October 2009Monthly Archives

Our First RV Park : Green Acres RV Park

For our first RV park experience, we picked a place in Wimberley Texas called Green Acres RV Park.

[ I tried to get a little video to get an idea of the pleasant LITTLE park. It is at the bottom of this post. ]

The name seems a little bit hokey, but you learn that it is on a street named

Green Acres so really they just adopted the name of the street.

We picked Wimberley because anywhere WEST of Austin is very nice – you will hear it referred to as the Texas Hill Country. There are so many wonderful little towns in the Texas Hill Country that you might want to spend time in each one – that is our plan. Wimberley is located South West of Austin and its only about 45 minutes away.

Also, we liked Wimberley because it is small, friendly and has lots of shops, artsy things, and a very eclectic set of people. You can’t really afford real estate in Wimberley, but you can actually find an RV spot near the downtown, and near the river. Surprisingly, even though you could consider a wonderful destination, there were only really three RV parks that Google would point out to us.

Green Acres is one of them. If you are an RV park and you can’t be found in Google, I just somehow have to suspect it is hurting your business. Maybe not, but…

We liked this little park because it looked very quiet, was about 75 yards from the Blanco river, has a little hotel within 30 yards of it, it was very, very clean, and was very small.

When we called we did not have to pay to make a reservation. The proprietor was a very nice lady named Lou Vaughn. She doesn’t accept credit cards but does accept that funny green stuff and those wierd things called checks! She was so personable that we think that we made a wonderful choice.

We got there in the evening and Lou Vaughn was not around, but she told us just pull on up and hook up and she would catch us in the morning. Within 45 minutes we had water, electric, sewer, cable tv and WiFi. Lou Vaughn wasn’t sure the WiFi was working well, but we had wonderful luck with it.

We paid for a month and told her we would be there on weekends whenever we could. So now we have our weekend getaway.

On our first night, when it got very dark, you would be amazed at all the stars you could see. I personally enjoy Austin – my wife – not so much. But in Austin, I have a downtown lights view and overlook a beautiful pool. All that aside, seeing the stars and breathing the fresh country air with almost no traffic noise. That was very peaceful. And needed. Amen.

Green Acres RV Park Wimberley Texas

Marlan "Living Small" RV Guy

October 30, 2009

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What do people from Wimberley call themselves?

As we were enjoying one of our first nights out on our new ‘home away from home’ town (Wimberley) it occurred to me that if you actually LIVED in Wimberley you might be called something.

For example, Austin people call themselves ‘Austinites’.

So I asked several people that night what people from Wimberley called themselves. Surprisingly there is not a name… yet.

Here are some of my ideas.

Wimberlites – Personally don’t like this one – sounds like something related to coal.

Wimberloogies.

Wimberooligans.

Wimbagians.

Wimmerites.

Wimolians.

Wimites.

Wimberleogians.

Wimberleyites.

Wimberleyans.

What are your ideas? They really need a name.

Marlan "Living Small" RV Guy

October 29, 2009

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Leveling our RV the First Time

[ Note. This article is PLUMB wrong. This is part one on Leveling and it is an example of a bad assumption. I'm leaving it here because I think it is important to know that as you tow/park/live in a recreational vehicle, you're human and you'll make mistakes. Long time RV'ers can be very TOUGH on the newbies. Anyway, read on and excuse the EGG on my face! All details here are left so that you can say he was an honest man. ]

I’m guessing this won’t be the ONLY post on leveling the recreational vehicle (RV). As you know Puma is the name we call our Palomino Puma travel trailer. It is a 29 foot Front Kitchen Super Slide (29 FKSS). Sheri bought it to live in and that is just one great thing that makes me love her. She beats to her own drum.

I can’t comment on ALL RV’s, but I can comment on ours and my observations. I’m thinking that many do not have automatic levelers. Right now, I don’t think that is a big deal, but check w/ me after our Thanksgiving week fun.

Most, if not all RV’s have to be level. Case in point : We did not have ours level and Sheri said it felt like she was walking on the moon. So, it isn’t just for good water management, it is truly for comfort.

So being level matters.

Some other quick notes. An RV can only be leveled by ‘just so much’. So you might really need to think about the idea of level, especially if you are ‘dry camping‘. For Sheri and I, we probably won’t do too much dry camping because we don’t have a generator. We’ll save that for when we get a fancier 5th wheel or a motorhome.

Just like an RV can only compensate so much for un-level ground, it is actually very amazing that someplace that LOOKS level really isn’t as level as you think. Good for drainage, but hard to get level.

When I do this more, I’ll let you know more on what I learn about leveling.

So, after we pulled into the spot, and arranged ourselves on the pad the best we could, we then hooked up our utilities. As I think back, maybe we should have leveled FIRST, just in case we found out we needed to pick a different orientation. Not sure. But we leveled last.

The next thing we did, was to unhook Puma from Mr Big. Honestly, I think you can’t even think about leveling when you are hooked up. I DID see a fifth wheel the other day that looked lived in AND level while parked at a friends house. But I can assure you that I don’t think the travel trailer would be level by keeping Mr Big connected. Plus we needed Mr. Big.

After disconnecting Mr Big, the next thing we did was use a carpenter’s level to check for the level. Sheri keeps one in the trailer and I would argue that is needed on the list of things to have with you at all times.

It told us what our eyes told us. That the front by the hitch needed lowering.

So we lowered like crazy. The leveling jacks got into arguments with the hitch jack. I think the correct thing to do is to lift the hitch jack all the way out of the way. The front lowers quite easy as the trailer leans on the hitch just a little bit.

By the way, we lowered the back leveler jacks too, just to be safe. Also we chocked the wheels so that the trailer did not roll. I don’t know what other people do, but that seems like common sense to me.

What we found was that we really had to crank the back completely as high as we could go, and then we even had to get some extra boards to go higher and the front almost as low as possible. Surprisingly, we got the left/right fairly level and then Sheri checks the doors. When they close easily then you’ve got it. If they don’t close, then the frame is warped just a little bit.

Anway, if you look at the picture you can see how high the back jack is even though the ground didn’t look that level.

I can see that we need to keep 2×12 for the jacks with us at all times and I’m already thinking about electronics to help level the darned thing.

Marlan "Living Small" RV Guy

October 27, 2009

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