Livingston

We made it to Livingston, Texas, this morning. The road from Marshall was much better than yesterday's trip. Much of it was at 65 mph so we made good time. 71 degrees here and brats on the grill made it feel like summer. Yes, Marn, we are on the lookout for a good spot to watch the Packers.

Traveling South

We left Hollister MO at about 9:30 this morning and headed to Texas.  The route through Arkansas (primarily highway 65) was quite a challenge with steep grades and sharp turns at the bottom of the hills requiring heavy braking.  There was not a flat straight stretch of highway anywhere--just up and down, left and right.  We also ran into heavy winds which pushed us around a bit.  After that, we managed to travel on interstates for only about an hour.  The highway took us through Hope, Arkansas (birthplace of Bill Clinton) and an oddly named town "Arkadelphia."  I assume someone from Philadelphia named it.  We took highway 59 south out of Texarkana into Texas.  This is an odd 4 lane highway with speed limits usually between 65 and 70 but which has driveways entering the highway and many stop lights.  The road travels through several small Texas towns which doesn't allow a high mileage day.  All in all, we travelled only 380 miles today but drove from 9:30 until 6:30.  We landed in Marshall, Texas, which is only 150 miles from our destination:  Livingston, Texas.  We are joining several other RVers for the night in a parking lot of a 24 hour Walmart Super Center.  Early day tomorrow.

On the Road Again

After spending a little more than 3 weeks in Wisconsin, we are back.  We experienced a blizzard and the flu (both of us) back in Wisconsin and are now in the balmy south.  Yesterday we had a rather late start from  De Forest (17 degrees)  and landed in Cuba, Missouri for the night.  We stayed at a Super 8 (not too bad) and were both dead tired.  We left Cuba this morning and stopped in Lebanon (also in Missouri) for breakfast and then on to to Hollister, Missouri (about 3 hours from Cuba).  We are back in the Turkey Creek RV park where we had been before. 

Bad news here, however.  Upon arriving here, we found our trailer batteries dead.  We needed to move the trailer from storage to a camp site.  But with dead batteries, the power tongue jack wouldn't work.  Had to back the truck close enough to the tongue to be able to plug the trailer into the truck to provide power.  No problem.  Hitched up the trailer but couldn't move it.  The truck acted as though we had the parking brake on.  It wasn't.  Checked the trailer, wheels were fine with no reason for them to be locked.  For some unknown reason, I checked out the trailer safety brake.  The safety brake is on a pull cord.  If the trailer becomes unhitched from the truck while towing, the cord (tethered to the truck and trailer) will pull a pin setting the trailer brakes so it stops on the highway.  The pin was pulled and the safety brakes were in place.  Apparently, someone had found it funny to pull the pin on us while the trailer was in storage.  This probably caused our battery failure as the brakes rely on the trailer batteries to set.  I was able to reinsert the pin and moved the trailer without a problem. 

However, the batteries were stone cold and did not take a charge.  Another trip to WalMart cured that.

Diplexers fix everything

At the park here in Hollister, we have cable TV included in the rent. The cable offerings are rather basic, but it does include the local ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX stations.  WE also have a portable satellite dish which gives us a much better selection (at least 123 shopping networks and 57 religious ones!) but we can't get local stations.  So, we want the best of both worlds--cable plus satellite.  However, our trailer is wired with only one cable running from the outside to the TV inside.  How do we get both without having to go outside to rewire every time or add new wire? 

After researching the problem on the Internet including on several RV forums, the answer was two diplexers.  A diplexer is used to combine cable and satellite signals on the same cable.  Actually two are required.  One is used on the outside the RV to combine the satellite and cable inputs and another is used to separate the signals into cable and satellite at the TV.  A diplexer looks like a cable signal splitter, but it is a different device.  Here is the hook up outside the RV:

The top cable plugs into the trailer cable inlet outside.  The bottom left is the cable coming from the satellite and the bottom right is the park  TV cable.  Inside, at the television, is the identical setup.  Another diplexer is connected to the trailer cable wiring.  The satellite out cable is wired directly to the satellite receiver box and the cable TV line goes directly to the television.  Now to switch between cable and satellite, we only need to change the antenna source on the television menu. 

This setup sure saves a lot of stress not having to send Donna outside to rewire the hookup every time we want to watch one system or the other.  But there is still nothing on worth watching.

Geocaching

We have enjoyed mild sunny days and cool nights since Thanksgiving.  Highs have been near 60 with lows in the upper 20s.  Precautions for water line freeze ups have continued.  We have had no problems as yet. 

We have found several very nice walking trails in the area and have been doing some geocaching along the way.  What is geocaching?  It is a treasure hunt game using a GPS enjoyed by people around the world.    Other geocachers hide treasure in various containers and the game is to find the treasure without being seen by others.  "Treasure" is a misnomer.  The treasure normally consists of  small items like plastic toys, stickers, tags, whatever with no real value.  Once finding the treasure, you trade one of your treasures for a new one.  Because of these toys, kids really enjoy this game.  The whole point of the game is to get you to places--usually scenic--that you haven't been before.  For more on geocaching go here:  click here.  Once you find the treasure, you log it on a log book hidden with the treasure and log it on the geocaching website.  Membership is free.  And you can hide your own treasures for others to find.  Sometimes, the only treasure is a log book.  For example, pictured below is a cache we found on the lake shore in Branson:

What?  you can't find it???  Here is a close up:



Still can't see it?  Well, it's easy.  Here is a fake cattail stuck in some rocks.  If you pull the cattail straight up, there is a small film container taped to the plastic stem.  Inside the container, is a piece of paper to log that you were here.  The whole point of this escapade, was to get us to take a walk along Lake Taneycomo in Branson on a beautiful day.  It worked.

We do not own one of those dedicated GPS devices.  We use our cell phone--a DroidX.  In the past, we have used a Blackberry.   Therefore, this game is costing us nothing other than some shoe leather and a little exercise in the fresh air.  We enjoy it.  Too bad Kiley isn't here to navigate!  She enjoys it also. 

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a cold, wet Thanksgiving here on Turkey Creek in Hollister. The temperature dropped from 68 at midnight to the upper 20s by Thanksgiving noon. On Wednesday afternoon we were under a tornado watch until 4:00 AM Thursday morning. Several tornados were reported just to the west and north of us. The severe storms trained along a path about 45 miles west of us to the north east of us. We were fortunate that the severe weather stayed away. However, about 1:00 AM we had some gusty winds and small hail. Heavy rains followed. Then mid morning on Thursday, rain turned to freezing rain, sleet and then to snow. Friday morning started sunny with highs expected near 50.




We had a Thanksgiving potluck at 2:00 PM with 27 others from the park in the community building here. We timed it perfectly by arriving at 2:05 with everyone else already seated. It always amazes me that potlucks somehow turn out with a wide variety of food. The park provided the turkey and stuffing and everybody else brought their favorites to share. Donna made squash, real cranberry sauce, and a raw cranberry relish. A 2 dollar donation to cover the park's costs was requested. So for 4 dollars, we ate like royalty. There was more than enough food left over to feed another 29 people.

Because of the cold, we needed to disconnect our water hose from the park supply. I had previously added fresh water to our holding tank so that we would have water by using our water pump. We also ran our furnace several times overnight to prevent water line freeze ups in the trailer. This was the first time we ran the furnace since we left Wisconsin. We have been using 2 small ceramic heaters (aka the $15 variety from WalMart) which keeps the trailer very comfortable. However, they do not heat the underbelly of the trailer where the water lines are located. The furnace has air ducts which run along the water lines thereby preventing (hopefully) any freeze up. We also have electric blankets (like large heating pads) on our fresh water and two gray water tanks to prevent them from freezing. No problems. However, we would have had problems if we lost power for a long period of time.

Learned today: always park the truck facing southeast after an ice storm. The sun will melt the accumulation so you don't have to scrape the windows.

The weather lately has been warm, cool, wet and dry. Highs in the upper 60s or low 70s have been common. Lows have ranged from the upper 30s to the upper 50s. All in all, it has been quite pleasant. Lows in the 20s and highs only in the 40s are expected later this week. Then a gradual warm up by the weekend.

We stumbled upon a tribute show to John Denver this morning. We went out for breakfast in the same building as the show occurred. It was a 10 AM show and tickets were available for ONLY 25 dollars. The cashier asked if we had discount coupons for the show. Of course, we did not. However, Donna remembered to say we saw the show advertised on TV. That was the key phrase to get the tickets at half price. We were told by one of our camper neighbors that some places discount if you tell them you saw their TV ad. We didn't watch their ad, but . . The show was OK but it would not have been worth full price. The theater was very small and all seats were good ones. We were in the 3rd row center.

If you were not aware already, we are deep into Baptist land. They have not come for me as yet but I am very careful when answering a knock on the door. You can never be too careful.