Surprising Wichita Falls

RVing is full of unexpected events.  Things like, “what do you mean the jacks won’t go down” to “is that red light on the dashboard a bad thing?”  Fortunately most of the surprises are good things, which is probably why we keep doing this.  Case in point, Wichita Falls, TX.

We planned a 2 night stop here to be close for a visit to the Wichita Falls Wildlife Refuge.  The RV Park looked good on paper and the manager was lovely on the phone as we made reservations.  Then we pulled in, greeted by colorful 10’ flamingos and a rainbow of fire hydrants.  This could be fun.  

Welcome to Wichita Falls RV Park

The check-in lady enthused about the sites to see and we soon had a map with highlights marked.  Wichita Falls???  Who knew?  The next good omen, the rig next our site was a twin of Chuck.  Yes, another 36QSH Phaeton, only one year newer.  If we came home drunk we could be in trouble.  And the frosting on the cake?  Outstanding free WiFi – a rare occurrence in most RV parks.  Turns out we are parked under the repeater.

We got set up and started touring.  World’s littlest skyscraper – check.  Funny story that.  http://www.texascooppower.com/texas-stories/history/legend-of-the-worlds-littlest-skyscraper

Museum of North Texas History – closed for the day, but interesting.

A downtown full of resale and vintage clothing stores – fun.  After dinner at a great barbecue place we decided an extra day in Wichita Falls would be worth it.

The next day we devoted to the town.  First stop - WEE-CHI-TAH.  To quote from the website: 

This marvelous life-sized sculpture features a Comanche family crossing the Wichita River. The actual legend of their crossing defines where Wichita got its name. This multi-part piece of art is of a Comanche woman, her child, two braves, their horses and a colt set in the natural beauty of rock & flowing water. The woman is testing the river's depth, as the legend tells, and describes it is ""waist-deep"", which is how ""Wee-chi-tah"" is translated. I hope that everyone who looks upon this sculpture will see a people who loved their own, the land, the horses, things that The Great Creator gave, not to be sold or owned, but a way of life, free, free to enjoy, free to live. Jack Stevens, Artist

It was very cool.  The gloomy day added to the atmosphere and the figures looked alive.  The expression on the child’s face is so gleeful.

  And, immediately adjacent is the best reuse of an old grain elevator imaginable – a climbing gym.  How smart is that.  An old trestle bridge is part of a nearby hiking trail along the river.

Climbing gym in an old grain elevator

The Navigator leading the way off the bridge

Next stop was the Riverbend Nature Center devoted to bringing city residents in touch with the river and the outdoors in the city.  It was a quiet day and we got a guided tour of the prairie dog colony (former pets that outgrew their pet life), butterfly house and other attractions.  

Prairie dog

Orange Juliet (not Orange Julius) butterfly

From there I insisted we find the “falls” that give Wichita Falls its name.  Sadly the original falls were wiped out in some natural disaster in the 18^th century and the current falls are a man-made re-creation built in the 1990s.  Nevertheless, it makes for an attractive park.

Wichita Falls

Back home to Chuck for lunch and a break and a wait for darkness.  Darkness because the biggest attraction in Wichita Falls at this time of year comes alive as darkness falls – The Fantasy of Lights!  My pictures don't do it justice and the story is interesting so check out the website:  https://fol.mwsu.edu/story/

It was pretty spectacular and the surrounding neighborhood was well – lit also (with lights silly). 

Part of the Fantasy of Lights

Today we might actually head for the Wildlife Refuge – our original plan for Wichita Falls.

Ruling the Rig

Our very first trip in Chuck was to a state park 15 miles from home to test out our abilities and our rig.  We had only one cat at the time, Beanie, and of course he went with us.  What we didn’t realize at the time was the variety of nooks and crannies built into the interior of Chuck.  We woke up that first morning and couldn’t find Beanie.  We called and opened every cupboard and closet and door.  We searched outside, sure he had is some mysterious way escaped and been eaten by a coyote.  We were frantic and hysterical for a good half hour when we heard a soft “meow” from a cavity below the closet that he somehow found.  We spent the next 45 minutes cajoling, begging and bribing him out of that cavity, popped him in the car and drove him home to spent the 2^nd night alone at home while we continued to camp.  Once the weekend was over our friend Simon cut a board to cover the opening to the cavity and we felt safe.  Unknown to us, that was just the beginning of the “Where’s Beanie” saga. 

Our next trip was to Door County and Beanie made the trip in his cat carrier strapped with one of the seat belts to one of the couches.  He seemed OK when we arrived at the campground and the Navigator and I went in to register.  We came out to find that he had managed to escape his carrier and was nowhere in sight.  We were sure he was in the rig so we went ahead and set up and starting calling for him with no response.  Worried, but not yet panicking, we opened some wine and sat with a friend until, all of a sudden, a tiny paw was seen pushing through an air vent behind the kitchen cabinets.  Yes, yet another cavity, apparently accessed behind a couch.  This time a bribe of cheese lured him over the back of the cabinet, through the cabinet and back into living space.  We stuffed a couple of pillows behind the couch to block the opening and the game was on. 

By far his favorite hiding place is under the bed in the slide mechanism.  Over the years we’ve added 5 body pillows and a bed pillow, all of which are jammed into the openings around the bed.  Additionally a pool noodle is wedged into place to hold the pillows.  We also make sure that the cabinet over the bed where we store extra towels is open and it is an alternative hiding place for him, but one we can reach.  99% of the time all of this preparation works, keeping him within reach.  But every once in a while the system breaks down and our preparations for departure sends him into hiding.  Hiding in the slide ensures that we can’t leave since bringing in the slide would crush him.  Not that we’ve ever considered that, even at our most frustrated….which was just the other day.

We try not to telegraph that we’re getting ready to pack up but there’s a certain tension in the air on moving day and on Wednesday Beanie disappeared.  We searched all the easy-to-reach hiding spots and concluded he was under the bed.  We started the waiting game.  “Act casual”.   After 20 minutes we were on the floor cajoling.  Then we put out wet food and treats trying to appeal to appetite.  No sign.  Alternatives were considered.  Should we push the vacuum cleaner hose under there?  We agreed that scaring him was counter-productive.  How patient could we be?  We had reservations for the next campground but if we had to we could stay another night in the parking lot of the RV service place and spend Thanksgiving in Big Cabin, OK.  It was now pushing noon, way past our hoped-for departure time of 10:30.  We told the campground managers that we had a mechanical issue delaying our departure – a cat in the slide.  They didn’t laugh in our faces but we heard snickers as we left the office.  Finally we decided to go into town and do a little grocery shopping figuring our absence would lure him out.  Yes, we returned and he was casually peering out the window, all departure fears gone.

Rig Monarch

With a swoop he was tucked into his carrier and we finished our preparations and departed.  Score:  Cat-25,  Humans – still behind.  

Theoretical Question

Theoretical Question – how many navigation systems does one need to find one’s way in the rural US?  One or two maybe?  We currently have 5.  Yes, 5, and we’ve still missed our mark 2 days out of 3.  To be fair, we aren’t using all 5 all the time but you’d think with 2 or 3 we’d land at our destination on the first try. 

System one is our RV Garmin GPS system.  Brand new last year after our other system dumped us on the side streets of Los Angeles, it’s pretty reliable, routing us away from low overhead hazards, roads too small for RVs and other dangers not apparent until too late.  We have her voice set on the “Samantha” setting so we call her Sam for short.

Sam

System two is a trucker’s navigation app on the iPad.  It has a male voice so we call him John.  John doesn’t not connect to satellites, instead relying on memory and the occasional wifi connection so that he knows where he is.  Also able to keep us away from weak bridges and low overheads but not aware of traffic jams and other quickly developing hazards.

John

System 3 is the Navigator (aka Robin) and a big paper trucker’s atlas.  Yes, very old school, but reliably present with safe routes color-coded.  Not always fast but reassuring.  Systems 4 and 5 are two cell phones with Siri on one and Sir Laddie on the other (Robin has changed Siri to the male British voice we affectionately call Sir Laddie in honor of our British friend Simon).  We rarely resort to 4 and 5 in Chuck, probably because we only have 4 hands between us and two of them are on the steering wheel.

On the first day we were feeling pretty smug as Sam and John agreed on routing all the way from Kenosha to Springfield, IL.  Day two started out well, as again they agreed even while talking over each other occasionally.  They both routed us one exit past our destination but then disagreed on exactly how to get back, Sam seemingly putting the RV park in the middle of the freeway while John landed us pretty much on point.

Yesterday got a little hairy at the end.  Sam seemingly had the RV park firmly programmed while John couldn’t get closer than the highway number.  We exited the Oklahoma Turnpike at Big Cabin and following Sam’s directions sailed past our destination at 60 mph.  It was a divided highway with a fair amount of traffic and no places to pull off and turn around especially when the combined length of rig and car is about 50 ft.  Next opportunity to reverse was the town of Adair, 11 miles down the road.  In Adair we turned off the highway on Main St and headed around the block, we thought, except the street didn’t have any cross streets and rapidly turned into a narrow gravel road crossing tiny streams on tinier culverts that clearly were not designed to support 32 tons of RV.  We crept along for several miles, passing bulls and cows in adjacent pastures until Sam finally indicated a cross trail leading back to the highway.  The Navigator got out to scout before we turned onto it.  The vultures were circling (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration) and we turned onto the goat track.  A mile further and we were back onto the highway and soon arrived at our destination.

Today we head for Oklahoma City, a big city.  I have high hopes.

New and Better (in theory) Beginnings – 2016-11-21

When we left for the winter last year, we had a bad surprise when our leveling jacks didn’t work at our first RV stop.  Without being level we were unable to put out the 4 slides that turn the tunnel into reasonable living space.  In addition, our water system had frozen and once thawed it leaked so badly that we couldn’t hook up to the RV park water system and had to work off our fresh water tank which meant showering in the various parks’ bathhouses until we got it fixed.  Eventually the Navigator got really good at eyeballing level sites and we lived without jacks all winter but all in all, It was not a comfortable start to last year and we vowed this year would be different.

Nortie holding down the dash

Chuck (the RV) spend most of this past summer up in Wausau, WI at a dealer, getting the jacks and various other things fixed.  As we brought it home we made vague plans to get out for at least a weekend before we left for the winter so that we’d find and fix any issues before the long trip.  Of course, life interfered and Chuck spent the remainder of the summer in storage until about a week ago when we brought it home and started loading it up.  The good news – the jacks worked.  So yesterday we were ready to go.  Except of course for that pile of stuff in the hallway that constituted the final 6 trips out to the rig.  Which of course scared the cats enough that they disappeared into that maze we call a basement.  Finally, cats corralled, house locked, cars moved, we turned the key and Chuck fired right up.  The Navigator was in position, I shifted into Reverse, released the airbrake and alarms started beeping hysterically.   Oh yeah, those pesky jacks were still firmly anchored to the ground preventing movement.  Oops.  Reboot.  Jacks up and but now the rig wasn’t airing up and was sitting on its chassis instead of on the inflated airbags.  10 minutes of pumping the brakes and now we were ready to go and we maneuvered out the driveway.  Time to hook up the car, except do we really remember how the auxiliary brake attaches?????  Several (6 or 8) tries later, that was working.  Except did that tire look low?  Get out that fancy digital gauge we bought 4 years ago and have never used.  Oops, dead battery in the gauge.  We sat in Chuck for 15 minutes debating the options starting with putting a “For Sale” sign in the window and dropping it off at the RV dealer and driving to Tucson in the car.  Finally we got out and looked and the tire looked better so we drove to the local truck stop for a possible air fill.  It looked even better so we eschewed professional help and hit the highway.   5 hours later we were settled in Springfield, IL at the basic, but inexpensive Illinois State Fairgrounds RV park for the night.  After a good night’s sleep we were back on the road today to St. Robert, MO.  It was a blessedly uneventful day’s drive and we are now comfortable ensconced at the Magnuson Motel and RV park.  Stay tuned, we have another 119 days to go.

Magnuson Hotel and RV Park - Glamorous Living