Puns

We've been driving a lot today, stopped for the night in Odessa, TX... will tell more about our day later.

For today's post, taken from a friend's Facebook page:

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says: "Dam!".

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly, it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal:transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories.After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off.

"Because", he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture,she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal.

Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. Friars behind on their belfry payments opened a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair.

He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. So,the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, a thug in town to "persuade"them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that: Only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him .(Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good).....A super calloused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did!

 

Kombucha

Kombucha is a fermented, lightly effervescent, sweetened black or green tea drink commonly consumed for its supposed health benefits. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha)

Carl has been making Kombucha for a few weeks... a couple of weeks ago, we took pictures when he was completing one batch and starting the next:

Bottles cleaned and ready for filling (it is better to have dark colored glass bottles, but we have two clear and two dark).

Carl makes a 1/2 gallon of sweet tea in the Instant Pot using 1/4 cup of sugar and lets it cool --

Completed sweet tea

He puts about a 1/4 cup of the sweet tea into each bottle...

Putting sweet tea into the bottles

The Kombucha which has been "fermenting" for about 10 days

 has completed its first fermentation.

Each fermenting of the Kombucha creates a new layer on the SCOBY. The SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is necessary to the making of the Kombucha (like a starter for sour dough bread).

Taking the SCOBY out

SCOBY resting in a bowl to be used again for the next batch.

Carl finishes filling the bottles with the fermented Kombucha

All bottles filled.

Capping the bottles tightly

The remaining sweet tea is poured in with the remaining Kombucha...

Carl splits off the oldest SCOBY...

... and puts the remaining SCOBY in with the sweet tea and kombucha mixture for making the next batch.

It will ferment at room temperature on the counter for 10 days or so.

The newly poured bottles will stay on the counter for the optional 2nd ferment (creating a carbonated-type beverage) for 3-4 days, and then into the refrigerator for consumption. The bottles will keep in the refrigerator for 30 days. Carl has been experimenting with adding fruit and ginger to the bottles for the 2nd optional fermentation to add flavor.

 

Friday

Thursday was a beautiful day weather-wise, but, other than a walk around the loop of the campground where we are parked, and sitting outside, we didn't get much exercise. The weather report indicated that Friday would be the best of the remaining days we had here (rain and cold predicted for Saturday and Sunday), so we decided to ride our bikes and see as much of the campground as we could. I think that we rode about 7 miles and saw a lot more than we would have gotten to if we were walking.

We noticed the growths in the trees...

Yep, it's mistletoe!

Overlooking Lake Bridgeport - there was a large house and boat house that, according to Google Maps is part of Lucky Star Ranch (or dude ranch).

Carl commented that he had not seen prickly pear cactus since he left Arizona (nearly a year ago now!).

We saw deer in a couple of places along our ride.

Someone had recently distributed corn along the road and the deer were enjoying it. They weren't too scared of us either, moving into the brush as we rode by and then right back out on the road/driveway to continue eating.

 

At the end of our ride, we put the bikes back on the rack and walked down the path behind our site to the lake. Carl had seen kids down there on Wednesday throwing rocks into the lake.

 

This campground is really very quiet and nice. One of the places that we rode was to (but didn't take pictures) was the "Back Forty" - a few sites that are separated from the rest, and right next to a small airport runway. I suspect that if we come back this way, we may opt for a site there as I know Carl would enjoy watching the small planes.

RV Storage

I had posted while we were at NIRVC that they were building a new building -- here's another picture of it:

They had been pouring the concrete on the day that I took the picture... a couple of the folks who gathered with us at the fire pit on some evenings had been standing at the fence watching, or, as I called it, "supervising", the work!

Our understanding is that they may be able to occupy the new space as soon as the end of this year.

Carl was talking with a fellow there. He indicated that NIRVC started as a storage facility and they added service due to storage customers wanting to get things done to their rigs and being required to drive somewhere else to get it done. They started doing simple things and gradually worked up to a full service shop with paint and body work too.

Some of the units in storage.

Some more of the units in storage. Do they all look alike to you?

We were trying to figure out how many motorhomes they could have in there -- one of our neighbors in the campground said 800. We were going to try to estimate, but Carl asked instead. The fellow he talked with said that the building could hold 250-400 motorhomes, depending on the sizes of each one (more if they were class B or C, fewer of the large class As).

This was a common sight in the evening (with the opposite in the morning) -- some of the units have to be moved out so that others can be moved in to work on them, so these units are being moved back inside in the evening. I think the ones being moved around are units that are in for service (not stored units). Once they get the new building open (seen on the right side of the picture with another motorhome and towed vehicle on the "new" concrete which is now several days cured), all service and body work is supposed to move there and the current building will be used just for storage again.

When Dwayne and I asked a few years ago, we learned that NIRVC stores only motorhomes, and they will provide "get-ready" service for their stored vehicles (dumping waste tanks, filling fresh tank, having refrigerator plugged in and cold, checking tire pressure, making sure batteries are charged and filled with water) before the customer picks it up. But, you have to sign a contract for a year of service. I just checked the rates, and it looks like it is $10/foot/month -- so for our 43' motorhome, it would be $430/month.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Carl and I are spending our first Thanksgiving Day together, and we're making (and sharing) memories as we go! 

Regina made us such a nice Thanksgiving dinner before we left the farm, and set the bar so high on yummy food, that we knew we couldn't come close, but, we decided to do what we could!

Getting a turkey that would fit in our small oven was the first challenge. We measured and determined that the bird could be at most 8" tall -- so in addition to getting a small turkey, it also needed to be short from back to breast. We looked through a number of turkeys at the store and finally got one that we thought was the best option. It was 15 pounds, but it was actually an inch shorter than the smaller ones!

The turkey ready to go into the oven - in the cooking bag and in disposable roasting pans (we used two to give additional strength).

We used a temperature probe to check the doneness as it was cooking.

We noticed a rig leaving a couple of sites down from us while we were making preparations. It was a very odd looking rig -- looked to be homegrown. We only saw a single woman with it. We hadn't noticed it before so had not taken the opportunity to talk to her to learn any more about it.

We took a walk while the turkey was roasting. One of the "permanent" sites has an interesting outside table - it is metal and has 2 seats on each side and they are all swings. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get onto the seat and stay on it safely, but it is definitely interesting looking!

Eventually (read that as "a lot later than we expected"), the turkey was done. After letting it rest for a little while, Carl started carving.

Wow! That looks great! (The disposable roasting pan turned into the storage pan for the cut off meat.)

We made use of the pull-out buffet counter for the first time since we've been together in Gracie.

We also cooked some things on the stovetop - though we realized that, since our campsite here only has 30A of power, we couldn't run the oven and the stovetop at the same time... until Carl remembered that we also have a generator and it would provide us with all the power we would need! So we used the generator at the end when we were using the stovetop and the oven at the same time.

Yum!

I don't think that anyone eating here today went away hungry!

Even though it seems like a LOT for two people to have a turkey dinner, we wanted to have the experience of making it, knew that we would enjoy leftovers, and that we could enjoy turkey soup made with broth from the bones (the broth is currently being made in the Instant Pot). We also think that we were probably just a *little* ambitious on the number of different items that we made, but, we enjoyed the experience.

Bay Landing

Check this out:

Anything special you notice about where the rig is parked?

If you are observant, you may have noticed that it is no longer in the "campground" (parking lot) at National Indoor RV Center!

We moved to a Thousand Trails Campground, Bay Landing, between Bridgeport and Runaway Bay, still in north central Texas, but no longer in the service center.

If you look even *more* closely, you may notice that there is no awning on Gracie... :-(

We had considered that if they weren't going to finish up with the awning by Wednesday, we were going to go ahead and leave for a few days just to get away from the service center. 

We were also coming to the conclusion that they really weren't going to get the awning installed anytime soon.

Sure enough, the guy who has been working with us on the awning came out to meet with us on Tuesday late afternoon (after I had written yesterday's blog post). He had just come from a discussion with his parts department. They indicated that their best information indicated that the support arms that we needed should be arriving by truck to their Dallas central distribution area on Monday, 11/30 -- !but! that the distribution area was woefully understaffed and they probably would not even get to unloading the truck for possibly a few weeks (!!!). We discussed various options, and decided that it was not worth it to us to stay around another few weeks waiting for these parts. We asked if it would be possible to transfer the work to the NIRVC in Phoenix, and the guy working with us was willing to try to make that happen (so we don't have to come back to Dallas *again* to try to have this work done). He apologized profusely, said that this is beyond frustrating to him, said that we were not the only customers he has dealing with awning problems. It seems that Dometic changed the design of the awning and the awning arms that we need are no longer produced... but Dometic will indicate that they have what is needed and are sending it -- which came with the awning that was shipped. But, that design will not fit our coach, and the body shop folks have spent many man-hours trying to retrofit it without success (on someone else's coach). It is possible that the awning arms on the truck that is supposed to arrive on 11/30 (which won't be unloaded and delivered for another few weeks) could, once again, be incorrect. However, he said that he now knows precisely what we need, and he will not notify us that they have the parts until they have *all* the correct parts we need.

We already had reservations at the Thousand Trails that was just over an hour away, so it was an easy decision to say, "We'll just head on out, and let you continue working on the awning without us sitting here."

That brings us to Bay Landing! The campground is on a part of Lake Bridgeport.  The water near the campground is actually called Hackberry Slough -- somehow that doesn't sound so appealing! I looked it up, and it seems that "slough" means "swamp" or shallow lake.

We haven't walked down to the lake yet, but there is a path right behind our motorhome, and I'm sure we will check it out while we're here.

View out the front -- the sites here are quite long and widely spaced with mesquite trees around.

Gracie all set up.

Oh! An update - I had mentioned in a previous blog post about a couple there at NIRVC with us who had not had hot water for several days... the manager at NIRVC made the correct decision to put the new water heating system into their rig on Tuesday, so they had hot water last night when we talked with them! We were all dancing with joy! We had 5 couples around the fire pit Tuesday night (4 at any one time - some had to leave and others came) - and nice conversation all around. While the "campground" at NIRVC isn't luxurious, it actually was a friendly place with the other folks there. We are all in similar situations, living in rigs that are constantly needing something fixed. We were all discussing how the lack of getting things finished at NIRVC makes us frustrated, everyone seemed to feel that it would not be better anywhere else, and a couple of them had experience in other places that backed that opinion up. Two of the couples who had been there with us the 13 days we were there this time had really appreciated us hosting the evening fire every other night or so -- and we were sorry to be leaving them. But, it was time for us to be going, and we feel an immense sense of relief to be back on our way west!

With a bow on it!

There are a lot of RVs being sold here at National Indoor RV. About every weekday we've seen one or two or three being readied for their new owners:

A new Entegra...

... with a pretty blue bow on the front...

... additional bows on a board in front of the sales office.

Sometimes (maybe most of the time) the rig is brought to the "campground" and the new owners spend one night in it before they leave the lot. We had new owners next to us last night -- they had purchased a Winnebago (I think it was possibly pre-owned because I don't think NIRVC is a dealer for new Winnebagoes, but I could be wrong). Unfortunately with all the Covid stuff, we don't get to visit with folks very much, but we always try to wish them well on their travels!

And, yes, we are still at NIRVC... no updates on when the needed awning arms might arrive. We are thankful to be in a warm and dry and comfortable motorhome in which we have hot and cold running water. One of the other couples here is waiting on their warranty company to agree to replace their broken water heater, so they have only cold water. Another couple is waiting for their warranty company to approve the replacement of their air conditioners. So we are thankful for a motorhome on which the necessary items are working!

Propane

We have been enjoying using our propane fire pit while here at National Indoor RV:

Other customers who are also staying in the "campground" join us around the fire, at a careful 6' social distance, of course!

We realized that the propane tank was getting low, and took it with us a couple of days ago to get it refilled. The Ace Hardware that we went to had just had their nozzle break and so they could not fill it. After leaving there, Carl remembered that the last time he had had it filled (we think at the same Ace Hardware!), the person doing the filling hesitated because it was close to needing certification. Carl checked the date on the tank, and, sure enough, it was 02/2008 -- and they need to be recertified after 12 years - so it needed recertification. After last night's fire in the fire pit, the tank was definitely almost out, so getting it replaced was on our to-do list for today.

Instead of just getting it filled, we were going to need to exchange it. But, we wanted to get a tank that we would be able to continue getting re-filled where we wanted to do it, not to be required to exchange the tank each time at a specific supplier (as Blue Rhino seems to require). We stopped at Lowe's and saw that they had Blue Rhino, so we drove across the street to Home Depot.

We saw a cage with tanks -- 

Are those propane tanks?

Uh... no... we don't need welding gas.

There's the propane -- now how to do the exchange?

Carl went in to the store and we just needed to leave our old tank outside, go in and pay for the new tank, and a store employee would come out to open the cage for us to get a new tank.

From what we've read online, we can refill the AmeriGas container wherever propane is sold.

Our new tank has a date of 09/2020, so we should be good until 2032!!!