Mammoth Goes to Matagorda, Day 9

Tuesday 18 January 2022

Falcon Lake State Park to Lake Bastrop State Park

At Falcon Lake, I saw a Black-chinned sparrow at site; also a probable long-billed thrasher but in retrospect it might have been a curve-billed thrasher. I just didn't get that good a look at it. There is some kind of birding law that states you always see birds on the day you're going to leave a site and don't have time to chase them down.

The route stunk. On the first leg, google wanted to take me on a county road and a road with no number, so I nixed that and headed a few miles over to get on a state highway. But after than, Google got me on an FM which wasn't all that bad, but not at all necessary. After that we stayed mostly on state highway 80 which wasn't a "bad" road, but it went through little towns and was alternately bumpy, lumpy and curvy,  It may have been the shortest route--google said it was thirty minutes faster that way--but it sucked.

Long before we got to Bastrop we could see smoke rising in the distance. We both speculated (independently) that the campground might be on fire. And when we finally arrived, we learned we weren't all that off-base. At the office I had to wait behind an older lady who was there to visit a friend who was already camping and she wanted to make a one-night stay. The ranger said no--they'd been told not to let any more day-0use visitors into the park in case they had to evacuate it.  The poor lady also wanted to renew her park pass, but the lady said they weren't set up to do that there. That part I don't understand, unless she was talking about a federal pass, not a state one.  All state parks are supposed to be able tissue state passes.

Anyway, the ranger eventually let the lady in for a short visit, and proceeded to check me in. The reservation I'd changed was good--thank Texas for a well-designed, well-working reservation system!  She said the fire was not contained but it didn't seem to be moving our way, so we were probably good.

Whew. But when we got parked and tried to level the RV, the levelers malfunctioned. They jacked us up really high on the right-hand site until it looked like the RV was about to tip over. Of course I knew that was impossible, but it was still scary. Ed tried a second time with the same results. And then they wouldn't go down. So we were stuck, immobile, and wildly unlevel.

I panicked, thinking we were in for a costly and time-consuming on-the-road repair using our Good Sam RV insurance, but I needn't. Ed got his tools out and managed to retract them manually. So we were able to move again, if we needed to. But we were still unlevel (in the other direction), and you're not supposed to open the slideouts when unlevel.

So we camped for the night with the slides in. With them out, Mammoth is roomy and delightful inside. With them in, it's cramped. Feels like a bus. Or a car. Blah.