Day 181: McKinney Falls State Park, TX

It is now Day 184 (Monday), so I've got some blogging to get caught up on.

Upper McKinney Falls.

On Thursday evening, one of our fellow campers at Bastrop State Park brought her chair and a few beers to our campsite, so that we could get acquainted.  Her name was Melissa (who like me is a melanoma survivor), and she is a retired Austin police officer who downsized from a 3,000 square foot house to a Bluebird diesel pusher motorhome (probably a bit over 300 square feet).  We had a great time learning a bit about her and her new job, and sharing some health tips.  Of course darkness (and bugs) closed in on us much too soon, as we would have enjoyed spending even more time with her.

Alea had the honor of encountering our first scorpion.

It was my turn to ride, and I had a far easier day than Alea's last day in the saddle.  My route trended downhill, with only a few low rollers to contend with.  And a good chunk was on roads paved with the easy rolling Texas white asphalt that we love riding on.  

The plan was for me to ride from the campsite, but after Alea had gone to the comfort station I discovered that my rear flashing light wouldn't come on.  It should have been charged, and we've had this happen before where if we keep trying the "on" button it eventually works.  I decided that I would give it a quick charge via USB cable while I, too, visited the comfort station.  Once I had it plugged in, I piled the bike in the van for safe keeping and locked up before heading there.

When I came out, I discovered that Alea had left with the van, obviously thinking I had started pedaling down the road.  We were fortunate in this instance that we had good cell coverage, as I could think of many places where we have been where it might have taken quite a while for her to figure out what had become of me.  So I called her and asked whether she had noticed my bike in the back of the van (an obviously rhetorical question)?  Luckily, she had not gone far and it wasn't long before she could return and I was on my way.

I made it the 34 miles to McKinney Falls State Park ($24, power, water, adjustable showers) in a couple of hours (we paid $24 for a 50 amp site, as all the $20 per night 30 amps sites were taken).  We had almost finished setting up when I got a call from my niece, Paula Everett.  Of course my clothes were completely soaked in sweat and my hands were sweaty, so I wasn't able to unlock my phone to answer her call.  But I quickly dried everything off and called her back, so that we could arrange a rendezvous.

I drove over to her hotel to pick her up, where she was waiting with some mail and merchandise that had sent to her house for us.  One of those items was our new ARB awning, which I knew would be bulky, but was a bit shocked to see just how big the thing was.

Tight squeeze.

For a moment I thought that the only way we would get it back to the campsite would be to install it right there on the spot, as it was longer than the van's cargo box, and the van was crammed to the gills with our gear.  But amazingly, with a little ingenuity we managed to squeeze it in diagonally between our two bicycles and were quickly on our way.

Of course on seeing the size of the awning package, I was feeling very sorry for having imposed the burden of delivery upon them.  Fortunately for me, she and her husband Robert are awesome people and they simply took it in stride.  They figured out how to transport it for the 5 hour drive from Lewisville, TX and then dragged into their hotel room for safe keeping.

Once Paula and I had returned to the campsite (Robert was working in Austin), and after briefly getting caught up with each other's lives, she, Alea and I set to work on installing the awning.  With the awning in hand, I finally knew what size of holes to drill in our T6 aluminum angle brackets, so that was the first item of business.  I drilled the topmost holes and then mounted the brackets to the roof.  Next, we temporarily installed the awning so that I could precisely locate where to drill the bottom-most holes.  With that done, we loosely mounted the awning, adjusted the position fore and aft, and then tightened down the bolts.  In total, the whole process probably took less than an hour.

The install was definitely a three person job, at least given the fact that we had no stepladders to facilitate the work.  So we are very grateful that we had Paula to help out, as it saved us a lot of extra time, effort and frustration.

We did a quick set up, to see if the claimed 30 second set up time was accurate.  Even our first attempt only took a minute or two, so we suspect with practice 30 seconds is very doable.

Alea and Paula head for the shade. 

Paula and Alea admiring out accomplishment.

We didn't have much chance to use the awning this weekend, as there weren't enough chairs for people to sit under it, so we had to deploy our beach umbrellas at the picnic table for that purpose.

Once Robert finished work, we got together to plan where to eat, and to hear of their travails from a few weeks ago in getting their house in Nashville on the market.  The worst part of that was that Robert got covered in poison oak/ivy while cleaning up the yard, yet didn't realize it because he didn't break out in welts until they had returned to Lewisville.  He's still recovering from that, so we can appreciate just how bad it had been initially.

He also managed to rupture an eardrum while participating in the annual Tough Mudder, with a whole epic of misadventures related to that.  It had been a tough month for him, so we admire his ability to maintain high spirits, despite his suffering outside with us for hours in the heat and humidity.  He is a class act, and we wish we could hang out with him more often.