One of Will’s picks to see on this trip was the Alamo. This kid loves history.
It was in the downtown area, not far from the River Walk. We walked between the two quite easily (it was less than 10 minutes, depending on where you were on the River Walk).
It was really neat to see. They did a really nice job with historical information signs and diagrams. There’s a gorgeous, huge, oak tree in the courtyard. (Ben’s favorite thing was the “historical” gift shop.)
Due to Covid, there was a limited amount of people allowed in the church area of the Alamo. Tickets were free, but they were sold out the day we were there. We do plan on going back once we can get tickets.
VISITOR NOTE: The postcards in the Alamo gift shop were $1.99 each. The shop across the street and the San Antonio Visitor Center had them for about $0.35/each.
I swore I packed Eugene before we left Ohio, maybe in the Fall/Winter clothes bin under the bed. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Luckily, Target had some cloth elf ornaments for $3. It looked a little bit like the big Elf. (The kids also know the truth behind the elf, so switching out the Elf shouldn’t be a problem.) I think the smaller elf may actually help me hide him more places! (About 8.5″ tall vs about 14.5″.)
Even though the boys are older, they still like finding the Elf and seeing what crazy shenanigans he got up to overnight. (He’s gone ice skating, zip lining, fought with Darth Vader, had a Lego house, got stuck in a snow globe and a water bottle, made a paper chain obstacle course for the boys…) I had a list of ideas I wanted to try at the house, but those won’t really work in the RV. Hiding an elf in 2,300ish sq ft house seems much easier than in the 400 sq ft RV. I’m going to have to get creative!
We need to travel light(ish), so we did not bring any of our holiday decorations with us. We bought things along the way for each holiday, but wanted them all to be disposable or donatable. Luckily, there is a dollar store pretty much in every town/city we’ve been to. Now, you can use a traditional Christmas stocking, a sock, or a shoe to fill with things for St. Nick’s Day. However, my family has always used a stocking, so I was on the hunt for some stockings for the RV. I was lucky enough to find some at the Dollar Tree.
We do have a mantle (kind of), but I was worried the stockings would hang too close to the heat source from the fireplace. I saw a great idea on Pinterest with hanging them on the edge of the living room slide with Command Hooks. I think it’s going to work out great, other than maybe having to duck a little to sit down. (The other option was to hang under the island. However, I didn’t want to put holes in the underside and the strips don’t stick as well on a textured surface.)
The stockings are a little lighter than normal this year, as we don’t have the space for much. They are getting some candy (including some I found along the way that I hadn’t seen before at home) and a puzzle book. I’ll probably download an ebook to their Kindle as well and slip a note into the stocking.
A few of you have asked about how we cook in the RV and if we had a “real” Thanksgiving dinner. We made a few modifications due to the small oven, but we did have a full Thanksgiving dinner. I think it turned out pretty well. The meal consisted of turkey, cranberry, stuffing, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, rolls, and green bean casserole.
We did a bit of cheating this year to make it work. We bought microwavable mashed potatoes from Costco (they were really nice, we’ve had them a few times), pre-made rolls, and turkey breasts instead of a whole turkey (there is no way a whole turkey would have fit). It was a bit of a juggling act to get things ready close to the same time. I am very thankful that our travel trailer has an island for more counter space!
I started with the turkey. I used a disposable 13×9 pan (labeled a stuffing pan) for cooking the turkey. I found a BBQ and a bacon wrapped turkey breast at the local grocery store. I was so excited about the bacon one, as I used to make a bacon sweater for the whole turkey back in the house. (NOTE: These were from Honeysuckle. They turned out ok. I have made turkey breasts from Butterball before, and those turned out much better.)
I browned the bottom of the bacon wrapped turkey on the stovetop, per the instructions and then placed in the pan with some water and aromatics (onions, carrots, lemon, and orange). The bacon turkey went into the oven first, as the baking temperature was higher. I added the BBQ chicken later and basted/spooned the liquids back over the turkeys several times during the cooking time. It took around 3ish hours to cook completely. Unfortunately, the bacon did not get very crispy and the oven does not have a broiler feature to it.
When I had about 40 minutes left on the turkeys, I put the sweet potatoes in the InstantPot*. I am not a sweet potato lover, but Nick and Ben are. The InstantPot is amazing for potatoes. (Sweet potatoes are done in 30-50 minutes, baked potatoes are done in 15-20 minutes.)
While the turkeys and sweet potatoes were cooking, I made the green bean casserole. To make it go faster, I used all canned green beans this year. (Normally I use half fresh green beans and half canned.) I also used a 13×9 disposable pan for this dish. After the turkeys were done, the green beans went into the oven. I kept the turkey covered with aluminum foil to keep warm.
Once the green bean casserole was finished, I popped some of the rolls in to crisp up and get warm. They were already baked, but there is something just better and more satisfying about warm bread and rolls! I opened the can of cranberry (jelly), and we were good to plate and eat.
I made a little too much, so we had leftovers for the next day. The one thing I really miss about having a larger oven is being able to make pizza; I would have loved to used the leftovers to make Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza!
For our travels in Texas, we originally had Thousand Trails (TT) parks reserved. However, after reading reviews for the first two, we decided to stay at other campgrounds. I had also talked with the first TT campground on the phone, and was not very impressed with their customer service. It also was 1.5 hours from any of the things we wanted to see.
It was a frantic internet search while driving through the vastness of Texas to try to find an open site near where we wanted to stay. We saw some good reviews for a place called Cowtown RV Park. They could get us in for 2 weeks, but then had other bookings. They were really nice on the phone and we reserved our stay. We didn’t pay anything until we checked in, although that could have been due to having a same day check-in as booking. After we checked in at the office, they had someone lead us to our site.
The office had a small store area, although it was mostly food. The campground did have laundry facilities (3 locations), bathrooms (closed due to Covid), a small playground, pool (locked for the season, but they did offer to unlock it if the kids wanted to swim, although it is not heated), horseshoes, and a basketball hoop. It was dog friendly with a couple of fenced-in dog areas. There were garbage cans scattered about on each row. Sites were concrete pads, with most having a picnic table and ours even had a charcoal grill! There were no fire rings, but I did see several people using their own fire pits on the driveways. The RV park was a mix of back-in and pull-through sites. All sites were 30/50 amp, full hookups, and had cable lines to hook into. They did sell propane onsite, as well as ice. The park also offered WiFi and had several boosters located around the grounds.
It was pretty dark around the campground at night. There were a few lights on the buildings (laundry, etc.), but not down the rows.
Laundry was $1.25/load for both the washers and dryers.
The park was close to the highway. Most of the time we did not hear any noise, or if we did it was not too loud.
The RV park was pretty conveniently located. There were several grocery store options close by (Walmart, Costco, Target, Brookshire’s — cheapest diesel while we were in town). Starbucks was close as well, almost walking distance but there were no sidewalks. It was about 20 minutes from Fort Worth/Fort Worth Stockyards.
I think the campground was decently priced. It had a really convenient location. If we were in the Fort Worth area, I think we would stay here again.
The boys put together another campground tour video!
Since we only have about 400 sq ft of living space in the RV, it makes having a Christmas tree rather difficult. We still wanted one for the kids. There were the mini trees types that they used to have in their rooms and some corner trees* which are great for small spaces. However, we have a very tiny space and I think I found a solution.
Blackout curtains, so many uses! Ok, not a ton, but they really do help! Most RVs come with aluminum blinds (they bend and break very easily, just like the kind we grew up with), or the pleated shades/paper blinds. They do keep some light out and afford you some privacy.
After living in the RV for 1 day, the boys already bent their aluminum blinds. I ordered custom blackout curtains for the boys’ bunks. They velcro right onto the frame. This way there was no ripping the curtain out/down while tossing and turning.
During the summer, we realized that a ton of heat was coming in through the windows. We had always had blackout curtains at our sticks and bricks, so we picked some up from Target. I didn’t want to do a whole crazy project, so I just trimmed the cloth to the right length and stapled them to the back of the valence board. I also stapled some ribbon to the board so I could tie the blinds up when we wanted to see out. There are a ton of ways you could hang curtains, I just went with easy.
We have always done a gingerbread house at Christmas. We found a really cute RV kit at Target this year.
The kit came with the gingerbread pieces, gum drops, candy beads, light bulb candy, red and black decorative icing, and a white Royal icing. There were a few paper decorations as well: Santa, a grill, and a picnic bench/tree.
There was a plastic tray with indents for the wheels. It did help a lot as the RV sides set. The directions said to do the front/back/sides and let sit, then add the roof. If you don’t have it perfect, the roof doesn’t fit in easily. Next time I may put the roof on as soon as the sides/front/back are iced together, so that the icing is still pliable and it can all set/dry together.
The boys had a blast decorating it and it turned out pretty well. They especially enjoyed eating it for Thanksgiving dessert!
In high school one of my favorite English teachers had us read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (a Nigerian Novelist). It was a short but powerful book that I would still recommend. Although google tells the adult version of me that the novel dealt with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters, the most vivid memory I have of this book was the delight the high school version of me had at discovering the publisher stamped “Things Fall Apart” on the inside binding of the cover.
Our adventure has a lot of parallels to the book. Each member of our family has dealt with change differently along our journey. We have each had ups and downs as we have adapted to our 400 square foot space and completely different, changing landscape. There have been arguments, tears and plenty of pouting and that was just me. In the end though, the good have greatly outweighed the bad and our laughter carries us through the tough days.
One thing that remains consistent is the amount of things that actually fall apart on a travel trailer as you bounce your home along the road at 60 mph. Going into this experience, I knew things broke easily on a traveling home. We had seen it in enough videos, but I was not prepared for just how quickly things actually broke.
June 4th: Buy RV and get it home. Modified the bunkroom and resealed the storage door. The caulking wasn’t great and we could see gaps. We checked the caulking on the outside and touched up a few spots. Boys slept in their beds and broke the aluminum mini blinds the first time sleeping in them. Sarah later upgraded these from Aluminum mini blinds to custom fit black out curtains that velcro in place.
June 9th: Move RV to Waynesville. After several water dripping, shampoo barely our of our hair showers, we replaced the shower head with an Oxygenics*. This was more of a mandatory upgrade rather than a repair.
July 1st: The kitchen faucet got stuck on the shower/spray setting. This was the second time, but now we can’t get it to go back to the steady stream. Sometimes more features just mean more problems.
July 5: The left hand small drawers in the kitchen came loose and were hanging crooked. When we took the drawers out to see why, it looks like they were only held up by the drawer tracks and two screws at the top. There was no bottom support at all. I got it reattached at the top and also put in a bottom support. We discovered some more storage space when we removed the access panel to reach the back of the drawers. Repurposed the panel to protect the water lines, but it is now moved back and attached to the new bottom drawer support. We have our bread in a storage bin under there now. (The cupboard was too warm and the bread was growing mold quickly.)
July 9th: After traveling to our first stop (boondocking), the trim around the main door was popping loose. Reattached it with the staple gun. We also learned that normal highway driving knocks the half moon shower doors out of their track. We close and lock them, but the left side keeps popping loose.
Not really broken, but maybe forgotten? All the blinds in the RV have some sort of hold back (cords attached to the wall, or hooks to attach the bottom of the blinds). The master bedroom blinds by the bed do not. We have gotten pretty level, but the RV still makes small movements when someone walks/turns in bed. Sarah attached sticky velcro to the wall and to the bottom of the blinds to keep them in place. It is now so much quieter when we are sleeping!
July 18th. One of the small kitchen cabinet doors ripped out. I reinstalled it, but it ripped out again. Problems of having short people (aka kids) putting away dishes. They are hard to open cabinets and I think he was just pulling downward too much instead of outward.
August 11th: Upgraded to a fancy new bike rack over the trailer hitch jack, the Jack-It*.
August 12th: Realized we damaged the passenger side rear stabilizer strut while installing the new bike rack. Still not fixed for lack of the right materials. Need to source materials not found in normal hardware stores.
August 12th: New bike rack also reduced the truck to trailer turning radius resulting in damage to one bikes tire rim and dents to the truck while backing into a tight RV space. Touch up paint and a new bike to the rescue (benefit of a cheap Walmart bike).
September 12th: Trim around main door popped off towards bottom again but on both sides this time. Closet door in master bedroom, left door fell off/screws came out. Learned from the kitchen cabinet doors and was ready with the upgrade and better installation. Based on the design, I bought enough bolts, washers and nuts to replace every cabinet door hinge in the travel trailer.
October: We didn’t move and coincidentally nothing broke. Easy living in California! We did finally upgrade the CO2 alarm to a less sensitive model. The model that came with the travel trailer would alarm daily (normally at 3:00AM, 4:00AM, or 5:00AM). The sensor sits immediately outside the boys bunkroom and the alarming frequency increased based on Mom’s dinner menu (strong correlation between beans and alarming). Once we upgraded to the Kidde Carbon Monoxide & Explosive Gas Detector Alarm* our late night wake up calls went away.
November 7th: Barely clipped gas station bollard while turning out of a tight Diesel refueling area pulling the travel trailer. Luckily just cracked the electrical cover plate. This could have been much worse. Until we get a new cover, we have resorted to a makeshift plastic bag and have been blessed with very little rain.
General:
The finish on the bathroom door is peeling off by the doorknob.
The floor grates are not designed for everyday traffic even though they are in high traffic areas. Sarah sourced and replaced the most offensive grates in the bathroom and master bedroom with a heavier grade.
Command strips are strong enough to pull off the wallpaper. We have had to do some cosmetic repairs when the Command strips won the battle.
Although things continue to inevitably fall apart, we are grateful it hasn’t been anything significant. On the positive side, we have had many opportunities to practice our engineering, visit hardware stores and my apprentices have started to learn how to repair things on their own. Things change, we can either go with it or let it break us. Maybe I have spent too much time with my surfing buddies in California, but we are just going with the flow dude.
I’m working on a few posts, but didn’t get them ready in time. So instead, here is a Thanksgiving themed word find in the shape (vaguely) of a travel trailer. 🙂 I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow!
For a printable version of the word find, click here!
