We just returned from an Airstream rally at Grapeland, Texas. “Where is Grapeland?”, you ask. Well, it is 12 miles north of Crockett, Texas. “Where is Crockett?”, you ask. Well, Crockett is about 50 miles east of Lufkin, Texas. Oh, what the heck! Grapeland is a tiny dot on the map in east Texas, 220 road miles from my house near Austin.

The first weird thing was the RV park, Salmon Lake RV Park. Hundreds of sites, mostly sitting empty, amid dozens of decrepit old structures trucked in from the surrounding area, interspersed with old cars, old trucks, and farming machinery. All looking much the worse for wear. Turns out that there is a huge bluegrass festival held there and this is window dressing.

Salmon Lake, really just a dammed up pond, sports a mill with a water wheel. Further downstream is a loop of railroad track, about 18″ gage. A locked tunned, made of boxcars, apparently hides a little train.

What made the town strange was that two out of the three restaurants in town treated us like dirt. One restaurant agreed to cater our Saturday dinner, then turned down the check after leaving about 20 of us waiting for 1 1/2 hours for lunch while locals were served immediately. Another restaurant ignored three of us and it took almost 1 1/2 hours to get burgers. The third place, a small Mexican restaurant was the only bright spot with good food and service.

Sadly, on the first morning of the rally, we learned of the sudden death of a unit member who had been at the unit luncheon two days earlier.

The bright spot of the rally was a visit to the “Opry” in Crockett where we heard some of the best bluegrass, 60’s music, and classic country music that I have heard in years. Turns out that Crockett is a mecca of live music with Jerry Jeff Walker and Ray Price scheduled this month.

By the way, we were treated great in Crockett.

We’re sitting in an overflow space at Dad’s RV Park in Victoria. Two of us couples have come down from Austin to talk to would-be buyers at the RV show. Our local Airstream dealer is good to our local Airstream Club unit and we, in turn, spend a few hours each year helping at their RV shows. Besides that, it is a great way to take a winter break down here where it is a bit warmer than Austin.

The RV show gig is pretty laid back. There are five Airstreams here; one is the 34′ toy hauler. Just about everything else is big 5th wheels. We come and go as we want and it is fun to talk to RV folks. Yesterday, nearly all attending were winter Texans. They are all bored out of their gourds and jump on anything to do and someone to talk to.

When we arrived at 2pm, the park was pouring some cement to extend pads. There were about 20 winter Texan men helping who had been stading around waiting for the truck for over 4 hours. Anything to do is better than nothing.

There is great seafood in this area, close to the Gulf of Mexico. RV park rates are reasonable and restaurant food is cheaper than at home. We are finding diesel as low as $2.149 which sure doesn’t hurt.

The Texas Vintage Rally is a little less than a month away. Getting ready for over 100 rigs is a lot of work and the phone calls and emails have been flying for the past week with an occasional crisis.

Latest crisis was yesterday when several committee members visited the RV park for some final preparations and found that the park had winter Texans scattered through the section tht they had repeatedly promised would be ours. We had gone to great lengths to get handicapped and folks without facilities in their trailers assigned spots by the restrooms. All that is out the window.

We’ll make it work somehow. It always does. Sadly, the vintage open house with a solid area of nothing but vintage Airstreams probably will not happen.

Other than that, the seminars, food, demonstrations, vendors, etc. are in place and we expect a great rally despite the setbacks.

With current fuel prices, I am more aware than ever of the mess of unused and unneeded supplies, utensils, and belongings that accumulate in the trailer. Over the last few weeks, I have been carting things home and throwing things away, using the general rule that if it hasn’t been used i na year, it is out of there.

Emergency items and necessary tools, were excepted, of course, but more seldom-used tools than I care to admit are now back in my workshop..

One big category has been cooking utensils and table settings. Some things have been moved from trailer to trailer, as many as 5 times over the years, such as the large pot over 10 years old that has been used just twice. Some items that aren’t very heavy such as the set of metal cups with the Nash Metropolitan and Bambi. We never use them. Because they don’t stack, they occupied a lot of cabinet space. The big plastic pitcher that was used once or twice for lemonade came home, as well.

I attacked the pantry with a vengance. Every large can except for some soup came home, leaving the small, pull-tab cans that are just enough for the two of us. Well worn packages of dry soup mix that have been riding around unused for years. Two part bottles of cooking oil became one.

All of the bottles of furniture wax, rug shampoo, and the like that are used just once in a long while now reside in the cabinet in the garage.

Hiking boots and back pack came home. They can go back for trips where there is a reasonable chance they will be used.

It is amazing how much empty shelf and drawer space there is in that 29′ trailer.

We pulled out Thursday morning (6/19) headed for Bozeman, MT. After an uneventful first day, we tied up at a RV park on I-20, 4 miles west of Sweetwater, TX. One look at the weather on TV and I started to sweat. A line of huge thunderstorms, including one stupendous one complete with rotation was heading towards us. There was not even a sturdy building on the property for refuge. I kept the stabilizers up, ready to flee on I-20 which ever direction looked the best. When it appeared that we would be in a “notch” between storms, I put the stabilizers down just in time to weather 70 mph winds. We rocked, but didn’t roll. After some hard rain, there were just sporadic hard showers overnight. Just east of us there was golf ball-sized hail.

We headed for Lubbock and passed some damage including a roofless mobile home After bucking a hard headwind, we stopped for the night at Dumas; north of Amarillo. Again, the TV showed a line of storms heading for us. Again, I poised to run, but it was soon obvious that we had lucked out again. The big one passed just to the east with tornado warnings and baseball-size hail. Apparently, Borger, TX and a series of small towns really took a beating. Again, we were treated to rain on the roof overnight.

I am writing this at a KOA, 20 miles east of Denver. The weather is perfect for a change. Rawlins, WY tomorrow and Grand Tetons the next day.

I’m pleased to say that the Duramax gave us over 14 miles pe gallon so far; prtety good for a 4600′ altitude gain.

Tuesday evening, I was scheduled to give a talk to a garden club in Smithville, Texas, about 50 miles down Texas 71 toward Houston. Since the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center would be paying me some mileage, I decided that rather than dodge deer in the dark coming home, I would take the Airstream and spend two nights at Buescher State Park.

Buescher is one of the parks built by the CCC back in the 30s. Like many of the CCC parks, there are lots of little pop-up sites, but just a few sites for longer trailers. The approximately 15 longer sites are in what is called the “Cozy Circle” with about half of the sites like spokes on a wheel and the rest on the connecting road. I had a “spoke” and I had only a single SOB neighbor the first day. The park will have more business on the weekend, but will seldom approach capacity.

I forgot my camera, which is a shame since the old CCC buildings and stone work are well worth seeing, as is the stone dam that forms a stocked lake. Even the entry from the highway into the park is over a red stone, one-lane bridge that dates from the 30s.

Since Buescher is in a limestone area, the red stone must have been brought in from some distance. The red stone, with white mortar lines, along with rough-cut planking, makes a very rustic scene. Only at close range is the crumbling of the rock and mortar painfully obvious.

Even though Texas has the smallest state park footprint per capita of any state, our state government, principally our Governor, has starved the state parks almost to the point of failure. The beautiful stone work done by the CCC is falling into ruin, the roads are deteriorating, and the park staff are using pickup trucks that would have been replaced years ago by any business or private owner. While I was there, the rangers were busy with a backhoe and bobcat replacing underground pipes from the comfort station; probably not what they dreamed they would be doing when they signed on.

As I do every year, I bought the $60 Passport that gives my carload free entry for a year. I probably will not stay enough nights to fully justify the $60, but that is my personal contribution to the park system.

Airstream Life readers may remember that I published in Great Ideas my solution to monitoring the temperature of my refrigerator. For those that don’t remember or did not read that issue, I use a wireless indoor-outdoor thermometer with the outdoor unit Velcroed to the inside wall of my refrigerator.

Wednesday afternoon, I pulled into Dad’s RV Park in Victoria, Texas a day early for our unit rally and parked next to our friend. Gary McClanahan, also a day early. A few minutes later, Gary came up to me and said “38 degrees”. I guess I looked puzzled, because he repeated “38 degrees”. He finally said “Your refrigerator is 38 degrees” and it finally dawned on me what he was referring to.

Gary had installed a similar wireless thermometer with the intent of placing the outdoor unit in the shade of his Airstream. Sadly, it never worked well. However, when I pulled into the adjoining site, 20′ away, he received my signal loud and clear through two aluminum walls. For the remainder of the rally, he would periodically grin and report my refrigerator temperature.

There are refrigerator monitors available, but I have found that a simple $20 wireless thermometer does a great job of simultaneously reading both the interior temperature of the Airstream, the refrigerator temperature, and keeping a high and low history of temperatures. It is a good way to determine whether your gas flame if blowing out on the highway (or for those who turn the box off while travelling, just how warm your food is getting).

By the way, Victoria is a neat, laid back, small city, Dad’s RV Park is a great place to stop, the weather was great, and, except for the price of diesel, it was a great rally.

We just returned from the 3rd Annual Chili Cookoff rally at Coshetta RV Ranch in Bellville, Texas. What a blast! Several units co-hosted the rally and about 60 rigs showed up. One rig accidentally stumbled in when he found his chosen state park full and found the nearest place to tie up. There was a Silver Sreak rally in a different part of the park. I never knew they made Silver Streak trailers until 1995. One SS was 8 1/2′ wide and had a sizable slide out. It sold for $75,000 in 1995 and was loaded with every option imaginable.

A young lady named “Kelly”, sitting next to me, feeds a big feller.

We went down Wednesday and did parking duty Thursday all day and Friday morning, although the last rigs didn’t roll in till late Friday. Friday afternoon, we toured a buffalo ranch. About 2 dozen of us rode a tractor-drawn wagon out into the heard where we fed the buffalo bread and bagles that were returned as unsold at the local market. I went through about a dozen bags of bagles trying to ring a horn with one. I came close, but that was all I could do as they were constantly moving. We bought 8 pounds of ground buffalo meat. I’ll mix in a little bit of bacon with the meat and grill up some very fine hamburgers,

These folks built the stand at home, disassembled it, and rebuilt it at the cookoff.

Saturday was the big day! There were 11 booths, two from our unit, each with a theme. The winner, from our unit, is pictured. The 3 buzzards on the roof are flame cut from steel plate by the fellow on the left who is a gifted artist.

Before the crowd descended.

Every person in attendance had 3 votes for their favorite booth. every booth was bribing folks with everything from Sangria to candy. I counted 5 Margarita machines. There was even a wet T-shirt event; the ladies danced a bit. then pulled the promised wet T-shirt out of a bucket of water. Every booth also had to present a skit. The best skit was a mock funeral march led by an oboe playing the funeral dirge.

The judge kept everything above board.

The Buzzard Breath folks won the best booth hands down, but neither of our teams placed in the chili judging. After the afternoon of imbibing many bribes and trying to sample as many of the 11 chilis as possible, I paid the price with a night of indigestion. It was worth it, though.

Readers of my Great Ideas column in Airstream Life will know that I have a positive dislike for the plethora of mirrors that adorn many Airstreams. They are put in the trailers because they are cheap and because they make the trailer look larger on the sales lot. They totally destroy the warmth I feel in older Airstreams.

My 28′ Classic had 11 mirrors when new. It now has precisely one, over the bathroom counter. I first tried reversing the mirrors and their backing board. The result looked rather cheap compared to the several oak fronted cabinets since the result was flat and rather boring.

My latest decor came about when I found some bamboo blinds at very low prices at the outlet mall.

Modified cabinet fronts

The blinds have bamboo strips sewn with white thread and the texture reminded me of the caned cabinet fronts in my friend Gayland Stephen’s 82 Limited. I bought several blinds, sprayed the mirror backing boards with 3M spray cement, and laminated sections of blind material to the boards. To keep the white thread clean over time, I sprayed the assembly with heavy coats of clear semi-gloss spray paint.

I bought a few yards of braid at the hobby store and used my hot glue gun to lay an edging of braid around each opening. The braid lends a touch of elegance to the result. The resulting look reminds me of the Craftsman furniture of the 1930s.

Th photo shows cabinets in the bedroom. The vertical cabinet was mirrored and was a quick mod. The upper cabinet was oak faced and I had to use my router to cut away some wood so that I could remove the oak face and replace it with 1/4″ birch plywood, stained Golden Oak. Currently, all of the the wardrobe doors, all upper cabinets except 2 over the stove, the spice cabinet, and a bathroom cabinet door have been modified.

I now know why older Airstreams were so much lighter than today’s since I now have a rather heavy collection of mirrors and oak cabinet fronts in my workshop. One of my completed cabinet doors is lighter than just the oak cabinet face piece that I removed from it.

We just returned from a week in Mineola, Texas, attending the Region 9 Rally. Mineola is a really neat small city on old US Route 80, about 80 miles east of Dallas and 30 miles north of Tyler. The town is full of antique shops and novelty stores that the ladies really liked. Great restaurants abound and we made full use of them. Mineola is on the “Azalea Trail” and the azaleas were in splendid bloom, along with bluebonnets, evening primrose, and other spring wildflowers.

We were surprised to find that such a small town has such a great civic center/RV park. The civic center is owned by a foundation, rather than being owned by the city. The facilities were great for the approximately 130 rigs, although the utility layout was a bit strange. It tool all of my 3 lngths of sewer hose to reach the island. The RV sites are available for individual travelers, and we will surely stop there if we pass that way again.

We had torrential rains on several days, but, in general, the weather didn’t interfere much with our activities. My cat, Onslow, won the cat section of the pet show which was held on the steps of the building since pets aren’t allowed inside. I gave 2 seminars, one on safety and one based on my Great Ideas Airstream Life column. Two of my photos won the first and second places in the “Airstream Memories” class in the photo show.

The only downer is the price of diesel. I burned 47.3 gallons during our 8 days away from home for a cost of n3early $190.

Our unit bulletin board, decorated by my wife, won third place in the bulletin board competition. Our unit, along with others, was presented a “Superior Unit” ribbon for out flag, based on our activities last year. Our unit also had a higher percentage of our membership at this rally than any other unit. All of our unit awards and participation at this year’s rally go toward the superior unit award to be presented next year.