Ahhh....

 December 17-21, 2020

We pulled out of the Christmas tree lot at 8:45am, at 9:15 while in one of the outside lanes of I35E we heard a loud bang from the engine compartment. We worked our way over to the inside lane and exited as soon as we could, the engine is struggling. We found a place to pull into and popped the hood, Dave soon found the problem, the turbo hose had disconnected. Dave tried to get a clamp to work so we could continue on but to no avail. I found a Chevy dealer, about 6 miles down the road, who could take us in as soon as we got there. The engine continued to struggle as we crept along the frontage road, we found a gas station\truck stop that we could drop the trailer at. I talked to one of the clerks and we could leave it there just not overnight. We finally arrived at the Charles Fairbanks Chevy dealership and Blake got us right in, he had hoped we would be on the road by noon. They soon figured out what the problem was, we couldn’t just replace the hose we needed the whole unit, which had to be picked up, and that entailed at least an hour of time waiting for the part to arrive. After getting the part installed they then had to a regen on the engine. About 2:15, and $700 later we were finally out of the dealership, got back to the trailer, and by 2:30 we were back on the road. Delays like this are one reason we are usually on the road first thing in the morning. 

We arrived at Jim Hogg COE Park in Georgetown TX about 5:30, still a little daylight left to get into the site. 

site 25

The park is named for the 20^th governor of TX, Jim Hogg. Jim Hogg had a daughter named Ima, “Ima was named for the heroine of the poem The Fate of Marvin, written by Hogg's older brother Tom”. Not sure about you but I’d have found myself a nickname.

Pictures from around the campground. 

Great window screen

Steep boat ramp

Gotta watch that first step

Local wildlife

We spent 5 nights at Jim Hogg, it was so nice to be away from the big city. We spent our days walking the park, there is also a 26-mile trail around the lake which went by the campground. We had the chance to walk parts of it a few days, trying both ways from the trailhead at the park. We did have a day of rain, the day after we got there, that we got a run into the local H-E-B and then enjoyed not having to listen for our motion detector go off alerting us to customers. Jim Hogg was just what we needed to decompress after 30 days straight of Christmas trees.

Not sure why this bouy (bird) was so far from the lake

Because of our involvement with the USACE loaner life jacket program we are always interested in seeing how other projects handle theirs. The COE campgrounds we stayed at earlier in the fall had no loaner life jacket stations :( 

Loaner life jacket station-Lake Georgetown TX

Loaner life jacket station-Lake Shelbyville IL

Tomorrow we head out to Goliad State Park where we’ll be for 8 nights, we’ll be celebrating the Christmas holiday there.

Merry Christmas to all of our family, friends and followers, we hope you have a safe and healthy holiday. 

Until next time…