Yay, today we go home!
Well not until 9pm tonight actually, so first a visit to the Outlet Mall I think : ) Need to fill in the day somehow after all.
Last post from US for this trip!! Cheers!
Our Adventure for 2017
Wednesday, 18 October – to U-Haul, De Montrond and Airway Inn, Houston
Planes flew overhead from early morning but we slept through
most of it. Woke late but not too late
to go down for brekkie, cereal and toast so not too flash but we got a cup of
tea – there are no hot drink facilities in our room. It’s a bit rundown and in need of some TLC
but we are on the ground floor with a carpark right outside so easy to unload
the car.
Yesterday we got diesel at a local Exxon service station,
the same one we had used to fill the rental car a couple of days back. The pump
locked off at $100 which is a higher value than most, often the max is $75. We still needed more diesel to fill it to the
brim but the’ pay at pump’ would not accept my card again. So a visit inside to the cashier is the obvious
next step. But the card still does not
let us buy more diesel, it’s now in the too hard basket so we bail. A little later in the day I see I have a
missed call, a txt and an email from the Bank of America Fraud Office – WTF??
Apparently a forecourt sale of $100 is
unusual and is often fraudulent so the Bank wanted to get in touch to make sure
those were our transactions. Because
they were weird I txt back not accepted and the bank then cancelled my
card. To be fair they routed me through
to phoning the fraud office and I spoke with a charming young lady who sorted
it all out for us and reinstated my card.
Thank goodness - I will no doubt need to go shopping tomorrow!!
We get a final visit to Walmart, want to buy a padlock so we
can make sure the coach stays plugged into the power box while we are
away. So we go back to UHaul to fit the
lock and say another sad farewell to our faithful friend who has once again safely
delivered us more than 6,370 miles over the last five and a half months : (
Next stop is De Montrond to hand the keys and gate clicker
to Andrew who is our second point of contact at UHaul and who will visit to
make sure all is as it should be while we are gone.
Starbucks for coffee, Willowbrook Mall for lunch (yum Cinnabon) and
shopping then back to the hotel for a rest, it’s been another big day!
After a rest and a wine (it’s now nearly 8pm) we are ready
to go eat and find a Good Eats Restaurant nearby, about 4 miles away. It looks busy when we rock up so that is a
good sign. We are seated straight away
and start with their signature margarita – Eatsarita Rocks!! And it was large and very good – happy
face! The food following was also good
and this place is definitely worthy of another visit in the future.
Tuesday, 17 October – to U-Haul, Antoine Drive, Houston
Bit cool this morning, had to put the heat pump on for a
while. Used the camp showers over the road
‘cos my shower is so clean it sparkles!
The bathrooms here are new, lovely tile and the toilet cubicles are timber
clad. Very clean too! Now a final load of towels in the washer and
it’s breakfast time. Just got enough
cereal but Kim has to have toast today, he finished his cornflakes yesterday :
(
We get on the road about 11.30am and have a stilted one hour drive
down the I45 to North Houston, there are a couple of accident residues for us
to manoeuvre around. We get to U-Haul by
1.30 pm and it takes another 20 minutes to register!! Meantime Kim is pumping up the tires and
taking the Tyre Tracker thingies off. We
are in site 0069, same as last year!! We
park up with ply under the tyres, put jacks underneath to support the chassis
and we are all done and dusted just after 3pm.
 |
| Be good coach, see you next year!! |
Good work, as Enterprise should be here before 4pm to pick us up to take
us to sign up for our rental car for the two remaining days. Well that is wishful thinking! Eventually get to Enterprise around 5pm, take
delivery of our nearly new (4,000 miles) Dodge People Mover (Grand Caravan) and
head back to UHaul to load up our luggage and left over nibbles and drinks we might want at the hotel.
Then we make our way to the Airway Inn on Greens Road to
check in for two nights. Hmm, cheap is
not always the best – but we make it home for a couple of days.
We can return the rental car to the airport
for a $25 surcharge but then we have to man-handle our “heavy” bags onto the
shuttle bus to take us to Departures. Much
better to return the rental to the local agency, then take advantage of the
free shuttle from our hotel direct to the airport. They have even offered to collect us from Enterprise so are offering great service.
We are pretty tired after our busy day so duck out to Burger King to get some
takeout for dinner then call it an early night!
Monday, 16 October – TT Lake Conroe, Willis, TX 77318
Cleaning and packing today and many loads of laundry, poor
machine ran all day! Kim takes the rental car back and I get started on the cleaning. It's pretty much all
done by 3pm so time to sit outside in the pleasant 24C and have a read. Everyone else is rugged up in winter clothes, only us still think it's summer at 24C.
Derosted the freezer after dinner so we are in good shape to leave here tomorrow for the
storage at UHaul.
Sunday, 15 October – TT Lake Conroe, Willis, TX 77318
Day started off hot but a cold front is supposed to move
down from the north and cool things down substantially. We found a Radio Shack where Kim wants to
visit to buy some LED’s and stuff. We
were surprised to see it was open, many of these stores have closed down. I got dropped off across the road at Target
to do girls shopping. Then Kim went to Best Buys where he hypothetically spent
many thousand s of $ on new TV’s, fancy heads up displays for the car with I
phone compatibility, accessories for the drone, noise cancelling head phones
etc…..
Frozen Yoghurt for lunch, the first time we have done that
build your own healthy (or unhealthy) cup of various flavours, I picked two flavours - the Cheesecake and
Hawaiian but they had other strange flavours too – taro, spicy pumpkin etc. and
only later did I see they had tiny tasting cups so we could have tried those
weird flavours too. The toppings were
fresh fruit, various candies and syrups, the latter being the unhealthy
options. Anyway it was a nice refreshing
lunch!
By the time we get home around 4.30pm it’s a pleasant 24C
and there is a bit of a brisk breeze. I
go to pull in the small awning on the road side to save it flapping and it
makes a horrendous noise! The arm
attaching the front end to the coach has pulled away from the coach, all four
screws have let go. We go outside to
investigate, get the ladder out and two guys from the site behind us come over
to see if they can help. They told us a
motorhome had pulled in to the site beside us yesterday and hit our awning!! The driver got out to check but didn’t think
it worthy to leave any details and just buggered off! He definitely did hit the awning because the
roller had been shoved along some and the pin bent. It was a good project for Kim although I am
sure he would have much rather continued watching the motor racing on TV - it
was pretty exciting with lots of ‘moments’.
Saturday, 14 October – TT Lake Conroe, Willis, TX 77318
Shopping day today, for lack of any other inspiration. First is the Conroe Outlet Mall, a huge complex
with only about 15% of the shops occupied and the rest empty, quite sad to see. Then Baskin Robbins for lunch (yum) and then
we head south on the I45 about 7 miles to Woodlands Mall which is huge. The three main department stores are featured,
Nordstrom, Macy’s and JC Penny. I must
be losing my touch, don’t come out with any parcels. Kim first went to the Food Court but it was
so noisy he found a comfortable lounge chair at the other end, logged into
the free wifi and was happy for a couple of hours.
Back to the coach for a relax out in the sun by the pool, before a cold
drink prior to heading out for dinner.
‘Cos we can, we have a car!
Planned to go to Texas Roadhouse for a steak, but when we
got there around 6.30pm the queue was outside along the pathway so we abandoned
that, it was too hot to sit outside to wait so went next door to Denny’s
instead. My Chicken served on aone of those sizzle platters, with roast potato, onions, mushrooms and peppers was huge. Kim managed to eat his Pot Roast on mashed potatoes and Chocolate Sundae in the time it took me to finish mine.
Friday, 13 October – TT Lake Conroe, Willis, TX 77318
Ohh Black Friday!! I
was awake early and it was foggy, a perfect time to for a walk!
We have booked a rental car from today for three days, we
only really need a couple of days but Enterprise is not open on Sunday and we
need a ride back to base when we return it, so three days it is. The plan for today is to go to the Texas Govt.
Drivers Licencing office and book in to start the process for a Texas Driving
License, this would mean we could save a lot or $ on our coach insurance. You can book on line for an appointment and
we did give that a try but we couldn’t chose a day/time to suit us and anyway
Kim would rather front up and take it from there. So we rock up to the outfit and there are
about 92 people sitting in the waiting room (maximum seating for 94) waiting for
their turn. Kim hasn’t even filled out
his paperwork so it’s not looking likely that this will go much further! Short version of the long and fraught version,
is that we won’t be applying for a Texas Drivers Licence any time soon!
What to do next, we have a rental car - Kim has been lamenting
not having a car for most of this trip, he says he wants to look around! So here we are, we have a car and a free day
or three, what would he like to do?? It
turns out he has no plans he just wants to have a car. So I win - let’s go shopping. But first we go to Walmart and rent a Rug
Doctor so we can clean our carpet and upholstery. That takes a couple of hours and then we
return the Rug Doctor. It did a pretty
good job too.
Just off the I45 is a shopping centre with a few of the
shops I would like to visit - so that’s where we go. Spend a couple of hours shopping with a good
result (parcels) then back to the coach to check the state of our carpet
etc. It is a bit damp still but we have
a drink and nibbles and think about what we might do next. In the end we eat our own food at home and I
google what where we might go to look around tomorrow., Kim wants ice cream so got that sorted, I
have also found a steakhouse close by so that will be dinner tomorrow
night.
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