Day 19 on the road – in Lockhart

We woke up this morning in the Wal Mart parking lot in Lockhart, Texas, where we’d spent the night after getting in late Saturday evening.  Our reservation for the state park was set for today, so once we got up and got dressed, we headed straight over there.  The night on the asphalt had been surprisingly cool thanks to a steady breeze coming in through the bedroom window, but once the sun was up, our little fiberglass box started heating up quickly.  We were ready to get to some hookups, plug in, and crank the A/C.

The state park was no more than five minutes from where we spent the night, and we got there sometime between 9 and 10 a.m.  We were a bit nervous about getting into our site because it was the first back-in site we’d tried on the whole trip.  I’d actually called around to find out about other RV parks just in case we couldn’t figure out how to get the rig into the campsite. Everywhere else we’ve stayed has had pull-through sites, and the fact that I reserved a back-in was my fault; I didn’t read the fine print.  When I saw the park review, I this is what I understood: pull-throughs, check; full-hookups, check; 50 amp connections, check; pets allowed, check.  That’s all we needed!  I didn’t look at the park map, but if I’d had I’d have understood that Lockhart State Park DOES have pull-through sites, but they are tiny, unable to accommodate rigs over 25 feet, and they don’t have full hookups.  The full-hookup sites are only back-ins.  My bad.

As it turns out, we didn’t need to leave and go to any of those other parks I investigated.  Lex didn’t get the trailer into the site on the first try, but she did get it parked eventually.  Of course, while we were trying to do this, a half a dozen kids and their parents, a park ranger, and the campground host were all sitting there watching us try which only stressed Lex out more.  Nothing like having folks observe and comment upon your personal struggles as they unfold.  The host and the ranger actually applauded when we finally got it done.  I think they had their doubts about the two women trying to manuever the huge 5er and were standing by in case it looked like we were going to run over something important.

One of these days, I’ll figure out a way to make this whole backing in thing easier for both of us.  Lex has a hard time with left and right (she’s a lefty), and I don’t have a good sense of depth perception or spatial relations.  So it’s the blind leading the blind.  I try to give her instructions while having a hard time visualizing in my mind exactly which way she needs to turn the wheel to get the trailer to go where it needs to go while she struggles to figure out how to implement the cockeyed instructions I do give her.  We get along pretty well as a rule, but this is the one part of RVing that really causes us to get testy with one another.  I suppose it’s just because it’s so frustrating.  Everything else we seem to be able to sort out, but we haven’t quite conquered this problem yet.

The site was pretty level so we didn’t have to break out the blocks, so we got everything plugged in and set up pretty fast.  I even adorned our little patio area. Each site has a covered picnic table on a concrete pad, a nice grill, and a fire ring.  I put the outdoor rug down outside the rig’s door under the shade tree, put out the folding chairs and little table, stuck our flag in the ground, plugged in the bug zapper, covered the picnic table, hung my flamingo lights, and plopped the citronella candles down.  Voila!  Home sweet campsite!

Patio area at our campsite in Lockhart State Park

I have an aunt, uncle, and some cousins in the area, and they all got together and made lunch for the two of us.  We spent the afternoon at my aunt and uncle’s place eating barbecued brisket, potato salad, rolls, beans, and homemade pies.  Yum!  It was good to see my family and have a Texas-style meal on Independence Day.   I haven’t visited with my cousins in a few years.  My cousin, Sheila, has triplet girls, and they’re getting so big!  Such a handsome family they are.  Sheila clearly got all the looks in our generation of the family.

After lunch, I brought my cousins back to see the camper.  The girls loved playing with the dogs and the cat while my cousins toured the rig.  After a bit, we bid them goodbye, came back inside, and promptly laid down to take a looong nap.  The drive, the heat, and the visiting had taken their toll.  I had a migraine, too.  The nap didn’t help.  Still had it when I woke up some three hours later.

We slept so long we missed the Lockhart Fourth of July fireworks display! We drove into town anyway looking for food because our fridge is on the fritz again.  I don’t think it travels very well because yesterday at some point during the trip it stopped cooling and temps got up to 59 degrees again and stayed there overnight.  This, of course, means spoiled food which I’ll have to go replace tomorrow when I have the opportunity.  So the broken fridge is how we ended up at the Dairy Queen at 10 p.m. tonight.

Dairy Queen in Texas is a different company from the Dairy Queens elsewhere, and this fact is reflected in the menu.  If you visit DQ in Texas and in other states, you’ll notice there are items on the Texas menus that do not exist elsewhere.  One menu item that is Texas-specific are the tacos.  They aren’t great. Better tacos can be had just about anywhere in the state, but for me, they have a special significance.  My great grandmother introduced me to them, and that’s something we used to do together when I’d visit her for a weekend and come into Lockhart to go grocery shopping with her.  We’d end up having lunch at DQ, and I’d almost always have the tacos.  Later in life, I introduced Lex to the DQ taco, and we’d have lunch together under a tree in a little park near where I used to work.  Those were very happy, idyllic days, so those mediocre tacos have become a special sort of comfort food for me.  It was nice to have them once again.  It’s been years!

Something not so comforting happened on the Dairy Queen run, though.  Lex asked me to drive, so I did, but as we were headed into the drive through, Lex reminded me to pull in our mirrors.  With the extensions for the RV, they are huge and can easily catch on something and break, so I pulled them in as I moved toward the speaker to order.   Immediately afterwards, I hear SCRAAAAAPE!  Ouch.  I’d hit one of the concrete pylons that are designed to prevent idiots like me from taking out their signage.  It was everything Lex could do not to strangle me, I’m sure.

Once we got back to the park, I took a flashlight and had a look.  I’ll know more in the light of day, but it appears that the paint is intact.  There’s just a nasty crease in the fender between the rear wheel and the bumper.  *sighs* Well, it’s not like I lied.  I’ve been quite honest about having no depth perception and barely being able to drive my own compact car without doing serious damage to it. Lex’s big old truck is a bit more vehicle than I should probably be allowed to handle.  Sorry, Lex.  Didn’t mean to hurt your baby!

I sat outside at our picnic table and enjoyed my tacos.  When I was done, I pulled my comfortable reclining lawn chair out of the RV and sat it out behind the rig and enjoyed the stars, the smell of campfires, and the sound of the cicadas for a while.  Ah, home!  Nothing like it anywhere else.

The Sounds of a South Texas Night

I’ve been trying to upload some photos I took today so I can add them to my blog entry, but we don’t have a 3G connection here.  Our broadband modems can only access the edge network which is about the same speed as dialup.  For us, accustomed as we are to high-speed Internet, this is torture!  This is what we call “roughing it.”  No fridge, fine.  Lost belly pan, okay.  Even scratched-up truck, we can deal.  But dial-up speeds?  Shoot us now!

Tomorrow I hope to have my aunt and uncle over for dinner and grill them something.  Tuesday I’ll probably spend grading papers, and Wednesday I plan to have lunch with me aunt, just girls on the town!  Thursday, maybe some geocaching.  Then Friday morning early, we’re off again to spend the weekend just down the road in Gonzales, Texas.

Tags: accident, camping, family, Fourth of July, Internet, Lockhart State Park, rving, Texas, Travel