Random October Musings and Happenings

October 21, 2018: The month of October on the Gulf Coast of Texas brought cooler temps, some rain and a welcomed respite from the summer heat. Oh yea, I did forget to mention that the weather changes did nothing to slow down the mosquitos. They definitely are not as bad, but you still have to prepare and be aware! With the change in seasons our life here in Port Lavaca, TX has pretty much stayed the course. So in this post I’ll just highlight some random things we’ve done, places we’ve been and anything else that’s filled our days.

I mentioned the rain above, but I think it’s worth noting in a little more detail. Now when I say rain, I mean RAIN! I mean lots of it, consistently, over several days into weeks. The locals like to say, “It’s dry here, but when it rains, it really rains, and for a while!” Well, they were right. The many fields in the vicinity of Texas Lakeside RV Resort were flooded, roads were under water and the local rivers / creeks were running over their banks. The good news is that when Texas Lakeside was built it was built properly. And when I say properly I don’t mean with all of the fun amenities. I mean it was built with all of the roads and sites being poured concrete, and was built to drain properly. The deluge of rain we received pretty much ran off the concrete, into the many storm drains and out of the park. The water level in the lake in the middle of the park definitely rose, but even that drained properly when it got to a certain height. Now, the grass areas in the park, especially the areas between the concrete sites, was another story. Grass and dirt can only take so much water and these areas in the park had reached their limit. Water began to pool in these areas, making it almost impossible to walk in any grassy section. Well, the good news is that I won’t have to cut the grass for a while, at least until these newly created ponds disappear!

Time to time we’ve mentioned the other workamping couples we work with at Texas Lakeside RV Resort. But what we have not mentioned as much is Viktor, our maintenance guy who I (Russ) get to work with on an almost daily basis. Viktor lives locally, about 20 minutes away, in the town of Seadrift. He works four days a week, spending most of his time maintaining the grass edging along all of the concrete in the park. Even though this is where Viktor spends most of his time, he is quite capable and talented, and can work on or fix almost anything that needs done in the park. He has worked there about four years and is the constant that keeps the outside maintenance workampers functioning. Now I tell you all of this so I can also mention Viktor’s better half, Cecilia, who works at a local business in Port Lavaca, and their five year-old son Zavien. If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook you may remember us talking about going to see Zavien play t-ball at the fields across the street from the park. Well, Zavien turned 5 this month, and a birthday bash was held for him by his mom and dad. When we got our invitation we both immediately knew we would find a way to get there for the fun. Even though we worked at the park the day of the party until 6 pm, we quickly closed the office, changed clothes and made the drive to Seadrift. The party was already in full swing when we arrived, with the front yard of Casa de Viktor covered with tables, chairs, food, a DJ and even a rather large bouncy castle! Yes, quite the setting. We were greeted by Viktor and Cecilia before settling in at a table with Bob and Maria, our fellow workamping couple from Texas Lakeside. We enjoyed warm tamales, beans, corn, and of course, pizza! With all of the kids at the party you gotta have pizza! I will tell you the tamales were awesome (we took a bundle of eight home with us!), and the music and conversation were worth the visit. Happy Birthday Zavien!

Across the street from Texas Lakeside RV Resort sits a series of buildings, a large covered area and vast amounts of open, stoned areas. We’ve driven by this area for almost a year now and I certainly have been aware its presence while cutting the grass on that side of our park. Even though this area sat dormant for most of the year with not much happening, it certainly came to life in October as preparations were being made for the arrival of the annual Calhoun County Fair. Temporary fencing went up, the paint on the buildings was freshened up, the animal buildings began to come to life, the entire area, in fact, slowly came to life. For eight days in mid-October, the fairgrounds became a Fair! We knew it was getting close when the trucks started rolling in, pulling all of the large rides onto the grounds. For over a week we had a front row seat for all of the activity. We saw the rides and lights at night, we heard the music coming from the entertainment tent and we kept an eye while we were working for fair-goers who may have mistakenly chosen to park in our campground. Problems were almost non-existent. We had a day off on Friday so we headed over to see what all of the excitement was about. We enjoyed walking around (although the rain had made it a little muddy!) and experiencing a local Texas County Fair. Even though carnival rides are not on my list of activities, we did enjoy the animal races, the food and most importantly (for Betsy), the cows. We spent a good bit of time walking through the cow shed, talking to, watching and laughing at the cows. Sorry Betsy, we don’t have room in Charlie for a pet cow!

And I really can’t put a bow on October without mentioning a little project that took some of our time during the month. It is directly related to our upcoming winter workamping gig in New Mexico. So we’ll be spending our winter months in Albuquerque, NM working for Jackson Hewitt Tax Service. Since neither Betsy nor I have any experience officially doing taxes for people, one of the requirements to do this job is to complete an online tax course, otherwise known as Tax School. At the end of October we had about 20 hours of work in on Tax School. It will take an estimated 60 hours total to complete the training, so more to come on this subject. We’ll keep plugging away at it and try to accomplish our goal of having it completed before we arrive to our in-person training the week of December 10th. There’s a $100 bonus if we can get it done, so I’m here to say we WILL have it completed.