What to Do in Colorado River Thousand Trails RV Park?

Columbus, TX.   Highs: mid to high seventies   Lows: 40's to 60's

 Site: E-78 new section    AT&T: download 363 (!) upload 48.1.  T-Mobile: download 262, upload 25.2

Colorado River is located in Columbus, TX, population around 3,000 people, so not a lot to do there. Small HEB grocery store, next to a small Walmart neighborhood shopping store. There are a couple of decent restaurants for dining, a decent Mexican restaurant, a Whataburger, and even a steakhouse, which we've never tried. Colorado River is a nice stop to rest, catch your breath, and just chill for a few days. If you like lots to do, then you might find this location a little on the boring side. You could always watch the vultures. With a lot of game in the area, they seem to hang around here a lot! (There are several exotic game ranches in the area.)

Colorado River has a new section of level gravel sites and two other older sections, one up on a hill...with trees for some shade....

and the other down by the Colorado River bank.  

The river is almost dried up in this section by the campground, and the riverbank is super steep, so not a very good view even if you are down by the river. You can't see the river from your site except for a couple of sites further down. So much for a river site, lol. The handicap sites are concrete pads, which is nice. Staff is friendly and helpful....the pool is very small and so is the laundry room. 

There are walking trails, although some uneven, all around the park. Since the new section has been paved, you can ride a bike all around on the newly paved parts and get about 5 miles in for a daily ride if you go around a couple of times. 

new section viewed from up on the hill above

This is the start of a hiking trail, it gets narrower, rockier, but the deer like to mosey around in the woods around it.

Sparky saw several different deer riding the hiking trail today. (It's like a mountain bike trail so you can go through it on a bike.) The deer are quite used to people so they don't immediately take off. This one's ribs are showing quite a bit, hope he or she is not sick!

Another one further into the woods on the hiking trail.....

You can get mail at the park, but they charge you 5.00 per package, so that will put the kibosh on Sparky getting more craft supplies...haha. (Whew! says Eldo. That's a good thing! We are running out of space in the rig!)

One thing you CAN do at this park, while staying here in Columbus, TX, is go see the beautiful painted churches tour. Sparky did this tour on her own a couple of years ago, when Covid was much more prevalent, but the churches were still open at that time for viewing. There are TWENTY painted churches scattered throughout central Texas, but there are about 4-6 of them within an hour's drive from Colorado River TT campground near Schulenberg, TX. They are all inscribed in the National Register of Historic Places and are of European German and Czech influence from the late 1800's to the early 1900's. The immigrants who built these churches didn't have the money of their forebears, so they used paint and plaster and tromp l'oeil ("fool the eye") decorations to mimic marble and gold and other fancy architectural features such as cornices.

St. John the Baptist Church

Here is a link to some of the churches Sparky visited last year. https://whereseldo.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-jaw-droppingly-beautiful-painted.html...The tour if you choose to have a guided one, which is now available after Covid, costs a 50.00 deposit which becomes the guide's fee once you show up. The way Sparky understands it, there is an additional charge depending on how many churches you want to go see with the guide. One of the options was the guide would travel with you in your car. The price was too expensive for the budget, so Sparky decided to forego the tour this time. If you want to go explore on your own, you can do that and there are maps online to guide you. You can buy a map of the churches for 5.00 from the Schulenberg Chamber of Commerce. To see these churches is truly something not to be missed whether you go with a guide or go on your own.

St. Mary's in High Hill, TX

Here is another fantastically beautiful one, another St. Mary's, only this one is in Praha, TX.

Here is St Mary's of the Assumption, in Flatonia, TX.

See? You really do need to take a tour of these amazing churches while you are at Colorado River in Columbus, TX....And as the week draws to a close, we are planning our journey north and west thru Texas to head towards Tucson. (You mean I'M planning the journey! exclaims E.) Yes sir, that's Eldy's job because he's the travel logistician in the family. He does a great job of planning how far to travel each day and where we are going to stop. He researches the parks using the RV Parky app. It's a great app and covers almost all the different types of campgrounds from KOA, to state parks, to Corps of Engineer, to Thousand Trails....Lots of good stuff in the app, check it out! 

It's getting more and more expensive to stay outside our membership parks when we travel, and the average cost is now over 50.00-70.00 a night as opposed to $25-30 when we were traveling full time the last time, over 13 years ago. We look for bargains but decent parks, and that's very difficult to find these days. Since we don't have a generator and we do have a residential fridge that runs down our batteries if we were to try and stay somewhere all night without electrical power, we can't boondock (stay for free overnight) at Walmart or Cracker Barrel-- for now. We are thinking about getting a generator which would enable us to do that. At any rate, it's going to take us three days at least to drive through Texas. Yep, it is truly a HUGE state!  

And with that, we will see you down the road!

Thousand Trails Colorado River

Columbus, TX.  High: 66  Low: 40. Site: D-25

AT&T 5G   T-Mobile hotspot slow

We landed our Pinnacle 5th wheel in Columbus, Texas, and this will be our home for the next three weeks. There's not a lot to do in Columbus, TX, it's a small town, BUT--the painted churches tour is a must see. Since we have already done that, Sparky is posting a link (click on the blue) to our blog about the churches she saw the last time she was here, and a teaser photo at the left for anyone who missed that blog.  Sparky would love to go see them again and might do that just because they are so beautiful. Here is another link, too, to tell you more about them. https://www.schulenburgchamber.org/painted-churches-tour

Thanksgiving Day was a blessing for us. Sparky is currently about 2 hours from one of her daughters and grandson, so we drove to her area and met for a beautiful buffet dinner at a local golf club. It was delicious! Especially so when Sparky doesn't have to cook a big dinner in a tiny kitchen in an RV!

It will be a quiet 3 weeks here. Sparky is going to babysit her grandson a little bit, we are going to do basic maintenance ourselves on our rig, (interesting stuff like lubricating the slides and jacks, washing windows, trapping Asian lady beetles, etc. haha) and Sparky is going to craft like crazy for the last little push for her shop on Etsy, JeanBeanGifts for the holidays. Yes, we have an invasion of Asian lady beetles. And they stink with their own little whiff just like stink bugs, only not as bad, when you catch them and squish them.  Ugh. Sparky is over the cuteness factor of ladybugs. They are still coming out of the woodwork even though we are in a different location now. Guess they came along for the ride!

We really like Colorado River RV park in the Thousand Trails system. It's in the boonies, true, but it's peaceful and quiet. The park is putting in over 100 brand new RV sites that are supposed to be finished early in January. That will help the park tremendously, to be able to have more 50 amp full hookup sites. They are currently limited in how many sites they have that are 50 amp full hookup. We are in a 30 amp site, which means we have to really be careful what appliances we run at the same time, or we will trip the breaker. The park gives you a sheet of what amps different appliances use, so that is really helpful for any newbies out there. It's surprising how fast amps add up! Here is a quick short list of amp usage on a typical RV:

ONE AC-15,000 BTU:  12.5.   Electric water heater: 12.5   Microwave: 12.8   

electric coffee pot 9.0    toaster: 10   Hair dryer: 10.  TV: 2.    Electric frying pan: 10.  Iron: 10.    

Food processor: 6.      Crockpot: 1.5    Dirt Devil hand vac: 2

If you need to know how many amps something takes, usually the watts are listed on the appliance. Divide the watts by 120 (volts) and that gives you the amps. To get the watts, multiply the amps by 120 (volts).

There are nice walking trails here, one runs all around the edges of the park, and then some that crisscross inside the park. You can ride your bike around on the trails if you have hybrid tires, the trails are a little like dual track mountain bike trails, rough with occasional rocks, so sometimes Sparky walks, and sometimes she rides. 

The deer come into the park every night almost...They feed in the fields in-between the different campground levels and wander around the campground sites sometimes. There are farmlands/ranches around the park, so we have a beautiful view out our back window of the deer grazing at dusk in the hay fields. There are also Texas native pecan trees and you are welcome to gather the nuts if they are falling while you are here!

The Colorado River runs beside the campground, but it's at extremely low levels right now, and there's no danger of any flooding, which has been known to happen in the past. It's not right close to the campsites, you have to walk down below the last campground level down to the boat ramp to see it. Sites are roomy down in the "D" level, but there are no 50 amp sites in this section. We have water, electric and sewer, just our electric is reduced. No problem, it's chilly here. We would definitely need 50 amp if it was summer time, with two AC's in our fifth wheel.

There is an H-E-B grocery store in town and a couple of good local restaurants for a break from cooking. (Sparky likes to take LOTS of cooking breaks, laughs Eldo.)

And with that, we will see you later....Hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving and got to see their families.....take care!

Bye, Bye Colorado River, Hello Lake Conroe and Leveling Problems

Weather--high 70, sunny, low 48                        Site G-71

After three weeks at Colorado River Thousand Trails Park, here's our take on it.... 

1. It's very peaceful and quiet...it seems to attract more retirees than families, probably because the amenities are very limited and more dated than many RV parks. There's not as much to do for families in the area. It's distant from any major town/shopping centers as well. But--we still enjoyed it very much.

2. There are herds of deer that wander the fields every day in the early morning and at dusk. They don't bother campers or intrude on the visitors, and they aren't fed by the campers, so they do their thing and you can just enjoy them when you encounter them. They are wary, but not afraid of you. We saw a couple of 8 pointer bucks while we were there!

3. The painted churches in the area are a must see. So beautiful and one friend said they reminded her of churches in Europe. They should as the Czech and German immigrants are the designers of these beautiful churches. (See January 19, 2021 post)

4. There is a shooting club nearby that practices on the weekends. Don't worry about that...you can safely hike the nature trail. It's a bunch of dudes who are interested in historical guns before 1916 (?), guy from the office explained, so the firepower is not to be nervous about. Sparky thought they were hunting very close by, but nope! Just target shooting on state inspected premises. Sparky walked the nature trail twice a day. You can get almost three miles in if you walk the entire perimeter and then in and out of the roads in the different sections. LOTS of bluebirds and warblers on the back side of the trail.

5. There are other interests in the area. There's the Stanzel Model Aircraft museum, the Texas Quilt Museum in LaGrange, the Texas Polka Museum, and the Texas Czech Heritage and Cultural Center.

6. Eating places? Not too many that we tried while we were here. Whataburger (in Columbus) has good burgers, Schobel's Restaurant (in Columbus) has good home cooked food, and we also tried Becky's in Columbus once. We didn't go back because staff was not wearing masks. Nice breakfast, though. Here are a couple more places that the locals recommend: Oakridge Smokehouse (how come we didn't try THAT one? wonders Eldo), the Red Vault Bistro (how come we didn't try THAT one, wonders Sparky). We did not discover these names until we came across a local brochure and we were at the end of our stay. NEXT time, says Sparky. OH! And there are THREE wineries here in the area. (Next time for SURE! says Sparky.) 

And off we went, back to Lake Conroe, TX, to the Thousand Trails park there, our second stay for the winter season. Our old site was open, but we found one closer to the pickle ball courts and laundry, so here we are for another three weeks. Sparky's grandson and daughter are 40 minutes away, so a chance to visit once again. AND--there's a new laundry house close by our site--TWENTY washing machines. When you don't have a washer/dryer onboard, that's great news!

So we drive in and check in at the gate house. They weren't able to tell us which sites were open, so we had to drive around looking for an open site with the big rig in tow. We chose G-71 and THOUGHT it looked level. Here's the site right next to us as an example. Looks pretty level, right? uh, NOPE! 

Not only was there a slope downhill, but a slope from side to side. You couldn't really tell by looking at it, but the automatic levelers knew it from attempt #1. On the first try, the center stabilizers would not engage and the red light came on, telling us there was a fault in the leveling system, meaning, try again, folks! We have a system of using nice thick wood blocks under the jacks and varying how many we put under the front jacks and then the center and rear jacks, and usually it works very well with one or two blocks under each jack. 

You have to access how far the jacks will be extending to decide how many blocks to set under each jack. There are no set numbers here, you just eyeball it and with each site experience, you learn what works and what doesn't.

Attempt #2, retract all the jacks and try again. This time we moved some blocks around and BOTH tires on the left side of the coach were raised off the ground. That is not something you want. You want as much ground contact as possible with chocked wheels and tire contact. It's dangerous to have any tires off the ground, certainly not two of them, so we had two options at this point: 1. find another site, or 2. move the rig on the site one way or another, side to side or forward or backwards so it's sitting on a more level part of the site. So we retract the jacks again, hook up the fifth wheel, back in and out a couple of times, and Eldy maneuvers the rig closer to the other side of the site.

Attempt #3, third time's the charm! It worked. By moving the rig just a little bit more side to side and hugging the site a little further away from the electric pedestal and water hookups, we took out the variable of the sloping lean on one side, and were able to level ourselves with just one tire slightly off the ground. Not perfect, but we wedged wood and lodged the tire so it was secure in place. The leveling test is --open the bathroom door (which is in the middle of the rig) and see if it swings open all the way (you're not as level as you wanted to be) or it opens and stays right where you opened it (You did it! You're level!) Whew! that only took about an hour. 

What was comforting to us is a big class A motorhome came in after us this afternoon right next door and had the very same problem with a tire off the ground despite trying their leveling system twice. Lake Conroe has a lot of sites that appear level, but fool you when you get situated into the site. 

We are happy to be back here and near civilization and shopping. (That means Sparky will be heading to Hobby Lobby or Michaels or Joanns soon, explains Eldo.) "Uh, honey, could you drive me to Hobby Lobby this afternoon?" sweetly asks Sparky.... (See, I told you!) Sparky is crafting for Valentine's Day and Easter now....a sample...tea origami pouches with honey crystals and tea. 

And some cute felt Easter egg ornaments.

That's it for now....settling in and ready for whatever comes our way...                                      

                                            See you later!