Two Weeks in Tucson

Saguaro (suh-war-oh) cactus in Tucson

Tucson, AZ.  Christmas Week -- Highs: bouncing around all over the place, from high seventies to high 50's.   Lows: 37 to 51
 Wifi connectivity is sometimes very good with AT &T (hotspots) and then it isn't. It can vary from hour to hour and minute to minute as far as signal strength. T-Mobile is terrible. Guess the mountains are in play here? Or winter storm Elliot all across the country? Or the guy that has a big ham radio antenna less than 10 feet from us?

With a huge sign of relief, after outdriving and missing the severe cold freezes all across the southwest, we settled into our site here in Tucson, AZ, at the Voyager RV Resort. The resort is beautiful, even though we are basically sitting in a gravel parking lot, the rest of the park's facilities are amazing! And the views of the five mountain ranges all around Tucson are terrific! Sparky has posted some FB photos of the mountains all around us and some beautiful sunsets. They bear repeating, so here they are. 

Site 3-163

The last couple of parks we have stayed at have had electrical issues and this big resort is no different. We were placed into a very tight site instead of a more spacious one because there were electrical problems in several rows where we were originally going to be. But why they jam people up right next to each other when the park is quite open and empty is a mystery. There's a rig on each side of us, then the rest of the row is empty all the way down. 

The park gave us a standard site--the standard sites are very long but very narrow. Premium pull thru sites are a little wider, but they told us they were not available because of the electric problems. At least your neighbors' rig placements are offset a bit so you aren't looking directly into their windows next to you.

The Voyager is a true resort--LOTS of pickle ball courts (16?) with serious playing going on....Sparky really wants to play but is worried about reinsuring an Achilles heel...Maybe she will go into it with the idea of just dinking the ball around. Sparky is quite competitive and it's hard for her not to go all out, so we'll see....This is a good time to play as the official playing season with all the regulars doesn't really get going until Jan. 1, when the seasonals arrive in droves. We heard that there are 100 RVs coming in January 1st! There are two pools, and wouldn't you know,  the main pool is being resurfaced so it's not available until early January, when we leave. There are classes galore here and all kinds of hobbies and crafts. We stay at this park as a destination on our way to Cottonwood, AZ, (where we stay for free with our Thousand Trails membership at Verde Valley), so we can only enjoy this resort for a couple of weeks to best fit our traveling budget. Because this park is a subsidiary membership park to our Thousand Trails park membership, it only costs us 20.00 a day, but membership benefits stipulate we can only stay for a two week max at any one time. If we wanted to stay longer, we could, but then we pay the public going rates for longer stays. Currently, a skinny standard pull through site for the month of January is $1,023.00, which really isn't bad considering this is a destination park. Here is a list of all the activities:

There is a hotel in the park, and an extensive year round resident section of beautiful homes to one side of the park, a small golf course, a resident post office, an an on site restaurant called Fat Willies, which serves very good food--breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

There's a really nice weight/exercise room, too...

Sparky's favorite part of the resort is the courtyard area...a great place to relax, read a book, grill out at one of the BBQ grill stations, watch the pickle ballers play, or listen to Native American flute playing. (There is even a group for that!)

"Batty Bikers"

And of course, there is an amazing bike trail around Tucson, called The Loop, which consists of over 100 miles of paved bikeway. Some of it goes through residential areas and spurs leading to other parts, and a LOT of it is on the outskirts of Tucson. It has amazing art installations along the way. The photo at left is a reminder that under some of the Tucson bridges are huge bat colonies. Forty thousand Mexican free tail bats live under the Campbell Avenue Bridge, but you won't see them in the winter here. They have migrated south. Fall is the peak season for the bats. They like the bridges because they are safe and cool, as in temperature. The deep grooves in the expansion joints provide an excellent roosting place. To protect the expansion joints, Pima County installed bat boxes so they can roost. 

A lot of the bridges are really cool in design as well, and some of the bridges are considered part of the art installations as well. One of the bridges, the Aho/Irvington Bridge has a cement pattern intaglio design that was taken from the tire tracks left in the river bed underneath it! (See above photo).

It's a little confusing where some of these art installations are when you compare the maps online to where the actually installations are. It also depends on which side of the river banks and washes you are riding on as to whether you will see all of them listed on the map. But it's a great bike adventure and great exercise to go looking for them!

Sparky has written about the Chuck Huckleberry Loop in the past and you can reference it by typing in "the Loop". in the blog search box, too. Hope these links work! 

In the two weeks we were here, Sparky rode the trail several times, particularly the Julian Walsh portion of the trail, which is quite close to the RV park. It has changed a little from last year in that there are more homeless people in the brush off the trail at several points along the way, living in tents and tarps. But because the trail is frequently used, they are far back and keep to themselves. Sparky never worried about riding the trail and never saw any people moving around there during the day.

There is a map of the art installations on the trail available online, The Loop Art Map and just to show you some more of the art on the Loop trail, here is another link to a portion Sparky did last year from Udall Park, the trailhead that is a few more miles down on Kolb Rd., the road the resort is on. You can reference the previous post at this link 

 art on the Loop Trail There are more than four dozen art installations on the trail, it is said. Bridges count as artwork, too! (see below photo) Sparky rode a record 36 miles one day, trying to find new artwork that was further along the trail than last year's search, but she picked the wrong trailhead to start, and possibly rode on the wrong side of the trail (there are two sides to the Loop trail in most places). So she got too tired after about 18 miles one way before having to turn around to make it back, not having found the artwork in the Rillito River Park area. But it's there! She's going to try again before we leave. 

The Loop Trail-one of the bridges

The weather is so fantastic here that this is a really great ride! Although we did hear a native say that the weather has been really "weird" here this year. Whatever he meant by that, we aren't sure. At any rate, we highly recommend checking out different portions of the trail leaving from different trailheads. Tucson is supposed to be the "bike capital of the world", or so they say....

Almost there!

The last thing we did besides enjoy a quiet Christmas holiday, was to take a drive along the Catalina Highway, to revisit Mt. Lemmon, which has an elevation of 9,000 feet at the top. It's a scenic drive of 27 miles one way. That's where Tucsonans (not Tucsonians, say the locals) go to escape the summer heat and where cyclists go to train, climbing all the way to 9,000 feet on their road bikes. Wow! There were a lot of people with the same idea to come to Mt. Lemmon Christmas Day to picnic, frolic in the snow, and make holiday memories. 

We love seeing families come from the dry sunny valley up to the mountain to try and sled, build a little snowman and throw snowballs at each other! It doesn't take much to make kids happy. Kids were sledding down wee little bumps of a hill on cardboard. We saw one family "burying" their son in the snow, just like you might bury a kid at the beach, everybody giggling and laughing. It was only 43 degrees--a lot better than up north in storm Elliot!

One family's snowman, er, snow lady

And, you get to see some fantastic scenery...At one of the many overlooks, we spotted a small waterfall cascading down. That's quite small but it was far away...

There are hoodoos along the way. A hoodoo is a column or pinnacle of weathered rock, sort of like this one....There are far more spectacular ones out in Bryce Canyon and Utah, but this gives you an idea. The gray sliver is the road on the way up to the top.

It's fun to stop at the many overlooks....to see all the different cacti, and to look for birds and animals (which were very scarce today except for a coyote running across the road on the way back down).

We got to see some snow, starting at 7,000 feet....Sparky loves snow, as you know....(Don't you dare throw that at me! says Eldo. She didn't.)

The yuccas have started blooming...Those are low spiky bushes and then up comes a tall, tall, blooming spire which will soon blossom into little white or yellow flowerets. Either that, or they have already bloomed, we are not sure.

It was a beautiful afternoon up on the mountain...We are sure we will go back before we leave, maybe in the morning for a different view of the mountain....Then again, maybe we won't. After two VERY rainy days down in the valley, (which is very unusual) Mt. Lemmon got a foot of snow and closed to the roads to all traffic for more than two days, except for the permanent residents on the mountain. We only have one day left to explore before leaving Tucson, so a trip back up the mountain is out.

That's ok, there are many wonderful things to see and do in Tucson...The Pima Air Museum, which we have done in the past, is a great visit and is very close to the RV park. Also, check out the Tucson Desert Museum, it's really cool, too! Er, hot, depending upon what time of year you visit. And don't forget the Saguaro National Park!...Lots of great places to eat, and again, lots of great places to ride on the Loop Trail, Sparky's favorite thing to do....Then there is "The Boneyard", where old planes go to die--3,000 planes come to their final resting place at Davis-Montham Air Force Base. It's the world's largest salvage yard for airplanes where the aircraft are lined up with military precision. It's the perfect climate conditions to store planes that they obviously can't store in hangars for space/cost reasons. They won't rust in the Sonoran Desert, that's for sure! Some are wrapped for permanent storage, and others can be used for spare parts and future activation. It's an amazing sight to see along S. Kolb Rd.

Sparky kept trying to get a photo of the planes from off the road, as tours are no longer offered, but had to settle for a couple from the internet.

We always check out the visitors' centers wherever we go to get literature and info to check out the area. Since we are only here two weeks, we are taking a low key approach this time as far as tourist activities and the hiking thing. They are taking a back seat as we are going to be investing in new RV batteries and maybe having to replace a new front jack in the near future.....

5 mountain ranges surround Tucson

So we got our new batteries installed and are ready to see if the one bothersome jack has improved any. We called on a mobile tech in the park, Urgent Care RV Repair, and Scott Harris came out and installed our batteries for us. Because electricity and very heavy batteries were the order of the day, we preferred to have him do the electrical work and heavy lifting. Those suckers weigh over 60 pounds a piece! We highly recommend him if he is in the Tucson area to help you with any RV needs and repairs. We also highly recommend Merle's Automotive Supply for any car parts needed. Excellent customer service, super friendly (and funny staff), exceptionally kind, caring service and attention for whatever you need.

As far as how much improvement the new batteries will make on the problematic jack, we won't know till our next destination, when we go to put them down. We just know we now have plenty of juice for the slide motors and our automatic electric cord reel and the jacks. We just don't know if there was not enough juice for the jack, or it's gone bad. We head out in two days. We hope the coming year is a healthy, happy one for all of our readers, family and friends. 

We will see you down the road. Next destination--Cottonwood, AZ, near Sedona!

 

Traveling from Columbus, TX to Tucson....

We left beautiful Colorado River Thousand Trails Sunday...Eldy wanted to avoid some major city traffic through San Antonio and by leaving on a Sunday, we certainly had a great, easy, less stressful drive of 260 miles, just enough to make a dent in the long journey across Texas, which will take us four days. We traveled I-10 all the way except for a small portion of roadway that was the 1604 Loop around San Antonio. There was a TON of construction going on all around the interstate and the highway itself in that area. We have never seen so much building and major projects going on all over the town and its outskirts. But there were NO slowdowns today and we had a great drive all the way here. Interstates are definitely improving across the US. I-10 was quite smooth. 

Pecan Valley RV and Farm Park Site #20

For our first night's destination, we picked Pecan Valley RV and Farm Park. It's a very small park (20 sites?) in Junction, TX, on the river banks of the North Llano River, very close to I-10. Call when you arrive and the owners will guide you to your site and settle up payment with you after you are settled in. It's a beautiful setting and not only is it an RV park, but a little farm as well right by a pecan grove and it's on the North Llano River. They sell pecan goodies at the store and even give you a little free bag of sweetened pecans when you check in. There are goats and chickens on site, and a roaming herd of deer that the owner feeds twice a day at 8:00 and 4:00 with automatic feeders. Sparky feels like we are back at Colorado River! But we're not.

You can swim in the river if you want to, but right now, it's a chilly 53 degrees here. The park is quite empty, so we had no difficulty coming in without a reservation. It gets busy after the holidays so we imagine that it would be a popular destination with a lot of people and you would probably need a reservation. 

Pecan grove on the property but off limits to guests

Sites are limestone gravel combination and because it's an older park (recently acquired by a younger couple who have made lots of improvements) the sites may be a little uneven, but they provide leveling blocks for you! Definitely big rig friendly and the sites are spread out, facing a large grassy area. Some sites have shade and some are close to the river. Each site has 30/50 amp full hookups. Daily rate is 47.00.

There is a very cute little general store (based on the honor system!), where you can buy little specialty food items or some swag. 

inside store

There is a chicken coop, a goat pen, and chickens free roaming all over the park. The park sells fresh eggs (5.00 a dozen) if you would like some. You can feed the chickens if you want as well.

park decorations

North Llano River

It's beautiful down by the river, and when it's hot, you definitely can swim in the river or fish if you want. There is a nearby state park called South Llano River State Park with nice trails.

In the nearby town of Junction, there is a great BBQ place called Lum's. We didn't check it out this time, but we will return to check it out and be sure to see what else is there.

People who come here thinking they are only going to be spending one night (like us) end up saying, "Gee, we should have booked more nights here!" It gets excellent reviews....We can see why, we highly recommend this little park.

Eldy has been watching the weather and the temps. The arctic cold front is extending down into Texas. Look at these temps coming in the next few days to the very area we stopped at this evening!

Our plan is to head about the same number of miles continuing on I-10 towards another Texas stop, yet to be named depending on how many miles we drive. (AHEM! How many miles I drive, laughs E.) Right! Actually, we will probably stop in Balmorhea, TX, a distance of 243 miles. Look at the weather coming in the next couple of days THERE! 

Monday....We had a second excellent driving day today....That is, ELDY had a great driving day. Two hundred forty-five miles, another pleasant drive with very good weather and decent road conditions on I-10 but some significant wind which dampened our fuel mileage. We took a little rest stop break to stretch our legs. The restrooms were open air restrooms, kind of surprising, considering that occasionally  temperatures can get pretty chilly at night. Nice tile mural on the wall!

And we did end up in Balmorhea, TX. Our final stop was at Saddleback Mountain RV Park, in Balmorhea.  The RV park is a no frills park and a great price for 20.00 a night. It's basically a gravel parking lot behind a Valero gas station (diesel 4.89 per gallon). It has a nice view of mountains behind it, and the sites are generously laid out to be long enough for a big rig and tow car. They are also attractively lined with stones and cactus plants in about half of the sites. It's a very informal process for checking in. Drive in, pick your site, deposit 20.00 in an envelope in a drop box by a little yellow cabin/house and that's it.

Sparky walked around a little bit checking out all the cactus. She likes the name of these cactus plants, below. They remind her of Mickey Mouse ears, but they are called "bunny ears" cactus, informally. They are all over the park along with the common prickly pear cactus.

Bunny Ears Cactus

It was a beautiful evening and a lovely way to end the day....

Tuesday....Driving day 3. We are headed for Lordsburg, New Mexico, a distance of 350 miles. At that point, temps will be right around 27 degrees for a low at night. Although we are a four season coach and can handle temperatures below freezing, Eldo still worries about SOMETHING freezing. There are obvious things you do like unhook your water hose from the rig to the outdoor spigot, and put some water in your inboard tank so you do have a water supply run by a pump motor if it's too cold to hook up to local water. So that's what we did. Sometimes we open up indoor cabinets that have plumbing fixtures so the warm indoor air can flow through those spaces. Most importantly, we make sure we have full propane tanks!

It was another beautiful day to drive...No snow, sleet or rain to worry about this time of year in the southwest. Sparky's favorite portion of the trip today was thru El Paso, TX, because of the amazing architectural features of the city's bridges and underpasses. Truly beautiful and amazing! (Note from Eldy: It was still a LOT of traffic for a Tuesday and it WAS stressful but not my worst driving scenario.)

This underpass was so pretty! Why can't the northern states think about making something beautiful out of something rather ugly like cement bridges and underpasses?

Here is one more of Sparky's favorites on the drive today.....

We picked the Lordsburg KOA park for the distance we needed to travel today. It's another gravel parking lot right off I-10 but in a very poor neighborhood. It's a small park (about 63 sites). There are picnic tables at each site, and sites are mostly level. There are some trees (short in stature so no shade) so the small park is mostly wide open. A little bit of road noise and train noise as tracks run nearby. Wifi is not very good here. AT &T is ok. T-Mobile was terrible. There is a decent family restaurant called Kranberry's within two blocks of the park. We ate supper there as we couldn't put out our kitchen slide and get into the fridge last night. Good home cooked food.

This is the park where we stayed last year when we had a major tire blowout within 2 miles of the park. When we got to the park, we had a LOT of trouble with our jacks coming down. Some negative juju going on here in this location! Haha. The auto level system was not functioning as it should. It wouldn't level the coach. We kept getting "fault" errors, and message errors. The jacks were coming down unevenly and then not at all. We tried retracting them manually and got them back up, but the same problem happened again. We called Lippert's tech support, the manufacturing giant of all things slides and jacks on our rig, and the tech guy tried to talk us through some solutions. He sent us a link to where once we opened it, Sparky used her camera phone to show him where things were and what was going on. He could see what we could see! Kinda like a FaceTime with RV tech support. We were very impressed with the technology and help. There were things we needed that we didn't have, like a voltmeter, jumper cables, and knowledge of where the control module was for the front jacks. We couldn't find it! The tech guy suspects that there is not enough amperage getting to the left front jack, since we tried recalibrating the whole leveling system and were not able to do that with the left front jack still problematic. We don't have a battery charger to check the batteries, (AHEM! We DID have one but Sparky thought it was an air compressor and left it behind back in Elkhart!) but we did get them tested in Elkhart and the charge was A-OK, the mobile tech said. apparently, he did not test them WITH A LOAD on them. Down the road, (haha) we would find out that made a big difference. (We are making a list for Santa at this point for some basics we should have on board and some of which we accidentally left behind--oopsie.) We never did get the problem solved this evening, but we have one slide out in the living room and our bedroom slide out in the back so we're good for the 27 degree night tonight. Another beautiful sunset at the Lordsburg, KOA. The sky was on fire tonight!

If all goes well in the morning, we are hoping the inverter has given the batteries enough charge so we can get our hitch up high enough to back the truck under it so we can leave! There is a way to hand crank the jacks with a drill bit but the space inside the bay is tight to try and do that. Once we get to Tucson, there will be lots of assistance available with mobile techs and hopefully, we will be able to get our leveling system up (and down, haha) and running smoothly again. If you are not level, you really shouldn't put all your slides out because  other problems may occur. Life is not always smooth going down the road, that's for sure!

Wednesday morning....last leg of the trip to Tucson and will we be able to get the front of the rig to go up so the hitch is in the right place so we can leave? The suspense is killing us. We had to wait for the temperatures to warm up a bit outside and here we go......YESSSSS! The front of the rig came up, barely, just a little at a time. It sounded like the battery was going bad fast and going to quit on us at any second, but we got the nose up high enough to hook up to the truck and off we went.  Today was a 167 mile drive to the Voyager RV Resort and we made it. BUT--when we got there, we couldn't put the jacks down to get our slides out until we got a mobile RV tech to come out. 

We managed to find an excellent recommendation from the park--Cameron's Reliable Maintenance Services and he was great! He happened to be in the park on his way out when we called and so he came right over. He knew we couldn't live the next few days without getting the jacks down manually because no jacks down? No slides out. He definitely knew his electronics and systems. He has over 20 years in the maintenance industry. He tested our batteries WITH A LOAD on them and we found out as we had suspected, that our batteries were just about shot and that was some of our problems were the result of that and it could have gotten much worse in a short period of time, leaving us stranded. Also,

the bad boy, Jack

according to him, our left front jack has failed, (there are two in the front--one on the left, one on the right, and they hold up the front end of the RV. The left jack won't even show up on the electronics panel when we try to use the leveling system. To get a new one is going to be super expensive. We can make do for awhile with manual leveling, as it will be difficult to get a jack during the holidays. Tomorrow, we are off to buy new batteries.  Note: Having had to consult mobile techs several times over the past couple of years traveling, an average service call for a mobile tech is 50-100.00 and labor charged on top of that....We love mobile techs. It's wonderful when you don't have to take your "house" to the repair shop, but they come to you. They are usually in most RV parks or nearby, and if they are certified by NRTVA (National RV Training Academy) , that is an even better designation to have. And everyone we have met, has been super delightful and helpful. 

We are settled in site 3-163 in the Voyager RV park in Tucson on S. Kolb Rd. It's a BIG beautiful park, and a true resort. Decent wifi, cell service great. Sparky has reviewed this park before, last year, but will try to find some new things to report about it in the next couple of weeks. We will be here for two weeks. Whew! Glad we made it! And the weather is awesome for the next two weeks--NO below freezing temperatures! 

Our next assignment will be to change out our batteries ourselves. WHOA! Not difficult, right, readers? Red to red, black to black, don't let the red touch any metal, those are the HOT ones. At least we don't think it will be difficult....We shall see....See you later!

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!

Cataract Surgery Update and Lots More

Lake Conroe, TX.  Highs: 70's to low 80's, Lows: 40's-60's

Well-l-l-l...Sparky finally got her glasses after 6 weeks from the second eye surgery date. The far vision has improved somewhat with the glasses, but it's still an effort to try and focus on cars on the road. Sparky's vision has improved from total separate double vision of cars in front of her to sort of a ghosting image of cars, still sometimes double. Her eyes still struggle to make things clearer. Near vision prescription is incorrect, darn it, but because we are long gone from Indiana where the surgery was done, Sparky will have to get into an optometrist for another eye exam to get her bifocal glasses RX fine tuned. We are guessing that Sparky's vision continued to change after the prescription was set up at the one month surgery date so the glasses finalization is not quite right. To top it off, the doctor spotted the beginning of a "capsule" behind the lens of her right eye which will cause vision to gradually "cloud" until it can be lasered off, but that's a very simple and quick office visit. She hopes! Capsule formations are very common after cataract surgery, so Sparky is not too worried about that. We will have to wait till spring till we are back in the Elkhart area to have it done. It's just discouraging to continue to have visual acuity problems! On a more positive note, Eldy's eyes and prescription glasses are just fine! Yay! And he's the one who's blind in one eye!

Here's a little info about Thousand Trails Lake Conroe..It's very close to shopping , breweries, great restaurants, etc. in Conroe and the Woodlands. Easy exit off I-45 to get there. Its a BIG park, gated, with security, and getting bigger. The staff is super nice and very friendly and helpful. The park is currently under construction for new sites for both park models and RV sites. At present there are over 300 sites that vary in suitability for rigs of varying sizes. It is definitely big rig friendly. Many sites are shaded, many are not. The new section up front has fairly level concrete pads, yet some of the back in sites have a steep short ramp up to get into the site, making it difficult to get a longer rig level with all 4 wheels (or more) on the ground and/or bottoming out the rear end of the RV. The older sites towards the middle and back of the park are very unlevel so it can be difficult to level your rig. There is a big section in the middle near the tennis courts that are pull thru, but they are the kind where you are so close to your neighbor that both you and your neighbor's living areas face each other, so very little privacy. The interior roads are TERRIBLE, but we were told that all the roads will be improved once all the construction is well underway to being completed. We sure hope so!

Shower houses and bathrooms are very nice, above average for a campground.

You are charged 3.00 a day for 50 amp electric. Most people prefer 50 amp if you have two air conditioner units on an RV. We do, so we pay the extra so we don't have to worry about tripping a breaker. Many parks say if you are a 50 amp coach, you have to hook up to 50 amp service. They do NOT allow doggone converters. Those converters allow you to "downsize" your electric needs from 50 amps to 30 amps. What makes it worse is they allow smaller rigs that use 30 amp to stay in 50 amp sites, giving you fewer choices when you come in if you are a big rig. There is a beautiful pool (unheated) with really pretty seating areas around it.

There's a relatively new large laundry room. It's definitely a family friendly park, as there are LOTS of families who choose this park for a weekend destination or seasonal camping because of the pool, lots of activities for kids at the activity center, a nice basketball court, tennis courts, pickle ball courts and a small beach fronting Lake Conroe. 

new sections being added near the lake

There are  "tiny home" park model sections of the park and they are building another new park model section as well. A completion date has not been mentioned. Did we mention there is mini golf, a very nice playground, and a dog park there, too?

Near the Lyric Center, Houston

One of the activities that happened while we were here, was a visit to the Nutcracker Ballet in Houston, a Christmas present from Sparky's daughter. The ballet was held at the Wortham Center in downtown Houston. No photos allowed of the ballet performance, but the center itself was amazingly beautiful. There are several fine arts/theaters in the area all within blocks of each other.

The outside of the center has several photo op possibilities, so naturally we had to take advantage of that!

Sparky had never been to the ballet before, so it was quite a treat! The inside of the theater was gorgeous as well as the outside. Here we are ready to go inside the Wortham Center. Impressive door handles!

The entire outside of the building is very impressive as well.....

We went inside and there were wonderful treats awaiting you if you wanted to get a bite to eat, visit the popup souvenir shop, or just sit awhile and enjoy the sights and people around you before the performance. It was great to see most everyone very dressed up for the special occasion. Sparky had to try a bulgogi bowl which was absolutely delicious! (Beef, rice, seasonings, and veggies with cilantro. Yum!) They had cook while you wait pasta buffet, too, along with sandwiches and all kinds of drinks, but no food or beverages inside the theater itself. 

A beautiful holiday tree was on display and the crowds lined up to have a photo taken in front of it.....

We checked out the curtain just before the performance was about to start. Incredibly beautiful, is it not?

After spending 12 days here in Lake Conroe, TX and visiting Sparky's family, we are headed to Colorado River in Columbus, TX for about ten days. This is an on-the-way destination, making our way towards Tucson where we will be spending the Christmas holiday. We will see you down the road!