Day 5 - Great Falls to Lethbridge

We had a fairly slow day yesterday and spent the night at Bridgeview RV Resort in Lethbridge, Alberta.

We started the day with our first breakfast out at McDonald's.  Then on to Walmart to stock up with canned and dry goods.  Cec forgot about the restrictions on fresh fruit and vegetables, and we took those back for a refund.

She also ran into a couple we had first seen at the campground in Wakeeny, KS.  They were towing an old 1950s vintage trailer, which we admired from as distance.  Then in Douglas, Wyoming, there they were again, and Cec had a conversation with them at the campground pool.  They were former Canadian residents and were headed to southern Canada for a vacation.  On the way to Great Falls I speculated whether we would see them at Dick's RV Park?  They are not there, although the campground was huge and could have easily hidden them.  Then at Walmart, there they were!  They promised to email use a list of things to see in Alberta.

The border crossing was easy.  Most of the time was spent vetting the boys' birth certificates, IDs and parental permissions.  They asked the usual questions about destination and length of stay.  And, of course, they asked about guns.  I was concerned that they might give an RV with Texas plates special scrutiny since all Texans carry guns, don't they?  My biggest dread was a teat-it-apart search of the RV as once occurred to us with our car in Windsor, Ontario. But it didn't happen

We arrived at the campground earlier than our previous stops, and the weather was gorgeous, bright and a cool breeze blowing.  So we decided to cook hot dogs on the grill.

After dinner the boys watched movies, Kaden something on his video device and Ben and Tristin watched a Harry Potter Movie on the TV.

Tomorrow we head for somewhere north of Edmonton.  And we had to stop to buy fruits and vegetables.

Don't Forget the Indian Paintbrushes

Although not as well know as the bluebonnet, many Texas roadsides also have fields of a reddish flower somewhat similar in appearance to bluebonnets, known as Indian paintbrushes.  They are also planted by the Texas Department of Transportation, and they provide a very pretty contrast to bluebonnets.  We found these Indian paintbrushes alongside a street on the edge of Huntsville while on a trip to Home Depot.

Bluebonnet Time in Texas

Every year from March to May the roadsides in many parts of Texas burst into carpets of blue flowers.  These are bluebonnets, the Texas state flower, and seeds are sown along Texas highways by the Texas Department of Transportation to keep the annual show going.  We have several large fields of bluebonnets alongside Highway 19 between Riverside and Huntsville.  It is not uncommon to see Texans stopping their cars alongside the highway and taking photos of family members lying in a field of bluebonnets. 

Martin's Gospel Jubilee

When I was a kid in East Texas, my parents liked to go to gospel "singings,"  which featured lively vocal music in the Southern gospel style.  Recently one of our RV club members stumbled upon a private campground on Lake Sam Rayburn that hosts an annual gospel "jubilee," which is three days of camping out, eating and listening to gospel music performances.  The surprising thing is that it is absolutely free!  And our club was invited to attend.  

The owner, a wealthy Houston man (he invented the A-frame air conditioning coil) who acts as host, emcee for the performances, and some time performer.  He is a talented songwriter and poet.  He also has a large collection of classic cars in a museum that opens only when he is there.  He is often around to provide a personal tour and gave us a reading of a touching poem that he wrote about his father's hat.  The car collection includes an RV-like bus that Franklin Roosevelt used in his run for Governor of New York in the late 1920's.

The meals were high cal all the way -- fried catfish, barbecue, bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, and so on.  In addition, they served homemade ice cream every day as shown in the nearby photo. Note that the ice cream maker was powered by a restored antique one cylinder John Deere "hit and miss" engine.  By the end of the weekend, we were hitting the antacids pretty heavily. 

The music featured everything from amateur open mike performances to professional groups.  The music was all gospel, and much of it was in the bluegrass style.  There also several very good traditional gospel quartets. One of the performers was my old grade school buddy, Kenneth Ryan.  He played bass in a local bluegrass gospel group.  Neither had any idea that the other would be there.

Guests included Donna Douglas, who played Ellie May on the "Beverly Hillbillies" and Tom Lester, who played Eb on the "Green Acres" series.

It was a very good weekend, and we will probably go again next year.

Lost in Texas

After our four wheeling run at Tree's Ranch, Cec and I played tourist for a day.  We drove over to Utopia, Texas for lunch and waymarked some historical markers (www.waymarking.com).  A group is photographing and measuring the coordinates of all Texas historical markers with GPSs.

After lunch we drove on to visit the Lost Maples State Natural Area.  Maples normally do not grow in hot climates, but they do grow in the canyons of the Sabinal River.  The cool spring fed river and the sheltered canyons provide an ideal microclimate for them.  The maples came to Texas with the glaciers in one of the ice ages and found a home.

We decided to hike the first section of one of the two trails in the area, but we just kept walking, crossing the very shallow river via stepping stones several times and climbing a very steep, rugged trail to a hill top where there were several very nice overlooks.  On the down side of the trail we ran across the lake shown in the photo above.  The attendant at our RV campground in Leakey later told me that he had camped there as a Boy Scout and that there was an artesian well that sprayed water up into the air.

Eventually, a tired pair made it back to the parking lot after a hike of almost 6 miles.  We slept soundly (and early) that night, but surprisingly we were not sore the next day.

Anatomy of a Trail Fix

Broken parts are a part of four wheeling, and ingenious trail fixes are often necessary to get the vehicle back to the parking lot where it can be trailered home.

In a previous post I mentioned that one of the Jeeps in our group at Tree's Ranch, a TJ model (97-06), broke a rear axle trying to climb a ledge.  Luckily it was near the end of the day, and the trail fix was an interesting part of the run.

When a rear axle breaks on a TJ, the axle shaft comes out of the axle tube and the wheel begins to stick out from the side of the Jeep.  If it is not restrained, it will eventually separate from the Jeep.

The fix in this case involved two steps.  First, the rear drive shaft was disconnected, which made the Jeep front wheel drive only.

The second part was to take the vertical bar from a high lift jack (a 4' tall jack made for heavy equipment but beloved by four wheelers) and tie it across the tire using parts of a ratchet strap (the type used to tie town loads to a trailer).  One end of the jack bar was tied to the Jeep frame on the rear of the tire and the other on the the front of the tire.  As the photo shows, this lets the jack bar slide on the tire while holding the tire and axle shaft in place.  The tire was lubricated with WD-40.

Unfortunately, the jack bar tended to rise up on the tire as it turned, and one of the guys rode on the bar as the Jeep drove back to the road.  As the Jeep moved, the rider sprayed the tire to keep it lubricated.  The Jeep had to drive very slowly, obviously, and a trailer was sent to pick it up at the first accessible location.

Four Wheeling at Tree's Ranch

We had not been four wheeling since we left Michigan, and we decided to join the Jeep Nation club out of San Antonio on a run to Tree's Ranch, which is about 125 miles west of San Antonio not far north of the small town of Leakey.

Tree's is a 5500 acre exotic game ranch that opens one weekend a month for four wheeling.  It is in the Texas Hill Country, which has limestone hills several hundred feet in height covered with cedar and mesquite trees and cactus.  The ground is littered with broken pieces of limestone of all sizes, and the land is cut by creeks that are dry most of the year. Among the rocks live rattlesnakes and scorpions, although we did not see any on our trip.  As they say, the area is filled with things that stick, sting and bite. 

We ran the intermediate trails which required tires at least 33" in diameter up to 37".  (By comparison most full size SUV tires are about 28" in diameter.)  Our trails crossed creeks, went up and down very steep hills and followed dry creek beds.  The creek beds were filled with rocks and had numerous dry waterfalls that we had to climb or descend.  The adjacent photo shows my Jeep descending a waterfall.

As a testament to the difficulty of the trails, our run had a broken U-joint and transfer case yoke on one Jeep, a broken track bar on another and a severely dented rim causing a flat tire on a third.  We heard of a rollover on the extreme trail, but those guys are prepared for that with extensive roll cages.  The worst breakdown of the day in our group was a broken rear axle on a TJ style Jeep, which I will detail with a photo the following post. 

My Jeep, also a TJ, came through with only a severely dented front license plate holder and plate and a slightly dented rear license plate holder.  That happened when I got stuck between two rocks in a stream bed.  Another Jeep used its winch to bull my rear tires sideways to give me room to maneuver.  

Oh, yes, they say I almost rolled my Jeep on the same obstacle, although I did not notice it from inside.  Oops!

Tree's is an outstanding offroad facility, and we had a wonderful time driving the trails and socializing with the Jeep Nation folks.  We followed the day with a nice barbecue dinner.  I also won a tow strap in the door prize drawing after dinner Saturday night.