Dodging Bill

June 15 - June 20, 2015

As we left Galveston for Austin, tropical storm "Bill" was bearing down on the Texas coast. While Bill didn't do any major damage, he was an unwelcome visitor to Eastern and Central Texas which had suffered so much flooding in the weeks before our arrival. Luckily, Austin hadn't had any severe flooding and was able to easily handle the rain that the remnants of Bill visited on central Texas. We had to laugh that we had installed our hurricane shutters before we left our coastal Florida home, only to find ourselves running away from a tropical storm in Texas! We had one very windy and rainy night where we slept with the Liberty's slideouts pulled in out of worry that high winds might tear the canvas covers on our slideouts. But Bill and his aftermath left us with rainy weather during our entire visit to Austin.

We set up camp in a Texas state park on the outskirts of Austin, called McKinney Falls. The park had several nice trails to waterfalls and other scenic vistas, but muddy conditions kept us close to the RV. We had a lovely shaded and private campsite with water and electric hookups. For those of you who aren't RVers, "hookups" refers to the kind of utilities which are available in any given campground.

Most national park campgrounds offer "primitive camping" which means there are no utilities available. We are fine with this for a few days, as long as it's not too hot or too cold. We carry 28 gallons of propane for cooking and heating. We have 3 water tanks onboard. One tank holds 78 gallons of fresh water, another contains 57 gallons of "gray water" which is the waste from your kitchen and bathroom faucets and shower, and the third contains 43 gallons of "black water", and well, you can guess where that comes from!

Other highlights include a 10 gallon hot water heater which runs on either electric or propane, a 4 door refrigerator which also runs on either electricity or propane, and a propane range for cooking. In addition to the engine battery we have two additional batteries and an inverter that power our lights, water pump, and tv. And we have a generator which produces enough power to run our two air conditioners and our combination microwave/convection oven. It can also recharge our batteries when they get low.

Many state parks, like McKinney Falls, have water and electric hookups, which means that we have power for all of our electrical appliances, and a water spigot to which we can connect a hose. We have to be cautious not to use more water than our waste tanks can contain. When we leave camp we can stop at the park's "dump station" which is a receptacle in the ground leading to the campgound's sewer pipes or septic tank. I have decided that this is "man's work" and am very glad that Rick has never challenged that.

And, of course, "full hookups" is the gold standard for RVs, meaning that in addition to the water and electric hookups, you have a connection for the RV's sewer pipe, making it easy to stay indefinitely in a given campsite. In addition to the full hookups, many private campgrounds, and a few public ones,  offer a cable hookup and/or wifi. Unfortunately, most campgrounds' wifi tends to be so slow that you're lucky to get your email to load. We have a Verizon "mifi" box which provides us with an internet connection. But, of course, we have to have a cell phone signal in order to use it, and we have to conserve our data usage if we don't want a huge cell phone bill at month's end. For me, the most important of the hookups is the wifi. I'll conserve water for a week in exchange for a fast free internet connection!