This morning, the bathroom was smelling like a urinal thanks to the seepage, so I had to go back out, turn off the water again, and come back in and take the toilet back apart.  I cleaned the gaskets between the bowl and the pedestal, getting rid of all the mineral deposits, put them back in, and very carefully put the toilet back together.  Now the bowl holds water again (it hasn’t for weeks), and I think I stopped the black water leak.  The fresh water issue, however, persists and will until I replace the parts.

I looked up the cost of the parts online.  Each of the two valves runs about $45.  Plus shipping I’d be paying $100 just for those parts, parts I’d then slap on an eight-year-old toilet.  A replacement toilet costs $150 (with shipping about $185).  I’m thinking I should just cough up the extra $85 and save myself some future heartbreak. 

I’ve looked at the repair manual, and it doesn’t seem like it should be too challenging to replace the toilet.  I figure if I have managed to take the thing apart and put it together three times already, the only extra step is unbolting it from the floor, pulling up the foam gasket, and then replacing everything.

This is the week of water leaks.  Yesterday while the water was off, I took everything out of the cabinet under my sink, opened up all the cabinet doors, and let the space dry out.  There has been a slow leak under there for some time, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.  I’ve always suspected that it’s just water dripping down the sprayer hose or seeping around the base of the faucet.  Once everything dried out, I turned the water back on and couldn’t see any leaks.  So I put everything back in the cabinets, managing to rearrange things a bit as I did.

This morning the leak is still there.  I just don’t know what the issue is.  Maybe I just need to go in and put silicone around everything and hope that works.  I have no idea.

I installed a new drinking water hose and a new outside filter yesterday, too.  Where the hose connects to the filter, I have a leak, and nothing I do will stop it.  I see no cracks or holes anywhere, and I’ve Teflon taped the hell out of everything, but it still leaks.  Tightened it with pliers and still nothing.  I don’t know what else to do short of going and buying a new hose.  *sighs*

As if I wasn’t already feeling defeated in the battle against leaks, today I discovered a very slow leak under the house at the connection for the water inlet.  Oh, boy.  I was out of juice after battling the toilet and the city water connection, so I just left it alone for now.  I’ll grab my Teflon tape and see what can be done about it tomorrow.

Sure, I could call the repair guy, but he’ll want $100 PLUS parts and labor.  Even if my warranty covers it, I still have a $100 deductible.  If I can get the repairs done for not much more than $100 and save myself the hassle of dealing with repair people, I’ll do it, even if it means I have to be up to my elbows in sewage periodically.

As if that wasn’t all fun enough, our septic tank is backing up.  It was prone to do that before when there was just one RV here.  Now there are three large rigs and nine people amongst them all.  That’s a lot of flushing, dish washing, and showering.  Now when I try to dump my holding tanks, the connection at the septic tank spits at me when the tank fills up and waste water begins to back up from the septic tank into my dump hose.  Not pretty.  All I can really do is ask Creepy Groundskeeper Chip to get over here and flush out the septic.  The neighbors probably haven’t noticed that there’s a problem.  Our rig is the last one before the septic tank, and we are at the bottom of a slight incline.  You know what they say;  shit flows downhill.   And then that shit seeps up through the ground and forms a puddle just beyond our awning mat.  Gotta tell you, the smell isn’t sweet, and, as luck would have it, it’s cooled down enough that we can open our windows, so we have.  Those cool breezes waft right over the septic field and into our rig. Oh so appetizing!

On a happier note, I scored some RV discussion boards until I found a novel (and cheap) solution to our missing underbelly pan.  Turns out there’s this stuff called Coroplast.  You’ve seen it.  It’s what all those crappy little campaign signs are made out of these days, a type of corrugated plastic.  It’s lightweight and inexpensive and can be bought from those places that make the signs.  I should be able to replace the underbelly cover for somewhere between $50-75, depending on what they charge for the stuff around here.  I’ll make some calls this week and price it out.

In news not related to RV repair, the neighbors have three young sons.  This being a long holiday weekend with beautiful weather, the boys were out playing.  Turns out they like to go fishing right behind our RV — six feet behind our RV.  With our windows open, we get to hear all their running and yelling.  Great!  Where are all the quiet, retired RVers we hear so much about?  Oh, yeah, they’re getting yelled at by their adult children who live right next door to them.

This week has been such a frustrating exercise in fulltiming that I’ve found myself browsing the “for rent” ads on Craigslist.  Not that we can afford to move right now, but what can I say?  I had a moment of weakness.

In other news, there have been a couple of times lately when I’ve smelled sewer gas in the house, even when the tanks had been dumped and I’d confirmed that nothing was leaking.  I’ve figured out where the odor is coming from, but I’m not sure why it’s there or how to fix it.  I have my suspicions, though.  It seems that the overflow pipe for the washer connection in our little hall closet has gas from the holding tanks backing up into it (just gas, not liquid).  This shouldn’t be happening.  We have vent pipes on the roof that are supposed to pull the gas up out of the tanks and release it back into the great outdoors.  At least some of the time, that’s clearly not happening and the gas is coming back inside.  This is dangerous becaue methane isn’t exactly something humans are built to breathe in large quantities.

I believe what might have happened is that when we had the Great Sewer Explosion this summer, solids of some sort must have partially clogged the vent pipe, restricting the discharge of the gas, causing it to build up until it finds some way to seep out.  That’s my theory, anyway.  I don’t have the energy or the know-how to take proper care of the problem, and I don’t have the money to call the repairman, so my big fix for the time being has been to wrap electrical tape around the pipe in the closet, covering the vent holes.  Let’s hope the whole place doesn’t blow up as a result.  I don’t know if that’s possible, but if it is, it’ll probably happen.  After all, our rig has a knack for breaking in the most inconvenient and incredibly dramatic ways.

There are just a million little things that need fixing right now, but none of them will be getting done anytime soon:  underbelly cover replacement, vent pipe cleaning, grey water tank valve replacement, awning arm and spring mechanism,  repair of leaks at the fresh water inlet on the toilet and underneath the kitchen sink, replacing torn day/night shades, mysterious wet spot on the slideout floor…the list goes on.  At this rate of decay, the whole rig will probably just be a pile of unroadworthy rubble by next summer!

Lex was home when the new rig arrived, and she watched them pull in.  Grumpy Groundskeeper Chip was on hand as usual to stand around, look sullen, and provide absolutely no help. Neighbor Bill has about had it with Chip who apparently announced to Bill and his wife that he’s “the boss around here” and suggested they should pay their rent to him.  WTF?  No way, no how.  We deal only with Diane at the main office, and all rent checks and requests go through her.  I wouldn’t dream of giving that devil one thin dime.  Alexis told the couple as much, so they called Diane who confimed that, in fact, Chip was not to receive any money from residents.  Creepy McCreeperson best watch it.  He doesn’t want an English professor writing a nasty letter about him to his employer.

So now all three sites here are occupied.  I have yet to go over and meet the neighbors in person.  I still haven’t bothered to cook something to take to them.  Bad form to visit someone empty-handed.  I will have to remedy that soon.

There is a little girl who lives at the house here at the end of the street.  She’s maybe four years old, a tiny little thing.  Her grandparents live with her, but apparently they don’t feel the need to keep a very close eye on her.  She quite literally spends all day outside, just running up and down the street, walking through people’s yards, and getting into things she ought not to.  This is a particular worry because we live right on the water, and there are no fences separating us from the creek.  The little girl seems to like to go take peeks at the water from time to time.

I’ve spoken with her grandmother once before, but if I continue to see the little girl out and about, I think I’ll have to go knock on their door.  I don’t want to be a buttinsky, and I do think kids should be free to run and play without constant parental supervision, but there is a difference between a reasonable amount of supervision and none at all.  None is what I think she’s getting right now.  Anyone could snatch that child up off the streets, and it’d be hours before her grandparents even knew she was gone!  This community has a rather notorious reputation for being home to a disproportionate number of sexual predators.  Ugh.  I hate even to think about it.

On a completely different topic, I went outside today to try to lower our awning.  It’s been hot recently, and we could use the shade.  One of the arms is now completely busted.  It just fell apart in my hands!  That and the roller spring mechanism still isn’t fixed.  I called the RV dealership that screwed up the awning in the first place, and they said they might get out here by September 18.  Geez, thanks.  I appreciate you rushing right on over!  I’m hoping they actually do show up this time because I want this to be the final time I deal with these people.

Right now, I’m so disgusted with the thing that I just want to rip it out of the side of the house and burn it!  It’s nothing but a worry, quite frankly.  When we have rainstorms, the winds are usually too high to leave an awning out, so it can’t even keep us dry.  Between the snow, freezing temperatures, and violent windstorms we get in the winter, we can’t use it then, either.  What’s the damned point?  I wish I just had an over-the-door awning like Class A motorhomes have.  That’s all I really want.  Something to keep the rain off my head while I’m standing outside trying to unlock the door.

Since we completed our summer trip, part of me feels sort of done with this whole RV adventure.  It think it’s because I know now that it’s not really viable for us to take short trips, and the only time we can really take long ones is in the summer.  If Lex ever has to move to a regular office job, we may not even be able to do that much.  For traveling just once a year, I’m not sure anymore that it’s worth the hassle.  But we’re stuck here for now.  We can’t afford to rent a house or apartment and pay for RV storage.  Maybe when I get my car paid off and free up the extra cash, we will, but until then, we’ll sit here at the end of the road.  It’s not like we’re miserable or anything.  I still find our little nest pretty cozy, but I really wish we could travel more.  That’s just not going to happen anytime soon.

My new dream involves us selling the fiver, moving into a stick-built place, and buying a nice little Class B that we can jump into and drive away any old time we feel like it.   Ahhhh…how lovely that would be!  While I’m waiting for that dream to become reality,  we’ll continue to be fulltimers, and my Class B will be my VW Golf with its car tent attached.

To help me get better “anchored” here, I’ve done a few things to the rig and around the house to help make life a little better.  First, when we parked the rig, we put all the wheels up on leveling blocks.  Since the site floods easily, this insures that our tires won’t be sitting in water or snow and mud for weeks on end and rotting off their rims.  I also put a pair of tire guards over the wheels.  These are fitted plastic covers that help protect the tires from UV degradation.  Most RV tires fail because of rot, not wear.  Since the rig may not travel again for another 10 months, we need to do what we can to make sure it’s still roadworthy when we finally do hitch up again.

I’ve also ordered little screens to cover the furnace, fridge, and stove vent openings so bugs don’t make their homes in my house and the right size Combi-Cams for the outside compartments so they’ll be a bit more secure (the RV dealership I ordered them from in San Antonio never called me back, so I bought them online instead).  These little improvements are my way of “nesting” and reestablishing my sense of “home.” 

One of my biggest complaints about this place is that water pools outside my rig right at the bottom of my steps when it rains.  To help alleviate that issue, Lex and I went in the middle of the night to Home Depot, bought 12 bags of gravel, and spread it on the ground out front.  We then covered the gravel with our awning mat, all under the cover of dark so that our nosy groundskeeper wouldn’t have the opportunity to complain about it.  If the management had put in new gravel like I asked, I wouldn’t have been forced to spend $50 just to keep from being ankle deep in muddy water every few weeks.

Speaking of said creepy groundskeeper, he was on hand yesterday when the promised new neighbors arrived.  I was off camping, but Alexis was here and offered a full report.  Chip apparently didn’t know the new tenants were set move in yesterday so tried to give them crap about it.  Then he proceeded to stand around and watch them back in and hook up.  Well, at least it’s good to know that it’s not because he’s a sexist, racist, or homophobe that he stands around and stares in disapproving silence at us; he’s just rude to everyone!

The neighbors arrive

The new neighbors, Bill and Jeanne, are settled in with their 42-foot park model trailer along with their two adolescent children, a dog, and their two vehicles.  That’s a lot of rig for one decidedly-undersized site!  Turns out my strategy to get more people in here has worked.  Jeanne told Alexis that she “found the place on the Internet.”  Only one way should could have done that, RV Park Reviews.com!  And it looks like the third and final site will soon be occupied by Jeanne’s mother and her rig.  I don’t know what the mother has, but you can bet she’ll have a car, too.  Oh, boy.

There really isn’t anyplace to park at this point except at the end of the block.  I have a feeling we’ll be fighting over the spots that Lex and I have occupied to this point.  Right now, Bill has his truck on the pad in which his mother-in-law will soon be parked, and their car is parked to the other side of their rig (not really a parking space, so I’m sure Chip will grumble about that).

Looks like they are here for a good, long while.  They’ve enrolled the children in the local schools, and Bill has a job here.  At least we’ll have stable neighbors.  Given that, I’m hoping that I can enlist them in some collective bargaining with the owners to get these sites improved a bit.  I’m not thrilled with the current state of affairs.

I really should make them a cake or some cookies or something and take them over to welcome them,but first I need to stow all my camping gear in the basement before it starts to rain again. I went on a little overnight trip last night to test out my new tent.  Last week, I spotted a car tent for sale on Craigslist, and on Friday I drove to Odenton to pick it up.  It effectively turns my VW Golf hatchback into a pop-up camper!  A Golf is a compact car, so someone much taller than me (and I’m 5’4″)  probably wouldn’t be able to comfortably fit in the back.  I’m fine, though, especially since the car tent allows me to hang my toes out of the back of the hatch.

The one problem I haven’t completely solved is how to make the back of the car a level sleeping surface.  I’m thinking of having a piece of foam cut to fit the trunk so that it is level, or nearly so, to the backs of the seats when they are flipped down.  As it was, I used a mishmash of an eggcrate mattress topper, folded sleeping bag, and a chaise cushion.  It was very soft and comfortable,  but I was sitting a little too upright.  That caused my neck to be a bit strained.  Still, when I woke up, I wasn’t all achy and in knots like I usually am when I sleep on the ground.

Breaking in the car tent at Patapsco Valley State Park

The tent itself is lightweight and easy to put up and take down.  There’s only one pole, and it fits to the car with bungee cords.  Of course, if you want some nice cross ventilation, the back windows ought to be put down.  Of course, during mosquito season, that’s not the best idea.  I found a product online called Magna Screen and ordered a pair  of the magnetic auto window screens.  They won’t be here for a week or so, so for the sake of going camping this weekend, I rigged one up using fiberglass screening, strip magnets, and duct tape.  It worked fine.  Not a mosquito bite all night long!

Towards morning, it started to rain, so I had the opportunity to discover whether or not the tent is actually waterproof.  I had to reach into the front seat and turn the key on so I could put my screened-in window up.  Rain was coming in on my blankets.  The screen tent door on the hatch was fine, though.  The way the tent pole extends over the lip of the hatch makes the water drain down toward the front of the car rather than the back.  I’m glad because if I’d had to put the hatch down, it would have been a sauna in there.

In all, the new tent passes muster.  I did have to take it down in the rain so when I got home, I had to spread it out and let it dry, but now it’s stored in the basement, ready to be used again the next time I get an itch to go tent camping.

Williamsburg:

Stayed in an okay park, ate some good food, did some shopping and geocaching, got a little Colonial American history. Lex had her only real days off during the whole trip.

Stone Mountain:

Stayed in a crappy park, ate some mediocre food, visited with a couple of friends, did a LOT of geocaching, visited Stone Mountain Park, saw the laser light show, and got some Confederate history.  Learned that you can get fifty cent refills on iced tea at Starbucks. Managed to overflow the black water holding tank in a big way. Fell and sprained my ankle and broke a bone in my foot as we were leaving.

New Orleans:

Limped around on crutches most of the week, ate some INCREDIBLE food, drank way too much, did a little geocaching, and didn’t get to visit nearly enough of a truly remarkable city. Lots happened to the rig while we were there: fridge broke down, got it fixed, got new slide-out awnings installed, and lost half of our underbelly pan on the way out of town. Almost involved in a collision when cars in front of us slammed on their brakes.

Lockhart:

Spent time with family, ate tons of barbecue, soaked up some local history, and did some geocaching.  Stayed in a nice state park but endured a seriously crappy Internet connection. Visited an aunt in the hospital after she became seriously ill.

Gonzales:

Came for a day, stayed for a week  at a lovely little RV park.  Spent the week being visited by Alex, our favorite teenager.  Did a lot of driving back and forth to San Antonio to sight-see and spent a day at the coast. Enjoyed greatly improved internet connection.  Visited with family.

San Antonio:

Spent two weeks in a so-so park with a really nice pool, spent some good times with very good friends, did lots of shopping, ate massive quantities of great food, did some geocaching, got the oil changed in the truck.  Went to a family reunion and my aunt’s funeral. Was sad to leave what I consider MY town.

Bandera:

Went on the tubing trip from hell, got the worst sunburn of my entire life, researched family history, did some geocaching, ate some wonderful local produce, and spent time with two of our best friends. Temperatures finally started to heat up in a big way just before we left.

Grapevine:

Parked the rig at a very nice park but stayed at my sister’s really lovely home because the weather was getting ridiculously hot, so hot our A/C unit started to freeze over.  Spent most of our time with my sister, her partner, and their friends, eating well, swimming, and, once again, drinking too much.   Did some shopping, geocaching, and visited the site of the Kennedy assassination.

Trip home:

Lex powered us through 1400 miles in three straight days of driving.   Ate far too much junk food on the trip, visited a friend of Lex’s in Texarkana, got trash talked by some homeless dude in Arkansas, and saw some gorgeous scenery through Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia.  We boondocked in Jackson, TN (super hot), and Roanoke, VA (nice and cool). Got back safely Saturday afternoon (thank you, Alexis!) only to have the annoying groundskeeper greet us by fussing at us and standing and staring at us while we got the rig hooked up.  We also learned we will have neighbors arriving at the other two sites in the next week or two.  Oh, goody!

Back to work Monday morning!

We boondocked for two nights on the return trip, so we didn’t use our computers.  Thus, no updates from the road.   Since we’re back home and plugged into shore power, it’s time to review the marathon run back East.

Day 58 – Grapevine, TX to Jackson, TN (560 miles)

We spent our last night in Texas at my sister’s place, so we awoke there, said goodbye to Lynn and Shay, packed up the dogs, and went back to the RV park.  At 9 a.m., it was already heating up considerably and our A/C was completely frozen over, so we tried to get things packed up as quickly as we could.  It took a couple of hours to get everything situated, but we eventually got underway with dogs and cat tucked into the backseat, an ice chest full of bottled water, and some snacks for the road.

A brief stop at the Texas/Arkansas line

It turned out to be a long day on the road.  In Texarkana, we stopped at the Flying J where one of Lex’s World of Warcraft guildmates, Shannon, met us to say hello.  It was so hot that no one wanted to hang around the blistering parking lot any longer than necessary, so it wasn’t a long visit.  A  couple of hours later,  we passed through Little Rock.  Sadly, because of the abbreviated trip, we didn’t get to stop there to see our friend, Mindy as we’d planned.  Sorry, Mindy!  I hope we get to see you the next time out.

We did, however, stop in a little town in Arkansas (neither of us remembers the name of it)  to walk the dogs and allow the cat to have a little rest break inside the RV.  We pulled into an empty parking lot, Lex took the dogs, and I took care of the cat.  At some point, I was talking to Alexis through the screen door, and a strange (probably homeless) man passed right between us, muttering something under his breath about man being made for woman and woman for man, not man for man and not woman for woman.  Huh?  He continued on his path and, other than his little verbal outburst, was absolutely harmless.  It was the only overtly anti-gay incident we dealt with on the entire trip, and as incidents go, it was no big.  It seemed pretty clear that the gentleman wasn’t entirely well, so it was hard to take anything he said to heart.

We got back on the road, and by the time we hit the state line and passed into Memphis, it was dark. We kept going until about 11 p.m. before calling it a night and pulling in to the Sam’s Club parking lot in Jackson where two other RVs were already parked.

We hadn’t really had a proper supper, and all the nearby restaurants were closed by this time, so I went to the Wal Mart and grabbed a salad for each of us plus some healthier snacks than the Pringles and beef jerky we’d been snacking on the whole day.  We scarfed down some food and crawled, exhausted, into bed.  It wasn’t a pleasant night.  While the stopover itself was quiet and uneventful, it was hot, hot, hot.  When boondocking, we have lights, hot and cold running water, and refrigeration, but we do not have A/C, and it was a scorcher.  We have two battery-powered fans that we use for just such occasions, and while they helped some, it was still pretty miserable, even with the windows wide open.

Day 59 – Jackson, TN to Roanoke, VA  (570 miles)

I out of bed at sunup thanks to the sounds of traffic starting to move through the lot and the rising temperatures.  It wasn’t easy to rouse Lex since she had only gotten about five hours of sleep, but eventually I pried her up and out of bed, and we were on the road by 7:30 a.m., much to her chagrin.  To get her jump started, we pulled into a parking lot next to a nearby Starbucks so she could get caffeinated.

Because she was so tired, we ended up taking a two-hour break for lunch and a nap in Cookesville, Tennessee, outside of Nashville.  With some trepidation, we stopped in a Cracker Barrel parking lot only because they have RV-accessible spaces.  Since the well-publicized lawsuits against the company in 2004 and again in 2006, the chain hasn’t exactly enjoyed a great reputation amongst Black folks. In fact, Lex refused to go in, so I went in, grabbed some lunch, and we ate it in the truck. I’d never been in a Cracker Barrel before, and I have to say, they are aptly named.  There wasn’t a single person of color anywhere in the joint, not amongst the customers or the employees, and the place was packed to the rafters during a weekday lunch rush. That’s a whole lot of whiteness packed into one establishment.  I think we won’t be using their services again if we can avoid it.  It’s a shame given how often they appear along Interstate highways and since they also allow overnight RV parking in their lots, but, just…eww.  Going to Wal Mart makes us both cringe since we know about their history of mistreatment of employees and their merciless business practices, but at least neither of us is made to feel uncomfortable by employees or customers of Wal Mart when we do shop there.

Mist hanging over the Blue Ridge Mountains

After our little break, continued east.  Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia are dominated by the Appalachians.  The roads are hilly and curvy, and after dark, it can be pretty stressful driving, even when not towing an RV.  Lex white-knuckled it the last hour or so of the trip, but we arrived safely in Roanoke at about 10 p.m. There’s a Camping World there, and they always welcome RVers who need to stop for the night, so we did.  There were already three other rigs in the lot when we got there, families with kids.  Lots of people stop at Camping World the night before having to take their rigs in for repair, too, so it’s hard to say how many were there just to get some sleep and how many were waiting on the store opening in the morning.

The difference in temperature in Roanoke was immense!  The higher elevation of the Blue Ridge Mountains plus the cloud cover meant nighttime temperatures in the 70s!  Yes!  We slept very comfortably Friday night as a result.

Day 60 – Roanoke, VA to Dundalk, MD (280 miles)

Early in the morning, it began to pour down.  Lex said she woke up at some point thinking I was taking a shower.  Later, when she was out walking the dogs, she realized that our bedroom was directly over the storm drain.  So Virginia was taking the shower, not me.  When Camping World opened at 8 a.m., I couldn’t resist going in and buying some goodies.  I got new carpet covers for our steps, a replacement vanity bulb, some solar insulating foil for the windows, a carrying bag for our patio rug, and some special stakes to hold down the carpet.  I LOVE RV gadgets, the little things that make life in a small, mobile space a bit easier.  Camping World is full of just such things.

While I’d been shopping, so had Lex across the parking lot at Gander Mountain, a gigantic sporting-goods store.  She came back with some bite valves for our Camelbak drinking bottles, but she also got me a dry bag as a little gag gift. When we went on the disastrous tubing adventure a couple of weeks ago, I commented afterwards that if only we’d had a dry bag, our walkie talkies might have survived and we might have been able to take a phone with us, expediting our rescue.  So now we’re prepared in the event that any of us get up the nerve to go tubing again anytime in the next decade.

We were back on the road before 10 a.m. Knowing that our trip today would be our last for a while and would be considerably shorter than the two previous days helped the miles roll by much more quickly.  We were back in Dundalk by 3:00 p.m.   We were concerned that given the rain the area had experienced recently we might have trouble getting our rig into our site, especially since it’s prone to flooding and isn’t paved.  We checked it out before pulling in and found it relatively dry.

As we pulled through the field and into our spot, the groundskeeper, Chip, trotted up and was all bent out of shape that we’d driven around instead of backing down an entire block, across a steep dip  in the very narrow, unpaved driveway, and then over the soft ground to our pad.  Hrm.  I wonder why we didn’t want to do that.

Chip is a strange bird.  He stood there silently and watched us straighten and level the rig and get hooked up.  This is not a quick process.  It took about an hour, and he stood there, not being helpful at all, for the entire time.  Great.  So glad to be back. Oh, and he told us we’re getting a neighbor in the next week or so, someone with a 42-foot rig.  Where they are going to put it, I have no idea.  And how we’ll get out if we ever need to pull the rig out around them, I also don’t know.  It’s going to be a tight fit.  I hope, though, that if we have a neighbor who is as displeased with his/her site as we often are with ours, we might have a little collective bargaining power.  It’s one thing for them to lose one renter but to lose two might put a hitch in their giddyup.  I’m hoping to talk the landlords into putting gravel on the driveway and on the RV pads.  I’d feel a lot safer about continuing to park here if I knew that we could actually get out in the event of bad weather.

The city water supply is leaking, making a massive mud puddle at the backside of the rig, right where I have to stand to pull the holding tank valves.  As I was bent over the water connections today trying to stop the leaks and my shoes were getting soaked, I started to wonder what on earth I’m doing paying $800 a month to these people for such a substandard RV site.  We stayed in some crappy RV parks on our trip, but none of them was quite so poorly equipped as this.  Even the unpaved parks had well-graveled pads and well-maintained utility connections.  Some even had concrete patios.

The only thing keeping us here at this point is that the next-closest RV park is all the way up in Abingdon, Maryland, nearly an hour’s drive away in rush-hour traffic.  It’s not much cheaper there, either, and the sites are all back-ins, and very close together.  Plus, I’d have the expense of all that additional fuel and vehicle maintenance from having to commute so far to work.  I hate driving, too.  Living only a mile from work is a real plus, so we’re sucking it up for now.  I swear if a better option crops up at some point in this next year and is within a reasonable driving distance (say half an hour or less), I will seriously consider moving just so we don’t have to deal with mud and slush half the year.

So now we’re back “home,” and our two-month, 7,000-mile (if you include towing PLUS travel while unhitched) trip is at its end.  We made it back home relatively unscathed.  I owe that entirely to Alexis who did every second of the towing.  I know she’s ready for a rest now, so we don’t have another trip scheduled until December when we will be spending Christmas week in South Carolina.  Until then, we’re staying put.  I may go on a tent camping trip and am still considering buying myself a little teardrop camper or something small that I can use on weekend jaunts, but mostly we’re just going to be fulltiming in place!

Lex and I both have to return to work on Monday, so my blog posts will be less frequent for a while.  I do plan on doing a “lessons learned” post and a highlight/lowlight wrap-up of our journey, so stay tuned for those.  Thanks for following along on our adventures this summer.  I had a great time writing about them, and I hope it hasn’t terribly dull for you to read about them.  I love reading and responding to your comments, so keep ‘em coming!

The guy on the left is concealing a cache near or on him. I couldn't find it.

There’s a cacher in Grapevine who has hidden several caches in the area.  I hate him.  HATE him!  He rates all his caches at a 1.5 difficulty, meaning I should be in and out of there in maybe half an hour, fifteen minutes, even.  But no.  He’s a big, fat liar!  His caches shoud probably be rated a 2.5 or 3 at least.  Take, for example, the cache he hid near a railroad museum, full of old railcars and rusting metal machinery.  The cache container was magnetic. Magnetic, understand, in a field full of metal with lots of rust and sharp edges.  Really?  I can’t remember the last time I had my tetanus shot!  If it hadn’t been nearly 100 degrees already at 9 a.m., I might have had more patience with this jerk who likes to fool people into trying “easy” caches that are anything but.  I gave up on two of his caches that morning.  I did manage to find three other caches, however, before I had to head over to the campground and check in on the kitty and the RV. 

Our A/C has frozen over, I think, so very little, if any, cool air is being pushed out.  I turned it off for a little while and let it rest, but it needed to be off for hours.  I had to leave, though, so I couldn’t let the kitty stay in the rig with NO air conditioning at all!  It’s one thing for the RV to be 88-90 degrees, it’s another for it to be 100.  I turned the thermostat up so that the A/C might kick of on its own and have a chance to defrost.  If it’s still frozen over tomorrow, it shouldn’t be a problem because we’ll be on the road all day long, so the A/C will be off all that time and should right itself.  I hope.  I really, really hope.  Of all things to break, the A/C is the one I most dread. I left kitty with lots of water, the fan on, and plenty of food, took out the trash, and washed up the dishes in the sink.

Before heading back to meet my sister at her house, I stopped off and grabbed some olive oil and Italian bread for us to share.  I went back to her place and made some spaghetti for lunch, and we dipped the bread in the oil.  It wasn’t the best meal I’d ever cooked by any stretch of the imagination.  The pasta was overcooked, the sauce was bottled, and the bread was denser than I liked.  Oh, well.  That’s what happens when I rush things.  It was edible, so we all got it down and it filled us up.

View from the grassy knoll looking across Dealey Plaza

My sister and I left and went to downtown Dallas for the afternoon.  There we visited Dealey Plaza and the Book Depository, site of the assassination of JFK.  I got to stand on the famous “grassy knoll” and look across to the exact spot where Kennedy was shot.  There is a museum in the Book Depository, and Lynn bought us tickets.  We took the tour and got to look out the window on the sixth floor from which Oswald fired.  When we left downtown, we actually drove over the fateful spot on Elm street which is now marked with an “X.”  That was the creepiest experience of the day.  An effort has been made to preserve Dealey Plaza exactly as it was then.  As Americans, we’ve all seen the photos and the video footage so many times that the site is part of our national consciousness.  Driving through the area, I realized that everything was familiar to me, even though I’d never actually been there before: the Book Depository, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll, the highway underpass…all of it.

When walking back to our car, I realized there was a geocache only a few hundred feet away.  I talked my sister into giving it a try.  My phone took us to within ten feet of the cache, and Lynn did the rest.  She guessed the site right away and came up with the container like she’d been caching her whole life!  Score!  That cache put me within two of my goal, but now I’m out of time!  We leave tomorrow morning, so I won’t have an opportunity to do anymore searching.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and we’ll find something near somewhere we stop for fuel or to spend the night.

Lynn and I headed back to her place where we met with Lex and Shay.  The four of us went to the nearby German Deli where Lex skipped about gaily like a kid in the proverbial candy store.  Candy, in fact, was mostly what she bought.  She stocked up on all the foods she’s missed since moving back to the US from Augsburg after her high school graduation some 16 years ago.  I don’t think I’ve seen her so happy during the whole trip!  It was just so cute to watch her running from rack to rack going, “Oh, look!  They have Haribo and Milke and Ritter Sport and, and, and…”  She filled up a handbasket with goodies and emptied her wallet.  Before she left, she got to stick a little red push pin into a giant map of Germany on the wall that is already covered in pushpins.  Any person in the store who has ever lived in, been stationed in, has visited, or feels some other personal connection to Germany can stick a pin in the map and then sign the book.

We had to leave the German Deli because they were closing and because we needed to meet one of Shay’s friends, Donna, at a Mexican restaurant not far away so we could have dinner.  Mi Cocina in Southlake is a rather high-end establishment that serves some pretty classed-up Mexican food.  I had a mango margarita and Lex  had a drink called The Dilemma.  It was three flavors of margarita blended into one.  We ate a great meal and got to know Donna better.  Overfull and a little tipsy, we departed the restaurant and came back home with Lynn and Shay where we’re spending the night.

When we get up in the morning, we’re heading over to the RV, breaking camp, hitching up, and heading back towards Maryland.  We’re not sure how far we’re going to go, exactly, but we’ll probably end up somewhere between Little Rock, Arkansas, and Jackson, Tennessee.  It just depends on how much driving Lex feels like she can do.  Since our plans are so loose and we’ll be stopping after dark, we’re probably going to be boondocking overnight.  That means it’s going to be HOT!  Urgh.  Oh, well.  Two or three nights of that and we’ll be back home, plugged in, and the A/C will have gotten plenty of rest.  Hopefully it will still work then!

The trip has been amazing.  The very idea of getting back to the regular day-to-day is hard for me to get my head around.  I’ve got four days to adapt to the notion before reality smacks me upside the head and I have to return to work.

By this time, it was after noon, so I went out and grabbed lunch for Lex and me.  After we ate, I took our two dogs and the clean wash and went back to the campground.  The dogs refuse to eat here at my sister’s house.  I think there’s just too much going on.  But as soon as I let them inside the RV and put some food down for them, they chowed down like college kids at a free buffet.

I’m glad we decided to stay at Lynn’s place because today was up around 100 degrees with even higher heat indexes, and with the direct sun blazing down on it, our A/C unit just couldn’t keep the camper cool enough.  The thermometer registered 92 degrees…inside!   I made sure to leave plenty of food and a huge bowl of water with ice cubes floating in it for the cat who seemed no worse for the wear.  She actually enjoys the heat where the dogs do not.  After ten minutes, Otis and Ivy were on the floor panting giving me looks that said, “Can we leave now and go back to the other place?”  They weren’t alone.  I put away the laundry, got a change of clothes, saw to the cat, and got the hell out of there. 

Tomorrow and Thursday will probably be two of the hottest days of the year here in North Texas, and we’ll be here to “enjoy” them!  Heat indexes are supposed to soar from 110-115 degrees!  My sister is off tomorrow afternoon, and we’d planned to go geocaching and sight-seeing initially.  I’m beginning to think that is a bad idea.  Neither of us needs a nasty case of heat stroke.  We talked about it, and I think we’ll visit some nice indoor museums with central air instead. The mere 94 degrees Baltimore is currently experiencing seems relatively chilly by comparison!

I got back to Lynn’s just a little while before Shay returned home from her business trip.  She was exhausted and went to go change clothes while I grabbed a shower.  Lex finished working and Lynn came home, and before you know it, all four of us were headed to dinner at their favorite neighborhood place, Kirby’s.  It’s clear that my sister and her partner spend a lot of time at Kirby’s because all the wait staff and a number of the customers knew them. It was like we walked into Cheers with Cliff and Norm (if Cliff and Norm were really cool, good-looking lesbians)!

We had cocktails (well, they did…I had club soda) and then dinner.  Dinner was incredible.  Kirby’s is a steakhouse, and they do meat really well.  They also make some mean mushroom risotto and a luscious amaretto creme brulee.  So, yet again, Lynn and Shay managed to stuff us to the gills and spoil us to death.  They really have been lovely.

I bought them a little flower arrangment today to say thank you, but it’s hardly enough, honestly.  They’ve been so gracious and, despite the fact that they both are incredibly busy at their respective jobs, have made time to hang out with us.  Even if they hadn’t wined us and dined us half to death, the fact that we got some QT with them both would have been more than enough.  Plus, their nice, soft guest bed with its private bath hasn’t hurt, either!

When we got home from the restaurant, Lex and I sat with Lynn in the living room and watched some episodes of “The Big Bang Theory.”  We’re all fans.  Everyone is heading to bed now, and up until a moment ago, I was surrounded by four cute dogs on the upstairs sofa.  Shay had to come looking for her two little devils because they didn’t want to budge.  Ivy has been a little jealous of the two dachshunds wanting to cuddle up with us.  How dare anyone else cuddle with her mamas!  Even though she was irked, she still played nice with the puppies.  There has been very little fussing amongst the dogs today.  They seem to get along quite well, thankfully.  I’m also pleased that Ivy and Otis have been good houseguests so far.  I hope they can keep it up through tomorrow when we will take them back home to the RV.

Lynn has offered us the opportunity to come and stay at their lake house the next time we’re in the area. Apparently, the next-door neighbor there has full RV hookups and will let us rent her site for relatively little.  We can park the RV there and stay in the lake house.  They have a boat and jetskis and a lovely place there, so it’s a mighty generous offer.   We may have to figure out how to swing a trip back here sometime in the next year!

Well, one more full day in Texas before heading back East on Thursday!  I believe tomorrow there will be Mexican food, or, as I like to think of it, our last real meal before returning to Tex-Mex-deprived Baltimore.

We sat and enjoyed our breakfast and chatted for a moment before getting up, bidding Melinda goodbye, and getting to work readying the rig for travel.  Lex got her hitched up, I stowed all the hoses, cables, cords, and blocks, we got the critters in the truck, secured everything inside, and left the campground at about 10 a.m. 

We went right across the street to a carwash that had a few truck bays (truck as in tractor-trailer rigs).  These bays are perfect for RVs because there are steps that allowed us to wash the entire rig as well as the truck itself.  It was so good to get those bug guts off the rig that we’d collected on our trip through the South. It was our first time to take the camper through a carwash.  We got hot, sweaty, soaking wet, and filthy, but it was satisfying to see our home clean again.

Sparkling clean and bug gut free!

The drive to Bandera from Braunig Lake wasn’t a terribly long one, about 70 miles.  We arrived here shortly after noon, got checked in, pulled into our site, and got set up.  It was a hot one today, the hottest day we’ve experienced so far this summer at 97 degrees.  I think between getting hitched up, washing the rig, and then getting unhitched and set up, we both got a little overheated, despite all the water we drank over the course of the morning.

Getting set up took a little longer than usual because it took two passes to get the RV properly leveled.  I’ve decided the best way to tell if the rig is really level is NOT to pay attention to levelers but to walk inside the rig and FEEL whether or not it’s level.  If I’m not sure, I try the bottle test.  I take a bottle, lay it on its side on the bathroom floor, and see whether or not it rolls.  If it does, adjust the landing gear.

Our treeless site has a concrete patio, so I’ve put out the awning to cover as much of it as possible.  The patio is nice to have but does nothing but radiate heat back at the rig.  The pads themselves are grass and gravel, and the roads through the park are dirt/gravel.  It’s going to be a hot, dusty week, with temps up around 100.  We’re finally getting into normal temperatures for this time of year in South Texas.

Fortunately, the Medina River runs right through the RV park and is just down the hill from where we are.  The Medina is a very shallow river, especially during dry spells, but here in the park, the river is shaded by massive, ancient cypress and willow trees, just beautiful.  I am going to be spending a lot of time cooling my hells in that nice, cool water this week.

We eventually got unpacked and showered and called our friends, Jason and Chris. They have a lovely home in Pipe Creek, a little community just a few minutes down the road.  They came over and took us out to dinner at the Old Spanish Trail Restaurant. We returned to the RV park and went down to the river where we all tried to teach Alexis to skip stones.  She finally got it!  Everyone should learn to skip rocks at some point in life.  It’s a cheap form of recreation.  You just need a body of water and some nice, flat, round rocks.

Jason, Alexis, and Chris on the banks of the Medina River in Bandera, Texas

Bandera is known as the “Cowboy Capitol of Texas” because of its role in the cattle drives of old.  In the 1950s, the town began to transform itself into a tourist destination, and dozens of “dude ranches” sprang up around the area. The town became a haven for city folk looking to play “urban cowboy,” and it also started attracting motorcycle rallies, rodeo cowboys, antiquers, and Western music lovers.  The actual population of the town is under 1,000 souls, but on any given weekend, thousands of cars, trucks, RVs, and motorcycles roll through, and the restaurants, shops, rodeo arenas, parks, and honky tonks fill up with tourists, and the place is hopping!

I have a personal connection to this town.  My great-grandfather was born and raised here.  He was part of the last generation of cowboys to go on the big trail drives out West to New Mexico. He used to tell stories about sleeping on the ground at night, using his saddle as a pillow and eating chuckwagon food.  No, he wasn’t recounting the plot of a John Wayne movie.  That was his life.  He went out on his first drive at twelve years of age.  His mother was told by the family doctor that Grandpa was losing his hearing, and if he didn’t go to a dryer climate, he would become totally deaf.  There isn’t much in the world dryer than West Texas and New Mexico, so I think spending so much of his youth there did help save at least some of his hearing.  He was always partially deaf, though, and as he got older, the problem got worse.

Grandpa Hay married a woman here in Bandera, and they had a child.  I’m not sure why, but their marriage ended, and the ex-wife gained custody of the son, completely cutting Grandpa out of the picture.  He never really got to know his boy, but did manage to get news of him through family members who continued to live in Bandera.  It’s my understanding that his son eventually became mayor of the town, and the Hay name grew to be a prominent one in the area.  I’ve seen maps of the historical buildings, and the Hay name is attached to at least one of them.  I think I may spend part of the week at the courthouse and at the local museum seeing what I can learn about my great grandfather’s family history.

Grandpa wasn’t truly my “blood” relative.  He married my great grandmother when her children (one of whom was my maternal grandmother) were already grown, but he was the only grandpa I ever really had.   He was a genuine character, and my cousins and I spent a lot of time with him.  We all have very fond memories of the old coot even today and quote his funny sayings and sing his little songs.  He died over twenty years ago, but we still miss him terribly.  He was the best kind of grandpa, really, and I’d like to learn more about who he was and where he came from.

Tomorrow, however, will be a day of fun.  Jason and Christopher will be joining us tomorrow morning for breakfast.  Then we’re all grabbing inner tubes, a raft, and an ice chest, and hitting the river.  We’re going to float a few miles down the river from Bandera to Pipe Creek.  Lex is super excited since she’s never been tubing before.  It should be a blast!

I’m looking forward to my week here.  I’ve only ever been on day trips to Bandera before and have never had the opportunity to thoroughly explore the area. That’s going to change!  On the way into town, I saw lots of cute shops, farm stands, and signs directing travelers to various historic sites.  I do believe I shall see them all.

Melinda smiles for the camera

Today was our last full day in San Antonio.  Lex spent part of that day in town at a work-related meeting.  I stayed home, cleaned house, and waited for a college friend, Melinda, to show up for a visit in the afternoon.  We hadn’t seen each other in nearly fifteen years, but when she got here, it was just like old times!  We sat and chatted until Lex got home.

Melinda had to go run an errand. but she came back and joined us for dinner a little later.  She brought a corn cup and a gigantic fruit cup from a fruteria not far away, and we grabbed some Bill Miller’s.  We shared our food and watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  It was a great time, and when Melinda left, she promised to show up again in the morning to see us off with breakfast tacos.

That’s  the same friendly, generous, energetic Meli that I remember from school. She’s a former middle school teacher who has her MBA and is currently enrolled in a PhD program at our alma mater.  I’m so proud of all she has achieved and all she is still working towards.

In other news, I flushed the holding tanks today, but something is blocking the black tank.  I flushed it with fresh water, and that water is draining, but I’m concerned that not a lot of solids are draining out.  Disgusting, I know, but the waste water system is one of the most critical ones in an RV.  If that doesn’t work, the RV ceases to be liveable.  Having a working toilet and a sink that drains is not an option for the full-time RVer. I’m keeping an eye on the situation and making sure we don’t have a serious issue.  That’s the last thing I want!

I spoke with our friend, Jason, tonight.  He’s the one who lives near Bandera along with his partner, Chris.  They called to check up on us and find out our plans for tomorrow.  I explained that by the time we get to Bandera, get all set up, and get a shower (because traveling with the RV is always hot, sweaty work), it’ll probably be about 6:00 p.m. or later.  Jason said he’d make us dinner tomorrow night to welcome us to town.  Woo hoo!  Then, Sunday, he and Chris will be taking us tubing.  I’m excited!  I love Jason and Chris, and spending time with them means one thing: fun and lots of it!

Well, before the fun can begin, there’s the work of getting on the road.  We don’t have far to travel, less than two hours, really, but getting packed up and then getting set up once we arrive is still the same amount of time and trouble as usual.  We’ll be staying at Riverside RV Park in Bandera, just a short hop from the downtown area.  I chose the place because it’s on our list of Happy Camper discount campgrounds, and I’m hoping it’s decent.

I really need to do laundry, but I’m  NOT motivated to do it tonight.  Instead, I’ll hang onto it until we get to Bandera.  The park there has a laundromat, so I’ll be good to go. One thing we will do before leaving San Antonio is visit the truck wash at the travel center at the intersection near the highway.  The bug guts splattered all over the nose of our camper are grossing me out.  I’d like to clean up the rig a bit while we have the opportunity.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print today.  Time to start packing up and breaking down so that we don’t have quite so much to do tomorrow morning.   I want to focus on eating those homemade breakfast tacos Melinda’s bringing.  Woot!