Rally between the rain

Saturday, October 12, 2013

I didn't sleep as well as I had hoped since Tony wasn't here, and the kitties stuck pretty close to me all night. In the morning, they got up about the time Tony had been... About 5:30! Too early! And they started pestering me for a feeding. I finally got up about 6 and fed them, only to find a kitty had hurled on the linoleum... With my foot. Ick! I'm awake now!

I tried to go back to sleep but wasn't able to. I finally got up about 7:45, but crawled back on bed and lounged until 8:15.

I started the roast cooking in the crockpot for the potluck, then worked on the newsletter until Tony got there, about 10:45.

At 11:15 we met the group at the dock for our picture. Clouds were starting to roll in, and rain was expected today, but it still seemed like a pleasant day so far.

The rally attendees

We all then headed over to Explore USA to look at trailers and have lunch, which they graciously provided. We had a good time looking at trailers. We were especially impressed with the new pearl colored Big Country front bath floorplan, except that I didn't want the dark Bordeaux wood color.

After our exploring ExploreUSA, we headed back, just before it startled to lightning and thunder... And then rain pretty heavily for a bit!

Tony took a short nap (as best he could during the thundering), and I worked a little.

We didn't see any rally attendees outside, so we stayed in and watched some of the shows we like on cable (History channel and A&E) like Storage Wars, American Restoration, and Pawn Stars. It rained a bit more, but then started to clear.

At 5:45 we gathered our pot roast and such and headed to the potluck dinner at the lodge. (No rain!) We had a great time eating, visiting and winning door prizes! We won another cyclone vent and a TST system, which we had been wanting for the pickup. (We have one on the trailer).

The HOC traveling sombrero from Michigan has now ended up with Terry and Carol Hershberger! They are attending the South Texas Rally in Beaumont next week, so I am guessing it will pass along to someone there. ;)


Terry Hershberger, Chapter Leader, new traveling hat recipient
After dinner, we visited a little more, then decided to head back to the rig. Tony was pretty tired and so was I, from being up early.

We watched a bit of TV then headed to bed. We say goodbyes tomorrow. The Rally was good but over too quick!


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Official Start to the Rally

Friday, October 11, 2013

Today Tony got up and out the door again before the sun was up. Kitties and I slept and lounged until about 8, then got up and got going. They watched outside, while I worked on the Heartland Highlights Newsletter.

Around 12, I walked the park to see who was out and take some pictures.























I then decided to head in for some lunch, and continued working until about 4:45. Tango was overseeing.




I walked around and saw no one out, so I waited a bit and called my friends Dan and Ann to see if they wanted to eat. Within 15 minutes, our 3 grew to 7, and we headed to Bakers Ribs for dinner. We had a good meal, except for the loud group of 10yr old girls and their fathers, apparently heading to a camping trip somewhere.

After dinner we returned home and prepped our snack items to go with ice cream, supplied by the club. We all met up at the lodge, and with close to 50 folks in the small meeting room, it was quite loud with all of them talking!

Nancy and Dave have been the Wagon-masters for this rally, (in other words, running all aspects of the Rally prep and setup) and Nancy did all the intros and announcements. I suspect we may have new Chapter Leaders, soon! ;)











I sat around and visited, then there was talk of a domino game... But it never surfaced. Instead I helped a few others put together a 250 piece jigsaw puzzle. With the three of us, and then a few more helpers toward the end, we did it in about 20 minutes. I find jigsaw puzzles frustrate me more than entertain, so I probably won't do another.

After the puzzle, folks were starting to leave, and thus ended up about 10 of us standing and chatting until just about 10pm. Someone outside of our room yelled and startled us, so that was the cue to leave. Turns out some unrelated young folks were playing with the Wii game in the lobby of the lodge, and that's where the yell came from. ;)

We walked or drove back home and I promptly went to bed. About 11 I chatted with Tony briefly, they were finally on the way home from the football game-- Terrell lost, 50-16. He'll come back to the RV park tomorrow, we decided it was better if he just crashed at the house after his football game rather than try to drive here so late at night.

Me and kitties settled in. For a queen bed, they sure know how to hog!!



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Canton out to lunch

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Today Tony got up really early to head to work. The cats got up with him, and got fed and fresh water. After he left, they can't back to bed and hogged his side, and we drifted back to sleep until about 7:30. It was chilly in the coach, but I turned the fireplace on for a bit and it helped. Kitties "claimed" they hadn't eaten, so I fed and put down fresh water. They are excellent actors! I got dressed and began working on a project for a customer. It was nice to have all the windows open for a change!

About 11:30, Dan came by and said a group was going to downtown Canton to eat and shop, so I said I'd go. We were gone most of the afternoon, and I felt guilty, but I'll make up for it tomorrow. The deadlines I had are still going to be met.

Lunch with Heartlanders

Will this fit in our ElkRidge?

After we returned to the park, I visited with the folks that had recently arrived. It was sure good to see them all! Tony got home about 5:30, and we visited some more. We finally sat down to eat about 7, and then watched some of our weekly tv shows. Both of us were pretty tired. Tomorrow evening is the first scheduled event, but I had a good day of Rallying today.





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It's Rally Time!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

First, a little backstory. Remember last trip we discovered a broken vent pipe? Well, we got Mammoth home and worked on fixing it. It took another trip to Home Depot, but we finally got it fixed, we think!

Before

Before... The pipe uses two 45 degree angles to negotiate under the drawer. One of the 45s was broken.

We cut the pipe in the middle of the long straight section, so we could remove it and aid in connecting the pieces back together.

With all pieces connected again.

To be safe, we ran water down to vent pipe to check for leaks and to make sure there were no obstructions causing the odor to enter the room. It ran fine and no leaks after some adjusting. ;)

Then, Tony installed a new cyclone vent onto the top of this vent, which is supposed to draw odors out by design.

Cyclone vent

We did a few other minor projects with the trailer, as well, but ran out of weekend.

Wednesday, I finished loading stuff and we got the Mammoth hitched and ready to go at lunchtime. We headed out after school was out for the 35-minute drive to Canton. When we arrived, most of our friends were out eating, so we set up and had dinner before starting to visit.

About 7, we walked out to visit with the group that was gathering, until mosquitos drove most everyone inside.

We finished getting set up inside, kitties settled in, and we surfed and chilled. Both of us were pretty tired, so we will probably turn in a little early. Tony has to get up even earlier to head to work the next few days.


Aaaaah, so glad to be here and see old friends, and meet new ones! More will be arriving the next few days. Should be 23 rigs in all!


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No one is stealing the water filter!

Monday, September 2

Early this morning a was awakened suddenly by what sounded like someone dragging a heavy plastic tote over gravel. In my sleepy stupor, I thought, "oh no! Someone is trying to steal our water filters!" These filters are housed in a rubber tote, and sit on the ground just below the coach. The water hose goes in one corner of the tote and out the other. The filters are not really expensive, it someone might think they were. Anyway, I thought the sound I heard was that. It wasn't. It was THUNDER!

After looking at the phone radar, I saw a small thunderstorm was headed our way. Sure enough, we got some rain. Not much, but some! And thankfully, it was some good cloud over that stayed in place. We drifted in and out of sleep with the thunder and rain until about 8.30, then we finally got up and got going. Tony made French toast again! Yum! After breakfast, we started packing up to head back home. Thank goodness for the rain! Even though it was humid, it was MUCH more bearable then 104, like yesterday!

We pulled out at noon, Tony with the trailer and me and the kitties in the car.

Eileen at Bluebird RV Park

Eileen at Bluebird RV Park (sign and office in the background!)

Heading out to I-20

I stopped and picked up food, and met Tony at home. We ate, unloaded Mammoth and took her back to storage. I'm not sure when our next trip will be, but we'll be back in Canton in October at Mill Creek Ranch for the North Texas Chapter Rally.

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Still too hot and exploring East Texas

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Well, we didn't get moving fast enough this morning to get out to the trade days. I think the long week had finally caught up with us. Both of us slept later than normal, and even the kitties slept in.

Tony cooked a wonderful breakfast of French toast and sausage, using our griddle. This works much better than trying them one at a time in a pan on the stove.




After breakfast we began investigating to broken pipe issue, and while I showered Tony tracked the odor... It's still coming in somewhere. But we narrowed it down to definitely a venting of the grey bathroom tank issue, not related to the AC or fantastic fan.

While we were working on that problem, the power-outages started again, and they became more frequent. About 10:30 Tony decided to go to the office to see what could be done. What's happening is that there is enough of a power fluctuation that our Electricity Management System is shutting down the power to the coach, as a precaution. It then takes 2 minutes to reset and open the connection again. When it happens more then 3 times within the hour, it starts to become annoying and the AC has a harder time trying to keep the rig cool!

So he went up to the office and they immediately seemed concerned. The office manager came to our site and checked, as we as a few other sites, and said yes the power was running high. She said she'd have her husband check and she'd call the power company, because apparently we were not the first to express concerns.

After a while there was a knock
And she told us the power company was aware and was looking into it. About an hour or so later, she came back by to say that they were working on a transformer down the road that was having issues and hoped to have it resolved soon. After that, we felt much better, it's good to know we helped. And sure enough, they said the same! They gave us a nice mug and a gift certificate, for helping them with the power. :)

In the afternoon, we decided to head over to see a state park we'd considered staying at but didn't know much about: Purtis Creek State Park. It was about a 30 min drive south of Canton.




We renewed our State Park Pass, then drove around the park's day use area, then over the earth dam to the camping areas. The park has some extensive areas of fire damage. I think it was a controlled burn, but it sure doesn't look all too attractive. We drove around the RV section, which is all back-ins and 30amp water and electric only. We didn't see any big 5vers there. Some small and medium, but mostly travel trailers, pop-ups and tent campers. I think we'll have to pass on this park. I'm glad we came and looked first!

After exploring, we headed back to Canton and stopped in to WalMart for some drinks and to check out their RV section. They had more than the typical, probably because of the high concentration of RVers here every month for trade days.

In the hunting and fishing section, we saw Si Robertson of Duck Dynasty! Ok, not really, but the guy could've been a relative.

After Walmart, we picked up some Dairy Queen steak finger baskets and headed back home. It's just too darn hot!!

We ate and settled in to watch a movie. After the movie, we surfed our phones, then headed off to bed.

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To hot to do too much

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Today Tony had orchestra practice so he wasn't back until after 1, but he brought us Baker's BBQ and fried pies! We ate lunch and rested, then decided to go exploring Canton. We drove around and saw lots of the huge trade-days set-up... Pavilions and booths all over the place, as well as large parking areas and RVs galore. It was close to 5 when we were out and many folks were leaving. It was 104* after all!

After we'd explored for a while (driving, we didn't actually stop and look), we stopped by Val's Italian downtown on the square and ordered a pizza. We drove around a bit until it was ready and got it to go. We went home and enjoyed our pizza, then settled in for a movie. Not an exciting day, but a fairly relaxing one.

If we go to the trade days, it will be tomorrow before it gets too hot.


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