We Now Are In......Lake Conroe, TX

Lake Conroe, TX.   High: 81  Low: 68.  Site: G-57. FAST AT & T, FAST T-Mobile Hotspot

The Pinnacle has landed...In Lake Conroe, TX at the Thousand Trails Park Lake Conroe location. We love this park because: 1) It's a nice semi-wooded, shady park in the middle of civilization! (She means EVERY SINGLE STORE YOU WOULD WANT TO SHOP AT IS HERE NEARBY, within 10-30 minutes. Every single chain restaurant, specialty restaurants and every single craft store, it's all here, laughs Eldo.) Sparky is going to blow her food and discretionary spending budget within a very short period of time. (BUDGET???? She has a budget????? wonders an incredulous Eldo.) Uh, no comment. 2.) It's VERY close to Sparky's family, one daughter and grandson, who is growing up so fast. 3.) Sparky can still get some nice bike rides in on very wide residential sidewalks that run for miles near the TT park and go for a nice walk/short hike inside a small city park just down the road.

Now, the park itself has not the greatest interior roads...rutted gravel, with lots of potholes USUALLY, and the gravel sites for the RV's are not very level in a lot of sites, but we managed to get a decent one this time on the second try. The first try was in the new section which on first inspection looked terrific! Cement pads, wide lots, and highly desirable AFTER the summer months. (The concrete is HOT in the summer and you bake your rig and you on those sites in the summer.) The problem with some of the sites in there is that there is a pretty big concrete "ramp" up onto the concrete level pad. We started to back the fifth wheel up and very quickly Sparky realized the RV was going to bottom out on the inclined ramp, so she hollered at Eldy, "STOP! It's not going to work!" We pulled out of that section and started driving around the park. Thousand Trails doesn't assign you a spot, but sometimes they will name some spots that they think MIGHT be open. So you drive around towing your RV looking for a good site. And off we went. Thousand Trails has quite a few pull through sites, but they are the type that pair two sites together ("buddy" sites) so that when two units pull into their respective pull throughs,  their living areas are facing each other. So your front door faces their front door and the common area between the rigs has two picnic tables and the living area in the same "corridor" or space. 

It's a much tighter use of space and hopefully, you get nice neighbors because you'll be seeing a LOT of each other if you like to be outside. Normally, pull thru sites have the outdoor living areas all on the same side going all the way down the row, so you don't normally see your neighbor (unless you go over and talk to them) because they are using their living space on the opposite side of their rig just as you are using yours.  Hope that makes sense!

We found a decent site, a back in, and got leveled pretty quickly. (Your rig has to be level for the fridge/coolant to work properly). It has 4 landing jacks that come down and adjust up or down or from one side to the other side and from front to back to level the rig by pushing a button. If you've placed wooden blocks properly under the landing jacks, then two additional central stabilizing jacks come down to act as additional supports so you don't feel movement inside the rig when walking around. That's Sparky's job to place several wooden blocks in different combinations or the same number under each jack depending on how the rig is sitting on the site and if the site is level or unlevel.  If she has eyeballed it correctly, then ALL the jacks, all six of them come down. If she doesn't view the site and how the rig is sitting on it correctly, then the stabilizer jacks don't come down and we live with more movement inside than we like. And Eldy is one unhappy camper. That doesn't happen too often, thank goodness!

Thousand Trails Lake Conroe has a    beautiful big pool, (unheated, though), a nice laundry room,  nice showers/bathrooms and lots of great space to roam and play for families, nice cabins AND the beach down at the lake! It's a nice place!

What have we been doing for the weeks we have been here? A little bit of maintenance, among other things. We had our two air conditioners cleaned by 4 Girls Ranch maintenance service (next door to the park) and recommend them if you are in the park and need help with a problem in your rig. To no surprise to us, they told us that we had lots of Asian lady beetles up on top with quite a few stink bugs as well hiding out under the shroud cover of the AC. Yep, we are still vacuuming those little buggers every day and until now, have not wanted to use chemicals. BUT--the time has come! Those little buggers stink, and Sparky is tired of craning her neck and sucking them off the ceiling and screens with the heavy vacuum hose. We'll see if the spray works or not! Note: yes and no. The spray has a pleasant odor but you are not supposed to breathe it in. It took all afternoon with the fans blowing to air the rig out, and the ladybugs are still coming in, although not as many.  But the main thing is only SOME are dying, so Sparky is going to spray again, and we need try and get up on the roof to spray around the AC's to try and diminish the entry point interest they seem to have!

Grandson took this photo!

On another note...Christmas came and went. The park had some fun activities like a snowball fight with big fuzzy pom pom balls....Sparky and grandson had a great time!

Gotta love those special decorated cookies....

Gotta love a card game called Exploding Kittens......

Grandma sucks at Connect 4. Grandson won 5-1.

Sparky and Grandson are tied at Spiderman Monopoly, which is a cool game by the way.....

Eldo (Eldy) had a great time, too!

Eldy and his daughter Kristi

Eldo loves his pizza burgers, a family recipe that has LOTS of cheese in it and on it....

Eldo got to see his grandson's new car, too! Pretty snazzy!

The three weeks went by very quickly. It's almost time to go....We start planning in the next day or two for about an 1100 mile drive spread out over a few days to get to Tucson, Arizona, our next destination. We hope you have a blessed New Year and safe travels and visits wherever you are....

See you on the road again......