Guadlupe River State Park, December 2012

I was really looking forward to this opportunity to get away in the Colby T. Last weekend, Stacy and Randy went to San Marcos in their new trailer, and all their little posts on Facebook did was make me pea green with envy. I could have gone camping last weekend. There were no major things on my calendar. I decided to grab this weekend since the holidays are just about here, and even though that means a lot of time off work for school teachers, it also comes with a lot of scheduled events and appointments.

As my day started yesterday, I was like a giddy little kid. I was coming off the high of watching my last school Christmas concert as a parent the night before. There is truly something special about watching your kid play the saxophone in a concert even though you can't really see him because of the music stands and only get to hear the music. Wait... let's get back to the weekend. I was excited, like I said. I had everything in my truck ready to go straight from school to get the Colby T and hit the road.

At about 8:15 am, I started to wonder if I would even get to go. You see, I am no longer on my low low low carb diet. I am working hard to stabilize my weight loss by eating around 1600 calories a day, and doing something aerobic daily to fight off the “extra”. I still choose only healthy low carb, low fat, low whatever stuff. However, on Thursday night I binged on one of my all time favorite, and long missed, foods. I made a vegetable stew with onions, kale, rutabagas, turnips, tomatoes, and a potato. It was HEAVENLY. Unfortunately, my innards did not appreciate the onslaught of fibrous foods after 13 months of mainly protein. I had little gas pockets hiding in every twist of my gut. They bubbled. They roamed. Most of all, they hurt like HELL! To be absolutely blunt- I couldn't pass gas fast enough! I spent the entire morning taking these little trips from my building to the library building. Please don't make me tell you why I was going on those little OUTSIDE excursions. You're too smart for that. You know what I was doing. Let's just say I am so glad nobody smokes on school grounds anymore!

Anyway, I left Braun Station at 11:30 to go to Carson for the holiday pot luck luncheon. I enjoyed eating all the wonderful things. I especially liked a chocolate cake someone brought. It was the best I ever had. Turns out that the teacher who made it used my wife's recipe! I must have been dieting when I took that cake to school sometime for a team mate's birthday. I don't remember ever eating it before!

After lunch I passed my time doing some things for my principal. Then I walked through the office and had my day ruined. A parent was telling the secretary about the shootings in Connecticut. I was horrified, as I'm sure every teacher in America was and is. We plan for events like that, but never in our wildest dreams expect to experience them. I pushed it back into the darkest area of my mind, refusing to let it ruin my weekend. After all, I am, and will always be, the textbook example of a “me person”.

I left school and hitched up the Colby T. I checked the air in the tires and decided they needed a few pounds of pressure added. I walked to the truck and realized that I had taken my pump out when the family went to church for Thanksgiving, so the boys would have a place to put their feet. I had to run home and get it, which delayed my hitting the road for about 20 minutes. That mattered to me, because it was approaching a Friday rush hour, the roads were slick from light rain, and I did not want to back the Colby T into a camp site in the dark. I don't know why I was worried. Traffic was fine and it was still light when I got here.

Instead of checking in at the headquarters, they told me to just pick whatever site I wanted and come back by 9:00 Saturday morning to do it. I drove through the camping area and learned right away that I had most of the park to myself. There were only about 8 sites being used. I found one close enough to the bath house so I wouldn't have to hike to it, but far enough away that I wouldn't have to hear anybody walking in and out of it all night. I only saw one other person in there the whole time I was camping. That was early Saturday morning. I might mention it later. I guess the other trailer people are using their onboard bathrooms. I decided to dry camp, since I went to the effort of installing a water heater bypass and winterizing my plumbing after the last trip. My pipes are full of pink potable anti-freeze. Besides, back in the popup days, I didn't even have a bathroom.

It was nice being back at this park. This is where N2S, Storm, and I had our second experience in the popup. It is also where I went for the maiden voyage of the Colby T. I came for one night and spent my time reading owner's manuals and learning how things worked.

I would have been all set up and ready to start relaxing within an hour and a half of leaving the house. Unfortunately, it was raining on us when we did the winterizing after the last trip, and the floor of the Colby T was filthy. We were both so tired from camping and the trip home that I told N2S I would come back and clean it later. Of course, I forgot, so I spent about 20 minutes sweeping and mopping the floor before I could unload the truck and set up the kitchen. Then I decided that I would make up the bed with the linens that Rachel gave me when she bought new ones for the remodeled bedroom. I had used them for her when we went to Laredo. The sheets are 800 thread count Egyptian cotton. They are off white. Rachel wanted white for the remodeled bedroom. I also got the sacred comforter that I was forbidden to touch or put anything on while the bed was made. We have a new sacred comforter with the same damned rules now. Anyway, when I am using “Jim configuration”, which means I leave the bed set up and use my little table from Wal-Mart for eating and computing, sleeping in real sheets is a lot nicer than just hopping in my sleeping bag.

I decided to jog around the campsite so I could count the campers and burn off some of the luncheon. It was only half a mile and only took about eight minutes, but it is better than nothing. When I got back, I cooked a microwave meal and then watched more news about New Town, Connecticut than I had planned on. I am having some allergy problems due to the mountain cedar season which is just now starting. Crying every ten minutes didn't help keep my nose uncongested. I watched it and felt it as a parent. I watched it and felt it as a teacher. I watched it and felt it as a human being who just can not understand it. I'm sorry. I just don't have anything else to say about it. I actually dread going to work on Monday morning and seeing the faces of my school's kids knowing they probably spent the weekend with idiot parents who didn't have enough sense to shelter them from the television coverage.

There was a new snack food in the Colby T on this trip. Instead of the standard pork rinds, microwave popcorn was served! I hadn't had popcorn in so long that I kind of wigged out and kept popping bag after bag. I should have bought the real size to begin with instead of the little 100 calorie ones. That is what I did from about 8:00 PM until I finally went to bed at 11:30. I ate popcorn. I alternated back and forth between a glass of Irish whiskey and a cup of Kenyan coffee. I read several chapters of my book while laying on my fancy sheets in my absolute favorite spot on earth, the Colby T.

I woke up at 7:00 am on Saturday morning with a need to visit the bath house. That's when dry camping is not so good. It was chilly and damp outside. I would have loved to walk the nice warm six feet to the bathroom in the trailer and gone right back to bed. But no. I had to get up, get dressed, and hike over there. Now, I guess I will talk about the only other person who I have seen in the bath house. He had evidently just taken a shower and was standing at the sink with a towel around his waist shaving like he was in his own bathroom at home. I went to my stall and went about my business. I played the day before's free puzzle in 7 Little Words. I read my email. I looked through Facebook. I must have sat there for 20 minutes. I come out of the stall, and there stands the guy at the sink completely naked. I'm sorry. It just seemed weird to me that the guy was wearing a towel when he was there by himself. Now, twenty minutes later he's buck naked? It was creepy. I just headed for the door and didn't even wash my hands . Thank God for hand sanitizer!

Back at the trailer, I made another microwave meal for breakfast. This one was Doña Maria's chicken mole. It was pretty good. I had it with some of those carb balance whole wheat tortillas from Mission. Then I got motivated enough to shave, dress in my public clothes, and drive up to the park headquarters to register for my site.

I decided to go ahead and start my hike instead of going back to the trailer. I used the Geocaching app to find area caches that I might not have found. There was one so I decided to go in that direction. Armed with a pencil for signing the log, my flip for taking photos, and my phone just in case I headed off. I didn't find the cache, but I did end up taking a fantastic 7.5 mile hike around the entire park. It would have been less, but, true to form, I read the map wrong and ended up at the park headquarters. As a result I had to hike all the way into the camp site by road. My feet were pretty sore after that. The tennies I keep in the Colby T are an old pair that need to be replaced. You can feel every pebble- they are worn so thin.

When I got back to the trailer, I ate a nice lunch of instant lasagna and Glory Foods canned collard greens. I sat on the bed for a few minutes and ended up falling asleep for about an hour. It must have been needed, because it was a sound sleep.

I got out of bed and dressed again. I needed to go to the gas station and gas up the truck. I had made a point of getting the tires aired up on Thursday evening when I stopped at Wal-Mart for supplies. I didn't even think about buying gas. I probably had enough to make it home, but I don't like hunting for usable gas stations when pulling the Colby T. On a real highway trip that's no problem. When you are on little back roads like I used to get to the park, it isn't so easy. You have to find one that is easy to go in and out of. The entrance from the road can't be too deep of a slant, or I will bottom out. Then you need one that you can get the tuck to the pump without blocking traffic with the trailer. Anyway, it is easier to get gas without the Colby T. Besides, I wanted a bottle of Merlot for the Spurs game.

For dinner I had another Doña Maria's instant meal. This one was Albondigas al Chilpotle (meatball stew with Chipotle). I added a nutrisystem chicken breast and ate it all on tortillas. It was great. I'm gonna make that a staple in the Colby T. I like the off the shelve microwave dinners, but these Mexican ones are extra good. You may be able to buy them at Wal-Mart. They come from Herdes. I think they are the ones who make those canned salsas that are so good.

After dinner, I started writing this and processing my pictures from the hike. I got all settled in to watch the Spurs game on KENS TV. That is what I am doing now, when the signal is good. It comes and goes. That kind of reminds me of my days in Waelder. I had a big outdoor antenna. I would be watching an Austin channel. It would get fuzzy. Then the Houston channel would be good. Then that would get fuzzy, and the Austin channel would be better again. Tonight, I am playing that same game with Austin and San Antonio. Except that Austin doesn't seem to have the game on.

Added Sunday (12/16)

Well the Spurs won the game. I only saw parts of it. The signal kept going in and out. When it was over, I went ahead and got in bed and read for awhile before giving in to being tired and getting some sleep. Sometime during the night, I woke up to use the pee bottle. There was a thunderstorm off in the distance with just enough power to light up the Colby T on occasion and give a little bit of a rumble. I got back in bed and opened the blinds so I could watch the storm, but don't remember seeing any of it. I fell right back to sleep!

This morning I had planned on getting up at 7:00 and taking another morning hike around the place. My right foot changed that plan when I limped to the bath house. I guess I overdid it yesterday. The pain goes away when I walk it out a bit, but I certainly wasn't going to take another hike and exacerbate the problem. I have had problems with plantar fasciitis in the past. I don't think this is a flair up of that, but why push it?

I made some coffee and started gradually prepping for departure. I wasn't in any big hurry. By 9:00 am, I had everything ready to go. I was all hitched up and started to do my walk around and final checklist. That's when I saw that the TV antenna wasn't down all the way. I took care of that. Then I saw that I hadn't marked “raise the stabilizers” off the list. I double-checked and sure enough they were still down. Had I tried to pull out with them down, the Colby T would have suffered some major damage. Anyway, I took care of that and finished my walk around. I was a little paranoid then, so I sat in the truck and went through the departure checklist again. Convinced everything was all in order, I sent a “getting on the road” text to Rachel and headed home.

The drive home was uneventful, thankfully. The roads where pretty slick, so I took it slow. Nobody got behind me except one truck on the 12 mile stretch that has no passing zones. He stayed way back and didn't seem to be bothered by following me. Since it was pretty early on a Sunday morning, traffic wasn't bad. Church folks were already at the early services, or at home fighting with their kids about getting ready for late services. Non-church folks were still in bed.

I pulled into Packrats at 10:30. I had the Colby T in its parking space with one easy backup. I really think I have the hang of it now. I'm not going to worry about places without pull-throughs anymore. If a park sounds good, I'm going- even if it means backing in.

Anyway, I'm home now. Won't be on another trip until New Year's Eve. I'm heading up to Palmetto SP with Stacy and Randy for three nights. I sure hope it is cold then!!

Until next time!

See all of the photos here!