Saturday January 9, 2016-Moving Day-Inks Lake state park to Cottonwood RV Park, Mission TX

We were up early to get things ready to leave Inks Lake. Actually I went outside at 7 and the sun hadn't risen over the trees, so I had to bump around in the dark for a few minutes. It was a chilly 46 degrees this morning but a light hoodie jacket felt just right.

We made really good time in getting packed up and we were ready to go about five minutes after eight. Both Dave and Corbin were ready before me but they haven't been here for over two months. we said goodbye to our neighbors but most of our other friends weren't out yet. I guess it was too warm in their trailers...

We made good time down highway 281 and only had minor slowdowns when we went through the towns. No big deal, and we decided to make our first "comfort" stop along the road before we got into San Antonio. We thought that was the best way to go and we had decided to make our one long stop at a Love's Truck Stop in Three Rivers. We were there longer than expected, but since it was the last stop before arriving in Mission, it was well worth it. 

We had no incidents or problems and made it to Mission about 3:30. Delia, our park owner, had just gone home for a break, but we found our sites and began backing in and getting set up before she came over. I had some trouble getting into this site but finally got in. I came in apprehensive about leaving ruts in the site like I did last year, but the ground was very soft because of recent rain. Today my problem began when I accidentally pulled the pin on the emergency brake on the trailer. Hard to pull a 16,000 pound trailer with the brakes locked! At any rate, we got that fixed and after a bit of back and forth, we were in and began setting up. 

We made it in in time to watch the second half of the Texans-Chiefs football playoff game. I was glad we made it, but after seeing how the Texans played, I'm not so sure. 

Last year we had an orange tree beside us but we changed sites and now have one across the street. As you can see, it is loaded with fruit. I can't wait to try some!

And here we are! All set up and ready to enjoy some warm weather. Someone forgot to tell Mother Nature because it was chilly last night and downright cold this morning but I'm sure that warm weather will be returning. 

So long.

Friday January 8, 2016-Inks Lake State Park

Well, here I am again, over a month behind on my blog entries. I have been busy with guiding deer hunters, and have been very tired at the end of the hunts. We put in more than 30 hours on the three day hunts, and I am always just too tired to write. It is tiring but a lot of fun, both for us (the guides) and the hunters. We have been having excellent results, with over 100% for most of the hunts, but the last one was lower. We don't know if the weather is the problem or the fact that so many deer have been harvested and we are thinning the herd.

We have enjoyed this park so much that we have signed up through the 2019-2020 season. One reason for the long-time sign-up is the number of park hosts here this year. There are an extraordinary number of people here to host and we wanted to be assured of a spot for the future.

We had a nice Host dinner for Christmas, with one couple bringing a large ham and the rest if us bringing side dishes and desserts. We had a great meal and after we played a dice game called Farkle. This is a fun dice game that we have played before several years ago. We enjoyed playing with some new friends. 

New Year's Eve was celebrated at our house by staying home. We almost never go out and nothing had been planned here except a few campfires but it was on a Thursday night, the last day of a deer hunt, so I was very tired and didn't feel like doing anything so we just stayed in. Party Poopers!

We had some more friends visiting us here. Dave and Nancy came in on January 4th and Corbin and Flora came in on the 6th. They will stay here until we leave for Mission on the 9th. We are looking forward to our visit to Mission.

Please stay tuned...

So long.

Saturday December 5, 2015-Inks Lake State Park

This evening we went to see a boat parade down the river above Inks Lake. Our vantage point was from the old highway on the closed-down bridge, which was a good point to see the boats below us, but it was surrounded by a very high cyclone fence, which made taking good photos very difficult.

The boats gathered and then circled under the bridge. There was also a barge with the fireworks on it below us. Again, it made personal viewing the fireworks easy, but they were very nearby so I couldn't get the full effect. 

After the boat parade we drove into Burnet to see the Christmas lights on the town square around the County Courthouse. Beautiful!!

I especially liked the icicles hanging from the limbs. They are actually flat lights with descending lights that make them look very realistic. We plan to go to another couple of light displays before Christmas and I'll show you the pictures when we go.

So long.

Thursday December 3, 2015-Inks Lake State Park

We have been having a great time again at Inks Lake where we are camp hosting again. This is our fourth year to host here and my third year to be a deer hunt guide. 

I think I have showed you this picture before, so this is just a reminder of how beautiful our site is here. If they had wifi here, it would be perfect!

Our neighbors, Paul and Willene's place.

We were visited here at the park just before Thanksgiving by our friends Tony and Erika, but unfortunately I didn't take any photos during that time. I am sorry for that, but trust me, we had a nice time with them. We ate out a couple of times including Cooper's Barbecue in Llano and the Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls but best of all, we had fun with our friends!

We went to visit Grandma Willie Mae and my brothers Phil and Ted the day after Thanksgiving. We had a delicious lunch at Pat's Place in New Braunfels. That is Grandma Willie Mae in front, Stella and I to her right, Phil and Carol, and Ted. As some of you may know, Ted lost his wife Kay in February. 

This is one of my three deer hunt blinds. I am just showing you this photo to give you an idea of the size of this area. It has the longest distance for shots of any of the blinds and I am proud to say that it has one of the best records for deer harvesting. I am standing in front of the blind and it is approximately 125 yards to the brush line. If you blow the picture up you can see the deer feeder in the left center of the picture. The man in the black jacket is Don, another host in the park and a professional photographer and the orange speck is the hunter, Shane.

Here is a better picture of Shane, one of five disabled  hunters that were here this week. This is an Americans with Disabilities compliant hunts, and as far as we know, one of very few in the country, certainly the only one in the TPWD system. We had the Director of Public Hunts, Justin, here for this hunt and he was very impressed.

Here I am posing with Shane and his two deer. As you can see, he is confined to his wheelchair as were three of the other four hunters. The fifth hunter was named Alia, age 10, who has a prosthetic leg. He took three deer by himself, one of which was his first-ever! I believe that he is having the deer mounted as a trophy of his first deer hunt.

A better photo of Shane with his hoodie down. It was cold this morning, about 35 degrees, another reason to congratulate these guys for braving cold weather to come out to hunt. We are honored to have these guys, both young and old, to come out and participate with us. 

The hunt will continue and I will try to keep you posted on or activities. We will have a youth-only hunt during the Christmas vacation and I will try to remember to bring my camera with me during that time.

The weather has been just about perfect for the past couple of days, with cold temps in the morning and warm and dry days, with temperatures in the upper 70's. I'll love it while it lasts!

So long.

Wednesday November 11, 2015-Inks Lake State Park

We are pretty well settled in here at Inks Lake. We still can't believe how many folks are in here to host along with us. I guess it will be okay, just a bit different. We had a park host meeting yesterday and the topic was brought up that NO host can boss another around. I don't know how that is going to be received by some people here but I guess we'll see. 

Some of our old Texas Boomer friends, Jim and Kitty Gardner, came to stay at the park for a few days and it was good to see them. Today we took them to Cooper Barbecue in Llano for supper and we had a great time. We got caught up on our travels and some plans for the future. It was a very nice time with old friends.

While we were there, a group of U.S. Army soldiers came in to eat. We learned that they are at Fort Hood fr training but not where they are from. It was nice to spend time in the presence of Army heroes that are still serving on Veterans Day. I would also like to add my congratulations and thanks to all the veterans out there that served. As some of you know, my Dad served in the Navy during World War II and was injured when the LST he was on was bombed and sunk. 

My work in the park will begin in a few more days and until then I will have to find something to do. I'm sure that I can find something...

So long.

Monday November 9, 2015-Moving day-Johnson Creek RV Resort to Inks Lake state park

Dave came over yesterday and with the help of a few other rally-goers, we got the new tire replaced onto the trailer and the spare put back into the storage under the trailer. Everything went very well except for the cable that lowers and raises the spare tire got off the roller and required some work to get straightened out. 

Later in the evening we had a nice meal of leftovers from the potluck. It was a fine way to end the rally and we visited for a long time before coming back home to begin preparations to leave in the morning.

We woke and had a nice breakfast before beginning our packing up to leave and still were ready to go about 9:30. We saw Dave and Nancy & Tom and Marti off before we left, but we only have about a hundred miles to go to the Inks Lake state park.

We made a very uneventful drive to our new home for the next couple of months. We were shocked when we arrived at the number of hosts that are here. There are 22 park host sites here and we got the next-to-last one. We are pleased with our site except that there is no Internet service at our site. We still have our own MIFI service but it is somewhat limited, so we won't be able to spend a lot of time "surfing" the net. 

Our site, #205. This is near the first site we were in a few years ago.

Our site showing our neighbors behind us. Paul and his wife are directly behind us and Roger and his wife are to the right. 

I went down to see my fellow deer hunt guides this morning and saw our hunt coordinator, Chris. We will just have to find something to do until the end of this month and the hunts will start on December 1st. I will be busy after that and I am looking forward to it.

So long.

Sunday November 8, 2015-Johnson Creek RV Resort

To bring you up to date on things, we took the blown out tire to Discount Tire in nearby Kerrville. I didn't know what to expect because the tires are at the end of their life in the RV world but nothing was said about their age and $38.75 later the tire was replaced. No strain, no pain. There was a delay in getting the tire installed because they were very busy and their phones and computers were down because someone had cut through a fiber-optic line somewhere, causing this outage with AT & T service in town. We ran some other errands and returned to get the new tire and were on our way!

One day we went out to eat lunch with Tom and Marti at a place called Classic Burgers and More and man, were we glad we went! Good, old fashioned burgers and great fries and onion rings were on the menu and they were great. So good in fact that the next day we took Dave and Nancy there. 

There was another reason to take Dave and Nancy out. We had gone to get the truck serviced and I took a wrong turn. We ended up on a loop around Kerrville and I pulled into a driveway leading to a city water well, intending to turn around to head back into town. I didn't realize how soft the ground was because of all the rain and slid off close to the fence. I wasn't stuck in the sense that I was buried but couldn't get traction to get out. I called Dave and he came out with his 4 wheel drive truck and pulled me out.

We had a park sponsored potluck dinner on Friday night and then had our rally Meet and Greet and Blue Bell ice cream. Several people from the park came to the Meet and Greet since they are Heartland owners and two of them actually joined the club!

Saturday was the club potluck and of course it was delicious. I always enjoy the potlucks but it's hard to watch what or how much you eat at one. I did the best I could and feel pretty good about my diet. I'm working on it slowly but surely.

This is a bittersweet day for us. The rally season is over for us until March of next year. We'll miss our friends but will keep ourselves busy at the state park.

So long.