How We Got Here: Part 1 continued
There are precious few places to boondock, or even camp in the state of Texas. It is a state almost totally, privately owned and because of that very little is available for road nomads to utilize for even one night.
As we were leaving on a hot, windy morning from a night of boondocking in the parking lot of a Dennys in a truck stop somewhere outside Lubbock, Dee glanced in the rear view and was startled by what she saw. A large section of the roof covering on the front of our rig, a material I came to know as EDPM had pulled loose and was flapping happily in the Jenn-Air hot early October winds. The thermometer was now hovering around 95 during the day dipping down to a balmy 85 or so at night.
I pulled over, and taped the chunk down with Gorilla tape, alarmed. We had noticed what we thought was a small leak during a heavy downpour when we pulled into a county park to camp in Pocatello, Idaho so we knew there was some roof work to do. What we didn't know was how much....
In Lubbock when the EDPM flap pulled loose again, I pulled over and cut it away. Among things always carried on the road were several tarps which I could use to cover the area in case it rained. Pushing on through the excruciatingly featureless West Texas miles we'd now decided to accept Seans offer and remain in Houston for a time so that we could refurbish the trailer before heading out again, an agreement we had forged with him earlier. Our main responsibilities were to be actual managers. something that was apparent by the books, just wasn't happening and the couple that had been there for God knows how long were finally leaving. Voluntarily .Sean assured us that we would have the latitude to leave when the weather got hot, work remotely and he'd handle the rest. Hell, he reasoned, he'd been doing the whole damn thing for years anyway despite the managers on site.
Finally, we delivered the trailer to Sean's ranch near Marquez, several hours north of Houston, a true piece of rapidly vanishing old timey Texas. In a striking contrast to the unfathomable acreage of flat nothingness of West Texas, it's a sprawling expanse of rolling hills and wet riparian lowland. There it sat completely enshrouded in tarps for several weeks while the house at Dumas Storage was being literally, fumigated. We spent nights at Seans and out at the ranch until we were able to coordinate with an old friend who is an artist in the construction world to help us out and replace the front section of our roof which had rotted out into a gigantic hole.
We hitched up the conestoga and headed down the coast to Rockport where i slipped the trailer onto the driveway of a house that our friend, Eric had been working on, remodeling it after hurricane Harvey leveled the area in 2017. Two years earlier and the evidence of destruction on a grand scale was still painfully evident. Empty houses and debris were still everywhere. It was Halloween weekend and as is often the case, an early cold front moved in dumping rain on the whole process, causing us to hurriedly re-tarp the gaping hole. Once the rain moved out, we waited another day for the hard northeasterly wind to subside enough to make work possible.
In a few hours over the course of several days the roof section was replaced and we returned to Houston, via highway 35 along the coast, choosing to spend the night in a city campground in Port Lavaca before finally delivering the trailer into a storage unit on Dumas Street.
Houston, we had arrived.
As we were leaving on a hot, windy morning from a night of boondocking in the parking lot of a Dennys in a truck stop somewhere outside Lubbock, Dee glanced in the rear view and was startled by what she saw. A large section of the roof covering on the front of our rig, a material I came to know as EDPM had pulled loose and was flapping happily in the Jenn-Air hot early October winds. The thermometer was now hovering around 95 during the day dipping down to a balmy 85 or so at night.
I pulled over, and taped the chunk down with Gorilla tape, alarmed. We had noticed what we thought was a small leak during a heavy downpour when we pulled into a county park to camp in Pocatello, Idaho so we knew there was some roof work to do. What we didn't know was how much....
In Lubbock when the EDPM flap pulled loose again, I pulled over and cut it away. Among things always carried on the road were several tarps which I could use to cover the area in case it rained. Pushing on through the excruciatingly featureless West Texas miles we'd now decided to accept Seans offer and remain in Houston for a time so that we could refurbish the trailer before heading out again, an agreement we had forged with him earlier. Our main responsibilities were to be actual managers. something that was apparent by the books, just wasn't happening and the couple that had been there for God knows how long were finally leaving. Voluntarily .Sean assured us that we would have the latitude to leave when the weather got hot, work remotely and he'd handle the rest. Hell, he reasoned, he'd been doing the whole damn thing for years anyway despite the managers on site.
Finally, we delivered the trailer to Sean's ranch near Marquez, several hours north of Houston, a true piece of rapidly vanishing old timey Texas. In a striking contrast to the unfathomable acreage of flat nothingness of West Texas, it's a sprawling expanse of rolling hills and wet riparian lowland. There it sat completely enshrouded in tarps for several weeks while the house at Dumas Storage was being literally, fumigated. We spent nights at Seans and out at the ranch until we were able to coordinate with an old friend who is an artist in the construction world to help us out and replace the front section of our roof which had rotted out into a gigantic hole.
We hitched up the conestoga and headed down the coast to Rockport where i slipped the trailer onto the driveway of a house that our friend, Eric had been working on, remodeling it after hurricane Harvey leveled the area in 2017. Two years earlier and the evidence of destruction on a grand scale was still painfully evident. Empty houses and debris were still everywhere. It was Halloween weekend and as is often the case, an early cold front moved in dumping rain on the whole process, causing us to hurriedly re-tarp the gaping hole. Once the rain moved out, we waited another day for the hard northeasterly wind to subside enough to make work possible.
In a few hours over the course of several days the roof section was replaced and we returned to Houston, via highway 35 along the coast, choosing to spend the night in a city campground in Port Lavaca before finally delivering the trailer into a storage unit on Dumas Street.
Houston, we had arrived.
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