Relaxed lobster in funny trunks...

2010-03-23
Today we got hot baths at one of the Hot Springs bath houses. I did not know what to expect, as different bath houses offer different packages. I was expecting a hot-tub/jacuzzi type deal. Well, that is not quite what I got. It was more like a spa treatment, and it was structured as the “old fashion” bath house experience that made Hot Springs AK famous. First, a dunk in a tub filled with hot water from the springs. Then a sauna steam room, then get wrapped in hot sheets, and finally a cold shower. Since I was expecting a big spring pool and a “mixed environment” (women and men) I wore swimming trunks. Since this was -not- the case, the men only section of the bath house found my trunks amusing. Needles to say that all this hot bath stuff was not my idea, I was just tagging along with my wife...
All in all, an interesting experience. Afterward, while dressing up, in the mirror, I looked like a boiled lobster. A relaxed boiled lobster.

Pondering on the life of lobsters...

After the baths, we took a stroll through downtown, in a sunny spring day.

Spring in Hot Springs

Vicky refills on "good for you" spring water.

Our first Hot Springs rounds...

Creek running next to our campground.

2010-03-21
First day in Hot Springs AK. It is raining and damp all over. Our campground at Hot Springs National Park, is very nice, next to the Gulpha Gorge. Today we drove to Catherine Lake, just about 30 miles out of Hot Springs. There, although raining, we hiked to the falls to take photos.

Falls at Catherine Lake

After wards we had lunch at the Olive Garden (?), then rotated the truck tires at the local Walmart. All in all, a very productive rainy day.

Hot Springs: Another GPS delight...

2010-03-20
Today we drove from Paris TX to Hot Springs AK. After about three weeks of lolly-gaging in Texas, we finally got out of the this state. This was our first day of rain and a bit of bad weather.
On this leg of the trip, one of my RV nightmares came to reality. This one can be also credited to our GPS from hell. Once we arrived to Hot Springs, we started to get directed to the campground. But we started to get nervous when we realized that the GPS was taking us to the downtown area. Traffic, narrow streets and tight turns, just great.
The bad route came to a claustrophobic halt when we came to the end of a narrow hill street where the only option was to make a tight U turn. Vicky had to get out of the truck and halt traffic so I could do a two step backup maneuver, that under pressure, I miraculously pulled off on the first try.
We drove out of downtown, and finally found our campground behind the mountain that the GPS was trying to make us climb on the wrong side. Another Vicky victory against GPS!

Paris Texas...

2010-03-19
Today we drove to Paris TX. It was a middle point between Bridgeport TX and Hot Springs AK and we were curios about this town. I saw the Movie “Paris Texas” in the 80's so I was even more curios.



Paris TX, turned out to be a nice little city. It has its own highway loop, a nice junior college, and the expected economically depressed downtown soon to be transformed into the “historic district”.


Whatever happen to Nastassja Kinski?

RV Buddies...

Meet the RV buddies.
These garbage disposal hooks serve a dual purpose:

- Allow garbage trucks to pick up trash containers
- Caress the sides your RV as you drive by

After the Possum Kingdom Incident, I started to pay closer attention to these evil hooks.
I realized how these containers are placed precisely at corners, right where you make tight turns with your trailer/RV.

Worst, such annoying placements are right on RV parks! You would think that RV parks would be more conscious of RV cornering hazards.

Oh! well, I guess now I just more paranoid of this sort of stuff.
Look for a set of RV Buddies on a corner near you.

Pit Stop...

2010-03-15, 16, 17
The last three days have been a roller coaster. We are based in Bay Landing near Bridgeport TX. The reasons for this featureless location were:

• Get our snail-mail forwarded here
• Repair the water inlets that got damaged in out last campground
• Refill the LP gas tanks

Our mail got sent to the wrong address, the physical address of the campground, instead of its PO Box. We went to the local US Postal office to plead and beg for them to retain the package there and not to return it to the sender. With no promises, they said that they would attempt to locate the package and retain it for us. On the 16th, they called us to tell us that they had our mail ready to pick-up. My faith on humanity was partially restored.

The repair of the water inlets has been bogged down by the fact that the parts need to be ordered. And I need to find out if one of the inlets needs to have a “flow-check-valve” or not, because the local RV shops do not know anything about Airstreams. I tried the four or five Airstream dealers in the Dallas area, but three no longer sell or repair Airstreams, one was too busy, and the remaining one was 70 miles away. So I decided to deal with a local RV shop, “Smith RV”. One of the owners, Josh was kind enough to listen to our situation and worked with us to get us going. He waited for me to find out the right parts information, ordered the parts “rush”, then let me hold one part to paint it to match the original, and finally, installed all in just one hour.

Humanity-Faith-O-Meter at 75%

Now, while attempting to refill the LP gas tanks. Actually one was empty, and the second one was almost full. So, since the area is full of LP distributors, we decided to take the opportunity and refill the empty tank. Well....we found the hard way that is not kosher to operate the LP auto flow valve with just one tank. The auto valve lets the LP gas of the remaining tank out. So in one night we lost all the LP gas of our second tank. Now we needed to refill both. Just great.

Just to make things more interesting, the nearest LP dealer got his fill valve broken and was out of business, and the next near one had his licensed LP technician out for the day. So, we waited one more day to get this chore done.

But as one expedition guide that we met at Big Bend said:

Even one bad day in the field is better than one good day at the office!

Amen!

Ramen Schindler's List

About two weeks ago, I started an undercover operation to rescue packets of Ramen Soup at risk of being used as salad “croutons”.
My wife came up with this salad recipe, where the dry noodles from a Ramen Soup package are used as such, uncooked in the salad. The worst part of this, is that the little pack that contains the chemicals to season the soup get discarded....oh! The horror.
So now, I sneak into the pantry and save some packets from this hideous fate. I save them and cook them as God intended:

• Dunk noodles into boiling water
• Wait 3 minutes
• Add Chemical goodness (with mellowing agents)
• Serve hot!

Bridgeport, Decatur, Denton, Dallas, Fort Worth tour...

2010-03-14
Greetings from a place where televangelist abound, smoking cigarettes is still cool, 80's rock still “in”, and people are helpful. In our TV, one out of three channels are televangelists, lots of people smoking (and chewing) tobacco, every other FM station is 80's rock, and people here in Bridgeport have helped us to solve our maintenance and repair issues.



Today we drove from our base campground in Bridgeport, to Dallas and Fort Worth. Dallas metro area...what a sprawling wasteland devoid of interesting views. The downtown cluster seem to be the only area of any remote interest, but even on Saturday it was slammed with traffic so we skipped it.



Then we ventured into Fort Worth. Not quite hideous, and actually, maybe, even a little interesting.With this I am referring to the Downtown and the area where the museums and galleries are. We visited the Kimbell Art museum and walked around on a pristine cool afternoon. Not bad.




Then we moved on, with some high expectations to the Fort Worth Stockyards “historical area”...in quotes, because it turned out to be a tourist trap kind of area of the lowest common denominator with such amenities as: Longhorn Kiddie rides, Cowboy Photo props, food court area, cowboy shows, etc. It was like the Disneyland for cowboys.



We found the actual Stockyards in the back, next to the parking lots, and this area, at least for me, was more interesting than anything in the main drag.

Vicky vs. GPS round 5

2010-03-13:
Today we drove from Possum Kingdom to Thousand Trails at Baylanding in Bridgeport TX. There, we will re-stock provisions, LP gas, get our snail-mail, and repair the water inlets damaged in Possum Kingdom.

We have been using a Garmin GPS unit since 2005. The satisfaction with the performance of this GPS varies depending on who you ask, me or my wife.

I think the unit works pretty good. It has its “usability” issues, but nothing that can't be overcome.
My wife thinks that the unit is a piece of crap that usually takes us through wild idiotic routes.
The best example of such cases is the time when we were trying to get to Chaco in New Mexico and we end up in some dead end dirt road in an Indian reservation.

Well, today was another victory for my Wife's campaign against GPS navigation, fist clenched in the air with her trusty paper maps.

When I asked the GPS to use the “fastest” route to get to our next destination, the unit decided to take us through some narrow twisty roads, that sometimes were parallel to perfectly good 4 lane highways.

We had to make some hairy “U” turns to correct direction when we grew increasingly distrustful with the GPS chosen roads. In the end we got there but with a GPS tarnished record.

Today's score, Vicky: 1 - GPS:0

2010-03-11, a date which will live in infamy...

Today we drove from Monahans Sandhills State Park to Possum Kingdom State Park. The drive was about 5 hours. When we arrived at the park, we had quite a bit of trouble un-hitching. Somehow, the sand from Monahans Sandhills and the grease on the hitch, formed a sticky compound that bonded the hitch bar inside the Hensley hitch head. We struggled quite a bit to get the bar out. We had to hitch again and drive the whole thing to leveled ground and secure the trailer good and give the whole thing a good yank with the truck. We got it out, but...now we were on a cramped section of the campground with a very tight turn. Well...while doing the tight turn I brushed the trailer against a garbage container and did some light damage to the side of the trailer. I was very, very upset. Some scratches and a cracked fresh water inlet cover. It seems that these sort of mishaps always are preceded by incidents like the stuck hitch...something that gets you off your 100%. Luckily the damages are cosmetic. We will see if we can stop somewhere to get a new cover for the fresh water inlet.

Sahara in Texas...

Monahans State Park


2010-03-09
Today we drove from Davis Mountains to Monahans Sand Hills State Park. This park is between Pecos TX and Abaline TX. It is a small state park, but we were intrigued by the “sand hills” part. As promised, there are pretty decent size sand hills. They are quite beautiful. The only issue, is that the high winds that have been attacking west Texas since we arrived at Terlingua have been persisting, and here, in the middle of the sand dunes are whipping with a vengeance. In the first hours at the park, I got sand in one of my cameras...not good!



Park was practically empty, and it had an eerie feeling of desolation and aloneness. I think the fierce winds discouraged several RV'ers that drove by and decided not to stay. One of them stopped and asked if we were “risking” staying.

In the end, the wind and sand created some annoyances inside the trailer and one ceiling vent got semi stuck with sand. On our second day, we bought a plastic sled and went and played in the tallest dunes. We tool some videos of this goofy slides.

More photos of the sand hills here

Our first Girona Moment of this trip...

2010-03-08
Today we drove from Fort Davis to Balmorhea. On this route, I had my first “Girona Moment”.
The moment came while having an impromptu lunch on a nondescript spot in the astonishingly beautiful area of Wild Rose Pass. Funny how, it seems, that you can not plan these moments, they just come unexpectedly.



After lunch we arrived at Balmorhea State Park and it was practically empty, sans a couple of divers scuba diving in the pool/spring. After checking the park we drove a couple of miles to the actual town of Balmorhea TX. There I found more material for the first project that started to emerge on our first stop back in Terlingua TX, a photographic project about travel trailers.



Vicky took her turn at the wheel, and we drove back to Fort Davis where she browsed thrift stores and local shops. All in all, a perfect day of quiet slow paced discovery.

Fort Davis, the town...

Fort Davis Historic Site

We visited this little town a couple of times. Lots of houses for sale...so we figured, must be cheap to buy a house here. After we picked up the local real state listings, we found otherwise.

Houses are more expensive than Austin TX!
Judging from the time we looked at property outside Alpine TX some years ago, it seems that the powers-to-be that shape the economics of this area have an economic development strategy based on attracting rich people to buy vacation/retirement properties. This, I think, is a dead-end strategy that leads to "Master & Servant" communities that produce nothing.

The town seems to currently rely on the tourism generated by the Fort Davis historic site, and the sheer beauty of the surroundings. Hotels, B&B's, eateries, and the staple Rock Shop...there is one every mile around here.

Fort Davis Historic Site...REI circa 1890?

For every charming cute touristy area of a town, there is always a poor side that works and supports the sunny side. We found this area on the East side of town. This side of town spells out struggle, grit, decay. We talked to some locals, workers in stores and little business owners. They seem to be happy, and they attribute its source to the slow pace of life, and the agreeable weather year around.

Vicky talking with Ron the broom maker.

We meet a young woman that just moved from Eugene Oregon, where she reported that unemployment is dreadful. Also a business owner that moved form Forth Worth Texas, and she is very happy in Fort Davis. But the cake was taken by the colorful and charming Ron Cox, who is a broom maker and operates his little shop right on the main street in Fort Davis. He makes old school style brooms, beautifully handcrafted one by one, all by him.

Ron Cox, Fort Davis broom maker extraordinaire.

Big Bend Photos...

For those interested in photography, here are the set of photos from Big Bend

Enjoy!

Big Bend to Davis Mountains...

2010-03-06: Today we drove from Cottonwood Camp in Big Bend to Davis Mountains Texas State Park. We stopped one last time in Study Butte to charge diesel, then drove to Alpine, TX.

Charging gas in Study Butte

The Study Butte store is a colorful, interesting place if you drive through, stop, stretch your legs, read the signs, and chat with the locals.

This is the place where brilliant minds assemble to willfully pool ignorance with questionable logic in order to reach absurd conclusions.

The world needs more Go-Go Girls

In Alpine I engaged in my first traffic oops! by driving the wrong way in one of Alpine's main streets. I never assumed that such a small town would have “One Way” streets. Alarmed Alpinites flashed their high beams as I swerved away from incoming traffic. By sheer luck, the way to avoid impending disaster, was to pull into a gas station where we landed perfectly in front of a diesel pump. Let's take this as a sign to re-fuel. Oh! Well, something for the Sunday church goers to talk about: “Did you see that ding-dong pulling a silver trailer the wrong way on Main Street? I tell'ya, dang tourists are ruining the place.

Campsite in Davis Mountains

We arrived at Davis Mountains State Park past midday. The area is beautiful. The high altitude changed the landscape from desert to high plateaus endlessly covered with tall yellow grass. We parked the Silver Whale in a pull through camping site with full hookups. Then drove to the town of Fort Davis to check it out. It is a pretty cute town. From the other towns in the region, Terlingua, Alpine, and Marfa, Fort Davis is the one that I like the most. Lots of houses for sale here....First candidate for relocation?

View from atop Davis Mountains

Javelinas are the new bears...

A javelina gets a whiff of my lens as I stand against the wind

2010-03-04:
Today we moved from Terlingua RV park to Cottonwood Camp.
Cottonwood is a boondocking camp, no hookups and no generators allowed. For this very reason, it is super nice, quiet, and almost all the spaces are under the shade of huge Cottonwood trees. The Rio Grande river is just a spit away form the camp.

The Silver Whale at Cottonwood camp

Here we came across a new threat: Javelinas.
Parks along the Rockies have pesky Bears. Warnings about not leaving anything remotely resembling food out are all over in every park, because the Bears will get it. Here in Big Bend, Javelinas are the number one threat to your Twinkies and Doritos. I need to write Steven Colbert and ask him to include Javelinas in his “Threat Down” list of things destroying America.



Around 5pm in the camp, we got the Javelina Rush Hour. They come across the campground looking for fresh grass, and they do not seem to mind the campers. The only thing that seems to rial them up is pets...dogs, cats.

Javelina rush hour at Cottonwood

Beware of Javelina!

Boquillas Canyon...

Boquillas Canyon

2010-03-01
Today we drove to Boquillas Canyon, on the eastern side of the park. There are 2 RV campgrounds there. A privately operated one with full hookups, and a park one with fresh water but no electric hookups and a dump station.

The story of the day was to witness how the residents from the little Mexican town Boquillas del Carmen, across the Rio Grande, leave handy-crafts for the tourists to buy. They leave beautiful carved and painted walking sticks, little wire scorpions, wire ocotillos and roadrunners on rocks and a jar for tourists to pay for what they like and take. It is an honor system, and they wave and thank you from across the river.

The goods await a willing lawbreaker to take a chance

All this heartwarming scene, as you may start wondering now, is illegal.
The artists from Boquillas del Carmen cross the river illegally to leave their merchandise, and it is illegal for the tourist to buy it.

On the other Mexican side of the river, Boquillas residents watch from the distance, hoping for some purchases.

But do not fret or panic. You can legally get the same merchandise in the main park visitor center at Panther Junction for 3 times the price. The items there are legally transported hours down the road to Ojinaga, Mexico where they can be crossed and then taken back down to the park.

Don Victor leaves a stone with a message for prospect buyers

While hiking Boquillas Canyon, we came across Don Victor. A Mexican national who crossed the river to collect money from his collection jar. I figured that he was between 50 and 60 years old. His skin had the copper tone that you get courtesy of years under the northern Mexican sun and no AC. He spoke both English and Spanish, but I could tell that Spanish would get me more interesting answers.

Our conversation: Adolfo Isassi (AI) with Don Victor (DV) (translated to English)

AI: Does the Migra (Border Patrol) bother you much?
DV: No, they know me well. I have been selling my crafts and crossing here for years.

AI: How is life in Boquillas?
DV: Hard. We live out of what we sell on this side.
AI: That sounds pretty rough, any other source of income? Farming? Ranching?
DV: Well, there are “Los Diablos” (The Devils). They are a group of young men from Boquillas that the USA Government hires seasonally to fight forest fires (hence the name) in Colorado and other states.

AI: What services do you have in Boquillas.
DV: No electricity. The Mexican government gave us solar panels. Mine can lightt 2 light bulbs at night.
For gas (propane) we have tanks that we have to refill. The nearest town with full services is a four hour drive on a dirt road.

About this time, it was time for Don Victor to cross back to the Mexican side.
I guess he did not feel like saying “hi” to his friends from La Migra.

A week of firsts...

It seems that in spite of planning and practice, you always have little mishaps, scares, and close calls, especially if you are a novice at something...in our case RV'ing. We are on our first week of travel, and so far here is our list of "woops / oh! nos!" :

First "It is all over" feeling:
We got a pull-through site in Mckinney Falls state park, nice right?
Well, we learned that these curved style pull-through sites come at a price. You save yourself the hassle of backing up, but if you unhitch, when you need to hitch again, the trailer and the truck are not at a straight angle. This adds a degree of difficulty to the hitching maneuver. Anyhow...we conquered the hitch-at-an-angle challenge, but when we started to tension the spring bars...one popped-out of the Hensley head, and fell to the ground.

Nothing like the feeling of watching a critical part of expensive equipment coming apart. A little voice in your head gasps: "It is all over," then a picture of a stack of dollar bills with flapping wings flutters around the scene.

Luckily my father-in-law was there, and he is quite experienced with all things mechanical, and has RV'ing miles in his background. He quickly realized that the problem was a tiny loose grease zerk screw that holds the spring bar in place. We put it back easily, but this promoted a closer examination of the Hensley hitch set up: It was constantly angled down, because the spring bars were set too high. We read the Hensley set up manual and re-set the bars at the 3 hole recommended set-up. So far so good.

First "How long will the gas reserve last?" moment:
I measured, tested, plotted, and charted the MPG for our GMC Sierra 2500 HD for about 3 months. The hard numbers are different from the on board computer, so by this time I should have known not to trust the "Fuel Range" readout on the dashboard. When we came into HI-10 from TX-290, the sign read 277 miles to Fort Stockton. I glanced at the dashboard, and the on-board computer read "Fuel Range 330 miles." Great! no need to stop at Ozona for fuel. Well, about 50 miles from Fort Stockton the ominous "Low on Fuel" yellow icon lit up in all its doom.
We rolled the last 30 or so miles at low RPMs, caressing that gas pedal with tender care and made it to the first diesel station in Fort Stockton. Now we have this number burned in our foreheads: 350 miles fuel range for towing.

First Black Water mishap:
We stayed for 5 nights in Terlingua RV park. Here I learned that a super air-tight plug in the sewer hook-up is not always the best approach. This particular hook-up needed a bit of air so the fluids would flow. When I first opened that valve, the hose popped-up off place! Luckily I was able to close it quickly before it spilled all over the place.

First campground shower:
After about 2 days, I smelled of all the hard work of moving out of Austin, TX. Time for a shower. But...we realized that the water heater in the trailer was still winterized. So we got acquainted with the RV camp showers. This experience bumped the "Get water heater working" in the to-do-list.

Big Bend looming in the distance

First Airstream trailer shower:
We finally de-winterized the water heater. It heats the water to a fine comfy temperature. The only complaint is that it takes 15-20 minutes to heat up the water. I think I may need to adjust the flame in the water heater to see if it can go faster...still reading the manuals for this.

BTW...I think I am getting some Karma back for all the software documentation that I was involved in in the past. These Airstream manual are clearly written by engineers/technicians, and they are meant for mechanics and installers, not for civilians.

The first on many gorgeous sunrises in out future

First "You are not on vacation" moment:
We planned to stay 2 days in our first campground in Big Bend, but we quickly realized that there is "no rush" anymore. We have time to actually sit for a day and rest, breathe, think, enjoy and slowly enter that "zone," where the plans and routes come to you by serendipity and secular inspiration. This is our 4th day here, and now we know that Spring Break will mark our departure from the park.

First "Yay! We have a generator" moment:
On our second evening at Big Bend, a severe wind came through the area and knocked out the electricity in the Terlingua, TX area. Our RV campground was also affected. We got the opportunity to see the refrigerator switch form AC to GAS automatically (nice), so our food did not get spoiled. Also, this was my opportunity to do a generator drill. It all worked as planned, and we spent the night in comfort while the Yamaha purred outside.

First redneck repair:
I have been around long enough to know that duct-tape and bungee cords are low-brow fix-it tools, yet, in a pinch they do the job. The high winds ripped our picnic mantel. Now it sports a silver duct tape slash. When I have lunch outside, I can hear a duel of banjo and guitar playing on the background.

McKinney Falls Texas State Park...

What do you know, right here in our (former) backyard one superb spot for RV camping.
I have been here many times, but never for overnight camping. Due to the logistics of our departure, we needed to spend at least one night out our (former) home. We got some generous hosting offers, but we figure that we needed as much "RV time" as possible before our departure, so we took this opportunity to do one more RV training session.

Upper falls at sunrise

We selected this park because it was very near our (former) home, just about 10-15 minutes away. The RV spaces are spaced out nicely and feel very private, and as an added bonus, there are plenty of pull-through sites. The sites are 30 or 50 amps, plus water. There is a dump station at the exit of the camping area. The camp is super clean and nice. All these amenities, just 15-20 minutes away form Downtown Austin.

Mckenney Falls Texas State Park. Lower falls under the moonlight

We spent a couple of nights here before heading out for Big Bend, and we were pretty happy. If you plan to spend some RV time in Austin TX, consider this excellent state park.