Texas Tales

I arrived in Tyler, TX one hour later than planned, (not bad considering the events leading up to getting here), and I’ve spent the last few days with my parents as they shop for a house here in Tyler.  We’ve driven all over, crossed most of their houses off the list, and are working through the process.

On my way into Tyler, I stopped in some little town as a quick overnight stay.  I had planned on staying at the walmart as most RVers do, but this particular walmart was a 24-hour one, in a busy part of town, and the parking was less than plentiful.  So I toured around and found a commercial/industrial part of town that looked very quiet with a nice road and curb, and a semi parked a half block down that looked like it was going to be there all night as well.  I settled in, and slept really well that night.  It’s fantastic when I get to skip the hotel and get a great night’s sleep!

Sunday morning we (my parents and me) went out scouting to see all the properties on their list.  Since my dad has a brand-new F150, it makes for a much better around-town vehicle compared to my current setup.  The first house we went to see, nick-named from my parents as “Stonehenge” had a terrible road leading up to it.  So bad in fact that the house was knocked off the list just due to the road conditions.  Several other houses were knocked out of contention for the same reason, terrible roads.

After deciding against “Stonehenge”, I routed us to the next house on the list.  The fastest way to get there was to continue on the aforementioned terrible road, so I did so.  About a mile later, we were going down a hill and saw at the bottom of the hill that there was a river flowing across the road.  It was more than just washed out, it was actively being washed out.  The idea of attempting to “ford” the river was out of the question.  Unfortunately, turning around wasn’t an option either since the road was so narrow and the sides were steep and wet.  So I threw it in reverse, used the fantastic backup camera on this new truck, and backed us up about a quarter mile.  My mother didn’t really like that little maneuver.

As the morning progressed, we saw a whole bunch more houses, most of which did not live up to the promise of their online photos.  Three were left at the end of the day, and we asked our realtor to set up appointments for those.  Unknown to us at the time, one of the three remaining was no longer available because it had a contract signed the day before.  So, we’re down to two.

“16 acres” was the nickname for one of the finalists, and after an appointment and detailed inspection, it was decided that the house was simply not right for us because we don’t own horses.  If we did, it would have been perfect, but between the price and the amount of maintenance required for the property and the age of the house, the fit wasn’t right.

“Red Iron” was the favorite house, and the last appointment.  My parents are working on offers and counter-offers now, and we’ll see how that goes.

On another side note, one evening I was boondocking in the camper it rained significantly, and I found there’s a leak.  Basically right over my head in the front of the camper when sleeping.  I looked around on top, didn’t see any obvious places it’s leaking from, so I threw some caulk into the spots that didn’t look quite as good.  We’re supposed to get rain on Wednesday, so I’ll see if my patch-caulking job did any good.  The image above was taken while on the top of the camper looking back at the trailer.

On a personal health-related note, I had some terrible food poisoning last night.  Worst case I’ve ever had.  Didn’t really get to sleep until about 7am this morning.  To say it’s thrown off my day is an understatement.  I’ve had water, gatorade, and crackers so far, and in a bit I’m going to try some real food.  I have no idea what caused it, and these things seem to happen to me a couple times a year, completely without warning and without any consistency in cause.  It was nice to be staying in a hotel for that event with its modern water and sewer systems.  Stupid human body.

The plan at the moment is to stay in Texas for a couple more days, and get new tires on my way out of town.  From there, I have possible stops in Indiana (trailer warranty work) and possibly New Jersey (visit a client).  Or I might just head back to the safe port of MN.

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