The Deitz family embarked on a first time trip to the Frio River near Garner State Park (West Texas). We borrowed a friend’s RV (now, wait a second…when you read this you need to imply the proper inflection to R V… read it more like aarre veee and a splash of gratuitous Texan accent). Our friends keep their RV in a rental pool so it gets used quite often and has been in this rental pool for I believe 4 or 5 years. This being the case, it gets used often. Going down the road we felt as if the entire unit would disintegrate leaving us with the drive shaft and engine to get us there!
However, despite my dramatics (and what appears to be ungratefulness for my friend’s generosity…which is NOT the case!!! I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to borrow the RV…I’m just not used to an RV 😉 ) we made it to our camp site with everything well intact (1.5 hours behind schedule because of the ridiculous lines at every gas station we tried to fill up on the way and the packed fast food restaurants! It felt like Hurricane Rita all over again).
Once settled and the kids kicked out into the wild we took in a nice long deep breath of the fresh, less humid, air. The next two and a half days were heaven. Our site was in front of what I call a really big ‘hill’…but I think in Texas it is a ‘mountain’…just a small mountain… and the river ran just below us. We had met up with some other friends and their family so the boys had plenty of kids to play with and we could let them run free…with no worries! The river was not deep, like the shallow end of our pool. They had two sets of tame rapids to ride over and over again. There was a rope swing and who can’t forget the fishing!
Ryan had a first catch too! And it was bigger…Neal had a great picture of it but I can’t seem to get it to upload. 🙁 They both loved to fish…they just didn’t like to touch it once they caught it!
We also had furry visitors at the camp site. The first was a little one that showed up at about 3am, first jumping on my head and then scurrying across my body! I JUMPED and kicked, but I didn’t scream. It all happened so fast and I was sleeping so sound that I thought it might have been my imagination. UNTIL our last night and Neal and I kept hearing a scratching noise. Neal got up and looked outside but found nothing. When we were packing up to leave I found the hard core evidence. Our tissue box was attacked, the tissue that comes out of the opening was shredded into millions of little pieces and little bite marks were on the box…plus the droppings we found in one of the cabinets! Yes, the RV had a residential mouse!!! AUGH! 🙁
Thankfully that didn’t come to my complete attention to we were headed out so my friend will have to deal with that. We also had an exotic deer (an Axis) that came to the campsite one day and literally stayed all day. She followed the kids around and they would pet her and feed her. She was gorgeous.
Neal has pictures of Ryan (yes, Ryan!) petting her, but again, I can’t get them to upload. 🙁
Finally, when all was said and done and were were headed back to home sweet home, we were passing through San Antonio (about 2 hours into the trip home) and Seth looks at me with wide eyes…”Mom, the couch has moved!”. The RV has two pull outs, one in the back for the main bedroom and one in the front where the couch can pull out. You have to bring in the pull outs when you drive and they are not supposed to just pull out on their own. I happened to be on the couch that was moving but hadn’t noticed. We immediately pulled over and when we tried to bring it back in we realized it was broken. The motor was running but nothing was working so we physically had to try and pull it back in. The interesting thing about this is Neal had made a wrong turn and in that moment had been trying to figure out how to get us back on track…but when we stopped to find the closest RV mechanic we found that it was just a block away! THANK YOU GOD! 😉 Long story short, we had to ‘rig’ it to stay put…it was a bigger job b/c a part had to be replaced. It wasn’t our fault, just something that goes out and having it in a rental pool did it…of course, it goes out on our watch…but hey.
We arrived home in the early evening, unshowered…unrested…but content and happy with the time we got to spend as family. It was a good end to a great summer.
Blessings
Shannon