Oh, Deer!

Aside from the unprecedented winter storm that brought record low temperatures and snow to TX, we've had a pretty amazing visit here in Lakehills. When we first arrived we drove around looking for the spot we wanted to part our RV. We saw a nicely wooded spot under some large trees that was only one street over from the lake. As it turns out, we parked right next to Gail and her husband, Lee. They are volunteers with wildlife rescue and help watch over the resident deer herd that roams around the park. I got to meet the deer up close and personal. Then Gail and Lee had to leave for a few days to visit family and asked me if I'd feed the deer. What an honor! These are such beautiful animals and, although they're still wild, they aren't too afraid of humans or even the dogs. Of course, all dogs are on leash. I'm sure it would be a different reaction if one of the dogs were to get loose.

This magnificent boy's name is "Tenderloin"

Although the deer are wild, they will eat from your hand

"Tenderloin" and a few of his ladies

They come to the door looking for veggie scraps and apples

My neighbors, Gail and Lee, who feed and watch after the deer

Other people we met here were Melody and Lou who have a YouTube Channel, LivingOurDreamNow. They "seek out scenic free and affordable camping locations while enjoying the benefits of our Thousand Trails, Resort Parks International (RPI), and Passport America memberships. Our video tour campsite reviews are specifically designed to help you decide where you may want to camp." Lovely couple and very informative blog. Check them out by clicking on the link to their YouTube channel above, or on their facebook page here.

In my last post I said that TX was getting back to normal after the record breaking storm. Today I was shopping at Walmart in San Antonio. Because of the power outages they had disposed of all food that needed refrigeration. That means no meat, cheese, eggs, dairy products, nothing in the freezers, etc. They even disposed of fresh vegetables and fruit that were in the produce coolers. It was so strange to see all those shelves empty. The only food you could buy was canned, bottled, or packaged. While we were out shopping we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. We were informed there was no lettuce, carrots, or tap water. Since they're still under a "boil water" restriction they couldn't serve anything that wasn't cooked. Strange times, indeed.

Empty shelves at Walmart

Getting Back to Normal

As most of you have probably heard, Texas and many of the other central southern states, have just come through a freak winter storm, with snow in various amounts depending on where you live, and record breaking temperatures. For us in the south central part of the state we received about 5" on Sunday night with another 3" on Wednesday. The temperatures reached single digits with wind chill as low as -35 (yes, you read that right, that's 35 below 0). The wind coming off the lake felt like needles hitting my face. I've never experienced anything like that, even in northern NH. A friend who lives in north Texas reported that she found many of the wild birds around her house frozen. Someone in San Antonio was out shopping for a heavy winter jacket, boots and mittens for her kids. She said that in all the time she's lived here she hasn't needed such things.

They called it a blizzard but those of us from the northern states just call it a regular old snowstorm. To the people here, though, this has been devastating. Millions were either without power for several days or had rolling power outages where electricity would be on for a few hours, then off for a few hours. As water mains froze and burst, many cities had a "boil water" order, if they could get water at all. 

Without power many stores, restaurants and gas stations were closed. Since Covid restrictions are still in place, limiting the number of people who could be in a store at any one time, the stores that were open had lines waiting to get in that stretched down the walkway and around the corner. They were trying their best to accommodate not only their own regular customers, but the overflow of people coming from other areas where the stores were closed. Without the proper equipment to clear the roads of snow and ice many were impassable, which interrupted deliveries of gas, diesel, groceries, and just about every other item.

Texas is #2 in the country for solar production, and #1 for wind power. But during a storm there is no sun, and the wind turbines froze because they weren't winterized. There's been no need until now. To add to the troubles, Texas has it's own independent power grid which isn't set up to receive power from other states. Obviously, Texas now has a great need to reassess their preparedness for such emergencies.

RVers are more prepared than most people for emergencies. We have batteries that will power most everything in an RV when we're not hooked up to shore (electric) power. If those batteries begin to run low we can either hook up to a generator or even start the truck and plug in there to recharge. There are water tanks that, when full, will give enough water for quite some time. In our RV we have a 60 gallon fresh water tank. That will last quite a while if we use it only for drinking and flushing the toilet which only uses a few cups with each flush.

Life seems to be getting back to normal for most folks. With the sun shining bright today, and temperatures getting into the mid 40s here, the snow is melting fast. Roads are now clear of ice and snow. Life is returning to normal but this is a winter that people will be telling their grandchildren about. 

Yes, when I was a girl I really did walk, in the snow and cold, a mile to school (or the school bus), and it was uphill both ways, since I lived on one hill and the bus stop was on another hill. You've probably seen the movie "A Christmas Story" where Ralphie's mother dressed his little brother, Randy, in a woolen snow suit with a scarf wrapped around his neck and head, and he wailed "I can't put my arms down!" I have a picture somewhere of me when I was probably about 5 or 6, standing in the driveway, with snowbanks way taller than I was, trussed up like a Christmas turkey in a woolen snow suit, heavy boots on my feet, a scarf around my neck, and a wool hat - with my arms stuck out to the side. I couldn't put my arms down either.

Snow? Seriously?

The term "snowbird" is used to describe a northerner that moves to a southern state during the winter months to avoid northern winters. In December of 2019 we sold our farm animals, bought an RV, and headed south. We traveled all over the southeast, with the exception of FL. We'd been there before and felt it was too hot and humid, even in February. We wanted warmer than northern NH but not as hot as FL so we traveled to NC, SC, GA, AL and TN.

This year we decided to try the southwest as part of our travels. It wasn't as warm in southern UT as we had hoped, but AZ was perfect weather. People describe the desert as beautiful. We thought it was interesting, but not beautiful. It was kind of all the same - miles and miles and miles of nothing but sand and cactus. We said we probably wouldn't go there again next winter.

Not how I anticipated dressing in TX

We started meandering eastward this month, landing in south-central TX as our first stop in February, just west of San Antonio. This was more like the northeast, except warmer. Trees, grass, lakes and streams felt more like home.

If you google the average temperature this time of year for this area you'll find that it's mid to high 60s for the day and low 40s at night. Perfect, right? Except when it isn't.

We just had a freak and rare winter storm pass through that brought record lows and 5" of snow! It was 7 degrees last night with 20 mph winds. The wind coming across the lake felt like needles hitting my face. I felt a little silly packing my winter clothes - jacket, mittens, snow pants, boots, even a balaclava. If nothing else, I was going to be prepared for anything. Little did I know how useful these would be.

Everyone says the snow is so beautiful. It may be, but we could have stayed home and experienced beautiful, even shoveled it! Texas, not being used to snow and cold, declared a state of emergency. They're just not equipped for snow and ice and many roadways throughout the state are currently impassable. Last Thursday there was a 133 car pile-up in Fort Worth, which is about 4 1/2 hours north of us. Apparently, the roadway on a bridge had a thin layer of ice which caused cars to skid, with others from behind unable to stop. There were tractor trailers on top of trucks on top of cars. Looking at the pictures made you wonder how anyone managed to survive.

So everyone just waits for it to melt, which may be a few days, since the temperatures aren't supposed to warm up significantly until later in the week.

Cactus in snow

Feels like we went to sleep in TX and woke up in NH

The wind coming off the lake felt like needles on my face

We may have to re-think our opinion of AZ. Perhaps miles and miles and miles of sand and cactus aren't so bad after all.

Welcome to Mexico?

We were in Sierra Blanca, TX for 2 days. Great hosts, and fantastic experience. If you missed our grand adventure getting there you can check it out here.

We arrived in Del Rio, TX, which is a border town on the Mexican border, this afternoon. Got a message this morning that our hosts were called away unexpectedly so they wouldn't be here to greet us. They told us their tenant, Tim, would show us where to park and where the electric and water hookups are. Tim was very accommodating, and even said it was OK to give our trailer a much needed bath. It was finally restored to it's original white color. We took the truck to a car wash for its beauty treatment.

We will be here for 3 days before moving on to Lakehills, TX for 2 weeks. Probably not much will happen as this seems like a pretty quiet town. Although our cell phones did send us a message "Welcome to Mexico" and informed us we wouldn't receive any roaming charges. That's good news, right?

Lost in the Desert

There are few things as worrisome when traveling than getting lost and your GPS basically saying it has no clue either. Add that to being in the middle of the Texas desert and it becomes the stuff of nightmares!

On Wednesday we headed out to our next 2 night stopover in Sierra Blanca, TX. The directions we got were to go 20 miles north of town, turn right at the overhead sign for Sunset Ranches, then follow the road around to the left past a house, go through the silver gate and turn right about 2 miles down the road. 

We saw the sign, turned right, and from there it was anybody's guess where we were. The road didn't turn to the left and there was no house, only a few RVs and trailers way out in the desert with "no trespassing" signs everywhere. It was the kind of place you could get shot just stopping to ask directions, if you could have found anyone to ask. There was no cell service, and when we found a place that showed 1 bar on the phone we tried to get GPS to tell us where we were. It basically shrugged its shoulders and laughed at us!

When hauling a 26' travel trailer behind you there aren't a lot of options when trying to find a place to turn around on a one-lane dirt road. Thanks to Jim's awesome backing skills we did manage to get going back the way we had come. As providence would have it, we met a car coming into the area that pulled over and stopped.

The man had long, salt and pepper, scruffy hair, a long scruffy beard of the same color to match, and ample empty spaces between what teeth he had left - the kind of person that you'd go out of your way to avoid if you met him in the suburbs. Strangely though, he looked like he belonged out here. Give him a pick axe and a mule and he would have looked like an authentic prospector. He was driving a beat up light gray clunker. Actually I'm not sure if it was supposed to be light gray or just the color of the thick dust that covered it front to back.

I'm not sure what clued him in that we needed help. Perhaps he's not used to seeing trucks hauling RVs through the desert, or perhaps it was the panicked and confused look on our faces, or maybe God whispered in his ear that we were totally lost. Whatever it was, we were extremely grateful. You've heard that men don't like to ask for directions, but thankfully Jim put his ego aside and decided to make an inquiry.

The man didn't know the address or people we were looking for but did say there were numerous gates all up and down the state road we had turned off of. OK, so maybe we turned in at the wrong one. We went back out to the state road and turned north to continue on a way further. To add to the confusion, Jim couldn't remember what the odometer had said when we left the town so he didn't know how far we'd come.

Several miles down the road we saw another Sunset Ranches sign and turned in there. This looked more like what the directions described. A short distance down the dirt road we saw a house and the road curved to the left. Another mile we came to a closed silver gate. I got out of the truck and opened it for Jim to drive through, then closed it behind us. The road was soft dirt and a slight wind was fortunately blowing the dust away from us. 

As I got back into the truck we saw a white F350 dually coming down the road toward us. At least I think it used to be white because it was that same shade of gray that the previous vehicle was. Our truck and RV were also now this same color. The driver pulled over and introduced himself as our host. He'd seen our dust cloud from his house (which was about 2 miles ahead, by the way) and figured he'd come get us. He did warn us to not honk our horn at the cattle in the road because it would have the opposite effect than what we wanted. Turns out that's how he calls them in to be fed. He drives to the top of the ridge, honks and they all come for the feed he drops off. Pavlov's cattle perhaps?

We followed his dust cloud to our camping spot down the road from his house. It was private, about a half mile away from his house, and not another house in sight. But oh, the dust and dirt! In English, Sierra Blanca means white mountain range, though I think it might be referring to the dust. The night sky looks like what you'd see at a planetarium exhibit, pitch black and blanketed with stars. He said there shouldn't be a lot of coyotes right now as he just shot about 40 of them. Good to know. Apparently, the state pays $20 a head but a neighboring rancher pays $50 each. I suppose that's a good side income and helps the ranchers out as well.

Sierra Blanca, TX

In this picture the buildings to the right are where our host lives. The small white spec to the left of them is our RV. As you can see, we were in the middle of nowhere. The vastness of the land is just mind blowing. Our brains can't comprehend how big the world is, but when we experience areas like this we are left with the feeling that we are but a tiny spec in the grand scheme of things. And yet, to God, we are everything.

Our neighbors in Sierra Blanca.
Our bikes on the front rack can double as cow catchers. Who knew?

Tree cholla

The road less traveled

The mountains in the distance are about 80 miles away

Soaptree Yucca

We're off-grid, or dry camping, while we're here, meaning no electricity or water hook-ups. We filled up the 60 gallon fresh water tank before we left our last stop. You'd be surprised how fast you can go through 60 gallons, so we conserve as much as we can. We use paper plates, plastic utensils, cook on the outdoor grill as much as possible, eat things that can be prepared without cooking, save the water that's used while waiting for the hot water to come through for other uses and take bucket baths. If we had to go longer than the 2 days we're here, the rule of thumb for the toilet would be "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down." Living without electric hookup means we draw power off the two 12 volt batteries and recharge those when necessary with the generator. Fortunately, we got the battery system repaired while we were in Apache Junction.

We'll be here till Friday morning. We've been invited to our host's house to see his off grid system. He'll also show us how he installed a diesel heating system in his daughter's RV, which is supposed to be much more efficient than the propane furnace we now have. One of the benefits of RVing, besides all the memorable adventures, is all the interesting people you meet and all the things you learn from them. 

But the evil troublemaker in me has a strong desire to honk the horn! 

RVing During Covid and Other Random Stuff

Many people have asked if traveling is safe because of Covid-19. RVing is the perfect social distancing activity. Our RV is self-contained. When we're on the road we have to stop for gas but any lunch or bathroom breaks are done in the RV. We do have to shop occasionally to buy groceries and such, but other than that we socialize with other RVers outside in the fresh air and sunshine, keeping social distancing precautions of course. Even though we do travel around to visit the sights, we still probably have about the same chance of contracting the virus that we would if we had stayed home. Maybe less because we're not wintering in the bitter cold but rather in moderate temperatures with lots of sunshine.

In other news: After Cruz put Sammy in charge of the blog, he's gotten even older, as folks do with the passage of time. At approximately 15 years old he sleeps most of the time and he says he doesn't want the responsibility of keeping up with the blog. He tried to talk Dora into agreeing to the assignment, but she's only 1 1/2 years old and much too distracted. So Sandy will be taking over the responsibility. She did most of the work for Sammy anyway so it won't be too much of an additional task. We hope our readers will be as happy with her writing as they were with Cruz and Sammy!

Jim seems to be suffering from canine paralysis

Dora is such a mama's girl

The Town Too Tough to Die

Gunfight at the OK corral

We left Apache Junction, AZ on Monday, February 1st and headed to our first 2 night stopover in Wilcox, AZ. We found the place easily as our GPS led us right to it. It was definitely secluded - out behind someone's storage shed facing wide open desert. 

It was an hour and a half from Tombstone, AZ so we took a day trip there.

Tombstone has been nicknamed "The town too tough to die." Many movies have used this historic town for on location shooting. A radio broadcast from Feb. 14, 2010, explains the history of the fight between the Earp brothers and Billy Clanton and his gang. The transcript is a very interesting read and you can find it here.

We'd been there before about 20 years ago and nothing seems to have changed. But then, I suppose, that's the point of a historic old western town - being to keep it as much like it was when Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were alive. There were cowboy shootouts, old time saloons with names like Big Nose Kate's Saloon and Doc Holliday's Saloon, and a show at the Crystal Palace Saloon. Most of the town was dog friendly, which was nice not to have to leave them in the truck.

Big Nose Kate was a real person, by the way. According to Wikipedia: "Mary Katherine Honory-Cummings (born as Maria Izabella Magdolna Honory, November 9, 1849 - November 2, 1940), also known as Big Nose Kate, was a Hungarian-born American prostitute, and longtime companion and common-law wife of Old West gunfighter Doc Holliday."

Gordon "Crazy Fingers" Lindquist

 We were able to attend a dinner concert at the Community Center of the RV park we were at. Gordy "Crazy Fingers" Lindquist performed a memorable piano concert of various styles from roaring 20s music to boogie woogie and ragtime to patriotic songs. His humor was equal to his piano skills when he demonstrated playing upside down laying on his back, to playing while the piano was covered with a sheet, and even added leather mittens. 

I wasn't able to record any of his performance because the sound wouldn't have been very good, but if you want to hear his style click here. It's definitely worth the listen. (For those who get this blog in your email, remember you have to go to the actual blog page to access the links or to post a comment.)

Dwarf Car Museum

The Dwarf Car Museum at Flat Tire Springs in Maricopa, AZ is actually small scale working cars, not cars for little people. "Ernie Adams, originator of the dwarf car, has made a name for himself building Dwarf Race Cars and scaled down replicas of classic cars called Dwarf Car Cruisers." 

There's even a hillbilly car

A dwarf boat for the dwarf car

Ginger's Barber Shop

Flat Tire Springs also displays an old filling station from a day gone past and includes "Ginger's Barber Shop, a real working vintage barbershop just as grandpa took you to as a kid. It's not just a haircut, it's an experience!" 

Around the garage that houses the dwarf cars you might see anything from an antique washing machine to a vintage farm tractor on display. There's even an old cemetery! It definitely was an interesting place to spend an afternoon.