We’ll be leaving in the morning. Our friends in Temple aren’t available for a visit so we’ll head to a COE park near Waco tomorrow. We finally got some rain last night, over 1″. It’s been over a month since we’ve had any rain at all, so it was welcome. We may get some more tonight, but hope it stops before morning so we don’t have to pack up the rain.

As our winter in Spring Branch is coming to a close, we are preparing to get on the road again. The plan is to leave here on Sunday, May 6 and drive to Temple, TX, to visit friends. From there, we’ll be heading directly to Milwaukee and should be there around May 13 or 14.

We do have some guests this week, Don and Mary Ann Nesbitt are on the buddy pad for a few days.

We left Corpus Christi on Wednesday, saying goodbye to Vic and Mo until this summer, and drove to TCI in San Antonio for 2 new front tires for the motorhome.  It took about an hour to install them and we then drove the 14 miles to Freightliner of San Antonio.  The service manager had kept a parking spot for us with 50A electric and we pulled in there for the night.  Meanwhile, TCI called and said they had installed the wrong valve cores, not the ones for the Equal balancing powder, and asked us to stop there on our way home the next day.  However, the next morning the left front tire was flat, so I reinflated it and installed the Pressure Pro sensor and watched it go from 90 psi to 70 psi in about 20 minutes.  I call TCI and said we were not driving there (14 miles) with that bad a leak, so they sent a truck to us at Freightliner.  It was a major leak around the bead, so the tech broke the tire from the wheel, cleaned the wheel and bead, reinflated the tire and remounted it.  End of leak, and he also installed the Equal valve cores.

Thursday they pulled the coach into the shop where we had a chassis lube, radiator cleaning, new fuel filters, right front shock remounted as it had come unscrewed from the lower mount.  Also had the generator serviced.  No oil change as that was done in Oct. when the fuel injectors were replaced.  They checked a few things that I had been told to watch during previous maintenance.  All that and we were out of there by 4:00pm and home by 5:00pm.

We plan on staying here until May, when we’ll head for Milwaukee.

This morning while Lorna was out walking Sasha, she saw a young bull grazing across the street in front of Buddy and Mary’s house.  After awhile, he wandered to our next door neighbor’s yard for some green grass and and a drink.  He actually turned the faucet to get more water from the spigot.  Before the owner could get here to pick him up, he wandered back down to the fence and probably through the hole that let him out in the first place.

The time since we arrived back in Spring Branch has been busy.  On Oct. 22, Vic and Mo Wexler came to our lot and stayed for 10 days.  At the same time, Don and Mary Ann Nesbitt were here for a couple of days.  We parked them on our neighbors RV site.  The next few weeks were taken up with chores around the lot, Lorna doing her volunteer work at the Bulverde/Spring Branch Library, and just settling in for the winter.  On Nov. 12, Joe and Lynn Grano from Houston came and stayed on the buddy pad for 3 nights.

Ned has also been volunteering at the library helping them with various computer and network related projects that they had been paying lots of money for previously.  With all the computers they have I’m sure there will be work for him to do any time he goes in.

Earlier this month we had DSL internet service installed and put the HughesNet satellite service on suspension until we leave in the spring.  After the fast response of DSL it will be painful to go back to satellite when we leave.

On Tuesday, we had a surprise visit from Jim and Pat Dick, on their way home from work camping at Yellowstone NP to their home base in Florida.  While they could only stay 2 nights, it was really good to see them again.

And how about those Packers?

After 12 long days of camping at Freightliner, the engine was finally fixed yesterday.  We got out of there around 3:00pm after paying the $6968 bill and headed to Cowtown RV Park in Aledo, about 20 miles.  4 miles from the campground, our Pressure Pro tire pressure monitor sounded an alarm.  The left rear outside tire was losing air, fast.  Normally at 95-100psi, it was down to 60psi by the time we got to the campground.  Got parked and called CoachNet, our roadside assistance provider.  They located a service facility, Wingfoot in Fort Worth, and said a truck would be out in about 2 hours with a new tire, if we couldn’t patch the bad one.  One hour later, Wingfoot service arrived.  He dismounted the tire and removed the 1″ sheet metal screw that had penetrated the tread.  Although he had brought a new tire, we opted to try a patch as the tire would have cost over $500, I’m sure.  About one hour later, the tire was patched, holding air, and mounted on the motorhome.  Total cost, $0!  Thank you, CoachNet.

The tire held up on the 230 mile drive home today and I expect it will hold up indefinitely.  We’re parked on our home site and are watching the sporadic rain showers bringing some much needed water to this area.  I’m afraid it’s not nearly enough, but we’ll take it.  Lorna is catching up on several weeks of laundry and I’m catching up on some computer tasks from a week ago.  We’re going to be stationary for several months, at least.  It may take that long to recover from our unintentionally long trip back from Wisconsin.