Author: Steve

We’re going to take all the seats out of the van and put in a nice sofa that converts into a bed in the rear.  The sofa bed is on order and won’t be shipped until late July though.  We’ve arranged with a shop in Colorado to install it.  We’re not going to wait here in the Valley until it’s ready.  We’re going to hit the road before then, gain a little altitude and lose a little humidity.  We’ll make sure we’re back in Colorado when it’s time for the sofa bed installation.  That means we’re going to have to go with a different kind of bed in the meantime, and here it is.  The floor bed.

It starts out as three 6-inch cushions folded up.  18 inches high.  About the height of a chair.  That’s how it will ride during the day.

It folds out into a bed for two at night.  It has a width that will fit just right between the wheel wells.

All set up with our nice puffy down sleeping bags.

We slept on it to make sure it was going to work.  It did.  This is totally doable.

Picked it up from the dealer at noon.

Tropical Storm Alberto has landed as well.  No problem.  We drove the van home from the dealer in the storm and then kept on going for another hour, just checking it out.  Now it’s parked backed-in underneath the cover.  We can get in and out of it through the side and back doors without getting very wet.  We bought it loaded with pretty much everything.  Plenty of features to explore and plans to make.  And now I can remove the blue tape outline of the interior of a Transit Van from our back patio, and it will look less like a crime scene back there.

The frogs have landed as well.  The torrential rain has unleashed all the different frogs we have here from their dormant states.  Standing out on the deck in the dark, it is a joyful racket of a thousand frogs announcing their return.

Here is something.  Screened vents.

Custom fit for Transit Vans.  They will roll up in the tops of the front windows in the van when we’re parked.  On their own, they won’t do much for airflow or a cross-breeze, but when the roof exhaust vent is installed in the back, these will be where the air comes in that will get pulled through the car, cooling us down to the ambient temperature outside.  That will be good airflow.  No bugs.  Good sleeping weather.

After all these days of a hundred degrees and sunny, an area of low pressure that will affect us is developing in the southern Gulf of Mexico next to the Yucatan Peninsula.

Now we have our first cone of uncertainty of the year. 

This disturbance is projected to strengthen into a tropical depression or even a tropical storm in the next couple of days.  The center is expected to make landfall in Mexico, but here in South Texas, we’re on the dirty side of the circulation.  We’ll get most of the moisture.  We’re told to expect five inches of rain, plus or minus.  Some places might get a foot.  It doesn’t look like something we need to leave town to escape.  We’ll sit here and see if our intermittent Lake Sandpipers reappears…  The park has installed a pump system to drain our flooding into a nearby ditch.  Even if the field out in front of us is overwhelmed, it should dry out much faster now.

It’s white now.

We didn’t take this photo.  Our friend Nancy who still walks by it sent the shot to us.  It looks like the natural grass has been restored.  The maple trees are still there, as is the pelican weathervane on the roof!

I like it.