Abilene State Park and a Trip to the Groomer

A few weekends ago the hubby and I took the RV out and headed for the Abilene State Park. It's a beautiful park and we had a great weekend but this park would not make my top 5 fav list of parks to visit in Texas. I believe the biggest drawback is the staff there were not friendly at all, not something I've seen at other state parks here in Texas.The the spaces intended for large RVs, 25 to 40 ft, were a tight fit. If you have an RV over 30 ft you will not be able to park the RV and have enough room for your truck or other vehicle, this had to be parked on the side of rd as close as we could get it. On the positive side the had lots of trees and nicely laid out hiking trails. Here are a few pics:

Our Campsite

Hiking Trail

Can you see the deer?

And the saddest part of all - The Abilene Lake:

Yep, it is easier to find the deer than to find any water in this lake. Please pray for rain for this area.

On a lighter note, I took my little diggity into the vet for a bath and toenail trim:

I loved the pink and black bandanna, she didn't. She also doesn't like having her picture taken. She sees the camera and tries to look away real fast, lol.

Vacation Mishaps

As you know, even when on vacation not everything goes as smoothly as we had hoped. So I thought I would share our mishaps with you in my first vacation post and be done with them. These are the adventures that were not so much fun but we made it through.

As I shared before we left, we parked the RV on the beach and boondocked for our vacation, or at least for most of it. We arrived on Friday, found a nice spot and got set up. We were having a great time on the beach. Then Sunday about mid-morning, high-tide happened.

It began washing the sand out from under us. We knew this was not good and began preparing to move further down the beach where the tide had not come in so far.

In the midst of our preparations, our trailer jack slipped off the brick it had been sitting on and was buried in the sand. I thought for sure we were going to need a tow truck. Fortunately my hubby was able to retract the jack and get something solid under it to get us up out of the sand enough to hitch up.

We got moved to a new spot and set up again. This time we made it until Thursday around noon when the tide came in to claim us again. We were watching it rather closely and thought we were going to be okay. The water was still a few feet from the RV and had appeared to have stopped coming in any further. About ten minutes after thinking we were safe we were literally ankle deep in water getting hooked up to move again.

This time we decided we had had enough of the beach and went in search of an RV park.

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We ended up at Shipman's Landing, where we spent our last few nights while on vacation. Now if all you are interested in from an RV park is a place to park your RV this park would suit you. It was one of the cheaper ones in the area at $35 for 30 amp and $45 for 50 amp. They did not have 50 amp spaces available so we took a 30 amp spot and used our adapter. The only thing this park had to offer was a nice pavilion by the water with a couple of picnic tables and a charcoal grill. No restrooms or laundry on site.

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The spaces are very small with just enough room to park your RV and one vehicle and that one vehicle is parked in the small space between your RV and the one next to you. This can be a problem if you have anyone come visit. It does accomplish giving you a place to park but that's about it.

Too Much is Just Too Much

I don't believe I have ever written a truly bad review on this blog but sometimes you just gotta. This is one of those times. We stayed for nearly six months at Alamo River RV Ranch Resort and do not plan on returning.

One of the management staff snaps at guests all the time, she usually catches herself but instead of apologizing for nearly biting someone's head off she tries to laugh it off.

When we first arrived there back in August the restrooms were being cleaned twice a day. Several long term people moved out at the end of the month so they cut back to once a day which made sense. However the beginning of October about eight or so new long term campers moved in and they did not go back to twice a day. When someone complained about it the statement was made that long term campers shouldn't be complaining about the restrooms, they are for short term campers. This is one of the things we look at when choosing an RV park. We like the larger restrooms with lots of hot water.

They began doing horse rides shortly after we arrived. I went on one and enjoyed it but the managers who saddled the horses didn't know what they were doing and more than one person (myself included) came close to have a spill due to the saddle being loose! The other problem with the horses is that the poop is left for days or longer before someone cleans it up, if it is cleaned up at all. If you have dogs this can be a problem. Dogs love to eat horse poop! So then when you take the dog for a walk, she constantly wants to get into the poop.

Then the end of December they fired their best office worker, without notice, claiming they had to cut back due to higher property taxes. Now I know they had to have their tax notice for at least two months at this point. There was no reason they couldn't have given this lady two weeks notice or more but instead they told her that morning that it would be her last day. At this same time they wanted everyone to provide copies of insurance on their RV's as well as insurance on their dogs. All this with a rent increase and a decrease in office hours. So at this point we decided it was time to go!

My husband went to an rv park review site and left a review detailing all this. One of our dear neighbors has been rather vocal about the issues with the rv park. The owner actually had the nerve to go to her rv, stand in the yard yelling at her that he knew she was the one who wrote that bad review and told her she was toxic to the park. At this same time he gave her a letter telling her they needed to be out at the end of the month although he knew they had already planned to leave. My husband spoke to him that same day and in the course of that conversation told him he was the one that wrote the review. It was like the guy didn't even hear him and of course no apology was ever offered to our neighbor for yelling at her the way he did. So I will not be returning nor would I recommend it to anyone else.

I just heard this morning that the managers are leaving the end of the week but I believe the true problem lies with the owner. Besides the above issue there was another problem where the manager was terribly rude to a guest and rather than make the manager apologize to the guest, the owner told the guest to go talk to the manager and make nice with her if they wanted to stay in the park. So forget about the customer is always right, at this park even when the customer is right it does not matter. I'm glad we stayed there, as we made some good friends with our little cooking group but they are moving on and so are we!

That's my rant for the day, probably for the year. I'm going to wait a little while before I write anything on our new park. Let the new wear off first and see if we still like as much as we do now.

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken with Chipotle Corn Salsa

Things have been eventful since my last post. We stayed for our two nights at the hotel waiting for the RV to be repaired. It still wasn't ready but the owner of the shop agreed to let us stay in the RV, gave us a key to the gate so we could come and go - very different. After one night at the shop the RV was ready so from there we went to a lovely little RV park - Coastal Oaks RV Park. We loved this place and will be staying here our next visit to Rockport. We stayed one night there then headed to Choke Canyon State Park. This is about 30 minutes from where our perm gate will be, which is now scheduled to start next week sometime. For now this is home.

When my in-laws were down for a visit last week visiting, my mother-in-law gave me her Redbook magazine. I always enjoy their Look, Cook, Eat! page. It usually contains two simple recipes. In this particular issue this was one of the two. If you would like to see their version you can find it online here at Group Recipes.

I only made one change as far as ingredients - instead of Mexicorn, I used Southwest Style Corn. The difference? Mexicorn is corn with red and green bell peppers. Southwest Style Corn is corn with onions, black beans, red bell peppers and flavored with lime juice. Of course I did my usual change of reducing the quantities to make it for two - one exception in this recipe is that I did not reduce the amount of chipotle pepper I used. Yep that means I used the same amount of pepper for two servings that they used for four servings - we like our food spicy around here! This recipe turned out to be a HUGE hit. To give you an idea here are a few quotes from my husband: "mooey yumalicious", "a keeper" and my favorite "man food".

Chipotle Corn Salsa
1/2 11 oz can southwest style corn
1/2 lg avocado, peeled and diced
1 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped
1/2 Tbsp canola oil
1/4 tsp coarse salt

Drain corn, reserving one to two tablespoons juice in small bowl. Add approx 1/2 cup corn to the reserved juice, cover and put away to use another time. In a medium bowl combine remaining corn, avocado, lime juice, pepper, oil and salt.

Set aside.

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken
5 chicken breast tenders
5 slices center cut bacon
Adobo sauce
Coarse salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 Tbsp canola oil

Sprinkle chicken tenders with salt and pepper to taste. Brush with adobo sauce.

Wrap one slice of bacon around each chicken tender. In nonstick skillet heat oil over medium heat. Add tenders and cook until fat is rendered and bacon is browned, 6-7 minutes.

Turn and cook until tenders are cooked through, about 5-6 minutes. Drain on paper towels.

Serve over the corn salsa. Enjoy!

Come back tomorrow to see what I use the other 1/2 of the corn and avocado for.

Spa Day

Today was my day to treat myself to a much needed manicure. I headed off to find Vie's Ocean Nail & Spa. It's located right on highway 35 across from the China A Super Buffet so finding it was actually pretty easy.

I picked an acrylic polish, which is supposed to last longer, in a light color, a clear pink.

I usually go with darker colors, ones you can actually see, but thought I'd try something a bit different this time. I'm still trying to decide whether I like it or not. What I really love about a manicure though is the pampering! I can do my own nails, but the extra pampering makes it worth the trip to the salon.

From there I headed over to Subway. I picked up a Buffalo Chicken foot-long on flat-bread with American cheese, baby spinach, tomatoes, jalapenos and sweet onion dressing. I headed back to the RV where John and I split the sub. It made for a nice light lunch with baked chips.

Yesterday we moved from the RV park we were staying at to Goose Island State Park. Beautiful park and with the park pass a week is only $4 more than the RV "resort" we were at. Since we don't typically use the amenities an rv resort offers this is a perfect park for us. Right on the water, great fishing pier and huge showers with plenty of hot water. We don't ask for much.

Now time to relax and enjoy the view for this week.

Bastrop

We are spending a couple of days in Bastrop while waiting for a gate to go guard. Anytime we are in Bastrop with the RV we stay at Highway 71 RV Park - both because it's a nice park and it's just a stones throw from my mom's house. It's a secure, gated park with onsite laundry, really nice restrooms and showers, and for warmer temps a swimming pool!

We will talk to the new boss this morning and depending on what he says may head to Gonzales later today to be closer to where the work is.  For now I am enjoying some bonus family time. Spent both Tuesday evening and most of Wednesday with my mom except for Wednesday afternoon when I headed off to Hair Express. Trim and a new color.

I usually go more red but this is closer to my natural color and it won't wash out as fast - reds are the worst for washing out quickly.

Thursday was mostly spent at the RV. John took our dog Midnight to a local vet for her rabies and rattlesnake vaccines. She was none too happy with us! Then I headed to town to pick up a few groceries.

For dinner I convinced John that we needed to go to Chili's. It's a favorite spot for both of us and my gate guarding experience tells me it could be a while before we get another chance to go to one, especially together. We each had a salad: John had the Quesadilla Explosion Salad and I went with the Buffalo Chicken Salad. We avoided the two for $20 trap, which includes an appetizer and two entrees. No appetizer means we left pleasantly full rather than miserably stuffed.

After Chili's we headed over to my baby sister's house for some good family fun with her and her family - family game night! We played team monopoly since there were so many of us. Here are pics of the teams.

My nieces, Courtney and Emily - They ended up winning.

Nephew and niece, Travis and Miranda.

My oldest nephew Jonathan, he is my older sister's son, and his friend Sherry Dawn.

Last but not least my baby sister Tabitha and her sweetie Dean.

Before heading to the salon on Wednesday, I loaded up the car with shoes and clothes that I thought my sister Tabitha and her daughter Courtney might be able to use. I was surprised to see that Miranda had snagged a pair of boots for herself, although about a size too big (guess she figures she'll grow into them) she did look really cute:

She was trying to look like Cindy Lou Who. Haha, they are such fun kids! My niece Katie was absent for the evening and was missed, she is always a joy to be around. The two youngest headed off to bed at 9:00 and 9:30, leaving their partners to finish the game. When 10:00 rolled around we ended the game so the two older girls could get to bed as well as half the adults present who needed to be at work the next morning. So to date I still have yet to finish a game of monopoly. Oh well, maybe next time!