Winter Woes

 We did get to Johnson Creek RV Park in Ingram, TX on Monday, 3/8 and the first two days were nice.  We sat outside and relaxed.  

However, we looked again at the weather forecast for the week and saw changes from earlier, and, they were not good!

So, I went to the office on Wednesday and said we were leaving on Saturday, 3/13.  Unfortunately, that was not soon enough because, on Thursday, we got a heavy rain/sleet storm.  On Friday everything was covered with ICE.  I was able to get the drivers door open and got the truck started and defroster on.  Then I went around the entire truck pounding on the ice to get it to break up and fall off.

On Saturday we tried to get the back cover on the truck to slide open but it was frozen shut.  Using an ice scraper I was able to break up the ice all around the cover and finally got it open.  Then we could get the truck backed up to the trailer and hooked up.

These pictures show the ice on the trees.

We had called the campground in the RGV where we had stayed in January and they had a site for us.  So we left around 10 AM and got on the road (I-10) south towards San Antonio.  The first 20 miles were good and then we saw a couple of Highway Patrolmen  in the center media with their flashers on.  Before long we came to a complete stop with all the trucks!!  Seems the road is icy up ahead! A couple of jack-knifed trucks were in the ditch.

So we crawled for about 4 miles or so and took about 2 hours before we finally got out of it.  It was a long trip anyway (350 miles) with the delay but we did get to the campground around 5:30 that night.

They had a site for us - somewhat muddy because of all the rain they had been having but we got in and got set up. 

Unfortunately, the small slideout would not go out.  I checked fuses and breakers and couldn't find any problems with those.  So we went to bed and decided to look at it in the morning.   Well, when we got up, we tried it again and it opened!!  We think it must have been frozen and the heater thawed it overnight.  Happy to find that out!!

The next several days were cold (even for south Texas) so we did not do anything.  On Wednesday we decided to go to Walmart for some supplies.  Every gas station has long lines of people waiting to get gas.  Apparently due to the freezing, refineries could not get the trucks out.  We were low on gas (diesel) so the next day I got up at 6:30 and found a station with gas and only had to wait about 10 minutes to get to a pump!

Our trip to Walmart was unusual - no milk, no butter, no meats, no breads, etc.  (The pandemic issues all over again!!!).

Anyway, the weather did get better and we were able to be outside and enjoy the nice weather.

We met the couple (from Tyler, TX), John and Joanie, across the street from us and ended up playing cards with them.  Had a great time.

We did go to South Padre Island to the Pier 19 again for breakfast.  While there Judy saw one of the waitresses go by us with a 'huge' cinnamon roll so we had to have one.

As a result of the cold weather we had down here the first few days, many plants died.  This one had hugh leaves that were green when we first got here, but after the cold spell, they were all turning brown and falling off.

Another plant.

There were cacti that froze and died as well.  Very unusual weather for this area of the state.

We did enjoy our two additional weeks down here and hope to come back some day.

We left on Monday, 3/1, and drove half way again, to Luling, TX and stayed at the same campground.  Had a nice back-in site but it was cold.  If it had been nicer, we could have fished in the pond.

We arrived back in Plano the next day, and, because they had had rain the past few days, we backed our trailer into this!!

Anyway, we are home for awhile.

Got our mail from Julie and had a package from our granddaughter in Ct.  She had these for us.

Cute, huh??

That's all for now.  Will be planning our next adventure soon.