Phase 1 after the Lower 48

Mount Pleasant KOA, TX

Wednesday, 9 through Tuesday, 22 August 2023

In planning this stay here at a campground I was comfortable in, I hoped I'd be able to finish my posts for North Carolina and for the travel to get here.  But I found myself contending with unexpected factors that kept me from doing that.

First there was the heat.  That actually wasn't unexpected - I'd come to Texas knowing it was going to be very hot and figuring I'd have an easier time finding inexpensive campsites in a state where nobody wanted to be right then.  What was unexpected was the effect the heat had on all of us.  By "heat" I mean daytime temps that never got below 90° and soared to 106° for several days.  And those are the actual temperatures - I don't know what the heat index readings were.

For Dexter, he spent days producing liquid stools frequently during the day and night.  He eventually got better, but the heat when we went out for walks seemed to be really hard on him.  I tried to keep him in the AC most of the day.

For Lily, there were a couple of odd incidents.  One mid-afternoon, she fell off the top bunk, then couldn't get her balance and walked like she was really drunk.  She lay down in the shower stall by the litter box and just stayed there.  I finally put a fan in there for her because the RV's AC never seems to make it into the bathroom.  At 7:30 PM on another day, she had another spell of uncoordinated limbs, moving as if she had cerebral palsy.  It was slightly cooler that day, and of course I had the AC running, so I don't know if these episodes are heat-related or not.  But I hope so because otherwise, she's got some kind of serious problem.

For me, I couldn't seem to summon much energy.  When I'd take Dext out for walks, I'd often have to stop and rest part-way along.  Even when I managed to do chores - a couple of loads of laundry, cleaning the bathroom, slow-cooking a chicken and making a pie - I had to do things in stages so I could stop and rest.

Second was chores and repairs that required an out-of-town trip.  After being here a week, I was getting desperate to find a recycling drop-off center.  Mt. Pleasant doesn't recycle, so I checked the larger cities in the vicinity.  The only one that would take all my recycle stuff (some wouldn't take glass, for instance) and that didn't require me to show proof of residency was in Tyler.  So I spent some time locating businesses and driving routes for the various errands I needed.  Even Google said getting to Tyler would take almost 1½ hours one way - so 3 hours round trip plus the actual errands - we left the campground soon after 7:30 AM.

Top of that errand list was the problem with the cabin batteries.  The first place I stopped said they'd be willing to sell me batteries but wouldn't install them, and for that I'd need to go to another of their locations.  When I went there, the install guy showed me just what a mess I had going with the batteries.

The battery on the right was just plain dead, but the one on the left was really fancy dead.
All that green and blue is corrosion, and the green at the ends of those connectors
shows the corrosion had extended beyond the connectors and into the connections.

I got lucky because instead of throwing up his hands and saying this was too corroded to be a normal install, the installer guy took pity on me (older clueless lady) and scrounged up the parts he wouldn't usually need but happened to have, and replaced those corroded connectors in addition to installing 2 brand-new batteries.  I spent a little extra and got a new kind of battery that doesn't need to have water added - because I absolutely never remembered to add water, which is why my batteries kept needing to be replaced.  Theoretically, these will last longer under my policy of benign neglect that I extend to just about everything I own.  So all that took an hour - out in the blazing heat (no indoor work spaces available).  I felt sorry for the install guy - we were all absolutely dripping with sweat by the time he was finished.  But thank goodness the cabin switches function like they're supposed to now.

I found a dog park online, and we stopped there for a while.  There were 3 or 4 very large fenced-in areas for different sized dogs, and Dext met several energetic guys in the large dog area.  For some reason, the owners ignored me, but I wasn't there for me so that was okay since Dext had fun.

We also stopped at a grocery store that was stocked for a larger town (Tyler - pop. 105,955) than the one in Mt. Pleasant (pop. 16,114), and we went to a PetsMart (which Mt. Pleasant doesn't have any version of).  And of equal importance, we stopped at the recycling place.  That turned out to be a large, active area with poor vehicle traffic control but great recycling facilities.  They accepted just about everything, as long as you had stuff separated.

As far as I could tell, Smith County, that Tyler's in, is a partly dry county (so beer and wine are available for sale), but Tyler itself is a dry city (so no alcohol is available).  I saw this illustrated in the tiny town of Winona (pop. 623) a few miles north of Tyler where I saw 3 liquor stores within 1½ city blocks - much like that liquor store feet from the Tyler County (no relation to the city of Tyler) line that I saw driving here the other day.

School started today for some school districts, including several of those I drove through today, so I often ran into reduced speed zones and school buses to stop for, which made the trip longer (though saving the life of a child is certainly worth the price).

Once back at the campground, I had to stop to buy propane, then empty my waste tanks, then fill the water tank, then walk Dext again.  It was almost 6:00 by the time I was done with all this and the critters were feeling badly neglected because the usual dinner time is about 4:15.  But despite the heat, I got a lot done, though it wore me out to do it.

Of course, by the next day, I was still pretty pooped and just couldn't bring myself to do anything constructive.  I read the Fulton County (GA) indictment on RICO charges (and realized how many esoteric byways there are in the field of law, because I knew nothing about RICO law).  And I watched The Post and All The President's Men.  The Post (made in 2017) was about the fight surrounding the Pentagon Papers in 1971, while All the President's Men (made in 1975) was about Watergate in 1972.  Watching them in chronological order of the subject matter was a bit jarring, because the difference of almost a half-century in the quality of movie-making made the events almost not seem connected.  Though I understand Katharine Graham's decision to fight to publish the Pentagon Papers gave her the strength to withstand the enormous pressure to stop investigating Watergate.

Third was some setbacks in planning future travel.  Though I've finished the Lower 48 states, I still very much want to visit Washington, DC, but when I started trying to plan a trip there, I ran into some serious cost problems, even going at a non-tourist time of year.  For one thing, I have to get up there, and that by itself will cost money.  If I were younger and willing to drive long hours at a time, I wouldn't need to stop at so many campgrounds on the way north.  But I'm not there any more (actually, even when I was in my 30s I hated driving long days) so I had to find a route that I could afford.  I came up with 3 different routes north, and they all seemed expensive.

Then, once in the DC area, the RV park I planned to stay in near DC charges $98/night - even in November - so I couldn't expect to stay there for very long.  The advantage of that campground is that a DC Metro bus stops there throughout the day and connects to the train into the city.  That would let me leave the RV in a relatively protected location while I played being a tourist.  To cut the cost I looked at staying at Virginia and Maryland state parks and then driving to a Metro train station, but that would mean leaving the RV in a public parking lot all day which seems like asking for trouble.

It all started to feeling overwhelming - all these expensive decisions to make - and I just had to set it aside for now.  My brain just seemed to seize up when I tried to get it to even narrow things down.

Instead, I tried to come up with plans to get other chores done in Texas.  For instance, my state inspection sticker was months past due and I needed to get it updated.  But when I called around in the Mt. Pleasant area, I learned that because the RV's registered in Collin County (near Dallas), I'll have to get it inspected there because Collin County requires an emissions test (the Dallas area having air quality problems).  The folks over here in East Texas don't have the equipment because they don't have the air quality problems.

I also needed to schedule annual visits with my doctors in Austin (some of whom I haven't seen in several years).  And I needed to fit those into the near-holiday calendar I expected could clog up available appointment dates.

So I did get appointments with my regular doctor, my dentist (actually, that guy had retired since I was last there, so I got his partner), my eye doctor (because I'm certain I need new glasses), and my other eye doctor (the retina specialist near Dallas).  And I made a reservation at the state park near Austin, because it's the only campground in the area I can afford.  Even there, and even in December, this state park had almost nothing available on weekends, only the weekdays, so I'll have to come up with a Plan B for the weekends.

And I made a reservation at Cedar Hills State Park south of Dallas, which would put us in the neighborhood for some of the errands in that area.  But it all took more time than I'd expected.

But there was a plus side.  David and Anna drove over to Mt. Pleasant from Dallas to visit us for a couple of days.  We'd originally envisioned being able to sit outside the RV under the awning and enjoy the pleasant summer out-of-doors in East Texas.  None of that happened.  Of course, I didn't dare put out the awning, and anyway with temps over 100° we didn't want to sit outside at all.  We spent most of their visit sitting in the RV's AC.  

When Dext saw Anna get out of their car, he started quivering with excitement.  He's just crazy about her.  He was glad to see David, but David is clearly second string in his book.  Well, I am too.  

One day we (people) went to JoJack's Smokehouse, a nearby BBQ place named after the owner's rescue dogs; I've been wanting to try it, but even to pick up take-out I'd never want to walk very far without Dext, and wouldn't anyway dream of leaving him to wait outside the restaurant when the weather's so crazy hot.  Their food was really good.  David had a chopped meat sandwich, Anna had a baked potato, and I had ribs, and we all reported to each other that our choices were great.

David was very kind and cleaned out the elbow bend under the bathroom sink for me.  He said somebody had tightened it too much (he remedied that) and he said they aren't usually intended to be cleaned out because their purpose is to catch yucky stuff (I'm paraphrasing).  But I wanted it done because it seemed to be the source of unpleasant odors - and I was right about that because David's cleaning job fixed the problem.

Also a plus were the kittens.  Of course, they're nearly adults now, but their behavior hasn't adjusted to that fact.  At the PetsMart I found that toy that Karen and Bobby had, and here's the video I promised.  I had to chop it in 2 pieces so each one was short enough for the program to upload it - but the kittens are pretty funny.  That's Jimmy on the left and Bucky on the right in both segments.

Each time I left the campsite for errands, I dumped my waste tanks when we got back, but then I wasn't always careful about parking in a level area of the site.  When the RV isn't level, then the bathroom door will swing open or swing shut, and I have to prop a shoe or rubber boot on one side of the door or other to stop the swinging.  Well, Jimmy likes reaching under the door with his paw to swipe at a toy or his brother, and after a bit all that swiping and reaching ends up moving the shoe so the door swings - in this case - shut.  One day Jimmy got stuck in the bathroom at least 6 times because of this.  For some reason, he hasn't figured out how easy it is for him to get out - he never seems to try to push on the door, which would take only a light touch to open.

Here's a photo of the kitties enjoying the birds and so forth that hang out in the greenery behind the RV.

That's Jimmy on the left, Bucky on the right.

In case you can't tell how big they've gotten, here's a video I took in Iowa last November.

I hope these videos will play once they're published, because they're not playing for me in this draft version.