Camper Flag Holder

 RDB asked me to find a way to display Old Glory when we camp so I went to the interwebs, searching for an easy, mobile way to get a flag pole on our camper.  It didn't take long at all for me to find just what we needed.

FYI, the links below are Amazon, but not affiliated (in other words, I don't make any money when you click on them) I just want this to be as easy for you as it was for me!

Here we go! You'll need:

One heavy duty glass suction holder thingy: (this comes as a set of two, the pricing was great, and we're considering hanging dual flags so it worked for our project)

One pair of ring-around-the-flagpole-so-it-won't-furl-up-on-itself flag connectors: (this is a SET of two, but you need a set of two for each flagpole  - so if you're making this for two flags, be sure to buy TWO of these sets)

Your choice of flags - but be sure to order them with GROMMETS and not banner style. The ones we're flying are 3'x5' which feels a little large up close, but is the perfect size for the nose of our mammoth camper.

A length of 1" PVC pipe (not pictured).  We happened to have a piece that's about 5' left over from another project in the garage, so I just grabbed that for this weekend; I'll need a second piece for the other flag and will probably spray paint them both black, but for now, this works.

Ok, assembly time!

Take your swivel rings and attach them to your PVC pole the appropriate distance apart to be able to hang the flag with just a little bit of slack.  Too tight and the swiveling feature won't work and your flag will furl up against itself in the wind. 

Find a smooth place on the side of your camper and suction the glass hangers to your rig. It helps if you have a tall, handsome bearded man to assist with this, especially if you're a short little lady like me. *wink*

Once the glass hanger is affixed, you'll simply slide the non-flagged end of the PVC pipe into the handle of the holder and, viola! you're done! (Pardon the pic with all the mayflies - they really really like the water dripping from the AC and the light we leave on to illuminate the flags overnight). 

So, there you go! You can proudly display Old Glory and your favorite team's flags when camping.  Hope you enjoy this little project as much as we did!

Camping Cache - Woodville, TX

 

Found:

Histree

Wally's home Woodville 

 

International Observe the Moon Night 2020

It's about quarter to five on Saturday, Sept 26th, and I'm listening in to the live feed from NASA on Facebook talking about tonight's event as the 10th annual International Observe the Moon Night this evening. This will be the first year that the event will take place on every continent on Earth - how COOL is that?! (Andy Shaner, from NASA, just said: "yeah, we found a penguin who will observe the moon from the south pole!" HA! in all actuality, several of the scientists down there are taking the time to observe the moon in -80*F weather today! FYI: they only have internet access for about 2 hours each day as the necessary satellites fly overhead.  So, if you're looking for a really remote camping site for your social media get-a-way....) 

We may be physically separated this year, but we all still live under and can enjoy the majesty of the same moon.  

As RDB and I get the telescope ready (we're keeping it _outside_ of the camper this time, so we won't have the same foggy issues we had when we tried to view the NEOWISE comet on one of our last trips!) and look forward to spending some time outside this evening, I'd encourage you to consider joining us this evening in spending a few minutes enjoying nature wherever you are - and share the amazement with your friends and family, too.

If you don't have a telescope, or maybe the skies around you are cloudy, you can also take a few tips from NASA's 10 Ways to Observe the Moon article here.  (It sounds like the skies over Rome are cloudy this evening though, so watching the live feed might not be an option.) 

Even when all else fails - keep looking up. There is so much beauty and wonder around us, even as all the drama and politics swirl.  I hope you enjoy this evening as much as RBD and I will.

(PS - if I can get a few photos tonight, I'll add them to this post, so check back later!) 

UPDATED: Photos we managed to grab between swatting at the mosquitos.  Using my iPhone X, an attachment to the telescope, and a tripod.  Pretty impressive!

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

Y'all, I could get used of this whole no-client-facing-work-on-Fridays and getting to work from the camper. I'm serious when I say I'd love to go full time RVing someday... but RDB reminds me that I'd miss my normal office after a while, and he's right.  However, when your "remote" office has views like this....

....it's easy to see how you can fall in love with the idea of being mobile!

We drove up to Martin Dies Jr State Park Thursday evening after work, taking our time to back into a very skinny spot. As always, safety over speed - it may have taken RDB and me 30 minutes to get parked where we wanted, but it's better to be slow and steady and get our rig exactly where we want it than to try and race thru set up and damage something. Or even hurt someone. 

Notice something new? RDB had asked me to find a way to get a flag holder of some kind for the camper, and thanks to the ingenuity of one of the Facebook groups, I order a few items off Amazon and we now have a set of removable flag holders for the nose of the camper.  I did a quick write up of that project here. 

Diesel dog came with us on this trip (we kenneled him last time, as it's easier to figure out a new camper without having the added adventures of a dog in tow.) I think most of the pictures on my camera roll are of him this trip!

Hanging out 'helping' me work on Friday.

 Enjoying a stroll over to the water's edge.

Taking a nap (the one thing I keep saying I'm going to do, but never get around to!)

Once again, that dog is the king of this camper - spoiled rotten with new bedding and toys (which he took no time in pulling all the fluffing out of!)

RDB and I enjoyed a couple meals out this weekend - one at Martin's Mexican Restaurant in Jasper and another at Tammy's Country Kitchen in Woodville.  Both were tasty and added to the charm of our small town adventures. (Remember, you can click the links above to see our Yelp reviews.)  And if you're in Jasper, be sure to drop in to Martins for the Dinner Avocados - those were incredible! If they had been open for dinner on Sunday, we'd have gone back over for another round!

Saturday we rode over to Woodville to do a little exploring; I was hoping for a main street with a few antique shops to go browse around in, but no luck.  We walked around the town square for a bit and enjoyed the beautiful weather.  It's wonderful to be outside now that the fall season has started (mind you, it's still in the mid 80*s, but we'll take that over 100*+ any day!).

I pulled up our Geocaching app to see if there were caches any nearby - one was within walking distance from the square and other was a bit of a drive.  We found a few, and didn't find a few others. (LINK) I enjoy geocaching since it not only encourages you to get outside, but also takes you to unique and neat little parts of town that you may not have discovered on your own.

The Woodville Magnolia Cemetery was one of those neat finds, with graves that went back before the Civil War.  RDB and I had a conversation about a grave in a family plot which had the birth dates inscribed, but no death dates (and it was obviously past the time of a nature lifetime for this person).  There were other family plots where it seemed someone had "bought in" to that section for a single person not related.  So many lives, so many stories, buried there in the dirt amongst the crepe myrtles. 

Saturday night was the 11th Annual Observe the Moon night. I was seriously impressed with the pictures we were able to get with my iPhone attached to the telescope.

And without realizing it, we just happened to put in a movie that also had a moon theme (Despicable Me - the one where Gru tries to steal the moon!)

Sunday morning brought the joy of sleeping in. Since we've started booking thru Monday morning, knowing full well that we'll be out Sunday afternoon, we don't to have to rush to get out of the site by noon!  I made a quick jaunt over to the WalMart in Jasper to fill up the truck and grab a few items to make one of our favorite breakfasts: veggies and jalapeno cheddar sausage, with strawberries and cream for dessert.  We tried to watch the Steelers vs Texans game but the reception in the camper, even with the 360* satellite antenna, wasn't all that great. The score is 21-17 Texans as we break for half time. (And we're 3-0 after defeating the Texans 28-21!) 

This weekend we were at Martin Dies Jr State Park, Walnut Ridge Unit, site #507.  As I mentioned, it's a bit of a challenge to get into (beware the really big tree!) but it was relatively level front to back and side to side.  We have our eyes on site #503 in this loop - though the parking pad is a bit short there's an "extra" pad next to the site where you could put your truck - and this one would have great water views (it's where we took the picture below).  No comments on the bathhouse here, since we never used it. Lots of wildlife (we saw deer, bunnies, armadillos, opossums, spiders, mosquitos....)

For more camping photos, go here.

Wow, What a Weekend!

With no client-facing work on Thursday or Friday, RDB and I took off for our first camping trip in Camper #3 to Cedar Hill State Park. Needless to say, I should've checked the weather!

A huge thanks to my RDB for always taking the long hauls when we travel and especially for this trip, since it poured buckets on us the whole way north!

We arrived at the park well after dark Wednesday night, and I didn't realize when we booked this site (#123) just how difficult it was going to be to get into: backing in uphill, and a significant tilt to the drivers side.  We were really impressed with the auto leveling on our new Palomino Columbus Compass Series.

Cedar Hill State Park made for a beautiful "office".....

View from my desk...

 

the break room....

my coworkers....

Even the time clock was reminding me how sweet it is to be here for work this week.

We reached out to Mom & G to see if they wanted to have dinner Thursday night - they came over afterwards to check out our new digs.  It's so nice to have a spot to be able to host other people and everyone is comfortable.  It was wonderful to share this space and a bottle of wine with them.... the label on the bottle says it all:

Friday was a bit of a blur - more work, including applying for a new role at my company (I've been waiting on that to post for _at least_ two months!), and trips to Ikea, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Target.  New campers require stuff, y'all!

Saturday was a blur of a different kind: we started the morning over at Randshe's new home in Castle Hills. R recently purchased an Audi R8 and was participating in an exotic car Make-a-Wish drive by. He invited RDB to ride along with him, so they took off (and I mean, the _took off!_ that car is a rocket!). S and I stayed back a the house to chat for a bit and then joined them for bunch later.

We're excited to come back up here in late October for Randshe's wedding - 10-30-20! (reminds me of RDB and my wedding date of 11-12-13). We already have a site booked for that one as well. It's awfully nice to be able to take our "rollin' home" with us to visit friends and family!  

Speaking of - it was so sweet to be able to snuggle on Kali and Ickis again - we sure miss those little cuties!

After lunch we came back to the site, packed up the camper, and hauled it over to Camper Revamper Chris Cox.  You'll remember we met him on a Facebook group as we were dealing with the beginnings of the camper crisis this year.  His prices are fair, his ideas are fabulous, and the quality of his work is second-to-none. We had a few items that we needed help with:

Camper mattresses are notorious for bad sleep, and RDB and I have been spoiled by a SleepNumber in the house, so we splurged for a SleepNumber (regular queen) for the camper. Chris helped out by reworking the wiring so that the plug for the base unit would be under the bed rather than plugged into the wall.  He put it like this: when he does improvements or modifications, he wants to make it look like it's always been there. (I'm telling you - Chris does quality work!)

Our unit came with the Wineguard wifi booster roof unit already wired in, you just need to add the router  to the ceiling inside and buy a data plan.  Big thanks to Camping World of Fort Worth for staying open for a few minutes extra on Saturday night - we came sliding into the parking lot literally at 6pm as they were closing, but they let us in to buy the router we needed for Chris to install it.

Again, Chris' mentality of "make it look like it belongs there" meant that instead of just installing the on/off switch on the ceiling (like he's seen some service shops do), he opened up the back of our "brain box" to put the switch in with all the other controls - like you would never have known it was installed post-production.  And watching him snake the wires thru the ceiling and walls with minimal space to spare? He's a master at it!

While he was working on those projects, I took a few quick minutes to use a wood stain touch up pen and finish off a few spots on the slides where you could see the backside of unfinished wood.  It's a little thing, and most people probably wouldn't even notice, but it made me glad to have it done so that when I'm laying in bed or sitting on the sofa, I won't be bugged by that "unfinished" bit of trim.

It was dark-thirty when we left Camper Revampers and headed back to our site at Cedar Hill State Park.  We had left behind our white water hose and stinky slinky, along with the leveling legos - trusting that they would be left alone (we had reserved the spot thru Sunday night, so no one would have been parking there.) Unfortunately, as we turned the corner into the camping loop we could see that our site had been completely cleared out.  BUT! The campers next door came running over to tell us that they had collected all our items, concerned that we had been gone for so long and afraid someone else might steal them. Faith in Humanity: restored.

We decided to extend our reservation thru till Monday, just to give us the ability to sleep in Sunday morning and not have to be packed up and out by noon.  Best. Decision. Ever!  I'm sitting here finishing up this blog post (sans pictures as the wifi (not our new set up yet) is s-l-o-w) and RDB is enjoying the beginning of football season lounging in the living room. 

We'll pack up and head home eventually, but for now? I'm loving the flexibility of working from the camper during the later part of the week, have an extended weekend and fun with friends and family, and truly making this place ours while enjoying all our camping adventures. 

We were at Cedar Hill State Park, Eagle Pass loop, Site #123.  It is an "advanced parking" kind of spot!  Backing in uphill, and not level at all from right to left.  If you can park in this spot, you'll be able to park _anywhere_!  (We're eyeing site #117 in this same loop for the next visit.)  This state park is HUGE!  We were wandering around the park Friday afternoon, trying to get back to our site, being followed by a park Ranger.... when we pulled into a parking spot to grab the map and figure out where we were, he tapped on the window: "Ya'll look like you might be lost?" Huh! Like I'm going to admit to that! Needless to say, I was grateful for his help to get us pointed back in the right direction. (But I think we could've figured it out; after all, not all who wander are lost.) 

We've been here once before, back in our pop-up camper days: Thanksgiving - Part 1, and Part 2

For more pictures, go here. 

__________________

(Post Script: the weekend was bookended with rain; it was storming again as we drove home. Just a note: when you're driving a rig that's nearly 13' tall, it's like driving a broadsided billboard - the wind, though it wasn't much, had us stopping over for a period of time to let the storm pass (just happened to be we were stopped at a Bucees again, go figure.)  Though it made for a longer trip home, I am once again, so grateful that RDB takes our safety seriously.  He's the best kinda camping partner you could ask for.)