Texas

It’s a Brit thing. And no photography allowed in there either.

Lubbock.

We’ve been watching the temperatures in Texas as we headed south. 90’s every day. Our friends Scott and Suzanne left Texas because it was too hot and humid.

Humid it is, Hot it’s not. 101% humidity equals rain, and it’s rained for the last 3 days. The temperature hasn’t been above 70. Lubbock!

After 4 nights we decided we’d had enough of Lubbock. San Angelo was halfway to Austin and had some interesting stuff like a railroad museum and several breweries. Having weighed the cultural advantages of San Angelo we hit the road

The RV Park in San Angelo was on a nice Lake and so quiet, such a change from the train whistles in Lubbock. 

We had a few thunderstorms but only at night, which let us wander the old downtown area of San Angelo in pleasant conditions. 

We went into a really cool store that was more like a Hollywood movie set than a store. 

Fort Concho was good too and to cap it all there were 2 nice brew pubs.

3 days and we moved on again, we had reservations at a timeshare resort near Austin.  (See http://banbrv.blogspot.com/2015/10/timeshares-good-and-bad.html for a timeshare lecture!).

We had points with RCI we hadn’t used and wouldn’t be able to use after we stopped our current membership, so we found a resort near Austin and got a week there. 

Our plan is to empty the fridge and freezer in the RV, defrost them and clean them out. Catch up on some maintenance in the rig, launder everything while we use the resort’s beds, bedding, kitchen etc., etc., then set off in the rig again for several more months.

The resort is called “The Shores at Lake Travis” being a timeshare it isn’t on the shores of anything! It’s a fairly strenuous (For us old farts) walk up and down a steep path. And the place is pretty run down too but they have room for the RV, will accept our mail and they are fairly close to Austin.

The resort is in the “Texas Hills” very pretty country with tight winding roads. It’s a famous deer hunting area and it’s easy to see why. It’s overrun with them, they will almost feed out of your hand here. Bucks that would look good on the wall on the east coast are commonplace.

We took a side trip to Fredericksburg TX. LBJ’s family ranch in Johnson TX is now a national historic site and you pass thru there on the way. Fredericksburg itself was a German community in the 1800’s and retains its heritage. Being October when we visit October Fest is in full swing with arts and music everywhere.

We visited the Museum of the War in the Pacific. Why is it here and not somewhere like San Diego? Well Chester Nimitz the Naval Commander in the Pacific was born in Fredericksburg. 

This is a VERY impressive museum. It doesn’t look big on the outside but there is a sign at the desk saying it can take 3 ½ hours to walk around the exhibits, and it really can! Luckily the tickets are good for 48 hours so you can come back to finish it.

Naturally we tried some Jaeger Schnitzel and German beer while we were there, but we didn’t see 10% of the things we wanted t see. We’ll be back again and then we’ll camp in the town and not near Austin which is a 90 minute drive each way.

Timeshares the good and bad

An explanation of timeshares might be in order.

Timeshares were a big deal in the 80’s. All the used car salesmen that had been fired for lack of integrity got hired by the timeshare industry. Huge money was involved and resorts sprang up everywhere. It was a major pain visiting anywhere that there was a tourist attraction. You’d be mobbed by timeshare people offering free gifts if you sat in a 60 minute sales presentation.

In 1983 Barbara and I were living in New Orleans and got roped into a presentation in Abita Springs. Barbara fell in love with the place and I wasn’t so keen. The more I said no the lower the price dropped. Eventually we bought in. 

The price got real low when I said I’d pay cash.

We didn’t know anything about comparable prices, annual maintenance fees, trading weeks, red weeks, green weeks, points verses weeks memberships and a host of other related things.

But we were lucky, and we got luckier later. First they played up the maintenance fees were low.

Every resort makes money on maintenance fees. The initial sales price goes to the resort developers and sales people. Once the resort is sold out the only income they have is exchange fees, rentals and maintenance fees. Some resorts the fees are reasonable some are extortionate. At the time we bought ours the annual maintenance was $200 a year and even now 30 yrs., later it’s only $400 a year. A friend bought into a high end resort and the fees are $1500 and rising every year.

Next they played up that the resort was a year round destination and all the weeks were Red Weeks. At that time there were three levels, red, blue and yellow (I think). Red were easy to trade, blue less so and yellow impossible.

That brings up trading. There are some organizations that you can join. Interval International and RCI were the 2 back then. They act as a clearing house for timeshare resorts. You pay them an annual membership and that allows you to trade your week at your home resort for a week in any of thousands of other resorts around the world provided there is availability there and you trade for a week equivalent to your home resort. Effectively you can trade red for red, or blue for blue. What you can’t do is trade blue for red or yellow for blue or red, so having a red week in a resort in demand gets you a much better chance of an exchange. If you find an exchange you have to pay RCI etc., an exchange fee.

Weeks and Points. After the timeshare market became totally saturated and sales dropped, the industry had to come up with a way to regenerate sales so they invented “Points Resorts”. In high traffic tourist areas (Orlando etc.,) they began building high end resorts. To prevent people who owned at lesser resorts trading for weeks there, they came up with points. Instead of Red etc., the new system had “Trading Points” based on how fancy the resort was. With points you could trade one week at a very fancy resort for say 2 weeks at a less fancy resort. The beauty of this system was that it excluded all the previous timeshare resorts so if you wanted to play you had to buy another MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE timeshare.

One of the big players in timeshares is Fairfield Resorts. They came in and bought derelict resorts (Of which there were many after the bubble burst and there was no more money to make in sales). As they got bigger they saw a way to corner the market. They bought RCI who were the big exchange company and changed everyone’s resort trading power from weeks (Where you traded a week for a week) to their own new points system. Better yet they made the points decrease in value the closer you came to the actual week you owned, then they offered to make your “Points” come back again for a fee! Brilliant for them but a major thorn on the side for owners.

We discovered another timeshare trading organization DAE. People sick and tired of RCI had another way to go, the fees are lower, the points went away and there were just as many resorts to trade for.

HINTS FOR POTENTIAL TIMESHARE PURCHASERS:

Don’t fall for the timeshare sales pitches! They employ every dirty nasty high pressure sales tactic they can think of. They lie, cheat and steal and once they make the sales they are GONE. The sales people work only on commission and have no connection with the resort.

Timeshares are available USED. If you like a resort search on e-bay etc. for the resort and you can get the same unit for pennies on the dollar. Many, many buyers regret buying after a year or so and can’t get out of the cast iron contracts they’ve signed. That’s your opportunity to buy cheap.

Beware the maintenance fees. They make it sound totally minor but if you are paying $1500 a year for the unit whether you use it OR NOT. It becomes a major cost. If you decide to just stop paying them they will have debt collection agencies on you in a heartbeat. 

Believe me I tried it! 

If they let YOU off the hook the hundreds of equally dissatisfied owners will jump on it too and they’ll go bust overnight.

Beware financing a timeshare, they will gouge you with interest rates and if you buy and regret it you won’t be able to get out of it.

Use the power of exchange to visit other resorts. We’ve owned our home resort for 30 years and only been there once! We have been all over the US and even to Europe on exchanges. 

To us the value of timeshare has been in trading, not owning a particular resort. That means you can buy ANY timeshare and get the benefits. You don’t have to buy the high price flashy unit the sales guys are pitching. 

We bought a second unit at our home resort. A 2 bedroom, red week for $1000 and $300 a year maintenance just so we’d have another week to trade and/or share with family.

Update 2020

We haven't used our timeshare in ages and RCI are just too expensive for trades so we decided to try and get rid.

I did some research on how to get out of the timeshare trap. There were many ads for lawyers who promised to get you out, but from the reviews posted they seemed to just want to gouge you for fees with no promises of success.

Then I found a site somewhere (Can't remember where) which put down some steps to try.

The big one was to call your home resort and ask if they would allow you to surrender your weeks.

Seems obvious now but I hadn't heard that it may be possible. When our annual dues bill arrived I called the resort and they said we could surrender the property. We wouldn't get any money for it but we wouldn't have to pay the annual dues on the 2 units we owned so right away we were $1k better off and we paid very little for either of the units we have had for over 30 years.

They sent us a form for each unit which we filled in and returned. We are now timeshare free! It feels great. Now to get Thousand Trails off our backs but not before we use up this years 30 days free,

Santa Fe and Roswell

Waiting for Scott and Suzanne near the Railyards Plaza we got into conversation with Mike who was fascinated by our full time adventure and another half hour flew by.

We ate too much and walked too little this week thanks to finding lots of new friends. But we did find some nice places to eat.

We found some nice parts of Santa Fe like Canyon Road which is a quaint area of adobe buildings, art/craft stores and restaurants. El Farol Spanish restaurant was our favorite and that’s where we had lunch with Ed and Joan.

Another neat place about 30 or so miles south of town on Rt 14 is Madrid. For our European readers this isn’t pronounced the way it is over there. If you ever saw the movie Wild Hogs with Tim Allen you may have heard them pronounce it MAD-DRID. And by no coincidence: this is the little town (More a village) where they filmed part of the movie. Maggie’s diner is a real place, accept it’s not a dinner but a souvenir store that sells ridiculously overpriced T shirts. Or at least attempts to sell them. Everyone that went in while we were there came out without buying anything.

Everyone also said “I thought it was a diner”. To me the market would be for a diner, but maybe the owners know better? We liked the Historic Mine Tavern best!

And after 6 days here it was time to move on, we have to be near Austin for October 9^th as we’ve decided to use up our last week of timeshare at a resort there, which will give us time to clean out the rig, defrost the fridge and live in a building for a week!

Passing thru Southern New Mexico one place stands out and draws you like a moth to a flame: Roswell.

I don’t know what I expected of this place. In my mind was a little cowboy town with a dirt street and aliens on the corner. So finding quite a large city with some interesting history apart from UFO’s was a pleasant surprise.

We did go and visit the UFO Museum however!!

The Roswell Elks Lodge is neat, you should visit if you pass thru here. Excellent RV facilities, and dinners Monday thru Saturday that are superb! They have their own swimming pool too and a casino! We happily got some darts practice in, as they have a room with 2 pool tables and 2 dart boards.

The Roswell Elks recommended the Carlsbad Elks for a stop to see the Cavern and we gladly followed their advice. Another great Lodge with it’s own casino. We arrived on Karaoke night, which didn’t sound too attractive. It wasn’t bad at all. Most of the performers were regulars apparently and did some good Country songs. We aren’t Country fans but we like Willie Nelson and his songs featured prominently so we were happy.

Carlsbad Caverns are well worth a visit, we chose to ride the elevator both way and it was still a 1 ½ hr walk around the main cave.

We had a “No Plan” thing going lately. We don’t decide where we’re going to be the next day until just before we go to bed. Makes things a surprise! We look for somewhere within about 150 miles of where we are. Next stop? 

Let’s look at the road atlas.

Lubbock Texas. Home of Buddy Holly, heck we can’t miss that LET’S GO.

First a tour of the Texas Air Museum. We got there early and were the only people there. The crew of volunteers came in and introduced themselves and we got a 1 on 1 personal tour of EVERYTHING. In and out of the planes, details of who donated what, how they traded this for that. I was so fascinated I forgot to take any pictures! 

After that the Buddy Holly Center was a bit of a letdown. The displays were virtually unreadable to our old eyes. Not much of a tribute to such a huge and short lived talent.

For my British readers the one weird exhibit was one of Buddy’s guitars. After his performance on the London Palladium he gave the guitar to DES O’CONNER. You Yanks won’t know what we’re talking about, but people of our age in UK will say “Get out of here DES O’CONNER!” It’s a Brit thing. And no photography allowed  in there either.

I checked how many miles we've traveled so far. My feeling was about 2500. WRONG we had 4005 miles when we left Roswell. We're having too much fun!!

Santa Fe and our 2nd month on the road.

One final selling point? The small picturesque town of Bayfield. Barely a mile from the campground has a Brewery with some nice beer. Visit the Bottom Shelf Brewery if you’re in town. The Oatmeal Stout is nice and the Red excellent.

So suddenly we are at the end of our second month on the road.

Funny but we can hardly remember the first one!

We left Durango and headed for Santa Fe where we had arranged to meet up with Scott and Suzanne. We bumped into Scott at a seminar during Escapades in Tucson. They were at about the same stage of planning that we were, they had a rig and were getting ready to sort out and sell the house. They beat us to it on the house sale and they have been zooming around visiting relatives etc. since.

We were all so excited about our adventures that we hardly stopped talking from early afternoon when we got together until after dinner at a local restaurant (and brewery of course). You don’t always have new people to talk to on the road and when you do it all comes pouring out. We found we have several things in common apart from the RV and it was a very pleasant evening.

On the way to Santa Fe we decided to stop in Chama NM at an RV park close to the scenic Railroad there. The park was OK and we had a very nice site on the river. Unlike the United Campground in Durango the train didn’t run right thru the campground. It ran directly across the river! 

Still the sound of a steam whistle is musical anytime you hear it (Except of course when you are trying to sleep). Unfortunately the weather turned bad and it rained hard most of the day and part of the following morning as we headed for Santa Fe. I discovered we have a leak in the roof over the bathroom so that’s another job when we have time. I did fix the cable TV connection and replace the sewer hose end connection however so I still deserve a gold star on my chart.

Our purpose for coming to Santa Fe was to meet up with Scott and Suzanne and we all stayed at the Ranchero Santa Fe RV Park. Quite a letdown after the last few parks. No streams, trains or Alpacas. Just gravel and very tight spaces, but talking to our new “old friends” has been good and taking pictures of the adobe buildings, markets and squares in Santa Fe has given me the urge to get settled somewhere and paint again.

Interior of the oldest house in the USA

While wandering the Plaza Santa Fe we found the Thunderbird Bar and Grille on a balcony overlooking the Plaza. 

Nice food and good beer. A couple at the next table asked us where we were from and we soon got into a great conversation with Ed and Joan who are long term RV’ers. More new friends! We swapped contact info and we’ll get together again before we leave the area.

It’s funny how you meet people. We were shopping and heard a very English voice explaining to his companion that people didn’t speak proper English here. I commented that we did, and we were immediately engrossed in a fascinating discussion with Roy and Ray about how we all got to the US, the things we missed and the things we loved about the US. We blocked the aisle in the market for a good half hour, then driving away they came alongside in their car and honked the horn! 

Waiting for Scott and Suzanne near the Rail Yards Plaza we got into conversation with Mike who was fascinated by our full time adventure and another half hour flew by.

In light of the election fever that's building in the US I have to relate this Rt 66 story. Apparently Rt 66 used to come right thru Santa Fe but in 1936 a group of Santa Fe citizens got together to oppose the current Governor in the forthcoming election. They did a great job and the Governor lost his seat. In revenge he rapidly set construction crews to work to bypass Santa Fe and build a shortcut around the city that knocked 90 miles off the route. Even when the new governor took power he was unable to stop the construction due to bad weather and by the time he could do anything the road was open and being used!

For you Western movie fans Santa Fe is where the Santa Fe and Old Pecos trails meet.

Durango

Walmarts and driving for a couple of days thru Rock Springs WY and Craig CO heading towards Pagosa Springs where we spent a pleasant vacation a few years back.

The questions people ask are quite funny to us. The concept of not having a house to go back to baffles a lot of people

Here’s some questions and our answers to them.

Where do you live?

We live wherever the RV is parked. We sold everything and we are just having fun

Where are you going?

We aren’t going ANYWHERE, and we don’t have to be there anytime soon. So if we find somewhere we like, we’ll stop there. If we are somewhere we don’t like, we’ll leave.

How do you get your mail?

We try to discourage paper mail and try to use e-mail wherever possible. We have a mail forwarding service and all the paper mail goes there. We find a Post Office along the way and have our mail forwarded there, General Delivery. When we get to the town we stop at the Post Office and pick it up. It may be weeks before we get mail but that’s OK by us.

Won’t you be cold in that RV in the winter?

No. We’ll drive it to someplace that’s warm.

This week we’ve been applying the “Goldilocks Principle”. That’s where you move your RV until it’s “Not too hot and not too cold” Just like the Fairy Tale!

The nights were getting too cold in Yellowstone so we moved south about 500 miles and now the weather is “Just right” 70’s daytime and upper 40’s at night. If it gets colder here we’ll move again, provided we’ve seen and done everything we want to here.

We’re proud members of the “Elks”.

http://www.elks.org/

Elks are a benevolent organization supporting local and national charities, with Lodges across the country. The Elks organization isn’t some secret society, there’s no secret handshake or mystic ceremonies. If you are a US citizen in good standing and believe in God you can join.

Some Lodges have RV parking for members. This is really good for several reasons.

1 There’s a welcoming place to go to, you feel at home as soon as you arrive

2, Lodges are generally in populated areas so if you want to spend time visiting a city then the Lodge is close to the city center unlike the average RV park.

3. Your fellow Elks know all the good places to see and things to do and gladly share that knowledge.

So now when we refer to the Elks in our blog you know what we’re talking about

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You can see the roof of our RV to the left of the Elk's Lodge roof.

We stopped at the Grand Junction CO Elks Lodge. We stopped there because we like to cut our travel time down into reasonable chunks and 150 miles a day meant Grand Junction was going to be a good break. We’d never heard of Grand Junction before. As far as we know it’s not famous for anything. We’ve never heard people say “You have to visit here”.

It has been a pleasant surprise then to find that the city has a pleasant Main Street. four breweries, an awesome National Monument, very reasonable gas prices, good shopping, good restaurants, two car museums, an Air and Space museum, a Western Museum and a whole lot more.

It would be fair to say that we LIKE Grand Junction and I expect we’ll be back.

We had planned to drive to Silverton or perhaps Durango depending how I felt. The road is known as “The Million Dollar Highway” and it was worth every penny. It climbed from 4500’ to 11000’ with corners as slow as 10mph and 8 % grades up and down. It was magnificent scenery made breathtaking by the fall colors at altitude that wrapped around the mountains.

In the end we made it to Durango but had a struggle finding somewhere to stay.

Turned out there was an art festival on the weekend we arrived. The only campground we could find close to town was the “United Campground” which was expensive and rundown. Handy for the center of Durango however and we did a little exploring. We were here several years ago. The big attraction is the Durango - Silverton Railroad. A steam train ride thru the mountains. It’s a “Must Do" trip if you’re here, and funnily enough it runs right thru our campground! Not just alongside but right thru the middle. You get to enjoy the train whistle four times a day.

We weren’t happy with that park and spent a day getting caught up on business things and finding another park. We found one 20 miles away on the other side of Durango in Bayfield CO.

The Bayfield Riverside RV Park was everything the other park wasn’t. Well maintained, clean, quiet and outstanding beautiful, in fact we believe this is the prettiest campground we’ve ever been to ever. Same price as the other one but with cable TV, and instead of a railroad running thru it this one has a privately stocked trout stream! 

Because it’s private you can fish there without a license. It’s what’s called “Catch and Release”, you can’t keep any fish you catch. You have to release them unharmed. 

Not a problem for me, if you don’t catch anything you don’t have to release them!!

Oh and they have this character there. Al the Alpaca.

One final selling point? The small picturesque town of Bayfield. Barely a mile from the campground has a Brewery with some nice beer. Visit the Bottom Shelf Brewery if you’re in town. The Oatmeal Stout is nice and the Red excellent.

Yellowstone and beyond

I spent a pleasant morning practicing fly casting and throwing knots in my line in midair. Novice fly fishermen will know the feeling of frustration,

We stayed in Aspen Acres for almost a week thinking that the area would be full due to the Labor Day weekend but this was a good time to be here as most of the crowds were gone already. 

Aspen although pretty was too far away from everything and needed a 100 mile round trip just to get to the parks. We managed a trip to Jackson WY but it’s a big time tourist trap and we weren’t impressed. We tried for a spot in the park but they could only get us in for 1 day.

Using our resources we searched “RVparkreview.com” and found a recommended park closer to Yellowstone. That came with a bigger price tag but cut down the 100 mile round trip to about 50 miles. We moved to Red Rock RV Park about 5 miles off Rt20 and close to Henry’s Lake in Island Park.

They fussed over us like mother hens when we arrived and they had found us the best spot in the park with a tremendous view of the hills. They even laid on a perfect sunset for us! 

First though they warned us that a bear had been in the park a couple of days previously and had got into the trash. All bear safety was thoroughly discussed! Something you forget living in the city.

We were parked next to Jim and Marilyn and their lovely friendly lab Cody. It ws such a pleasure to come back each evening and have neighbors to chat with about the day and find out how Cody was doing with his training (He’s a rescue dog but so friendly).

Sometime in the last week I had managed to lose the keys to the rig. Luckily we have a spare set but we had to go to West Yellowstone MT for shopping and got a new set of keys cut while we were there.

Of course having got them cut I found the originals 2 days later!

Our last day was an easy one. A 60 mile trip into the park to see Old Faithful. It turned into so much more with lot of wildlife and side trips to some amazing geysers. We really had a good day out and I was even inspired to pick up my sketch book and start drawing the mountains behind the park.

An overnighter in Walmart near Pocatella ID and a trip to the local Brew Pub got us involved in a fascinating talk with a young couple who were travelling in an old ambulance with 2 Honda Trail 90 motorcycles. They called themselves Campbulance and were planning dropping the Ambulance at their relatives place then riding the 2 tiny Hondas to Tierra Del Fuego the southernmost tip off South America!! Oh yes, they didn’t have licenses to ride them yet!!

Their main worry? People kept telling them that Mexico was too dangerous and they shouldn’t go!

Walmarts and driving for a couple of days thru Rock Springs WY and Craig CO heading towards Pagosa Springs where we spent a pleasant vaction a few years back.

We also saw a post on the Escapees forum from a couple we met at Escapade in Tuscon earlier this year who are heading north into Colorado as we are heading south. Maybe we can hook up with them as we pass.

To Yellowstone

After sitting talking about places and things all afternoon they took us to their favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner. That dream came true TWICE this week.

Our 2 weeks in Rapid City have been great, we’ve met lots of new RV’ing friends and explored the area, yet it still left us with a desire to come back for more. And we got in some valuable darts practice for when we get to Casa Grande in December!

On the way to Yellowstone we stopped at the Walmarts in Sheriden (I wonder if it’s named after Mrs Bucket’s Sheriden?) and Cody.

WY14 from Sheriden is a super twisty road that climbs 5000 feet in 1 shot. We were down to 25 mph in places but luckily we didn’t have a long line of traffic behind, probably due to being mid-week and September. The Shell Falls were a welcome break.

If you’re in Cody then THE thing there is the Buffalo Bill Cody center. We found its layout confusing but the exhibits were diverse and appealing. We looked at an art exhibit put on for the benefit of the museum. All extremely high quality work and it will be auctioned off at the end of the show. They say last year they raise $1,000,000 and I can believe it. I liked their firearms gallery too which had guns from ancient to modern.

The Buffalo Bill exhibit itself to me was a little phony. The exhibits were genuine but the man was mainly an invention of “Penny Westerns” and circus performances.

We drove to and through Yellowstone to get to Ashland Idaho. Some of the people we met in Rapid City told us it was great, in an Aspen grove and with the Teton’s as a view.

They didn’t mention it was right in the middle of nowhere!

Middle of nowhere can be pleasant though, we’ve been relaxing. I did some more sketching inspired by the view of the Grand Tetons from just over the brow of the hill from our campsite. 

The lady in the office recommended driving about 20 miles to the Mesa Falls and Lower Mesa Falls. I’m glad she did they are really beautiful in a deep gorge. The main falls are like a miniature American Falls if you’ve ever been to Niagara.

This campground is about 90 miles from the heart of Yellowstone so we’ve decided to move to another place about 20 miles from the park and spend a couple of days deep in the Yellowstone experience then drive south through Grand Teton NP and stop somewhere around Jackson.

It feels strange to be thinking of where we want to go next. Up till now we’ve been going to Rapid City or here. Now we have until the end of October to get to Austin and we can go any direction we want.

Barbara suggested I might want to try fishing as Henry’s Fork of the Snake River is a famous trout fishery and I took the trouble to dig out my dusty fishing gear. 

A sign of just how long it’s been since I did any was the Maryland fishing regulation book in the bottom off my tackle box dated 1998!!! 

The local fly fishing supply store provided a license and some likely fishing spots. Turns out that there is some prime fishing just down river from the Mesa Falls.

It soon became really obvious that it had indeed been 17 years since my last angling experience! At the river road there were lots of drift boats being put into the water with guides at the oars and paying guests doing the fishing. I idly asked the price of a day out. $500!! 

I spent a pleasant morning practicing fly casting and throwing knots in my line in mid air. Novice fly fishermen will know the feeling of frustration.

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