We’ve Arrived in Nebraska

We spent the last three days on the road traveling from Texas to Nebraska. I am so happy to report that all three days were smooth sailing with very nice weather and no problems!

We are members of Passport America. Staying at their parks has provided us with some very good campground savings over the three years we’ve been fulltiming. However, their member parks can be an adventure. I use several online sites to check reviews of campgrounds, but sometimes you still get a dud.

Friday night we stayed at Cedar Valley RV Park about six miles off of I-35 in Guthrie, Oklahoma. We had a FHU, 50 amp, pull-thru site for $15. The campground is well cared for and a great spot for a night or two. They have a clean laundry room, and only charge $1 each to wash and dry. So, we took advantage of that and did three loads. They also had free wi-fi that worked well.

Saturday night we stayed at Lakeside Recreation park in Assaria, Kansas a few miles off of I-135. There weren’t a lot of campground choices in Kansas. This park didn’t have the best reviews online, but they weren’t terrible. I think the place has seen better days in the past. Now it is just a dump. There is a 1.5 mile gravel road to get to it. They advertise FHU 30 amp pull-through sites. Only one of those sites had working utilities. The others had garbage bags over the power post or had water that wasn’t working. There are a handful of permanent residents and that’s it. The bathhouse was locked. The advertised free wi-fi was down according to one of the residents. The cost was also $15. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Sunday we arrived at Walnut Creek Rec Area in Papillion, Nebraska about 10 miles outside of Omaha. We’re here to visit our son Korey and his fiancé Cathryn. What a pleasant surprise this campground turned out to be.

It is owned by the city of Papillion and has electric only sites for $16 per night. We have a 50 amp site right next to a small lake. All of the pads are concrete and plenty big enough for a large rig. In fact, there are quite a few big rigs staying here. It is a super well maintained park in a beautiful setting. There are three water hydrants in the park to fill your tank. We’re here for six nights so will not have a problem with our tanks filling up.

Here’s the view outside our back window. I woke up early this morning and was able to enjoy a beautiful sunrise.

Korey and Cathryn came over for dinner last night. We had a nice visit with lots of wedding chatter. We played a card game and then they had to leave. Cathryn had a test to study for.

Just a little bragging about Cathryn. She is a wonderful young lady who is in her second year of the Doctorate of Occupational Therapy program at Creighton University. Saturday night they had their Spring Banquet. She won both top student awards, one from the professors and one from her fellow students. We couldn’t be more proud of her!!

Korey is settling into his new job here in Omaha. He’s not totally loving it, but it’s a decent paycheck and allowed him to move closer to his sweetheart. Its only for two years until she finishes her program.

Today’s forecast is for 78 degrees. Tomorrow a cold front comes through with rain and highs predicted to be only in the 40s for a few days.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Ray Roberts Lake State Park

We’ve spent the last three days at Ray Roberts State Park in northern Texas, about 45 miles from the Oklahoma border, six miles off I-35. This is a very nice park.

Too bad the weather has been lousy. It’s been rainy with highs in the 40s the whole time. Today was the coldest April day since 2007. With the drought conditions, the rain is very welcome. But, it could have waited a few more days :)

We’re at the Johnson Branch area of the park. The lake is huge and there are actually a couple of sections to this state park. We’re in site #87 in the Walnut camping loop. The site is a paved pull-through with 50 amp electric and water. There are no sewer sites and no wi-fi in the park.

This is the view out of our back window. Very nice.

Today it was still cloudy, but at least the rain stopped. I bundled up in my parka, put up my hood, and we took an hour long walk. There is a very nice three mile long wide concrete walking/biking path that meanders through the park. Since it was pretty muddy out, the concrete path was great.

Texas has many wonderful state parks. The problem with staying at them is they charge you the camping fee plus the daily park user fee. Camping fees range from $20 to $28 per night. Daily use fees range from $4 to $7 per person, per day. That just makes it too expensive. The only way to make it economically justifiable to stay at any of them is to buy the annual pass for $70. That’s pretty pricey, but it gets you into any of the parks without paying the daily fee and gives you four nights of 1/2 price camping at four different parks. We feel it was worth it buying the annual pass.

Other than that we’ve been playing games, browsing on our computers and watching TV. I’m happy our mi-fi and satellite work great here.

Another bit of bad luck has attacked us. Kevin’s Compaq laptop, which is about three years old, has decided to act up. The screen is black. It happened once before, but I was able to get it working again. This time it seems the screen does not want to come back to life. We’ll probably just end up getting a new one.

Hmmm, my Toshiba is about 5 or 6 years old, but still works just fine. Maybe I’ll get a new one and he can have mine. Sounds good, don’t you think!

Tomorrow morning we leave Texas. We’ve made some great memories this winter in this very large state. But, I don’t think we’ll ever winter in Texas again.

I really enjoyed the many types of birds we saw, especially in the Rio Grande Valley. The flock of hundreds of green parakeets that came to our campground in Mission was a site I’ll never forget. We also enjoyed our time on the gulf coast, watching dolphins and sea turtles. Exploring the Hill Country was fun, and we did get to see some bluebonnets.

The weather was okay. It is definitely not as sunny as it is in Arizona. It seems there are many areas of Texas where the predominant language is Spanish which we don’t speak. Grocery shopping was an interesting experience. If you expect to see longhorn steer, cowboys and oil wells around every corner, you will be disappointed. We saw very little of any of those. We were surprised that many of the locals we met didn’t have the strong Texas southern accent we were expecting.

Those are just a few of our observations of Texas. I’m not saying it’s a bad place to go, as shown by the many Winter Texans that come back year after year. It just wasn’t so much to our liking. Next year our plan is to explore the Gulf Coast during the winter months.

Tomorrow night we’ll be in Oklahoma, the next night in Kansas and then Sunday we’ll be near Omaha, Nebraska where we’ll visit with our son Korey and his fiancé Cathryn. I’m so excited to see them again. We have lots of wedding details to discuss!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Dinosaur Valley State Park

We’ve been off the grid without internet access since last Friday. I wrote this post on March 30th, and am finally able to post it today.

We arrived at Cleburne State Park on Friday afternoon after about a three hour drive. I’ve forgotten what a state park is like on a holiday weekend. We probably should have chosen a private park for the Easter weekend. There are lots of noisy children and dogs, people walking through our site and just general chaos.

Cedar Lake is located in this park. It’s a small lake with a beach. There are also quite a few campsites. We have a FHU 30 amp back in site. There are lots of trees so we could not get a satellite signal. Luckily, we got TV channels with the antenna as it is another March Madness weekend. Kevin would have been very unhappy if he couldn’t watch the games. We also can’t get any cell or mi-fi signals, so no internet. We rely a lot on technology, so we would not stay here again. We’re leaving Tuesday morning and will just have to deal with it. I admit I am a bit of an internet junkie :)

On Saturday we went to Dinosaur Valley State Park, about 15 miles from our campground. I had read online that there are actual dinosaur tracks at the park and was interested in seeing them.

Using our Texas Park Pass we did not have to pay the $7 per person entrance fee. We got a map and went exploring. The first thing you see are two huge dinosaur statues. Notice Kevin is reading one of the signs, so you can see how big these guys are.

These statutes were built for the New York World’s Fair in 1964 and paid for by The Sinclair Oil Company. I’m sure many of you remember seeing the green one on gas station signs. In 1970 Sinclair donated them to this park. The guy on the left was known for many years as a Brontosaurus. It turns out that was incorrect.

In the early days of dinosaur excavating, there were two men who were fierce rivals. They would do anything to beat out the other guy. One of them uncovered the skeleton of an Apatosaurus but it didn’t have a head. He put a different dinosaur’s head on it and claimed he had discovered a new species which he named Brontosaurus. The error was accepted by the scientific community and not discovered for many years. Interesting!

The Apatosaurus was one of the largest land animals that ever lived. It was 75 feet long and weighed 33 tons and roamed Western North America.

The one on the left is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. We’ve all seen him in the movies. Neither of these dinosaurs actually lived in this part of Texas, but they make for a nice display.

We climbed down some rock stairs to the river to the first track viewing area. Honestly, if I didn’t know they were there, I would have never guessed there were dinosaur tracks beneath the surface of the water. They just look like big holes. These tracks were made by a Theropod.

Our next stop was also another site along the river. Some tracks were in the water and some were in a roped off area of mud and dirt.

The bigger rounded tracks were made by a Pleurocoelus. I think this park would have been much better if there were more signs and markers pointing to the tracks. There are signs at the top of the riverbank, but when you get down there, you don’t really know where to look or what you are looking for.

We drove through the campground to see what it was like. The roads are quite narrow and there are lots of low trees. This is definitely not a campground for big rigs.

I saw a story on the news that the Texas legislators have taken two-thirds of money designated for the state parks to pay for other stuff. Figures. Although the state parks we have visited are nice, you can see they could use more funding. Most trails are not well marked, and grass needs to be mowed in all of them. They’re just looking a little rough around the edges.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

McKinney Falls State Park Hiking

McKinney Falls State Park near Austin, Texas has some very nice hiking trails. Yesterday we hiked the three mile Onion Creek Trail. It meanders through some wooded areas and along Onion Creek. It reminded me of trails in Wisconsin except every once in a while you see prickly pear cactus growing along the trail. Definitely not Wisconsin.

There are lots of bluebonnets in this park. They really are so pretty.

We came to a sign for the Upper Falls. Another mini falls, maybe due to the drought.

 

There are already quite a few wildflowers blooming in Texas. I don’t know what they all are, but we saw yellow, pink, blue and purple flowers. I did some experimenting with the macro setting on my camera. I like how nicely this shot turned out.

 

 

Next, we hiked the one mile Rock Shelter Interpretive Trail. There is a brochure that describes the marked posts along the trail. At least half of the trees they were describing must have died. They weren’t there. Also, the trail was very poorly marked and we got lost a couple of times. Not a very good trail.

We did learn about one type of cactus on the trail. It’s called a pencil cactus because the spines look like pencils. There were red berries on the ones we saw. I like this picture because you can see the pencil cactus, but also some prickly pear cactus, bluebonnets and a yellow flower.

Today we hiked the three mile Homestead Trail. The trail starts next to the Lower Falls. They say everything in Texas is bigger, but so far that has not applied to any waterfalls we have seen.

These ruins are of the house built by the slaves of Thomas McKinney in the 1840s. The Civil War brought financial ruin to McKinney. He died in this house in 1873, and his wife sold the property.

All together we hiked about five miles each day.  This park was booked for the Easter weekend, so tomorrow we head to Cleburne State Park, south of Dallas. We’re enjoying exploring just a few of the over 100 state parks in Texas.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

A New TV

When we got up yesterday morning, we certainly weren’t planning on buying a new TV that afternoon. However, you know what they say about best laid plans.

We left Rio Raft RV Park for a short one hour drive to McKinney Falls State Park around 11:00 a.m. McKinney is located just outside of Austin. The lady in the office was very nice and registration was a breeze. She assigned us site #14, a large pull-through site with 50 amp electric and water. There are no sewer sites in this park, but we’re only here for four nights so no problem there.

The annual Texas State Park Pass we bought in Mission has been paying off. We thought it was a bit pricey at $70, but it saved us $60 just on our stay here. Without the pass, the state parks charge the daily fee per person for each day you camp in the park. That’s $6 per day, per person. Added to the $24 per night camping fee, it would just be way too expensive to camp in the state parks without the pass. You also get four 1/2 price nights at four different parks, so that saved us another $12.

We got set up and were looking forward to exploring the trails. This park looks like its very nice, and I was excited to get out and do some hiking.

Not so fast! I turned on the TV in the living room to set it up for our new location, and it wasn’t working correctly. It just kept turning itself on and off without touching any buttons. Kevin came in and took a look. We tried new batteries in the remote. Didn’t work. Kevin pulled out the manual and tried some reset suggestions. Nothing worked.

He called Toshiba’s 800 number and amazingly got a person pretty quickly. After explaining the problem, the service person told him it was an internal problem and would have to be repaired. What to do? We’re only here for four days, really not enough time to mess around with trying to get it fixed. Plus, it would probably cost more than it would be worth.

Luckily, we’re quite close to San Antonio so off to Best Buy we went. Our TV was a 42 inch. Most TVs are now 40 inch. We found a Sharp with all the features we wanted on sale for $379. In the truck it went. We did buy the 5 year extended warranty for $69 extra.

I am usually very anti extended warranty. But, since our Toshiba was only 4-1/2 years old before it died, and Best Buy will replace the TV rather than repair it if it dies, we bought the warranty.

Kevin got it all set up. For now it is sitting on its stand on the counter in front of the hole it goes into. Today Kevin will have to do a little modification to the brackets that attach it to the wall. We’ll also have to do a little work on the wood frame that goes around the TV, but that can wait until we’re back in Wisconsin.

It’s amazing how these TVs keep improving and coming down in price. Even though the old one was a flat screen, this one is considerably thinner and lighter.

They say bad things come in threes, so we are now done!!! Since leaving Wisconsin in October, we’ve had the tire blow out, the roof damage and now a dead TV. Enough already!!

We did see a deer in the site across from us. Today we will do some exploring.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

New Chair

Yesterday we went to Camping World in New Braunfels. We were looking for Endurabond to better repair the tear in our roof. Camping World doesn’t sell Endurabond, they sell Dicor. It looks like the same stuff, but we weren’t sure if it would work as well. I’ve done some online research, and it seems they are pretty much the same stuff.

The duct tape Kevin put up there is holding up fine so far. However, we are concerned about the spring rains we know we’ll encounter further north. We ended up not buying it for now. We’ll be near another Camping World when we are in the Dallas area.

In the meantime, I am going to call the insurance company this week to check if they want to send someone to see the damage. We’ll be in Texas a few more weeks. It sure would be a waste to do the temporary repair, and then they want to see it and make us try to take it off.

I did buy a new chair though. Here’s a screen shot from Camping World’s website. I’ve been looking for a chair with a foot rest. This one actually has several reclining positions. You can have the foot rest in or out. And, it’s very comfortable.

We drove through the town of New Braunfels. There didn’t appear to be anything we were interested in looking at, so we didn’t stop.

The last stop of the day was at Walmart for some odds and ends. We rarely shop on the weekend. Now I remember why!

We had thought about doing some hiking in this area, but yesterday was really hot and today is very windy. So, Kevin has been enjoying the NCAA tournament and I’ve got a few projects I’m working on.

I walked down to the river area yesterday afternoon. There were a few people enjoying the warm day. I saw this cute little guy on one of the railings. I was expecting him to start trying to sell me some Geico insurance at any moment :)

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Enchanted Rock State Natural Area

Yesterday we went back to Enchanted Rock. You may recall we tried to go there last week, but forgot it was spring break and couldn’t get in.

This week was much better. There were still some people around, but it wasn’t overcrowded. We stopped at the visitor center to get a map. The lady there recommended the hike to the summit of Enchanted Rock and the loop trail hike as well.

The summit trail is only .6 miles each way, but the elevation change in that short trip is 425 feet. Most of the way up is just walking on rock. Kevin suggested doing the summit trail first. Good thing, because after the 4.2 mile loop trail I don’t think I would have wanted to do it.

Here’s the view from the bottom. The little dots on the picture are people hiking up. Click on the picture for a better view.

Enchanted Rock is just a very small part of a huge underground rock called a batholith. The underground rock spans over 100 square miles, four times the size of Manhattan!

The higher we went, the windier it got. Amazingly, there were several depressions at the top of the rock where plants were growing.

The views from on top were amazing. You can really see all the hills. No wonder this area is called Hill Country. I was also surprised at how green it looked from the top.

Here we are about half way down. Can you tell how windy it was!

The 4.2 mile loop trail went around the base of Enchanted Rock. We saw a few patches of bluebonnets and some blooming cactus.

Around the backside of Enchanted Rock it looked like sheets of rock were falling off. A sign explained that these are called exfoliation sheets. I guess nature is shedding the dead cells on the rock’s face :)

It was 2:00 pm when we finished our hikes so we decided to check out Pedernales Falls State Park on our way home. We drove to the falls parking lot and walked the 1/4 mile trail to see the falls. I’m thinking the drought has caused the river to be low. This really wasn’t anything to get excited about. The trail was through a juniper forest, and it sure did smell good in there.

There were warning signs explaining how quickly flash floods could develop. I can’t believe this picture is of the same place.

Next we stopped at the bird blind in the park. I’ve been searching for a Painted Bunting, but no such luck today.

We did see a Ladder-backed Woodpecker.

And a Black-chinned Hummingbird. That’s a new one for me. The only hummingbirds we see in Wisconsin are the Ruby-throated. Cool. The picture was taken through a dirty window, so its not that sharp.

Our final stop was the swimming area. The map said there was a beach along this part of the river. There were about 100 stone steps leading down to the swim area. I guess you could call it a beach as there was sand. The water was very shallow. It would be pretty hard to swim in there. By the time we climbed back up the steps, we could have used a swim!

We drove through the campground. There are electric and water sites at this park, however most of them were pretty tight. We probably wouldn’t attempt to stay here.

Today we left Blanco State Park and headed south about 30 miles. The state park was booked for the weekend so we are at Rio Raft and Resort near New Braunfels. It’s a Passport America park with FHU pull-through sites. At $16.50 per night, it’s a good deal. The park is on the Guadalupe River and has RV sites and cabins for rent. They also rent rafts and kayaks. It looks like it’s a pretty popular place in the summer. The wi-fi at our site does not work well at all.

We’re here so we can go to Camping World tomorrow to buy some Eternabond to patch our roof damage. The owner of Hill Country RV Park has filed a claim with his insurance company regarding the damage his tree did to our roof. I’ll give them a call next week and see what they’re going to do for us.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!