Sunday, November 27, 2022

Enjoying Canyon lake and Thanksgiving with Family…

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With new shoes on the RV we were ready to move on down the road. We paid our bill at Humphries Tires in Luling and drove west toward our next stop in the Texas hill country. We made our way through San Marcos and an hour later we pulled into our beautiful lakefront site at Potters Creek Campground, a Corps of Engineers Park, on Canyon Lake.

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We enjoyed a few days of nice weather before a series of cold fronts came through making our stay rather chilly. With it raining off and on we were still able to get out and about to make a journey down the Old River Road.

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Old River Road meanders along the banks of the Guadalupe River with several crossings allowing us some fabulous views of the river cutting through the hill country. With it being late fall this is one of the few places in Texas providing some nice fall colors.

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The Bald Cypress trees were fully adorned with their remaining rusty red leaves lining the banks of the Guadalupe. With the blue waters of the river and the white chalky limestone cliffs the views were majestic despite the cloudy day. This is by far one of our favorite drives in the Texas hill country.

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Since it was Thanksgiving week, we packed for a visit to our son’s house to prepare and eat the huge turkey feast. It’s always fun to get back together with family and this time was no exception. Although the weather was cold and rainy we still enjoyed putting all the dishes together and enjoying each others company.

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It is always good to see our grandkids and our great-grandson who is growing up fast. We also love to see the grand-dogs, Barley the Boxer, and Bernie the wiener. Barley is really quite amusing to be around and he apparently thinks he too is a wiener dog as he always wanted to get up on me and lay in my lap. Too funny…

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Our 20 year old granddaughter recently had some serious surgery and was recuperating so we were doubly glad to be there to help support her. She has begun chemo treatment for ovarian cancer so it has been a rough time for her and for all of us who love her. We didn’t stay as long as we might have otherwise because we certainly wanted to allow her more time to recover in a less crowded environment.

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Therefore we we are back at Canyon Lake and with only a few days left we need to enjoy the lake now that the rains have passed. We can expect some sunny skies the next few days which will be wonderful.

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Wednesday, November 23, 2022

A stop in Lockhart for some BBQ and new tires for the RV

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The month went by pretty fast in College Station. Our next stop is one of our favorites  because of the gastronomic delights found in the area. That stop would be to Lockhart State Park, a mere 115 miles west. We plan to get our fill of Bar B Que and to have new tires placed on the RV during our short two night stay.

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Let me tell you about what we went through to get our tires. While we were in College Station I hoped to have new tires installed at one of the local shops there. Well as I soon discovered no one carried the tires we needed to match the front two we bought a few years ago.

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My thought was I would order the tires from simpletire.com as I have done before. One can simply order the tires on-line and have them shipped to the tire installer. Well no tire installer in College Station would take delivery of any tires. So my second thought was to look at our next stop in Lockhart.

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I found one installer who would install them but also wouldn’t take delivery.  However, I contacted our friend Tim who said he would take delivery and then I could transport them to the installer before we left Lockhart. Perfect! So I went to order the tires and they were out of stock again!!! I found an alternative brand that were the same circumference and ordered them, from of all places, Walmart.

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While we were waiting for our tire appointment we had fun hiking in the state park and eating Bar B Que. Our first BBQ stop was at Chisolm Trail, one of the local favorites. While it did not disappoint we did suffer a little sticker shock with BBQ brisket going for $25.00 per pound.

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We normally stay four nights in Lockhart and go to four different BBQ joints. Since we only had two nights we went to Smitty’s BBQ for the second night’s dinner. Smitty’s was pretty good too but it seems as if the “brisket” wasn’t actually brisket. I suspect it was actually a clod roast smoked like a brisket. Although it was good I was a bit disappointed.

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The morning of our appointment we drove over to the Luling Texas to the Humphries Tire Shop to have the four tires replaced on the rear of our RV. Our friend Tim graciously volunteered to haul the new tires to the shop and we arrived right behind him. I talked a bit with the shop owner only to discover what a great guy he was and he assured us the tires would be installed in a few hours.

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We said our hellos/goodbyes to Tim and thanked him profusely for bringing our tires. Then we drove off to check out the Zedler Mill Museum & Park. While it was cold outside with some light rain we still had a nice time walking around and exploring the old Mill. We found it pretty interesting and a great way to kill some time while waiting for the RV tire installation..

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As lunchtime rolled around we stopped at Luling’s City Market for some of Luling’s best BBQ. It definitely did not disappoint. Afterward we made our way back over to Humphries Tires and waited just a bit longer until our RV was ready.

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We also had them inspect our car and RV while we were there. We cannot put into words how great Humphries Tires was to us. We wholly support and recommend this shop for your tire needs if you are ever in the area. You will not be disappointed!

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Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Some fun things we did during our stay in College Station Texas…

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We are wrapping up our stay in the Bryan-College Station Metroplex. We thought we would share a few other things (besides disc golf) we have done while staying here.

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One place we always like to visit is the Bonfire Memorial. Many of you may not be aware that Texas A&M University held a massive bonfire event so very looked forward to right before the annual Texas A&M vs University of Texas rivalry football game. That all came to an end, tragically on Nov. 18, 1999 at 2:42 a.m.

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This marked the time the bonfire collapsed while being built. The tragedy was that students were actively “on the stack” putting on the finishing touches on the bonfire. The collapse resulted in the untimely death of 12 students, one former student and injured 27 others.The accident led Texas A&M to declare a hiatus on the official Bonfire and the bonfire memorial was built to honor those who were lost in the accident. Each of the 12 artfully arranged cubicles has a sculpture of the student as well as memorial wording from family and friends.  It is a very somber place indeed.

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We also made a visit over to the new park newly built adjacent to the Texas A&M football stadium. This park is going to be quite the gathering place for tailgating prior to football games. It includes a nice sized pond and lots of nooks for students to relax, study and contemplate their futures.

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Another nice area for a hike is Lick Creek Park with miles of trails. We love hiking this park in the spring when it is loaded with wildflowers and birds migrating through the area. In late fall we saw a few flowers and fewer birds but it is always a pleasant place for a hike.

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Another nice place for hiking is to nearby Bryan Lake. There is a $5.00 entry fee but it offers some nice hiking and mountain biking trails. We hoped to see some migrating waterfowl on the lake but alas we found nary a one. Still we enjoyed a pleasant day on the lake.

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We also took a road trip over to Waco to visit dear friends.. A road trip was needed to break up the routine of our more localized activities. We had a great visit with our friends Patty and Chuck. While returning home we spotted a barn painted by an obvious former student of Texas A&M University.

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Another visit around happy hour was a favorite, the Messina Hof Winery. One of the very best wineries in Texas (in our very humbled opinions). offers various glasses of wine at their happy hour for $5/glass. Of course we had to buy a bottle of the one we both loved.

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And lastly no trip to our former town would be complete without socializing with fantastic friends whom we dearly love.. Upon leaving we always promise to return some day to renew these cherished friendships.

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Friday, November 11, 2022

Baseball, Basketball and Disc Golf in Aggieland

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We aren’t usually in our old home town in the Fall since we normally travel through  only in the spring. However, when we decided at the last minute this summer we weren’t going to winter in Florida as we originally planned, we pivoted and decided that we would winter in Arionna. As a result we ended up in College Station this fall.

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Being In Central Texas in early fall means that everything is mostly brown after the usually hot and dry summers. This year is no different as the landscape is parched. One positive about being here in the fall which hadn’t occurred to us is we have found a lot of fall sports opportunities.

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Fall baseball at Texas A&M University is in full swing and we were able to watch a few exhibition games. While neither of us are huge baseball fans there is nothing more entertaining about baseball than attending a game live. It sure was fun watching the Aggies play in their super nice stadium.

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We also were able to watch a fall exhibition Men’s basketball game in Reed Arena. I use to be one of  the statisticians for the Men’s Basketball team so it was fun having this opportunity to watch college hoops again. The team has a new coach from when I was last in the arena so it was also fun to watch the new coach.

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Texas A&M’s basketball was very impressive in the shellacking of a team they only beat by four last year. The talent added through the transfer portal appears to be very skilled. I think this year’s team is going to be way better than people think, so look out SEC these Aggies look pretty darned good!

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We have also been playing some disc golf here. The courses in this area are not all that nice but they are about average in quality when compared to all the courses we have played across the country. Our favorite course is a challenging nine hole course which we usually play twice.

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We rarely see anyone else playing disc golf in Bryan/College Station which explains the lack of quality courses . We find this surprising given there are over 60,000 students attending Texas A&M University and nearly 19,000 at Blinn College!

Our stay here is nearing its end and we will once again be on the road making our way toward San Antonio to spend time with our son and his family for Thanksgiving.

Saturday, November 5, 2022

A few RV repairs finally finished, or at least we hope so…

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We left the Beaumont area with the Atwood levelleg removed from the RV and put it in the back of the CRV. The drive over to Colleges Station took about 3.5 hours and we pulled into Holiday RV Park for a longer stay.

We have stayed at this park multiple times and their monthly rate just can’t be beat. We have been here for a couple of weeks already so I’ll share some of what we have been doing.

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The first order of business was to try and solve the Atwood Levelleg issue. First I took about the box at the top to see if there were any gears broken. After removing the gear box and opening it I could find no sign of damage anywhere.

Finding no obvious damage I regreased all the gears and reassembled it. I cleaned up the jack, reset the control board and tested it manually with a bit I  bought for the drill.

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I ran the drill on the jack and was able to completely retract it without any issue. Stumped as to what actually happened to it in Beaumont I decided to reinstall it on the RV. For grins I started the engine and tested the jacks. Of course the control board alarms went crazy so I reset the board. I tried once again and all the jacks worked.

While we aren’t entirely out of the woods since I still have no clue why the one jack didn’t retract, everything seems fine now. To be sure we will test them once again before we leave, then if they work we will just cross our fingers and hope it doesn’t happen again

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While I was at it I went ahead and pulled our Thetford Aquamagic up and installed a new replacement cable for the foot peddle. This was actually quite an easy repair. I don’t know if I mentioned it but some time ago as we were flushing our toilet the foot pedal made a loud noise and fell flat to the floor.

After a little online research I discovered we had broken the foot pedal cable. Well we were in travel mode and couldn’t find a replacement part anywhere, and, well… to us having a toilet that flushes is critical for life. Since I couldn’t find one I had an idea to fabricate one out of a new bicycle brake cable. This worked so well we never replaced it once we got the new cable. Yet, recently my fabricated cable was slipping and flushing was not easy so it was time to replace it. Thankfully all is well once again!.

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In the meantime we have been revisiting friends we haven’t seen in a while, playing disc golf at several different courses and going to happy hour at our favorite haunts. We will be here till November 12th so we will rinse and repeat these activities until our departure.