Once the weather finally warmed up here in the Southwest, time seemed to speed up as quickly as the fat grew around our waistlines from all of the good eats and tasty Shiner beer we’re consuming (we are in Texas after all!).

Our road trip adventures are happening faster than we can write about them, and as much as we don’t want this blog to be a “this-is-what-I-did-today” journal, for the sake of catching up, here’s a quick recap of a few of our favorite stops:

The Pepper Pot, Hatch New Mexico

Hatch is nothing more than a wide spot in the road, but it’s got a worldwide rep for being the green chile capital of the world. When we heard that Anthony Bourdain once said that he had the best red enchiladas of his life at the Pepper Pot, we had to find out if it was true.

Bourdain was right. The Pepper Pot’s menu was the finest of traditional New Mexican cuisine, and I’ve never had a better green or red sauce than theirs (with the exception of my Mom’s, of course!). The aromas and flavors were a smooth, smoky blend of New Mexico’s finest chilies, the staff was friendly, and this massive lunch was just $25 for the two of us.

The Texas Hill Country

There’s an unexpected beauty to the Hill Country region that’s drawn our rig back since 2008. This year the countryside was especially green and lush, with incredible spring flowers and overflowing creeks and rivers.

We love Texas so much that next time a pile of money falls from the sky, we’ll buy a small piece of Hill Country land to winter on. The food can’t be beat, the people are friendly and open, and most aren’t afraid to express their opinions. Texans tell it like they see it, which even when I don’t agree with it, I can appreciate.

Luckenbach

Still, we love Texas but we’re not sure if Texas loves us. Last year the trailer got stuck in the mud at Luckenbach. This year, a flash flood almost took our rig on the Guadalupe. After that near-death experience, once again, our truck almost drowned in the slippery, deep mud of the Luckenbach parking lot.

But it was totally worth it.

Come hell or high water, nothing was going to keep the good people of Luckenbach from holding the first annual Texas Hat Festival.

If anyone knows about hats, it’s Texans. The Luckenbach Hat Festival was all things hats, with a ton of incredible Texas bands, vendors, games and contests.

Like the ugly hat contest I entered. I didn’t win, but at least I can say I got my fifteen seconds of fame, on stage at Luckenbach. I also got a pretty nifty cowgirl hat for just twenty bucks, then ended up wining one later from an event sponsor!

Staying in the Hill Country hasn’t been cheap. Texas doesn’t believe in free public lands or have a whole lot of national forests, so we haven’t boondocked since New Mexico. While it’s been a luxury hooking up to the grid for the last few weeks, RV parks are spendy, costing no less than $27 a night. While there’s deals to be found, like the “By the River” campground we almost died at in Kerrville, they are few and far between.

Despite all of our misadventures here and the high cost of RV parks, it’s the Texas music, the diverse scenery, the food and the people that make it all worthwhile.

Of course, there are always exceptions . . .

René recently cut out another quote and taped it inside our bathroom cabinet door:

“At its core, adventure is the willingness to commit to an uncertain outcome with and open heart and an open mind.”

I don’t know where she got that one or who said it, but her timing is impeccable as it certainly applies to our latest adventure.

Had we known of the uncertain outcome that awaited us at By The River RV Park in Ingram, Texas, alongside the lazy Guadalupe River, we might have left after our first night. But who would have thought this pretty park could be covered in water within the next 24 hours? And after nearly three years on the road, we’ve come to expect the unexpected. Without such an outlook, panic may have set in even earlier than it did the other night.

No, that first photo is not a picture of the park. It’s just where we ended up spending the night, along with all the other rigs from the park, which is a very good thing considering how events of the evening unfolded …

Earlier in the day, we had walked across a spillway path over to an island on the river across from the park. It’s where they allow tent campers – of which there were none, fortunately – and the path was clear of water. We later took the short drive to nearby Hunt, TX to see Stonehenge II – noticing along the way various river crossings that would clearly become impassable with the slightest rise of the river. A sign of things to come. Later that night, three people would be washed downstream after trying to cross the river there. One has yet to be found, another spent most of the evening up a tree crying for help.

Upon returning to the park, I noticed only an inch or so of water covering the path we had walked. That would soon change.

At about 10:00 p.m., the park manager showed up only suggesting that we “may want to hitch up and be prepared to leave” – a high water advisory was in effect until midnight. I figured we had plenty of time and decided to dump our sewer, not knowing where we might be in the morning. While doing so, I walked over to the river bank and noticed it was much closer.

The water was about 8′ higher than it was, and only about 5′ lower than our site. I poked my head in the trailer and told Rene, “Uhh… we might just want to leave now and beat the rush. Come check this out!”

Our pace hastened, we disconnected our power and water, and proceeded to get going. That’s when we heard the sirens, saw the fire truck and noticed emergency personnel suggesting we hurry up because, “This end of the park floods first.”

Gee, thanks for letting us know now, I thought.

A look over their shoulder showed the water about another two feet higher. Everything was fine, it was pretty exciting, but that was it. Then we couldn’t hitch up.

This is when it started to get scary. Multiple attempts to connect the trailer resulted only in a frightening clunk. Apparently I had bent something while trying to hook up in such a hurry. Fearing the damage was permanent and we would be forced to leave the trailer, Renee scrambled to determine which belongings we absolutely needed to grab and I remembered something I learned when getting SCUBA certified: Panic = Death.

Each time I jumped out to adjust the legs of the trailer up or down, there were more volunteers trying to help. One wearing a safety vest and helmet, diligently tried to calm down René. Another tried to assist me by holding our hitch plate level. Clunk. I panicked and tried to force the hook up.

That’s how I pushed the trailer legs off their blocks, causing the fifth wheel kingpin box to slam down on top of our truck bed rails. Doing my best to remain calm, it was clearly time to poop my pants. But no time for that. I wasn’t leaving without our home. The water was another foot higher. I raised the trailer, pulled out from under it and started dismantling our hitch. I think that’s when René really started freaking out.

I quickly confirmed the hitch was still functional and put it back together. One last attempt after adjusting the trailer height again – with the park manager holding the hitch, and me holding my breath – we connected, but it didn’t feel like it. I knew something was wrong. The manager insisted he heard it click, and he must have. I was clearly out of my mind and the water was another foot hgher.

Side Note: Old time RVers throughout our travels have more than once made the same comment one fireman did as we waited for our trailer’s legs to retract: “Are those things moving?” he said. The Arctic Fox may indeed have the slowest retracting legs in the RV industry. But this time it seemed to take an eternity. With water lapping at our site, we were on our way, just in time.

We joined dozens of other RVs up the hill in a church parking lot for the night, hoping the trailer wouldn’t fall off, wondering if we would be able to unhitch. As more continued to show up, one frantic woman asked if I had a fifth wheel. She said someone needed help getting their trailer out because they had no way to pull it. My heart shrank as I had to say no. Our Pullrite Superglide requires a kingpin adapter to function without damaging the hitch and/or trailer.

Walking down to survey the damage the next morning, I noticed our site had clearly been under at least a couple feet of water. All the RVs and trailers did get out, some with their sewer hoses draped over their bike racks. Others who left theirs behind. With only our end of the park truly getting flooded, we feel very fortunate to have our home with us. We moved on to a park down the road a in Bourne called Top Of The Hill RV Resort, thinking we might need to be there a while waiting for hitch parks. But upon further  investigation, the damage done was nothing a few whacks from a hammer couldn’t fix.

Epilogue: As we were leaving the morning after, I noticed a trailer tire was low. Pulling away in hopes that we would find a service station soon, we immediately pulled into a tire shop right across the road. We had not one, but two punctured tires.

I guess when it rains, it really does pour. Especially in Texas. After all the excitement, I did little math and calculated that the river was rising a foot every five minutes. That may not sound all that fast, but consider the gentle slope of the terrain and it’s easy to imagine that flood approaching like an incoming tide – we don’t need to, we were there!

We’ve always wanted to go RVing in Mexico. I have a long lost cousin in the beautiful small town of Cuernavaca, and I know other RVers who’ve spent long beautiful winters in Mexico. But when the border violence started escalating, we heeded warnings from friends and family and stayed away.

This year we tempted fate, and on a whim headed to Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona, which is spitting distance from the Mexican border. It’s a beautiful park, much like Big Bend in Texas, but with more plant diversity (in my un-scientific opinion).

Being the low-budget travelers that we are, we camped at a remote free BLM campground outside of the park, and saw this warning as soon as we pulled in.

While we’ve heard rumors about immigration and drug running routes going through this park, we took this sign as more government hype.

That is until about 11 pm on our first night, when we saw a truck speeding through the campground, cruising around, obviously looking for someone.

While there were at least 5 other RVs in the park, it was a little disconcerting to think that really illegal activity was actually going on right outside our trailer. But with the swarms of border patrol agents hanging out in the area, we slept OK.

The next day we went on a long walk out into the desert and saw tons of beautiful plants and flowers. Later in the afternoon, I read about the murder of a prominent Arizona rancher that happened the previous day, about 200 miles from us in Douglas. The rancher’s murder has inflamed the anger of locals in the area who want more security. I can’t blame them.

The was the first border murder on U.S. soil since park ranger Kris Eggle was killed in 2002 while on duty near the park.

At the border town of Lukeville, we saw many RVers coming back from Mexico. I was partly jealous, partly thinking “those guys are NUTS!”

So what I want to know is, just how much of what we hear about the violence in Mexico is exaggerated by the media, and how much is real?

I want to talk to other RVers who’ve gone there in the last year, and find out what their experience was. Traveling south is something we really want to do, and I’m getting antsy to make this trek, possibly next winter.

Anyone with any feedback on recent RV experiences in Mexico, I’d love to hear about it.

People unfamiliar with Slab City are surprised to learn that there’s regular entertainment every weekend.

But on Friday and Saturday nights, you can count on music filling the air when musicians like the family band Drop 7 hit the stage at the Range or the Stage Door.

Sadly, the drummer for Drop 7 and mother of the band, Trish Scott, died suddenly on March 7. She can be seen here in this video we took, just two weeks prior.

Her death came as a terrible shock to all, since she was only 41. When news of her passing spread, our friends Jen and Johnny acted fast and got Slabbers together to successfully raise the money needed for her funeral expenses.

Here’s a video of Trish and Drop 7 during one of their last shows together.

Boozing, gambling, war, trucking and three legged dogs. Does pleasure reading get any better than this?

When I first heard about how author Richard Ide logged over a million miles as a long haul trucker while perfecting the fine art of writing, I knew I had to read his book, “3 Aces,” which resulted from those travels.

I guessed that anyone who’s led the life of a trucker, dealt cards in Atlantic City and sold stocks on Wall Street, must have a good story to share. And I was right. Don’t let the vague title or cover art fool you: like a cold Shiner on a hot summer day, 3 Aces is good for the soul.

3 Aces is a road trip story based on the life of Abner, a struggling, lonely trucker suffering from Vietnam-era post traumatic stress disorder, who meets Dawn, a younger, divorced alcoholic leading a dead end life while a young daughter waits back at home. When Dawn and Abner team up as long haul truckers and a three legged dog named Pip hops along for the ride, a captivating story unfolds as they travel the highways and byways of America.

Much like a classic country love song, 3 Aces doesn’t pose as highbrow literature. But like a big haired waitress in a Texas diner, 3 Aces serves up a hearty plate of love, politics, forgiveness, redemption and adventure. There’s a side of politics too, as Ide educates readers about global trade and the economic impact it has on the grueling life of truckers who keep the shelves stocked at your nearest Mega-Lo Mart.

Ide’s story is an easy read, and is escapism at it’s finest. He manages to keep a complex story line going with multi-dimensional characters that never run out of gas. He has a knack for character development and conversation details, and describing the highway scenes of America in such vivid detail you’d swear you traveled down that same road. You’ll especially love how he weaves the colorful language of truckers into the story, sharing colloquialisms like “chicken coop” and “plain blue wrappers” with the uneducated public.

3 Aces is a great road tripping book, and it breaks my heart that few people know about it. That’s because of the fearful state of the publishing industry, which wouldn’t give Ide a deal for his story. So Ide went the self publishing route with 3 Aces. The problem with self publishing however, is that unless you’re a marketing guru and can get the story into the public, it’s very difficult to sell copies. Ide has made every effort to get 3 Aces out there, and can still use all he help he can get in moving it.

So please, buy a copy and read 3 Aces and help get a classic tale into the hands of the masses.

Let’s coin a new phrase, in the original meaning of the term …

I hereby declare Snabbers as Seasonal Snowbird Slabbers – those of us who enjoy the culture of Slab City on a seasonal basis.

As in … “Slab City residents are happy the Snabbers have left.”

Unlike the stereotypical Snowbirds who tend to gate themselves up in their RV caravan roundups, never venturing downtown, Snabbers prefer to immerse themselves in the Slab City experience.

You might even find Snabbers at the hot spring or bathing in a culvert. Though we only partook in the former this year.

And unlike self-proclaimed Slabbers, we Snabbers retain a certain self respect rare among certain full time residents of the Slabs.

Overheard one day in reference to an old travel trailer in dire need of repair …

“I’m a Slabber! It’s too nice for me.”

Snabbers walk a fine line. While we enjoy meeting the eclectic mix of people that one might find at The Range on a Saturday night, and don’t mind putting up with a little acrid smoke while gathered around a trash can fire to enjoy some funky music act, we do prefer a tasty cocktail over malt liquor, and hot grilled eggplant over cold Spam out of a can. We also like regular showers in the privacy of our own RV and a clean shirt every few days.

Snabbing isn’t for everyone. But at least one night on the Slabs should be required of any true full-timer. Make it a Saturday next season, and we’ll meet you at The Range.

Dare I digress and ask who coined the phrase, “to coin a phrase”? See that first link if you’re really interested. Or, if someone asks this piece of useless trivia at a dinner party, just tell them it predates printing and moveable type if that’s what they suggest. Way back in the 14 century, money was apparently coined by wedge-shaped dies called “coins” used to stamp the metal blanks which came to be called coins.

Considering money is something you will find very little of at the Slabs, I find this relevant. As is this coining quote typical of its early use in the mid 2oth century …

“It takes all sorts to make a world, to coin a phrase.”
— From Francis Brett Young’s novel Mr. Lucton’s Freedom, 1940

Indeed it does. Especially at Slab City.

When you RV, you always learn something new. Whether it’s about how to avoid dropping weird stuff down the toilet,  or learning new boondocking tips, you’re always growing.

When we met Kelly and Al last winter in New Mexico, I couldn’t believe we had been on the road almost two years and didn’t know about the Escapees Day’s End Directory. We were on our way to Texas to join Escapees because we knew about all of their perks, but we didn’t know about this one until Al and Kelly (aka The Bayfield Bunch) told us about it.

The Day’s End Directory is a comprehensive collection of practically every low cost and free boondocking spot in North America, compiled by the folks who know best, Escapees members. For just $5, you can join this private Escapees group, the Day’s End Yahoo Group, and gain access to the directory. It has literally thousands of locations of free and cheap campsites, and members update the information regularly.

The only downside to the Day’s End Directory is that it’s created in oldschool format. The book is available as a CD or .rtf file only, and you need to rifle through about 500 pages to find locations by state and city. It’s laborious and time consuming, and cost-prohibitive to print. To get around that, I created a PDF of the Western states we are visiting this year, and sent the file to Kinkos for printing. It cost me $12 to print CA, AZ, NM and TX.

I hope some day the Escapees powers that be will pay a young geek to  take over the project and convert the listings to some kind of searchable database like our friend’s Jenn and Johnny’s FreeCampsites.net.

But until then, this behemoth book is still the best money you’ll spend if you like to get out into the wild, or just need an approved, safe place to crash for the night.