The Trek South

I started south by taking a short leg down to Chickasaw National Recreation Area. Since it is not a “Park”, they allow geocaches, which I did. I also put in an application with the National Park Service for hosting jobs, but none were available at Chickasaw. Next on the agenda was the DFW area, where I stayed two days at Hickory Creek COE Park, geocaching, of course. I attended the Dallas Area Geocachers Back to School Breakfast, where I met Geo D – who is one of the original geocachers in the area and has quite an interesting profile. Look him up if you have a sign-on on www.geocaching.com. After geocaching the area around the meeting, I met my “Boys” Jeff (& Al), Dave (& Jeanne), and Jim (& Gail & Emily) for lunch at Pappasito's in Dallas.

I stayed the weekend at Jims doing geocaching chores at my cache on his property and then got my bi-annual eye exam and a new set of contact lenses before heading to Leander, where Gary Lives.

The Express Van was acting up again, so I stayed at Cedar Breaks COE Park and geocached, while the Chevrolet garage spent two days analyzing and fixing the system. $441 later, with a new O2 sensor I finally got to Gary’s house. He acquired a lot of truck parts in lieu of pay from Carlos, a man who he had worked for, when the Carlos went out of business. Since Gary is not allowed to use the internet, I offered to list some items on EBay for him, and forward the results to him by phone. There has been some interest, but no bids yet. The sale will be over on Monday. Gary has had 5 years without a drink. Mary and Matt and I are going to his AA Meeting tomorrow where he and others will give there testimonies.

After Gary’s I went to Sportsmobile, in Austin, where I intended to start on getting my Van converted to a Class B motorhome. After seeing all of the prices and not being able to fit all of my needs into the floor plan, I decided to do a conversion myself to use for short trips – and keep the Casita as my home. I started on the conversion at Mary’s hose in Wimberley when they offered me a small refrigerator, which should be able to run on my solar power without severely draining the batteries.

After Mary’s I went to McKinney Falls State Park, where the Texas Parks and Wildlife office is located. I put in an application with the State and they suggested that I go directly to the parks that I am interested in with applications as well. I started with McKinney Falls and after spending 4 days hiking and geocaching there, I have landed a volunteer (that’s unpaid) job there. I will work 25 hours for my full hookup site and have the weekends off. My duties are easy. Essentially, I just sit at the gate from 6 to 10 PM and keep track of who comes and goes and give out information. I will start as soon as my criminal background check is completed.

I plan to stay here for at least a month and accumulate a little more money for fuel and get the van up to date.

Settling the Prairie

Oklahoma just celebrated their 100 years of statehood, but the prairie still is far behind the rest of civilization. Things like communication, roads, and food supplies are not really up to par. Those of you who have visited “Lynch Hill,” my daughter Michelle’s and Cathy’s place will know what I am talking about. Well, in the last month there has been significant progress here on the prairie. The first major improvement was that the ¾ mile road in to the property has been improved to the point where I can get my trailer all the way to Cathy’s house and not have to worry (too much) about if it will rain before I need to get back out. The next breakthrough was that I bought an AT&T aircard and Wilson antenna setup to get on the internet. I can only get the signal here at the property because the surrounding 3 miles is a dead zone, but we are on the top of the hill. The signal is only 2G most of the time, with occasional spurts into 3G – but it’s about 10 times faster than Michelle’s dial-up. Broadband has been installed to the neighborhood, but it hasn’t been tested and released to marketing yet – but hopefully the Lynches will be able to get into the 21st century soon.

While here I have been involved in some domestic chores. The air conditioner went out and had to be replaced. Of course, there wasn’t a direct replacement available, so it was necessary to replace all of the mounting hardware in the wall as well. The Poison Ivy had taken over in the woods and I spent one very hot day spraying it. Now, a couple of weeks later, it appears that it is dying out. Both of our vehicles have required attention and hopefully have now been fixed. We both have installed our TV converter boxes and are enjoying them very much. If you are going to need one I recommend them highly. We pick up about 9 more channels and they are very good pictures, even here in the fringe area. Last week we both worked on the K of C garage sale. It was a huge success but, of course, we bought too much for ourselves. We shipped Cathy’s quilting machine back to the people who sold it to her. It has proved to be a lemon, and they have agreed to replace it if they can’t find out what is wrong with it.

I have started on a new venture – eBay. I took the training course at the Escapade and have started selling. My first item was a Pickard Tea Set from my mother’s things that have been gathering dust for years. At 10:38 on my birthday the bidding stopped and, after 10 bids, I got $52 for the set. I consider that a success, since I am just learning the intricacies of the web based sales.
I plan to perhaps market some of our old books while I am on the road this winter. It’s amazing what some people will pay for this old stuff!
Since winter is approaching, I am heading south this week. I plan to visit all of my kids on the way and then I am going to look for a job hosting or something for one of the park systems. That will get me a nice place to stay and still be able to travel frequently enough and, of course, do more geocaching