Steve and Judy's Travels!

    Hunkered down on the high ground at Buckhorn Lake RV Resort.       Buckhorn Lake Resort  

  That’s the name of the flood control project that’s going to help with our flooding.  Our part of the county north of Edinburg is a low spot.  Flooding has always been a problem here.  The drain will be sixty-three miles long collecting and draining water all the way from Edinburg Lake to the Gulf.  We’re at the Edinburg Lake end of it.   This project has been in the works for thirty years, but it couldn’t get any funding until now.  Phase One of the Raymondville Drain project just got started in 2017.  We can see progress on it as we drive in and out of our neighborhood.   So it started in 2017.  It’s a five-phase project.  I wonder what the completion date is.  I wonder if it starts to provide any benefit to our neighborhood at any intermediate stage.  The only thing I can find on Google is about phase one.  As far as Google knows, it’s a one-phase project.  We in our neighborhood would like to know more.  I guess time will tell.  

  It was a two-day trip.  One day to drive just north of San Antonio and one day back.  We were so careful not to pack a bunch of extra stuff.   Our location   Remember I said it rained the night before we left?  Five inches.  The park in front of our house was completely flooded.  We had to wade to the motorhome to get in it and drive away.  Well, it rained another five inches again last night.  Now the entire RV Park is flooded.  The roads to get to and from our park are covered by standing water.  More rain is forecast.  Oh, and there is a tropical storm in the gulf headed our way.   We always say that if a hurricane is coming, our house has wheels.  This isn’t a hurricane, but it is a significant enough rain event that we decided since our house with wheels is already on high ground, we probably ought to just leave it there and stay in it until the flooding in the Valley has receded.   But there is a problem with that.  To stay out, we need more stuff.  We didn’t even bring a change of clothes.  We didn’t bring our prescriptions.  We decided to drive back to the Valley today, get the stuff we need, and drive back here tomorrow, and stay out until the floodwaters have gone down.  We can drive through a little standing water; it’s a Jeep!  We got as far as San Antonio before we got the note that the County was about to let more water out of Edinburg Lake just south of our house.  The roads to and from our house are going to be impassible.  Time for a new plan.   We turned around.  Now we’re back in the motorhome in Bandera with groceries in the pantry and refrigerator.  Tomorrow we can go buy a change of clothes at Walmart.  Judy called Walgreens and they will provide new prescriptions in advance of us normally needing them.  Maybe we can go home next week.  Never know though; sometimes plans just have to change.  

  Five inches!   We had pulled out onto the road the night before and got the car hooked up.  We waded out to the RV this morning and left for a two-day driveabout.   We’re at Bandera for the night.                

  Boy did I get a lot of responses and helpful suggestions.   The water filter problem turned out not to be crystalizing mineral salts jamming up the threads (as I most recently suspected).  Jazi suggested I go press the pressure release valve on the top of the filter.  Well, I didn’t need to do that because I had already released the pressure, but her note got me to thinking.  Brother Tom had already made a suggestion about releasing the pressure, but I wasn’t ready to revisit the pressure release yet then.   I started out thinking that I could go press the pressure release button just to prove that the pressure had been released.  (No way the filter canister is going to unscrew if it is still under pressure.)  I knew there was no pressure because I had closed valves on either side of the filter and released any pressure by turning on the kitchen faucet.  Problem is, the filter is between the two valves, but the kitchen faucet is not, so the pressure I released from the faucet was not the pressure I needed to release.   So I went back out to the filter, looked for the pressure release button, couldn’t find it, then followed brother Tom’s suggestion and only closed the inlet valve to the filter, didn’t close the outlet valve from the filter, and let the pressure out with the kitchen faucet.  Pressure off, barely needed the wrench, filter removed and replaced.  Piece of cake!   Again, thank you all.  Put this together with yesterday’s report and we have a complete story!