Texas - Days 24 - 34 - Mt. Pleasant and the KOA campground

Mt. Pleasant KOA, Mount Pleasant
Thursday, 26 November - Sunday, 6 December 2020

I intended to spend 4 nights here – just the Thanksgiving weekend – and ended up staying 12 nights.  Partly that was because I needed the time to rest and regroup, and partly it was because I started having trouble finding campgrounds where we could go.  

Of course, most campgrounds had a campsite or two open this night or that night (though some seemed to be completely full for weeks), but those campsites were always buried in the middle of the campgrounds, and I see no point in planning to stay somewhere where we may not even be able to get out of the RV without causing trouble.  Now that I’m getting used to my dogs, I've started noticing mine aren’t the only ones causing trouble.  Even in this Mt. Pleasant campground, I found 2 other dogs that suddenly stood alert and started barking when they merely saw mine, even if mine hadn’t noticed them.

So what with one thing and another, we stayed here a week and a half.


Doctor Appointments

It took some looking, but I found the business cards I’d brought on this trip from each of the doctors I’d been seeing in Austin before I started traveling.  I made appointments for the critters at my vet, and an appointment for me with my dentist.

I haven’t been to a dentist at all these last 3 years and that’s really been worrying me.  At first, I couldn’t figure out how to find one in any miscellaneous town I happened to be traveling through that I could believe was trustworthy (I’ve been to some in the past who weren’t).  And just when I was about to throw caution to the winds early this year, the pandemic hit. Even if a dentist had been open I wouldn’t have gone. So it may be odd to be excited about seeing a dentist, but I am.

My regular doctor is now seeing patients only online, thanks to the virus, and they gave me an early appointment with her, rather than wait till I was in town.  Well, that was something new for me, never having used Skype or Zoom or any of those services.  But they sent me a link, and on the appointed day and time I was there, but my doctor wasn’t.  I was only slightly anxious, though, because I well remembered she was often late for regular appointments, being one of those doctors who actually spends as much time with each of her patients as they seem to need (may her tribe increase).  But she didn’t appear and didn’t appear and finally called me on the phone.  She didn’t waste time on whether I’d done something wrong or whether the signal wasn’t strong enough or something.  She just moved straight on to my health concerns.

She changed my blood pressure medicine on a short-term basis – until I could go to the lab in Austin for blood tests (which she says are required by law, which is something I hadn’t known before) and we could have another appointment after she got those results.

She also noted that if I wasn’t using my asthma medicine because I didn’t like the side effects but was continuing to have trouble breathing, I should have asked somebody about it.  She noted that breathing is important.  And I had to agree that it was dumb of someone with my educational level not to ask questions when I have them, particularly about something relatively vital like breathing.  So she changed that medicine, too, again on a short-term basis.

She sent in the new prescriptions to the CVS in Mt. Pleasant (oh the joys of knowing how to use modern technology) and I promised to pick them up and to get the blood tests done and to call for another appointment after that.  She’s a really good doctor.

Blog Posts and Campground Reservations

Of course, the main thing I spent my time on were these 2 activities.  I wrote 11 overdue blog posts while I was here.  And I made route plans and campground reservations for the 3 weeks through Christmas.

That was complicated by needing to spend time specifically near enough to Austin to make it to these appointments, despite the expected traffic.  There are 4 state parks and 2 KOAs within that kind of range; those KOAs are, to my mind, wildly expensive, though I suppose they reflect the town’s popularity these days.  And none of the state parks could take us for 4 or 5 nights at a time.  And while I was at it, I decided to add on an extra day in town to go to the Tuba Christmas on the Capitol steps, that Momma and I used to go to every year.  I hated to be so close, and so near to the right time, and not go.  I still miss her a lot and going to hear the tubas just seemed right.

My solution was to cobble together the nights I’d need by a string of one-night stands, as you might say.  One night at Lockhart State Park, one at McKinney Falls, 2 at Buescher in Smithville, one at Bastrop.  Then the weekend over in east Texas, and back over to Blanco State Park, then Lake Somerville after the tubas.

Once I’d gotten all that pieced together, I decided to do the same thing about my travels the week before going to Austin and the several days after, up to my Christmas reservations.  So I’ve got a string of reservations at 13 different state parks in the 16 nights before I go to Goose Island State Park in Rockport for Christmas. 

Anna tells me she and David have rented a cabin just around the corner from the campground, so we can fix Christmas dinner using accommodations besides my 3-burner gas stovetop and microwave.

Of course, I still have to come up with someplace to stay over New Year's Eve, which is likely to be at least as big a problem as these other dates.  Speaking as a full-time RVer, I find national holidays to be a nuisance.

Trips to Town

I ended up going into Mt. Pleasant twice, besides the drive-though I did when I first got here.  My first trip I was looking for groceries and a new pair of jeans.  I’d discovered that the little hole I thought was in my back pocket was actually in the jeans themselves and was unaccountably getting larger by the day.  I was about ready to try to darn it, which is something I’ve never done before and was reluctant to try for the first time on my only pair of jeans.  It was clearly time to get a 2nd pair.

And it turned out that was easier said than done in a town this size.  They had a local store called Glyn’s Western Wear, but that was on the main street with only parallel street parking available – clearly out of the question.  The only alternatives seemed to be Walmart, which I avoid if I possibly can, and the Beall’s affiliate called Burkes Outlet (Beall’s apparently having gone out of business).  So Burkes it was.

That turned out to be along the lines of a Ross Dress For Less – long racks of clothes allegedly sorted by size and type, though not really.  Still, I managed to find several pairs that might do the job, and then faced the problem of how to try them on with the pandemic concerns.  I was of course wearing gloves, which kept getting caught in zippers and buttons, but I did manage to find 2 pairs that seemed to fit, and I decided to get them both, in case one turned out not to work out.

By then, the critters were clamoring for attention, and I found a little park in town where we could take a short walk and stay to eat some lunch.  I was surprised no one else was there but assumed it was because it was midmorning.  It was sunny and cold that day, but pleasant enough.

So when I went back to town after my doctor appointment to pick up the new prescriptions, we went back by that same park.  This time there were several others there, but fortunately no one with a dog, so we were again able to have a little walk and the dogs could sniff different things than those they found in the campground.

Mt. Pleasant was advertising "Boots And Bells - An Olde West Christmas."  I don't think of northeast Texas as being the Olde West, but I guess they do.

And I passed a business in town with a sign saying, "Don't Forget to Set Your Scales Back 10 Pounds."

I heard on the radio that the hospitals in Texas are more short-staffed than those in any other state.

Campground Life

Mostly we just spent time here.  The campground was big enough, and laid out in such a shape, that we had our choice of several different ways we could walk for varying lengths of time.

This KOA, as many of them do, had a fenced dog park, but this one was unusually large and included some nice pines.  It also had a feature that Gracie absolutely loved: a little corner covered with local vines and bushes, that had been created when a retaining wall was installed to make the park level.

You might can see the proportions, with the retaining wall just higher than Dexter’s back (but he could jump it, of course).  What you can’t see is that this corner is only about a fifth of the length of the park and about a quarter of the width – it really was a good-sized area.  Another thing you may not be able to see in this photo is that Gracie’s there too. She’s hidden back in the vines up against that chain-link fence along the side.  If you can enlarge it, and know where to look, you can just barely see her collar against her very black neck.  She really is hidden, and she apparently loved it.  She made a beeline for it almost every time after she discovered it.

When we get a house of our own, I’ll have to be sure she has an area like this, that’s forgiving enough that she can dig, which she loves, and in the shade, which she also loves.  She seems to feel safe in cave-like places (probably why she goes under the table or in the shower stall when it thunders) and with the vine cover, this place qualifies.  You never know when you’re going to learn something new about someone.

This KOA also had a large field next to a small pond.  The pond was kept aerated, so it never got the scum I’ve seen on many of them.  The field wasn’t fenced and was right next to a pasture with cows and horses, so I had to be careful with the dogs.  But the field had a healthy hedge of bushes and trees around most of it, so I could usually keep the dogs away from the sight of the bigger critters.  It gave us a lot of room to walk around the edge of it so the dogs could sniff things, so we could get at least a little exercise.

The camping area itself was fairly large, with maybe half the spaces taken by long-term residents.  Most of them seemed to have jobs in the area, and every morning from about 3:30 on I’d see a veritable parade of pickups driving out to work.  One of the long-termers apparently had some sort of medical problem, because when we were out for our 6:15 AM walk, we passed an ambulance with a patient in the back, and the ambulance ended up carting this person out - presumably to a hospital.

Two of the long-termers didn’t seem to work, and they were the 2 with the large dogs that would lie outside their respective trailers during the day. One was a boxer mix and the other an Alsatian mix, and both those were on their feet and barking at the first sight of my dogs.  Unfortunately, the Alsatian lived 2 spaces away from us, so it was really hard to go for walks when she was outside, but we managed it.  Oddly, I found out about both of them by accident – literally, an accident.  Both times we came upon these dogs without expecting to see them, and both times Dexter had a strong reaction to being barked at, and both times Gracie was bouncing around too, and both times I got a close hold of Dexter so I had leverage to drag him away while I was trying to keep Gracie in check, and both times I fell down when I got tangled in Dexter’s twisting body and flailing feet, and both times the men owners came after me to apologize and help and just generally be nice.  Contact too close for these virus-fearing times, but still it was kind of them.

So I spent much of our walking times checking out whether either of the dogs was out and, if so, figuring out how to walk while avoiding them.  It was lucky the campground was laid out in such a way that we could do it.  And that I’d chosen my campsite for a location that made that possible.  But all in all, we had a pleasant stay here.

Birds

Since we were just on the other side of I-30 from the town, I wouldn’t have figured this area to be full of birds.  But I guess the attraction was all the wooded areas and the little pond surrounding the campground, because I saw a variety of species without even trying.

Tufted Titmouse

There seemed to be several Tufted Titmouses (I doubt if they’re Titmice) around here, and one perched on the tree next to my window, which was nice of him.  I know it’s a Tufted Titmouse, because that’s the only titmouse species in this area.

Northern Flicker

I saw a Northern Flicker one afternoon – easy to identify by acting like a woodpecker and showing a large white rump area when flying.  And the Northern is, again, the only flicker in this area.

There were at least a pair of Bluebirds I saw several times.  That color is such a happy color.  And a pair of Cardinals were around a lot.

I kept hearing a call that I associate with a Sharp-shinned Hawk.  We used to get one in our back yard in Austin – scaring all the little birds that had come to the feeders – and I never saw this one so could easily be wrong.  But that’s my best guess.

I also heard an owl several mornings, and my best guess there is a Barred Owl, mostly because there weren’t many species to choose from that would be in this area, and the call I heard wasn’t any of the others.  Of course, once I decided to try to identify it, it refused to say another word so I couldn’t tell for sure.

And lots of little sparrows that just don’t sit still long enough for me to get a good enough look at them to figure out which species they are.  But they all made for a pleasant atmosphere.