We are leaving McAllen today. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find here. The RGV is a bunch of small cities that all run together. There's not much to see or do. I think I figured out why it's so popular with snowbirds, or Winter Texans, as they call them here. The climate is great, it has everything in the way of restaurants, shopping etc., and it is CHEAP. Apparently one of the cheapest places to live in the USA.
This is what $269,000 will buy you here (and this was by far the most expensive place on the street).
Have a look at the inside here:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/McAllen-TX/pmf,pf_pt/52760167_zpid/25818_rid/any_days/globalrelevanceex_sort/26.386641,-97.921486,26.06511,-98.591652_rect/10_zm/?3col=true
But when visiting the Public Library and the local shopping mall rank in the top 5 things to do in McAllen, (according to Tripadvisor) it's time to move on.
It was HOT yesterday. The 2 AC's in the unit managed to keep the temperature inside around 28. Darlene hung around the pool most of the day and I decided to tackle the water pump on the outboard. You may remember the problem I had with it from last fall. Here are the old and new impellers. No wonder it wouldn't pump water.
We're hoping to use the outboard in the next few days. We will be near Rio Hondo at a park that is on the "Arroyo Colorado". That means "Colorado Gulch", not to be confused with the Colorado River, which doesn't dry up when there's been no rain. Here's hoping the creek is running.
And one more thing....you gotta see this. We drove by this 2 days ago on our way to Progresso but I wasn't fast enough with the camera. So I drove back there yesterday morning, camera in hand, just so you could see this marvel of "anything goes" American advertising.
Well, Mexican advertising actually. The hospital is just across the Rio Grande a few miles south of the billboard. And I always thought the Mexican dentists were the ones offering great deals.
We stayed at a small quiet park in Falfurrias, TX last night after a pretty long driving day. The definition of a long drive is getting shorter with every trip I think. Yesterday's drive was five and a half hours. The last hour dragged by as usual.
Fallfurrias is a small town with a population of about 5000. It seems every small town has one thing or another that it is known for. Not the case here. The best I could glean from the internet is that they were once pretty good at making products from B grade milk, namely cheese and butter. But that was a long time ago. Still, a nice little town "In The Middle of Nowhere", Texas. Nice people too.
Tonight we are in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley, McAllen, TX. It's a large RV park in an urban setting. There are at least 300 RV's in the park but only a handful of people. Kind of like condo's in Florida, 90 percent unoccupied.
The Valley is quite built up, or rather, built out. Nothing taller than a few stories but the developed stretch goes on for 70 miles or so along the border with Mexico. So far, we're not that impressed. Weather is nice though, 90 degrees today and cloudy. Tomorrow the forecast is for 100. And sunny!
We took a drive today to Progresso, another small town. It's directly across the Rio Grande from its sister city, Nuevo Progresso on the Mexican side. We went as far as the border crossing and turned around. We didn't have our passports with us. If we had, we could have parked on the US side and walked across the bridge into Mexico.
This is the parking lot.
Went out for Mexican food again tonight. I had the Chimichanga appetizer. It was outstanding, but I could only finish a quarter of it. The rest is in the fridge along with Darlene's chicken fajiitas which she couldn't finish either.
We did however polish off the margaritas.
We arrived in Austin Friday afternoon. After two full days of interstates we decided to travel on secondary highways from Texarcana to Austin. There is so much more to see off the interstates and although the route was shorter it only took a little longer to get there. Well worth the extra hour, and NO TRUCKS!
Yesterday I went to the storage yard to start getting the Unit ready. I found it exactly the way I left it. It started right up, the generator too and everything appears to be working.
Tomorrow we move it from storage to a local camp-ground where I still need to fill the water tank, the last item on the long list of things to do. We'll stay there the one night and on Tuesday, we're off. But not to our planned first stop.
Two weeks ago I had booked Tuesday through Friday at Mustang Island State Park on the gulf. The day before we left Toronto I received an email from the park saying that due to storm damage, the park would be closed all this week. Funny how such a little thing can really make a mess of your plans.
I found a solution though. Since the park re-opens on Monday April 4th, when we had planned to be in the Rio Grande Valley, I switched the two. So now we're going to RGV first and then to Mustang Island, before we head off the Big Bend National Park.
Sorry, not too colourful yet without pictures but we'll have lots of them soon. Stay tuned.
But just to start things off, there's nothing cuter than a Pug puppy. Otis is just 12 weeks old and belongs to Ella, our niece here in Austin.
We,ve been doing little else but driving for the past 2 days.
We managed to duck the bad weather leaving Toronto yesterday. Had some serious rain this morning leaving Terre Haute, IN. I'm pretty sure the last of the winter's road salt has been washed from the underside of the car.
Tonight, our second night on the road, we're in Texarcana, a town which straddles the state line between Texas and Arkansas.
1050 Km's yesterday, 1192 today. The final few hours really seem to drag by each day. Tomorrow will be an easy day, about 5 and a half hours to Austin.
Went out for mexican food tonight. The margaritas were WAY too big. Must get some sleep now.
Seems like it has been a long time coming, but only a few more days until we head south again for warmer weather and more great adventures.
The CR-V is serviced and ready to go. The little car had a bit of a setback (more like a push forward) in December due to a "rear ender". Hard to believe the insurance claim for this came to well over $5000, which was getting very close to a write off.
But they fixed it right (my choice of body shop, not the insurance company's) and you would never know it had been hit.
We are planning to take 3 days to travel to Austin, overnighting in Terre Haute, IN and Little Rock, AR. These are the places we stopped at on the way home last November. They break the trip to Austin nicely into thirds and we know the hotels (pet friendly) and some good restaurants.
Our loosely planned itinerary for the next 6 weeks includes Padre Island National Seashore at Corpus Christi, the Rio Grande Valley near Brownsville, TX, Big Bend National Park , Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, Branson, Missouri, Nashville (again) and a stop in Charlotte MI at the Spartan factory for what American Coach owners jokingly refer to as "the $5000 oil change". Spartan, the manufacturerof the Unit's chassis offers a 44 point inspection for $100, but I'm guessing it doesn't end there. (I'm definitely not planning to spend 5K, but we'll
have to see what
they find.) They're not cheap but nobody
knows these machines like they do.
So with the exception of the first destination, this trip will be desert rather than beach.
Oppressive heat, wide open spaces and stunning vistas are some of the things my research tells me we can expect. And maybe the occasional rattlesnake, scorpion or tarantula. Comes with the territory.
Last year I promised to tell you how the unit got its name, "The Unit". There was a forerunner to this unit, you see. The original UNIT.
The story on how it got its name isn't terribly interesting, or even funny, but here it is anyways.
I bought it at a large RV dealership near Stoney Creek in 1998. When I asked the salesman (who was also one of the owners) to tell me truthfully if this was a sound motorhome (I know, as if...) he replied that this was "a good unit" and they would stand behind it. A few months later when it started going through antifreeze at an alarming rate, I took it back to them. Broken head bolt, $1500 cost to me. Long story short, after I reminded him of the "good unit" conversation (now in writing) he begrudgingly agreed to do the repair and pick up the cost.
A few "Original Unit Stories"
I bought it in spite of the threat of divorce. I think she over reacted.
The drapes needed to be replaced due to sun damage. I asked Darlene if she would sew a new set for "our new toy", which was no small task.
Big mistake. Little did I know, I was about to have to learn how to sew. They didn't turn out bad. Unlike welding, in sewing you can easily undo your mistakes with scissors. Who knew?
We towed a motorcycle on a trailer for local transportation. We were younger then.
We took a 3 week whirlwind tour of the USA in the fall of 2001. Until last fall, this trip was often referred to as our best vacation ever. We covered more ground in those 3 weeks than we will in the 12 weeks of the fall 2015 and this trip put together. We made it all the way to the Grand Canyon. We were younger then.
I sold the original Unit in 2002, knowing our careers wouldn't allow us to spend enough time travelling to justify keeping it.
It was a "good unit" and we always knew we would get another one some day.
The drive home.
2795 km's, ninety percent of it in rain. Haven't seen the sun in over a week. It's warmer here today than it was in Austin last Saturday.
This was a trip of weather anomalies, starting with intense heat and high humidity, then wind and rain, then cooler, then downright cold and more rain.
At one point last week the radar map showed a weather system (rain) stretching from Mexico all the way to Newfoundland.
But I'm not complaining. All in all it was great.
A few random notes.
Gas in the US is CHEAP! In most states it could be found for as little as $1.60 per gallon. That would translate to 58 cents CDN per litre. We are paying 50% more for gasoline in Canada. It's nice to be able to call yourself a Canadian but it sure costs!
Diesel was a little more, about $2.00 to $2.60 a gallon, but still cheap.
We burned about $650 worth in 2620 miles. The Unit averaged about 11.5 miles to a CDN gallon. Towing the car cost us about 1 mpg. So the fuel cost to tow it the 2600 miles was about $60. Not bad.
I can't speak highly enough of this little car. We dragged it mercilessly over enormous pot-holes at highway speeds and flogged it at 75 mph in the rain for 3 days with nary whimper. I followed us everywhere faithfully, stuck to the Unit's rear bumper. If not for the rear camera I would never have known it was there. I found it hard to believe but we put 1600 km's on it not counting the trip home.
Speed limits south of the border are more realistic than in Canada. Some go beyond realistic. I remember sailing through a small town in rural Texas on a 2 lane country road (ironically the road's name was "Nameless Road") at 55 mph, the posted speed limit. That's pretty close to our maximum on major highways like the 401.
We had a budget for the trip and I'm happy to say we were able to stay well within it. This was in no small part due to the fact that I wrote the budget when the CDN dollar was near par with the US dollar. The budget didn't specify which currency it was referring to so I chose US, of course.
The low cost of fuel and our preference for State Parks over the more expensive private parks helped a lot.
Without getting into specifics, the entire trip came in just under $4000 plus the cost of the trip home at $324.
That's roughly what a week in St. Maarten used to cost us.
So there you have it. Our first big trip in the Unit. The first of many we hope.
Thanks to all who came along for the ride, it's been great!
Hope to see y'all again in the spring.
Be safe, be happy, just do it!
After about a week of temperatures in the single digits I would have to say that, weather-wise anyways, this past week was lousy. Add to that, the past 3 days of constant rain and we're ready to come home where its drier (and probably warmer).
We drove the Unit to the storage place yesterday during a very brief dry spell. It took just about the whole day to pack up everything and winterize the water system, holding tanks, etc. Here's the Unit in her winter home. Pretty cozy, huh?
We left Austin this morning and drove 9 hours in driving rain.
Tonight we are in Little Rock, AR. , a distance of 828 kms. Just had dinner in a pizza/craft beer restaurant. Great beer, awesome pizza.
Now for the high-lites of our trip.
For places we stayed, St. George Is. State Park In Florida was by far the best. Ironically it was also the least expensive. We found we much preferred State Parks to private RV Parks. We avoided any park that had the words "luxury" or "resort" in the name.
Best food had tho be the Apalachicola Seafood Festival. We won't soon forget it and we'll be back.
Best Deal goes to the free ferry to Galveston. A close second would have to be Canadian Club Whiskey. I may have been a little over zealous in my quest to load up on the low priced libation and I now have a fair quantity to dispose of before we cross the border. Not to worry, I'm working on that as we speak.
Most fun, in spite of the weather, was the past week which we spent with Carla, Billy and the kids in Austin. Never a dull moment with Carla planning the activities.
Best Bar was Paddy's (the raw oyster place) and for entertainment, the jazz bar in New Orleans.
We wanted to determine on this trip, what the actual costs would be so I kept track of every dollar we spent. We also wanted to find out if we would drive each other nuts, being in such close proximity to each other for weeks on end. As for the latter, we're both already planning the spring trip so no problems there.
Next post, I'll get into some of the costs and other findings, some of which I found quite surprising.
