Thursday (74) - Today was a travel day. It was 280 miles from Harlingen to Medina Lake TT near Lakehills, TX. This campground is about 45 minutes west of San Antonio. We have a 30amp full-hookup site and it looks like reasonable Verizon signal though the upload speed is over 10x more than the download speed. I guess a lot of people are watching Netflix. I keyed the DMR radio and it sent an digital-APRS position report. I looked up on aprs.fi and it registered my location. This also demonstrated, to me, that the Internet connection through my iPad was still working.
As part of our planning for what to do this summer, we are assuming that the Canadian border will still be closed at the beginning of the summer so I went ahead and booked passage on the Alaska State Ferry system between Bellingham, WA, and Whittier, AK. This route bypasses Canada completely. I am just bringing the Prius and will look for somewhere to store the RV. In case you are interested, the fare for the car, one senior citizen (me), and a two-berth (no bathroom) room is $2600. Kind of steep but I do get a 4-day trip out of it. This is part of the boarding pass for the car showing 16 feet long and disembarking at Whittier.
Friday (75) - This will be "home" for the next three weeks. They are still working on repairing some of the infrastructure from the freeze and snows of the last week. They put out a notice that water may be off during the day but will be turned back on by sundown. And strongly suggested boiling any drinking water. We arrived with a full water tank (120 gal) so we should be fine through the weekend.
It's only 51°F today but there is no wind. Kind of a nice change from the continuous winds in Harlingen. Speedtests showed download speeds varying all over the place from marginal to pretty good. But during the day it’s dismal so I won’t be assisting with the amateur radio exams. Just not enough download bandwidth for Zoom video.
Saturday (76) - Before we left Harlingen, we met Michelle and Brian who have an entertaining YouTube RV channel. This is their new-to-them Airstream that they downsized to from their diesel pusher, class A motor home. I don’t know how they fit everything in there. I had forgotten to post this picture last Thursday.
We went into town so Bridget could get her COVID test (PCR) and we had lunch at IHOP. We hadn’t been there in quite a while. We though About getting some groceries at HEB but it was extremely crowded. I did pick up a minimal RV water filter as they have been working on the water pipes this past week. It should be sufficient to filter out sand or other particulate matter.
Sunday (77) - It’s a humid morning (90%) and I’m sitting near the pool (closed) because there is WiFi available. I figured that I should at least try it out. It seems decent enough for free and I may try and connect the Ubiquity radio to it.
Yesterday, we met another couple that has an RV YouTube channel but I hadn’t seen any of their videos before. But did recognize their name from some YouTube live stream comments.
This is a four-day post. About as long a period without posting.
I think you can direct travel through Canada on your way to home in Alaska.
ReplyDeleteYes, you are correct but it’s a much more challenging trip to follow the restrictions without the RV. And, if we drove the RV north there is no reason why Canada would allow us to head south later in the year.
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