Remember the Alamo!

Left Austin at 11am and arrived San Antonio around 2:15pm.....stopped in Kyle, TX at the local HEB supermarket to fuel up....119 gallons at $453.....should last us now until late April based on our travel plan. Will hit the Mission Trail bike path into downtown San Antonio tomorrow morning for a day of site seeing (Alamo, Riverwalk, and 4 missions). Traveled 102 miles today.....more what you can expect from us the next 8 weeks....when we move......

Always hate getaway day....saying "until next time" is painful for me. We had the most wonderful hosts for 7 days, and will miss them a lot, but now we are on our own for several weeks with no obligations.....looking forward to a more relaxed pace. Off to Corpus Christi on Tuesday.

The drive down to San Antonio was very pleasant....I ran with the driver's side window open to take advantage of the cool air....about 6 degrees cooler than Austin today. We are sitting up above I-410 and using the Lowe's Guest free WiFi. Speaking of WiFi, we have really had no problem between the HotSpots on our phones, and WiFi provided by our hosts getting access to broadband.

Since we filled up in El Paso on February 18th we have consumed 145 gallons, and our mileage was around 7.1 mpg. We ran in the high 60's mph most of those miles, which is why the mileage is down. Over the next 4-6 weeks we will be running at, or under 60mph, and we should see mileage creep back up to 8 mpg. We spent around $453 filling up today, plus $100 a week ago when we got to Austin just to get the tank back up over 1/4 full.....it was right around the "E" when we arrived in Austin. We shouldn't have to fill back up for 4-6 weeks.....just depends on our pace. We don't expect to move more than 100 miles each time we change our view. So far we have traveled 2,038 miles since 1/30/2012.

Tomorrow, Monday, March 5th will mark our 5th week on the road since we left Rancho Jurupa.....seems like a few months since we were sitting still at Rancho Jurupa just dreaming about what we are doing now. In some respects we are losing our sense of time....the last week seemed like a few days. It's nice losing track of time, and the days, if even for just a while.

Spring Break?

This is not the kind of scenery we are looking for the next 8 weeks...

A couple of days ago a "friend" on Facebook sent me a private message asking if I knew that Spring Break would be starting along the Gulf Coast in a week, or two. Doh! No I haven't thought in those terms for over 10 years since my last child graduated high school. So, here we are sitting in Austin soon to be heading south to San Antonio, and then on to Corpus Christi around March 7th, which, I am told, happens to be a Spring Break hot spot. If you have been following our blog you know our plan "was" to meander along the Gulf Coast until the end of April and then head northwest for the summer. We hope to get at far as the Florida Panhandle, or further if time permits. Now we are in a minor quandry about what route to take east.....should be stay inland away from the crowded beaches for a few weeks? Well, just like the first 5 weeks, we will just make it up as we go. If it gets tooo crowded we'll turn inland.

It's funny when I think back that our original plan was to head south right after New Year's day, but plans changed. Had the notion of Spring Break even briefly crossed my mind last October when we made the decision to delay our departure a month I would have stayed with the original schedule. Even when we left on January 30th I had it in my mind that we would be hitting Corpus Christi 10-14 days ago. Nevertheless, we shall press on with style and FLEXIBILITY. The one thing that does give us more flexibility on where we stay is our solar panels, and large waste water capacities. No doubt RV spots along the coast will be more difficult to come by when we need them, so we will need to be more imaginative as the weeks progress keeping our eyes open for dump stations, and overnight parking spots that don't require reservations.

Yesterday morning it was warm and muggy on the shores of Lake Travis....humidity was at 81% and perspiration was flowing.....lol. By mid afternoon the temp had dropped 10 degrees and the humidity was down to 30%! That is a big change in just a few hours, but one for which I was grateful.....I grew in in SoCal and humidity and I are never going to be friends. A couple of friends, Phil and Denise Whitson, from my high school days in SoCal who moved to Austin a while back dropped by to see our coach and talk to us about our adventure for an hour or so. It was good to see them.

Today we will begin to get ready to leave in the morning for San Antonio. We will be visiting one more time with Elaine's sister Laureen and her husband Glen this afternoon. We'll be in San Antonio for a few days checking out the sites, including River Walk, and taking advantage of a great bike path system to visit the four missions in the area. What happens after that is up in the air due to this "spring break" thing, but tag along and see what happens!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Salt Lick

I read a lot of blogs, and specifically a lot of RV blogs written by fulltimers. One thing that always comes up eventually is Texas BBQ. We have now been to a couple of BBQ places in Texas. Tonight we visited The Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX....kind of a suburb of Austin on the southwest side. This is one of several locations in the Austin area. The one we visited is the original store of this small chain. This is a no nonsense place......cash only, BYOB (bring your own booze) and 4 menu items.......BBQ beef, sausage, pork ribs, and turkey with sides of coleslaw, potato salad, and bread. I can tell you from personal experience, they are ALL good! The service at this place is lightning fast......we had 7 in our party and had our food within 5 minutes after we ordered. It's the first time I've ever eaten at a place that allowed you to bring your own booze, which in my case was Dos Equis.

The original Salt Lick open pit BBQ

I plan to sample a lot more Texas BBQ in the coming weeks, and will be sure to give you a report.

Earlier in the day Elaine and I got out the trikes and did an 8 mile ride along the shores of Lake Travis. ALL of the roads in the area are up and down. Where we are staying is one of the high elevation points on the lake, so all roads are downhill from the property we are staying at, which means the end of our ride is/was uphill. That being said, 8 miles felt closer to 20 with the big climbs at the end. After our ride we did some grocery shopping to restock our fridge. We'll be leaving Austin on Sunday.

After we returned from The Salt Lick we did a video chat using Google+ with our daughter Kate and her daughter Charlie. It is so cool to use this technology to see our kids as we talk with them. We've been able to use SKYPE and Google+ many times over the past 10 days to visit with our loved ones, and we are so grateful to have access to it.

That's it for today......thanks for stopping by!

Courtesy Parking in Austin, TX

There are four different ways to live your life on the road. The first, and most obvious, is to utilize local RV Parks along the way. Even with discounts such as AAA, Good Sam, Passport America, Golden Age Passport, or utilizing Escapee Park membership discounts, it can be quite expensive even if you are paying as little as $15 per night using one, or as many discounts as you are allowed.

The second option is to utilize "courtesy parking" opportunities as often as you can. Courtesy parking is parking on, or near the property of a friend, or relative where you are able to get an electrical outlet providing 15 amps of power, and maybe a hose bib connection for water. A really good courtesy parking option also provides access to a sewer "clean out" so you can pump your waste water (gray and black) out of your tanks and into the city sewer system, or the property septic system. The later requires some thought as you don't want to add hundreds of gallons of waste water to your friend's/relative's system that it can't handle.

The third is dry camping. Dry camping can also be done in the courtesy parking situation, but means you have no water, electric, or sewer options and must manage your consumption of water and electricity to be sure you don't exceed the capacities of your fresh water tanks, your waste tanks, and your house batteries. If you have installed a solar charging system such as we have, then managing the electrical part of your dry camping experience is much easier, because you can replace each day what you have used the prior evening. Dry camping also takes place often in large parking lots of the big box stores such as Walmart, or in restaurant parking lots that provide RV parking, or in Rest/Picnic areas along the Interstates, or secondary roads.

The fourth option, and one we are looking forward to exploring more in the coming months, is boondocking. This is a situation where you may park your RV on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land in some cases for free, or up to $20 for 2 weeks. Of course you have to have the ability to replenish your house batteries. Batteries only store so many amp hours of usage. You can replenish the used electricity by using your on board generator, or a portable one, or by utilizing your solar charging system. Another option for managing electrical consumption is a wind generator. These are becoming popular in the desert regions of the Southwest.

So far in the first month of our fulltime journey we have utilized (in Jojoba Hills) the Escapee discount for 4 nights, the Passport America discount (Benson, AZ) and since then courtesy parking. In each of the courtesy parking situations we have had access to 15 amps of electricity (Mesa, AZ), 45 amps (Bullard, TX), and now 100 amp service in Austin, TX. We have also had access to water, and sewer clean outs. None of these courtesy parking situations have cost us anything out of pocket. Of course, depending on the situation, and duration of stay you might feel obliged to leave a monetary gift behind. So far any offer of compensation has been refused. Our total costs for parking our coach for the month were $95.

After we leave Austin we will be on our own until we hit Louisiana a couple of weeks from now. We have already been offered a courtesy parking opportunity there. It will provide a great base of operations for visiting New Orleans, and other sites within driving, and biking distance. The same can be said when we get to Alabama. So, in between those times we will utilize dry camping, boondocking, and on occasion an RV Park.

We plan to be in the Austin area until Sunday when we will depart for the Gulf Coast. We plan to head directly to Corpus Christi where we will turn east and meander along the Gulf Coast until we hit the Florida Panhandle, or the end of April arrives, which ever comes first.

The weather the past two days has been overcast, with brisk winds yesterday afternoon, and quite humid. As our Austin host said yesterday, "Clarke, it's always humid in East Texas, you just don't notice it as much in the winter." Well, OK, I notice it....lol!

Today we will get the bikes out and do some riding. I have a couple of "elective" projects to work on today. By "elective" I mean nothing is broken, but I'm going to try and fix it anyway.

Thanks for stopping by!

"All systems are go, and confidence is high"

Rainy day in Austin

I have always liked that NASA phrase......of course, the one you don't want to hear yourself saying is "Houston we have a problem". Any of you who know me well know there is a pessimistic side to me. Even though, intellectually, I understand that I did the pump installation correctly, and there should be no problem whatsoever, there is a little part of me that is often waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anyway, I say that to say this.....the first 20 miles on the road yesterday my eyes were glued to the water temp gauge.....as it slowly approached it's idling operating temp of 180 degrees I was half expecting it to keep on going. Of course, that didn't happen, and after 20 miles it kept a steady reading and I began to relax and enjoy the beautiful driving day.

We spent 8 days at my sister-in-law's home and thoroughly enjoyed the time with all those related to us. I wish I had been able to spend more time riding my bike instead of having my head stuck in the engine bay. Even though I wear mechanic's gloves when I work on any part the coach I still suffered a few minor injuries to my hands that are still healing. My back hurts from the awkward positions required to put the pump in place, but it is getting better each day.


Our driving goal for Monday was an easy 243 mile jaunt down to Austin, TX where more relatives and friends await. It was a partially cloudy day portending the rain that would descend upon us last night, and the temps were so pleasant that I drove with the driver's side window open much of the time. The last time we headed south from Bullard in the Spring of 2009 we took HWY 79 all the way to Round Rock where we got on I-35 for about 10 miles and then got off again. There are a lot of small towns along the way, and even though it is 20 miles shorter going that way, I takes longer because of all the towns. This time we decided to head directly west, or at least as directly as is possible....we took FM 344 west to HWY 155 to HWY 79 to HWY 84 and hit I-35 around the 135 mile mark giving us 98 miles of freeway driving before we exited at HWY 45 to FM 620. This route was a good choice....very few towns, and beautiful pastureland and blacktop all the way to the Interstate.


Each time we took a driving break I walked around the coach looking for anything out of the ordinary, and found nothing each time. Even when we arrived at our destination I was concerned again that something might go wrong just as it had the last two times I parked in front of friend's home.....haha....but again, nothing. Right now we are parked at a fellow Newell owner's home on the shores of Lake Travis, which, until recent rain storms, was 52' below normal....they got 3.2" of rain the other day and the lake went up over 4 feet! The last time we were in this area we were attending a Newell mini rally at La Hacienda RV Resort, which is less than a mile from our current location. It rained on and off last night, and is still drizzling as I write, but the sun should poke its head out around Noon time. We'll go visit Elaine's sister and brother-in-law this evening. Our host has offered to take me gun shopping today. I'm looking for small shotgun to keep under our bed in case someone decides to "intrude". This does happen on rare occasions, and has happened to others we know. While it is a rarity I plan to be prepared. I hope I never have to pull the trigger, but I'm sure an intruder hearing the pump action of the shotgun will not think twice, and retreat.


Hoping that the weather clears up so we can take a short bike ride around this neighborhood.


Thanks for stopping by!

If it weren't heavily overcast you could see Lake Travis behind those trees!

The first time I have disconneted the trailer since January 31st

Success!

Sunday morning around 9am I turned the engine over and it started right up. I walked back to the engine bay and watched for a few minutes and saw NO LEAKS! I let the engine run up to operating temperature and then shut her down. All is well! Later on in the day I decided I needed to be sure I could back out of the dirt/gravel driveway as the rear wheels had settled a little....maybe 3-4 inches due to a heavy rain just before we arrived. So, I fired up the Detroit Diesel one more time and was able to successfully back up 2 feet, and on to more solid ground. I let it run up to operating temperature again, and then shut it down. Again, no leaks were observed. I spent the rest of the day washing the trailer and most of the Newell....it had been in rain, and had a lot of road grime. By the end of the day I was whipped......this retirement thing is wearing me out! I hate to be on the road looking grungy, so now I was ready to hit the road Monday morning.

We had a nice going away dinner (my sister-in-law cooked her specialty, Lasagna!) with the relatives and hit the sack around 10:30pm. All in all it was a good stay. I learned more about the mechanical aspects of my coach through the installation of the new water pump, and gained a lot of confidence in my ability to make a major repair.......OK, at least major for me. Tomorrow we off to Austin to visit more relatives and friends.

Thanks for stopping by!

Brrrrrr!!!!

Sometime early Saturday morning the temperature dipped below freezing. How do I know you ask? Each morning one of the first things I do is turn on the kitchen faucet to HOT to preheat our coffee mugs. I like hot coffee, and I like it to stay hot for more than 4 minutes, so preheating the mugs is a must. Well, the water had been running for just a few seconds when the flow reduced to almost nothing. My suspicion was that the there was an ice plug in the hose, and sure enough when I checked the outside temp it was just 34 degrees at 7am! Gradually the plug melted and I was able to get on with my coffee prep....lol!

Since it was so cold there was no way I was going to start pouring coolant until it warmed up a little. Finally around 9am it was warm enough to be outside. I first had to finish attaching the 5th hose, torque the 5/8" bolts, and reattach the fuel filter before proceeding to mix and pour up to 22 gallons of coolant into the giant rear facing radiator. It didn't take long to finish the unfinished business from the day before, and I began mixing a gallon of coolant with a gallon of distilled water. After pouring in each 2 gallons I mixed I would peak inside the driver's side engine door to see if there were any leaks......after 8 gallons there were still none, but after 10 gallons I could see coolant running down around the pump. Of course, I was dismayed at this revolting turn of events! To say the least I was mildly depressed.

Using my small LED flashlight I began to look around the pump to figure out where the coolant was coming from. At first it appeared to becoming out of the area where the pump butts up against the engine block, but I knew it couldn't be the pump as it is a gear driven pump and no water enters the housing area where the pump attached to the engine block, so it had to be coming from higher up. Nevertheless, I decided to drain all 10 gallons out, and undo all the connections to be sure I wasn't missing anything.....like a crack in the pump housing walls, or something catastrophic like that. It did not take too long to disassemble the pump and hoses. After re-checking the pump for any flaws, and noting that the "O"ring was still in the proper position I turned my attention to the hoses where they attached to the pump. It turns out the highest hose connection, a 4" connecting piece had not properly seated to the pump when I put it in the first time. I didn't want to completely remove the pump, so I took my time and "massaged" the hose connection lower onto the pump housing. After I was satisfied that it was in a better position I attached an 8mm socket to my socket wrench and tightened down the two hose clamps on that hose, as well as all the others. Instead of reattaching the fuel filter I decided to leave it out until I was sure there were no leaks.....just makes it easier to see what is going on, and get at any hose clamps that may need additional tightening.

Now the process of re-pouring the 10 gallons back in to see what I had. As I poured in the 10th gallon I said a little prayer, and then went and looked. For a minute all looked fine, but then I began to see a very small, and I mean small, trickle coming down from the upper 4" hose connection. I got out the 8mm fitting and ratchet and began torquing each hose clamp slowly so as not to over tighten and strip the clamp. At last the trickle stopped. I wiped everything off and waited a few minutes. No leaks. Yea! With the leak plugged I proceeded to pour in the rest of the coolant. Finally about 4pm I finished, and still no leaks.

Today, Sunday, I will check first to see if the coolant level has dropped (liquid seeks it's own level, and sometimes overnight it will settle a little requiring the addition of more coolant to top it off), add any if necessary, and then start up the 6V92 and see how it, the 4" hose connector, performs with pressure applied.

We are staying on the property of Elaine's sister while we visit. Elaine's sister works for US Air and is on a trip until this afternoon, so we have been spending time inside the house while she is gone....well Elaine has.....I've had my head inside the engine bay of our "home" for 3 days. At any rate, her brother and sister-in-law brought steaks, and margaritas over for dinner. A very nice way to unwind after an up and down day.

Thanks for stopping by!