Waco Here We Come.

We have mixed emotions about getting back on the road.  On one hand we are looking forward to what Waco, TX has to offer tourists but on the other hand we are unsettled by our tire problems.  We have confirmed that our total load is within limits and that our load balance across each axle and even each individual tire is also within limits.  But after more hours than I care to think about researching and getting on forums it is clear that the Goodyear Marathons I am running are a tire with a reputation.  And it is not a good reputation.

The number of reported failures of these tires was astounding.  It was not possible to read all the search hits about problems with this tire.  Of the couple hundred I did read the theme was common, tread separation and blowouts under conditions that these problems should not have happened.  One condition that did seem to be an issue in a large number of the failures was hot pavement.  Like me, many of the people experiencing catastrophic blowouts did so while traveling in blistering summer heat.  Several had said they changed their traveling habits to move only at night!  We are not willing to go to that extreme but we are going to start traveling by sunup and be to our next campground by mid-day.  That should have us traveling before the pavement gets untouchably hot plus being a time of day that should something happen it will be daylight and businesses that we would need will be open.

With that said, we are up at 5:00 am and getting configured for travel.  Even with this being the coolest time of day, it is still 83 degrees.  It doesn't sound much like it cooled off during the night but when I got to thinking about it it was almost a 30 degree drop from yesterday's high.

We are pulling out and the sun has not quite come up yet.  Our destination is just over three hours away so we will be getting to our new campground in time to park, get set up and fix lunch.  But our destination park, Flat Creek Farm RV Resort is not our original choice.  We were all set to try out a Corp of Engineers park on Lake Waco.  This campground had received great reviews and we were looking forward to being next to the water for a few days.  But once we figured out what day we would be leaving Livingston we went online to make reservations and discovered that all the campgrounds on Lake Waco were closed due to flooding.  Outside of the COE campgrounds the choices for RV parking got a little sketchy or pricey.  We chose to go pricey and reduced the number of days we would have stayed otherwise.  We would soon learn that the flooding was not limited to the lake area.

It seems that the strategy of driving slow and during the cool part of the day is working.  The move to Waco was uneventful and our little out of the way RV resort is nice.  Although their parking layout is a little odd to us.  The sites are pull-thru but they alternate the direction you are pointed.  The backside of your RV is facing the backside of your neighbor's RV with only a couple of feet between you.  We could literally hear our neighbor sneeze or cough.  But that's okay, we don't plan on being around much except to sleep anyway.

We picked Waco for pure fun.  No chores or things to do like jury duty or going to the tax commissioner.  Our satellite feed gives us the HGTV channel and we have become fans of the show Fixer Upper, which is based in Waco.  The point of the show is to take you through the process of people buying a house that is need of serious repair in the Waco area and then doing a total overhaul on it to make it livable and updated.  But in the course of doing that they show little snippets of sites from around town like the skyline of downtown, the river through town, the sculptures at the historic bridge, and more.  We wanted to see more and we wanted to see it in person so here we are.

First thing is the ALICO (Amicable Life Insurance Company) building which is featured at least a couple of times each show.  It is the tallest building in town at 22 stories and was completed in 1911 on top of a site that was the location of a run-down, three story First National Bank building.

The ALICO building was just as we saw it on TV,
iconic flag starched by a stiff breeze and all.

A big attraction in town is the Brazos River Park and its suspension bridge.  In Texas there are many rivers but it is common that many, if not most, only have water flowing in them when it is raining.  The Brazos is not one of those.  It may get shallow at times of drought but it seems to always have flow.  This year has been anything but a drought for Texas.  Rains have been so abundant that a large portion of the state has been under flood warning for months.  That is pretty much what happened to our first choice campground on Lake Waco.  It finally rained enough that the COE had to cut back on flow into the Brazos to minimize its flooding.  The most recent rains finally pushed the shore line up into the campgrounds.

This shot was captured standing on the old suspension bridge looking
down the swollen Brazos toward Baylor University's McClane Stadium.

The suspension bridge, built in 1870, was a toll bridge.  And in an agreement with its builders and local officials, was a monopoly until 1889.  The only other way across the river was by ferry, and by the stories told it was a bit of a risky endeavor.  From the day the bridge opened it became the de facto crossing point for the Chisholm Trail at 5 cents a head.  The $141,000 it took to build the bridge was paid back quickly and many times over.  In 1889 the bridge was sold to McClennan County and all tolls were removed.

With its 475 foot span, this was Texas' first major
suspension bridge and the longest west of the Mississippi. 

 Roebling Company of Trenton, New Jersey designed the bridge and built the cabling for it.  Roebling later used the Waco Bridge as a prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge.

I was going for an artistic shot of the bridge but got a
bonus of a pair of Black Vultures on top of the far tower.

The bridge was built wide enough for stagecoaches to pass each other or for cattle to go down one side and pedestrians the other.

Modern day Waco has built parks along the river on both sides of the bridge.  But for the duration of our three-day stay, and well before and after, the parks were submerged under flood waters.

The Brazos is running high.

It was a disappointment that we were not able to enjoy the river parks but on the other hand it gives us a reason to go back.

The banks of the river were high and dry, this is where the Chisholm Trail Cattle Drive sculptures reside.  The guy(s) that sculpted this scene did not mess around, everything was about double life-size and there were a lot of them.  I particularly enjoyed one scene where the cowboy was managing a spirited horse all the while herding longhorns to the entrance of the bridge.

Lots of drama going on here.

The Fixer Upper TV show is what prompted us to visit Waco so what stay would be complete without visiting the stars of the show's newly finished restoration of a grain silo operation into a home decor store?  It may be an old grain silo but that does not mean it is out in the middle of some wheat field.  This silo is right downtown alongside an old railroad spur.

Even arriving well before opening time, cars were parked for blocks around.

We had been hearing about how popular a place this was to visit so we planned to arrive at opening time.  It should be cooler (we are still experiencing 100+ degree days) and maybe we will beat the crowds.  Cooler happened, beating the crowds didn't.

We were about sixty or seventy back.  The line behind us wrapped around the block.

By opening time the line to get in was a couple hundred people deep but everybody was relaxed and enjoying some bearable weather.  The best part was when teenagers appeared out of a side building that had been adapted into a kitchen, with large trays of cupcakes.  They started giving them to those of us waiting in line and man oh man were they good.  I had never tasted an icing that was even remotely like what they were dishing out.

Well before Waco was known for its TV personalities it was home to the invention of what was to be a famous soft drink, Dr Pepper.  It was 1885 when a pharmacist by the name of Charles Alderton concocted a carbonated drink at the pharmacy's soda fountain.  It rapidly gained popularity and became too much for the young pharmacist who preferred to focus on his pharmaceutical career.  He sold the formula and "business" to a couple of businessmen.  These two men were serious about growing the business and showcased the drink at the 1904 Worlds Fair, the same year that hot dogs and hamburgers were served on buns.

Dr Pepper museum, Waco, TX

Even though the business of Dr Pepper was moved to Dallas in the early 1900's, Waco is recognized as the home of the concoction and has a museum dedicated to all things Dr Pepper.

Waco is also home to Baylor University.  Even though Cyndee and I are native Texans we were not really well informed about just how much of a school it is.  We drove onto campus and were blown away by its size and beauty.  It was an mix of old and new.  It was amusing for us to see groups of incoming freshmen doing campus tours.  We had flashbacks of our own freshmen orientation forty-some years ago at West Texas State University (now known as West Texas A&M).

Waco is also home to a brand new National Monument.  One year ago to the month of our visit, the National Park Service acquired a paleontological dig on an ancient tributary near today's Brazos River.  This is an important dig as it is the only one in the world where they have a complete nursery of Columbian Mammoths.  Normally the males are solitary and not found in the vicinity of females or calves.  In this dig they are all together plus a camel and a couple other yet identified animals, all from around 67,000 years ago.

Since the dig is of a relatively young time, the bones and tusks of the animals are not fully mineralized.  They are not yet completely a fossil.  In fact the ivory of the tusks has proven very sensitive to environmental conditions and when exposed to moisture and warm temperatures, have literally exploded into small fragments.  To protect the dig, a building has been built to encompass the entire site for the purposes of environmental control of humidity and temperature.

Walkway above Columbian Mammoth dig site.

The Columbian Mammoth is not the same as the Woolly Mammoth that most of us are familiar with.  The Columbians lived in southern climes and were so much bigger that they made other mammoths look petite.

This bull Columbian Mammoth was as much as four feet
 taller at the shoulders than his Woolly Mammoth cousin.  That's fourteen feet!

This about wraps up our three day visit to Waco, TX.  It will be another early morning tomorrow for our short trip, barely two hours, to Highland Village, TX near John's brother's home.

Just a quick blurb.

Being in Livingston, TX puts us close to several of John's cousins.  Of course close is a relative term when your talking about Texas.  One was two hours away in Sugarland, another one an hour away in Conroe and the third an hour away in Montgomery.  By the way, did you know that you could always tell if you were talking to a Texan if they spoke in terms of travel time instead of distance?  When we were in high school we made a few trips from our hometown of Borger, TX (up in the panhandle, north of Amarillo) to Galveston Island, TX.  To this day I have no idea how many miles that drive was but I know it was a 14 hour trip with 70 mph speed limits.  During the oil crisis when speed limits were dropped to 55 mph we quit making long-distance weekend drives.  There just was not enough hours in the weekend to do more than make the drive, with no time to spend at the destination.

Before our stay in Livingston was finished we had managed to meet with all three for dinner at restaurants approximately mid-way between us and them.  These are some pretty special people in my book and we loved spending time with them.  Although Cyndee did miss one dinner due to her strep throat infection. So, where does one meet for a special dinner with family when in Texas, why at BBQ or Mexican food restaurants of course.

One dinner Cyndee didn't miss was a trip to the Humble, TX location of Spring Creek BBQ.  This is a chain of restaurants scattered around the Houston area and east Texas.  But don't let the chain thing put you off, this is some good BBQ.  I got what I call a dinosaur bone (a big ol' beef rib) and was thoroughly satisfied with it and the endless sides that come with it.  Plus, the wait staff walks around with a large basket of fresh, hot rolls that just keep coming.  Our next stop was on a farm to market road just outside of Conroe, at the foot of the dam of Lake Conroe.  El Bosque has two locations, one in Conroe and this one at the lake.  They had an extensive menu with several unique offerings.  Everything we had was really good.  And lastly, the one Cyndee was down and out for, was Los Pericos in Huntsville.  Again, a huge menu with many unique house specialties.  I did take a desert home for Cyndee.

We'll be getting ready to head north now.  We are going to go to Waco and be tourists for a few days and then work our way up to my brother's place near Dallas and then to both my and Cyndee's home town of Borger.

Done, done and done.

The second day of jury duty was a lot like the first, hot and boring.  The A/C had not been fixed yet so it was plenty hot.  The heat coupled with the not-so-interesting law suit made for drowsiness.  One of our jurors, a twenty-something, actually dosed off, but within seconds of the first head-bob the bailiff was all over her letting her know that behavior was unacceptable. That perked everybody in the courtroom up.

By the end of the day we, the jury, had found in favor of the plaintiff and awarded them the $150,000 they had been swindled out of.  We had now fulfilled our civil obligations.  Mark this one DONE!

It was time to move on to the other objectives we (Cyndee and I) had come to Livingston for.  I made an appointment to get our truck and trailer weighed with SmartWeigh and headed to the tax commissioner's office to secure the title to my truck.

It has been three years since we moved from Georgia to Texas.  All legal documents have been moved.  Driver licenses, bank accounts, wills, etc. have all been converted to our new home state.  The exception being the title to the truck.  Despite multiple attempts in 2013 when we did everything else, we just couldn't get the title.  And trying to do it by mail in the intervening three years was no more fruitful.  I was dreading taking on whatever bureaucracy was going to be thrown at me this time.  What was different about today I don't know, but ten minutes after walking in the tax commissioners building, I was walking out, title in hand.  DONE!

Texas is one of the states that has speed limits for select roads up to 75 mph.  These higher speed roads tend to be multi-lane with intersections that are overpasses with ramps, or at least stack lanes for turning.  But not always, and that is the case for the road that goes to the Escapees park, Rainbow's End.  Coming from Livingston going to the RV park there is a generous stack lane for turning right into the park.  But coming from the other direction there is nothing but the single driving lane to make a left turn from.  And pulling out from the park, making a left to go into town is a high pucker factor move.  PLUS, the entrance to the park is at the top of a rise in the road.  Visibility is limited for seeing high speed traffic coming down the only lane you have for going from a dead-stop to highway speed.

Escapees Rainbow's End RV Park Entrance.
If you are coming from town (top), you have a turn lane.  Coming from the other way or turning out of park towards town you have nothing but the single, 75 mph lane to work with.

This part of Texas is known as the piney woods.  There is an abundant amount of logging going on with large, heavy logging trucks blasting up and down roads big and small all around here.  The road in front of Escapees has a pretty steady parade of logging trucks moving in both directions all day, every day.  It is not unusual to hear the heavy application of jake brakes accompanied by the squalling sound of skidding tires as trucks have to make a panic stop to keep from rear-ending a car trying to make a left turn into the park.  Today was a little different as there were multiple crashing sounds to go along with jake brake noise and squalling truck tires.

It would seem that a small car was stopped, waiting for traffic to clear so they could make a left into the Escapees park when they were rear-ended by an SUV.  That collision scattered the two small vehicles across all available pavement and a logging truck was only a few seconds behind the SUV.  The truck had no room to stop and no alternate pavement to use.  The driver had his stuff straight, he was not going to add his considerable mass to the collision so he headed into the ditch alongside the road in full panic-stop mode.  The ditch being steeply sloped and the truck being of a high center of gravity resulted in the only thing that could happen, he went over and started plowing the ditch with the side of his cab.

This logging truck driver did an excellent job of not adding to a collision that happened right in front of him.  Luckily he had just dropped his load at the lumber mill and was running empty.

Ambulances took away the injured from the two small vehicles and tow trucks quickly cleared the two wrecked cars but it was a good while before they got a big enough tow truck that could handle the logging truck.  And by the way, the picture makes the weather look pleasant, it wasn't.  Temperature at the time this shot was taken was 111 degrees.

Distractions aside, it was time to go to our SmartWeigh appointment.  To do so means completely packing up the rig and truck just as if you were moving to your next destination.  All the sewer connections, shore power cable, water hose, everything put in its storage compartment to get an accurate representation of the load balance.  Same for the truck, including both passengers.

Tanks dumped and all buttoned up we hook up the truck and idle our way through the RV park to the SmartWeigh scale pad.  SmartWeigh is a service within the park that is manned by trained staff.  Our technician today was definitely not new at the job.  She was all business, but friendly.  She got me square on the scale pad and then went about having me inch forward and backward, getting a weight on each individual wheel for both the truck and trailer.  Then we unhitched and weighed the truck by itself.  It's necessary to do this to understand what the king pin weight is so that gross axle weights can be calculated.

Sounds like a lot of trouble doesn't it?  Well, it is, and not free either, but it is also necessary.  This whole SmartWeigh thing came about because of a strong need in the industry.  RV's are not like commercial truck and trailers (or buses if you are talking about motor homes).  The loads in an RV can get really concentrated if you are not careful.  It has always been an issue of not concentrating a lot of weight in the galley what with the refrigerator, microwave, stove and pantry all being in close proximity.  Then with the advent of slide-outs, weights took a significant jump in all kinds of ways.

Then you add all your "stuff", with some people packing literally hundreds of pounds of books, DVDs, giant propane grills, metal cutlery and glass dishes (place settings for eight).  You can pretty quickly get one side of the trailer, or even a single wheel above its maximum rated capacity.  Then there is even the bigger problem where the trailer dealer will tell a potential buyer of a 35' 5th wheel; "Sure, your Chevy S-10 can pull it".  Happens all the time, or some variation there-of.  The point is, there are a lot of trucks out there that have way more trailer attached to them than the engineers of the truck ever intended.

With my blowout problems I'm thinking I may have a weight distribution problem.  I had the shortest trailer built I could get with three axles.  As it turned out, to fit all the tanks (fresh water, grey water, black water) and three axles into the same trailer, you need 37' of frame.  But I met my goal of having the frame and axles/wheels/tires over-engineered.  I shouldn't have had to give it a second thought but the blowouts have me second guessing that now.

The technician finished all her calculations and declared her surprise at the results.  In all the weighings that she does, it is a rare occasion that there is not at least one tire or axle or hitch weight over the limit.  In our case there was not a single point that was even close to being a problem.  Okay, mark another one DONE!

We returned to our campsite comforted in knowing we were below weight limits but left scratching our heads as to what could be causing all the tire problems.