Anchored in the Heart of Texas
Anchored in the Heart of Texas
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It’s been so long since I’ve updated what we’ve been up to, it’s left a few caring folks out there confused. I don’t blame you! We arrived at Falling Star RV Resort (see the last two entries) right before Easter and our RV tires have sat still ever since—well, except for the time Brent got under the trailer and rotated them.
So, why haven’t we been singing “Anchors Aweigh”? Have we found ourselves a permanent harbor? No, we haven’t decided to live in Texas, though our 88-year old neighbor, Wanda, has promised to remove the engine from our truck in case we had any ideas of leaving.
Well, we stayed one week, then two. Then, we went ahead and paid for a month. We realized we had a safe place for Brent’s back to heal and a group of neighbors around us who quickly felt like family.
What have we been up to all this time?
We’re still “honky tonkin’” at Red Rock Saloon Thursday nights with friends and journeying out to Bastrop every week for Margarita Mondays (half off margherita pizzas and yummy margaritas on the rocks at Neighbor’s Pizza). Since the weather has warmed considerably, Evelyn has been finding herself company in the pool with plenty of friends and friendly faces. When we arrived late March, she had to use floaties. Now, she dives in and can swim the length of the pool underwater! When she’s not swimming on her own, she’s asking Daddy or Jason to throw her up in the air to splash back down again. We’ve been impromptu grilling and cocktailing, listening to Lonnie strum and sing while the kids and dogs chase toads around the campsite. The owner of the park, Kelly, even watched the girls for us one night so Brent and I could get out and go to dinner together.
We didn’t plan to stay this long, and it’s the longest we’ve stayed in one place in two years. We do keep intending to lift our anchors, but these crazy things keep happening.
For starters, Brent went to buy me some over-the-counter decongestants one day for a sinus infection that had been killing me and was informed that his driver’s license had expired… like, back in February! We had actually been in California when it expired but we had no idea it had happened, and here he’d been driving around on an expired license for over three months and was now half way across the country!
He began investigation on the best solution to the problem. He would have to visit the DMV in California in person to renew his license now. Was that the best option? He made several calls to see whether he should just get a Texas license, but that entailed registering all of our vehicles in Texas and we had just paid to renew them for a year in California. So, we checked flights and decided to fly the whole family home to California (minus the dogs) to handle the problem. It seemed a great time to visit friends and family, anyway, so why not?
It felt really strange leaving the dogs with the trailer and us not be there. We’d all been together non-stop, everyday for nearly two years, and here we were talking about leaving them “home” with the trailer while we flew back to California! Our amazing neighbors hopped in without hesitation with offers to take care of Emmy and Heidi while we were gone. Thank goodness for Dee, Sandra, Anna, and Vicky, who banded together to be sure our fur kids were loved, walked and fed while we were away!
So, we lifted off from San Antonio for Kailyn’s first plane ride, landing in Ontario three hours later.
A week’s visit in California went fast, but we got to visit Memaw and Papa while they camped at the beach one night and we worked in visits with family and friends we’d been missing other nights. Brent spent 6 ½ hours at the DMV and got his license renewed, so all in all, it was a hugely successful trip!
We touched back down in San Antonio and traveled the now-familiar Texas highways back to McMahon and back home to our trailer and dogs at Falling Star. The weather had graduated into full-blown summer temperatures while we were gone. It was nearly 100 degrees and plenty humid. The dogs were happy to see us, but it was just too hot outside to expend too much energy on celebrating.
Having been at Falling Star for two and a half months at this point, we started wrapping our heads once again around the idea of leaving. It’s a heart-breaking and bittersweet idea to leave now—our new friends have come to be like family. It will be no easy thing this time to hitch up and roll off into the sunset.
But the time had come, so “anchors aweigh”, at last? Not exactly.
Kelly asked us a favor: would we stay on to help her run the park while she visits her family home in Wisconsin for two weeks in July? Because Kelly has come to mean so much to us and we were so touched that she trusts us enough to ask such a favor of us, we didn’t hesitate to agree.
So, we have extended our stay at Falling Star now through near the end of July! Who’d have thought when we rolled into this special place back at the end of March that we’d have made such a family of friends, made such wonderful memories, and still be planning keep anchored there well into July, and to be lucky enough to be trusted by the hard-working owner of the park to watch over things while she’s away?
So, that’s the skinny—and why we are still harbored in Texas through the hottest months of the year. Kind of a crazy thought that we have a home we can literally take anywhere we want, yet we’ve chosen to moor up where it’s hotter than anywhere else in the country.
Honestly, though, I don’t even mind—Texas has won my heart. I love the people, I love the pride, I love the community. If only it had Oregon weather! Ha!
How would we beat the heat this summer? Well, that’s the best part of bringing this blog up to date. We thought we might take a couple weeks in June to go down to South Padre Island on the Gulf Coast, but Kelly had a better option for us--her very own private “key” to Door County, Wisconsin, and that would send us on probably THE highlight of our two years’ traveling so far. But, that’s an entry of its own.
In short, our anchor remains firmly planted at Lake Falling Star. We’re starting to feel like Texas is home, and in a lot of ways it is.
I’ve recently started reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. I think Steinbeck felt what we feel in Texas; it’s a hard feeling to miss: “Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.”
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