, which wouldn’t and checking out the little screened enclosures that are also available for rent. 

They would be really nice for tent campers during the peak bug season. There are three other tent areas but none of them have these little screened enclosures. 

Set-up complete, we took the dogs for a short walk around the loop. We were probably gone from our site for about 15 minutes.

 As we rounded the corner, putting our site in vision, we heard running water, and as we got closer noticed water cascading like a little Niagara Falls all along the passenger side of the RV. 

Steve immediately shut off the water supply and unlocked the door, both of us expecting the worst. It seems "somebody" was on our side this time though. 

We had noticed when we put the jacks down that the rig was about an inch low on the passenger side, and that saved us a lot of potential problems, as the water ran out instead of into the interior. 

A connection on the pump under the kitchen sink had apparently blown apart, probably loosened on the rough road we’d just traveled over. Even though Steve had checked it before we left it couldn’t hold up to the vibration. 

We spent much of the remainder of the afternoon blotting up water (good thing we had a lot of towels available!) and running fans under the cabinets. 

We were prepared to turn around and go home when we first saw the situation, but it turned out to be salvageable. It took us three tries to get here (having had to cancel the first two reservations) and we certainly didn't want to have to give up now that we were finally here! 

Lesson learned here:

ALWAYS turn the water off before leaving the site for any length of time! 

We spent the remainder of the afternoon recuperating our nerves and checking out the immediate neighborhood. 

It turned out we had a lot of neighbors, tiny ones, tree trimming neighbors.... otherwise known as leaf cutter ants. 

There is a large colony of them, permanent residents I'm sure, not campers, just a couple of sites down. 

The woman in the campsite next to us pointed them out. She was taking photos of them climbing up and down the tree in another site.  They are fascinating little creatures and they worked all day at gathering their leaves. 

Their colony is quite extensive, and mostly looks like a dog has been digging from a distance. 

Close up you can see the entry hole and the fine soil they kick up. This colony is probably where the ants are taking the leaves they clip, on which they will grow microbes to feed their young, as far as 8-10 feet under the surface!

Not to be outdone by all the industry of the ants, we were also visited by a pair of wrens. 

Not just visited.... they wanted to move in! We sat in camp relaxing, enjoying a couple of "adult beverages" and noticed birds dashing in and out around the front end of the trailer, so we paid closer attention and discovered this pair was doing what a pair at home had attempted. . . trying to build a nest on our propane tanks!

They were swooping up under the tank cover, a large plastic covering for the two tanks that made the area nice and dark which is their preference for nesting. 

We dislodged them twice but they kept coming back so finally Steve opened  up the top piece on the plastic tank cover so it would be light inside and that stopped them. Well, actually, I think they moved over to a rig that had just arrived. Oh well, that's nature at work!

Tomorrow we'll visit The Presidio La Bahia where the Fannin Memorial is located. This will be a jump directly into the middle of the Texas battle for independence.

*Follow up note - the fans seem to have taken care of the interior moisture, and so far a check of the insulation from the underside seems to show no damage. 

Practice makes perfect???

Friday, July 24

70 miles north of Lakeview, Oregon,
on the Outback Scenic Byway. . . .

The tire, which is directly below the kitchen sink, exploded with such force that it threw the dishpan up out of the sink and on to the floor!


I don't know if the routine is "perfect" now, but it took half the time of the last tire change!

Hubby just reported "the ol' thermometer says 106, and that's not a radio station", so I guess it's a good time to kick back in the house, enjoy the A/C and do a bit of updating.

We're trying to get ready for departure, which will be sometime early in July if things go as planned. The weather lately makes it hard to get the outside tasks done, so we're progressing rather slowly (that's our story and we're sticking to it!).

A friend commented one time that she just assumed it took us a couple of days to get things ready and packed when we hit the road for the summer. I wish! Heck, I can't pack that quickly for a three day plane trip! We've always got things to repair, or improve, kitchen staples to refill, groceries to buy and load in, and then there's always the unnecessary crafty project of some kind that I'm determined to do, even though it isn't strictly necessary.

This year the essential repair was the forward spring that broke just as we were leaving Balmorhea State Park back in mid May. We had moved the short distance from our site over to the dump station when, in his customary walk-around, Steve noticed some unusual wear on the trailer's front tire sidewall.  Upon inspection he discovered the front spring had broken two leaves, allowing the fender well to drop. It was rubbing on the side of the tire and had done noticeable damage in only a few feet of travel.  It's a little unnerving to think about what the results might have been if that had happened at a high speed.

As a temporary fix to get us home Steve put a wooden block between the axle and the trailer. We certainly couldn't rely on that solution forever, so he found these heavy rubber axle bumpers that mount on the axle and will hopefully serve the same purpose should we ever break another spring.

The parts arrived the other day and after completing the installation Steve said the project went better than he'd expected, so in consideration of the wear and tear all the springs have had over the years, he ordered another spring for the other side and replaced that one too.

He did most of the work lying on his back in the gravel, under a metal roof, in a thunderstorm, with Shiner either breathing in his ear or laying on his tools - does he know how to have fun or what!

He's also done some general reorganization for the cargo spaces, and some repairs to the cargo box on the back so he's almost done with his to-do list.

My crafty project for this season was targeted at getting rid of the peeling wallpaper border. When we bought our Arctic Fox 30U, back in 2003, it had a wallpaper border all the way around the main living area. It's pressure sensitive sticky back promptly curled up and let go of the wall in the Nevada heat on that 4th of July trip. So, I put up a regular paper border, one that's attached with a water based paste. That survived pretty well, but now, nine years later, it was beginning to curl up at the corners and was driving me crazy.

The vinyl surface walls in an RV do present a particular challenge as not much wants to stick to them. My current solution is a stenciled design. Using a couple of purchased stencils and craft paints I applied a subtle leafy vine along the long side of the slideout, and two birds (colored to resemble the Texas scissor-tailed flycatcher) near the windows on each side of the slide. I dare this wall treatment to fall off!


I also remodeled a couple of foil window shades to fit our living space windows. These are the same kind you buy for autos, cut down to fit exactly so they can be tucked behind the shade during hot sunny days.
We find it makes a huge difference in being able to keep the inside cool when it's over 95 outside. The shades are already accordion folded, so are easy to tuck beside the sofa out of the way when we don't need them. We now have a foil blind to fit every window, so we're ready for that southwest desert sun!

Housekeeping is pretty much the same in an RV as at home. In spite of routine cleaning sometimes you need to dismantle an area and start over with everything clean and new. This year I talked myself into tackling the spice collection.

We like to cook, and we like spicy foods, so we carry a lot of spices for both baking and BBQ. Between road dust and humidity, the RV life is kind of hard on them. So, completely cleaning out and starting over seemed like a good plan. It only took most of a day (but I was able to stay inside where it's cool!)

We keep most of the spices in a nifty hanging rack that holds 12 different spices without taking up any shelf space. (You can find one like this by doing a web search on "select a spice carousel" - there are several, at varying prices.) I think this is one of the best inventions I've seen for organizing a small RV kitchen. It's taken all these years of bouncing down the road with no ill effects, too!

Remaining to-do's: reattaching our plexiglass storm window on the front door, steam cleaning the carpet, and installing the new sound system. So that my friends is why it takes us so long to get ready to travel.

After all that is completed we can start with the basic food and clothes packing! Yes, it's work, and maybe it would be easier if we did it full-time and didn't have the house to worry about too, but we do enjoy both. It's no more work than playing tennis as far as I'm concerned!
[Reminder: you can click on any of the photos for a larger version]