Our first ‘Arvey trip
For our first adventure we chose a fairly simple round trip from home, to Rusk KOA and then around to Caddo Lake Park and back home, it sort of worked out OK apart from the stay at Caddo Lake.
First stop was Rusk, Texas. Rusk KOA is quite small and is very quiet, very few trees so satellite reception isn’t a problem. The electric hook up and water are close as is the dump tank. For anyone who isn’t into ‘camping’ in a motor home this is where you connect the large tube so that you can empty what is nicely termed the ‘black tank’ – the toilet. Soon after we hooked up the water we noticed that there was a pool forming under ‘arvey – we were told it may be that the fresh water tank was at a slight angle so ignored it. Leveling was a real task; there are 4 hydraulic jacks under the coach – basically one at each corner. Some coaches have automatic controllers – ours is manual and it took a while to get it sort of level. You also have to use the jacks to stop the rolling as you walk about.
So we’re hooked up, connected, expanded and leveled. The satellite dish is up and the big TV is on – just like home. We decided to go exploring the doggy walk, a really wide area at the end of the site – stickers everywhere, poor Rusty didn’t know which paw to lift up – they all had at least one of these thorny pods on the underneath. This is a dog who does not like anyone touching his feet – bit like Tony – so it was quite a while until his paws were cleaned. Walks for the next couple of days were restricted more to the pathways or areas that appeared to be clear of these painful seeds.
Our next stop on this trip was Caddo Lake at Karnack, Texas – just a short 95 mile trip towards Louisiana. This is a Texas state park and is heavily wooded and has huge cypress trees in the water, and some of the scenery is amazing. Sadly the drought 2012 had reduced the levels in the lake to such an extent that even the flat bottomed boats were out of service. The site we had was right in the wooded area, really picturesque and very quiet. It had a barbeque pit and fixed table and chairs, we’d stopped to get a nice steak on the way so we cooked out that night – really good.
So – remember I said it was heavily wooded, and we were at a site right in the middle. This was late in the year and these were all some kind of fir trees. All night long the cones dropped on the roof – randomly – so you could start to doze off and the next couple would hit. It was sometime during that night that we decided we could not stay another 2 nights, we would have been zombies trying to drive back to Carrollton. The next morning we found a site not too far away near Shreveport – Tall Pines – but no pines trees on the sites – that will do. We packed up, unhooked, pulled up the leveling jacks and left Caddo Lake State Park.
Leveling jacks – now they can be troublesome, especially if you don’t retract them fully and we soon discovered what happens. We went over a bump and the buzzing started which is really disconcerting – it was one of the jacks and they have sensors. The bump must have just dropped the jack a fraction and the sensor thought it was down. Memo to self – next time make sure the jacks are fully retracted.
Just before we arrived at Tall Pines we saw a Wal-Mart and decided to get new provisions – it’s provisions if you’re camping, groceries when at home. The only problem was they had height restrictions on the main entrance so we had to do a little maneuvering to get to the parking lot. A quick shopping trip inside and on to the RV park. Tall Pines like Rusk KOA was quite small, the site was large enough and quite level, it would have been a push if we’d been towing, though another RV pulled in later towing a Beetle.
On the way back to Dallas we stopped at the in-laws in Wills Point. Maneuvering ‘arvey through the seemingly narrow and low opening to the ranch was real fun, especially off a 70 mph limit 2 track road, but we survived to camp again.