Mookie’s Big Adventure in Dallas

This is our 16 ½ year-old Havanese Mookie lying in his crate at the Holiday Inn Dallas Market Center.

We have to take Mookie everywhere with us. He has both a kidney condition and a heart condition that require him to have a special diet and medications so we just can’t leave him with a pet sitter. It would not be fair to Mookie or the pet sitter.

Last week we went to Dallas RV show and, of course, took Mookie with us. The Holiday Inn is right across the street from the Market Center where the show was held, so, if necessary, we would be able to check on him periodically. Fortunately that was not necessary. The hotel was very nice and the staff very friendly. Unfortunately, from a Mookie perspective, it had marble floors in the lobby so I had to carry him out of the building when he had to go.

After checking in we all went to Reverchon Park, a park that leads to the Katy Trail and restaurants.

The park is only 1.8 miles from the hotel and, theoretically, you can walk to it in 20 minutes. The truth is that the Dallas traffic is insane and the city is not pedestrian friendly, so walking was not an option. I think the 1.8 mile car ride took 20 minutes!
The "wagon" you see is the Creative Outdoor All Terrain Big Wheel Universal Cart. You can get it on Amazon and a lot of other sites. It sets up and breaks down quite easily. We take it off road a lot and even to the beach.

Donna scouted out restaurants that let you take your dog with you and that made life a bit easier for us. The first place we went was the Katy Trail Ice House, a restaurant that serves up pretty good food and has an extensive beer selection. We had three different beers—the Pecan Porter (a dark porter), the Real Ale Fireman’s #4 (a blonde ale) and the Ugly Pug (a dark, German-style lager.  You can tell by the picture below that Mookie appreciated the beer selections because I will dip a fingertip in the beer and let him lick it. One or two licks seem to satisfy him.

I had a burger which was really awesome. Donna had the tacos, which were also awesome. The serving sizes were pretty big, so we had to go for a long walk. We put Mookie in his wagon and walked along the Katy Trail, a paved trail that people use for jogging, walking, inline skating, and bicycling. The trail runs through Dallas, following the path of the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad.

I think we walked for an hour and a half before returning to the hotel. All that fresh air got to him.

Note the crate and bowl next to the chair. The bowl is collapsible and folds down to about one inch high. The crate is the Petsfit Portable Pop Open Crate.

It provides a lot of space for a dog Mookie’s size and, better yet, folds down to about 1-2 inches.

It also has a cover that we used to put Mookie’s food on so he wouldn’t get any on the carpeting. Traveling with your pet is getting easier with products like these.

The next evening we went to LUCK (Local Urban Craft Kitchen) restaurant, another place that accepted dogs. Donna ordered steak that was really, really good.

Shockingly, a few little pieces of her steak made its way to Mookie, as did a couple of fingertips of a chocolate porter (called “The End of the Weak”) I ordered. Donna ordered a beer called “Somethin’ Shady,” a Texas porter.

After dinner we took a walk on the Trinity Skyline Trail, a paved trail that follows the Trinity River. Again we took Mookie in his buggy.

Somewhere along the way he decided that he didn’t want to be in the buggy and actually tried to get out. So we let him out and he walked quite a long way, sometimes chasing after the buggy as though he was saying, “Come back. I changed my mind!”

Needless to say he was exhausted at the end of the day.

Oh...we actually saw some RVs that we liked but still have not made up our minds as to what it is we are going to buy. After driving along I-35 toward Dallas we’re not sure we want to haul a trailer behind us. Do they ever stop working on I-35?  
If you have not seen them already, you can find videos of our dogs here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL2ob-p59lb6jIOv6bu4hsA

THE JOY OF CAMPING WITH YOUR PETS

This past weekend Donna and I went camping at Big Bend Ranch State Park. We had intended to take our elderly dog Mookie (who suffers from kidney and heart disease) along so we could kayak with him on the Rio Grande. At the last minute, we also decided to take “Mama” who is either a Jack Russel Terrier, a Rat Terrier or a blend of Terrier and something else. We don’t know because she showed up one day and had her puppies in our landscaping. We raised the puppies and kept her.

Anyway, American Whitewater had the CFS at 500 and one description of the section where we would be suggested that you could paddle upstream easily. Based on that we lugged our big kayaks along on the trip.

Well, it took almost seven hours to get to the park and it rained almost the entire time. When we got to our campsite we saw that the river was roiling as well as very, very muddy. There was no way we could paddle upstream, especially not with dogs in the kayaks. So much for that. Later we ran into some canoers who told us that the river had briefly gotten up to 5000 CFS because of all the rain that had fallen. It seems the Rio Grande rises and falls pretty rapidly.

The river conditions were disappointing enough, but we also had to contend with gale force winds while trying to set up our tent, a tent that attaches to our truck. No sooner had we gotten one part of the tent up and started working on the other part, the wind would knock everything down. We were finally able to get the tent up but decided we had it facing the wrong direction, so we detached it from the truck, turned it around and tried to set it up again.

It was just not working—the wind was too strong. Fortunately, Donna has a set of NRS tie downs that she brings with her everywhere (despite the fact that I always ask “why do you drag those things along?”). The tie-downs came in very, very handy. We used them to attach the tent to the wooden poles that provided shelter to the picnic table at the tent site.  From a distance the camp site looked pretty good.

But when you take a close-up look you can see what we had to go through.

This view shows you how everything was twisted. Some of our tent pools are slightly bent now.

The process of setting up the tent wound up taking us more than two hours, so by the time we were ready to eat it was dark and freezing cold. We bundled the dogs up in their winter coats and, in just about total darkness, sat and ate our chili (which was, by the way, delicious).

We were finally able to crawl into the truck to go to sleep. Fortunately, Donna had purchased some “survival blankets” that reflect 80% of radiated body heat back to you. For a while, at least, we were quite warm.

Unfortunately, Mookie has to pee a lot because of his kidney condition. He let me know that he had to go around two in the morning so I got up, put on my shoes and took him out. He did a long, long pee. The trouble was, it seems, that I took too long to get my shoes on and he couldn’t hold off entirely so he peed a bit in the tent. We had to get up, pull off the sheet we had covering the survival blankets, remove the peed-on survival blanket, turn over my air mattress and put another sheet over the air mattresses. We did all of this in the really cold weather.

What fun.

After breakfast we decided to take a ride to the Sauceda Ranger Station where the views are supposed to be spectacular. To get there you have to drive on a 27 mile drive on a gravel road which is rough and not well maintained in areas. We figured—how bad can it be? Well, Mama let us know how bad it was. After about ten miles she puked on a towel in the back seat. WE took out the towel and put down another one. After 17 miles she puked again—a BIG puke.  

More fun. 

We gave up and turned around so we could hike on the Hoodoos Trail. The hoodoos are called the Stonehenge of West Texas – a gathering of isolated, knobby rock spires overlooking the banks of the Rio Grande.

The trail to get to the hoodoos is easy, but for a dog like Mookie it would be pretty tough. So we put him in a buggy and wheeled him down the trail.

After the Hoodoos we went back to our campsite for dinner. While dinner, filet mignon steaks, was cooking, Donna put up her Bluetooth speakers and we listened to music and danced around. Once again it was almost dark when we were getting ready to eat. Just as we were about to sit down a very nice young couple, Robert and Brandi, showed up (probably attracted to our site by the music). We invited them to hang out and they did, but first they went to their campsite to get their dinner. They also brought a bottle of wine (which I blog about in my other blog) and some chocolate bars. The picture below gives you an idea of how cold it was while Brandi was making their dinner.

Robert and Brandi were planning to move to South America to spread the idea of permaculture, a system of agricultural and social design principles centered on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems. You meet the most interesting people on camping trips, that’s for sure.

We decided to cut the trip short and return home the next day. The only problem we had was driving through constant rain and, sometimes, heavy fog. But at least we had no more peeing or puking. It’s funny how you learn to appreciate the little things in life.

Below are some pictures of the park and our campsite.

Campsite View - 1

Campsite View - 2

This is a picture of the Rio Grande from up high on Route 170.

If you have not been to the Big Bend Ranch State Park, I highly recommend it if only to see the night sky. The stars are incredible. Several people have told us that the State Park is better than the National Park.

Be sure to visit my YouTube channel: Greg's INTO (I'm Not Too Old) Channel

Go here to read my blog about the wine Brandi and Robert gave us on this trip.

http://thetexaswinesnob.blogspot.com/

“GLAMPING” AT MUSTANG ISLAND STATE PARK

When we went to the School of White Water Kayaking in Arkansas last year we saw some young men with a very elaborate tent set-up. Not only did they have a large tent, but they had a tent with an added area under which they had a table and their cooking gear. Their tent looked something like this:

When we talked to the guys and told them how much we liked their tent, they laughed and said, “Yeah. We don’t like camping. We like glamping.” I thought that was a pretty good word for describing “glamourous camping.”

Before I wrote this blog, however, I wanted to get some “official” definition of glamping. According to Wikipedia the word "glamping" first appeared in the United Kingdom in 2005 and was used to describe luxury tent camping.  A whole glamping industry has evolved around glamping and has taken the concept to new and, in some cases, absurd heights. Here, for example, is one opinion of how camping differs from glamping.

Here is another. You gotta have a welcome mat!

If you are interested in seeing some (in my opinion) absurd examples of glamping, follow this link: https://indonesia.tripcanvas.co/bali/glamping-bali/

A few years ago Donna and I stayed at an eco-resort in Tulum, Mexico for our 25th wedding anniversary. The resort, called Sueños Tulum (Tulum Dreams), consists of a number of thatch-roofed huts with comfortable beds and small bathroom. There is no electricity in the rooms during the day nor are there telephones, TV's, CD players or other electronic luxuries. From the beach the huts look like this.

We didn’t know it at the time but we were, based on the extended definition of the term, we were glamping and we liked it!

So, after camping out twice on the ground in a tent that was no more than three feet high, Donna decided to research tent options. Glamping sounded like a good idea to us. She found a Napier tent that had an added feature—a screen room. This is what the tent looks like.

  

I’m not so sure that the tents I just described could provide a “luxurious” camping experience but, when used in combination with an SUV or truck with a camper shell, you can get pretty close.

Anyway, you may remember that we recently had some really cold days, so cold that our fountain almost froze solid. When the weather warmed up a bit we checked the forecast and decided that it would be nice to go camping at Mustang Island State Park. We chose the State Park over the National Seashore because the primitive sites have port-o-johns and water every few hundred feet or so. We thought the beach might be crowded but we were willing to sacrifice privacy for those few conveniences. 

When we arrived we found that the beach was not crowded.  In fact, it was essentially empty.

The weather forecast the day before we left indicated that it would be partially sunny and in the sixties when we arrived. I’m not quite sure what “partially sunny” means but you’ll note that the sky is pretty dark. I also doubt that the temperature was in the sixties.

Anyway, we set up the tent as shown below.

After we set up the tent Donna got started on making dinner while I fed the dogs. You might be able to tell from the picture below that the dogs have long hair.

Of course they lay down while they waited for dinner, thus getting sand in their hair. Thanks to them, this is what the inside of the tent looked like after a while.

Fortunately Donna had bought a Dewalt Cordless Wet-Dry Vac.

I’ll admit that when she got it I wondered if and when we would ever use it. Well, I found out right away. It is a great tool that I highly recommend.

After we set up the tent, Donna was able to put the camping stove on the picnic table and prepare dinner.

Actually, she had made dinner in a thermal cooker early in the morning so we were ready to eat as soon as we arrived. A thermal cooker, shown below, is like a big thermos bottle. You start a meal, put it in the thermal cooker, take it to where you are going and, about four hours later, your meal is cooked and warm. Not only is it convenient for camping, it saves energy as well.

Afterwards we built a camp fire and relaxed. It was pretty chilly outside and the fire lulled us to sleep. Below is a picture of Donna wearing a relatively heavy jacket and holding Mookie while getting warmed up by the fire.

Finally it was time for bed. Sleeping was great until it started raining. That’s when we discovered that the tent was a bit leaky.  So, in between the periods of rain, we set up the extension to the tent called the Screen Room. 

The screen room provided a covered space in which we could store stuff.  Better yet (from my perspective) it provided a space in which Donna could cook. This is not like cooking inside a tent. The screen room has the ground open below you, a large door open to the side and two screened windows. We did not have any issues regarding cooking inside it.

Donna’s cooking was facilitated by the fact that she had purchased a “Kamp-Rite Kwik Pantry with Cook Table.” The Kamp-Rite Kwik Pantry provides space for cooking as well as food or utensil storage in one compact unit. It has a rollout aluminum tabletop that attaches to the top of the frame, a detachable wind shield to protect your camp stove from the wind when you are using it outside, a pantry divided into two zippered storage sections, each with three shelves and two outside storage pockets. It only takes a couple of minutes to set it up in s and folds down compactly to fit in a convenient carry bag. When you are considering camping equipment, storage size is very important.  A picture of the pantry is below.

But there was one more item Donna bought that made camping a bit more glamorous—a collapsible “flexware” sink.  When expanded the sink is 5.90″ high, 11.42” deep and 14.96” wide. Rather than going to a spigot in the rain to clean our dishes, we could (using biodegradable soap, of course) clean them right in the screen room on top of the pantry,

  

For cleaning the dishes Donna bought Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Dish Soap, a biodegradable soap made natural products. She bought the Honeysuckle variety of the soap because the bottle says, “Honeysuckle is believed to be soothing...nice to think that these lovely blossoms lend an air of calm as you clean.” Calm is something you want when you are camping in the rain and the dogs are bugging you.

With the pantry, the sink, the vacuum cleaner and the extra tent space we were getting pretty close to Glamping.  We have found the pantry so useful we’ve decided to buy a second one to provide more counter top surface.

You can see how Donna used the Kwik Pantry as well as the wet spots in the tent in the GoPro video I took. The GoPro was, by the way, an early Christmas present from Donna. I’m still figuring out how to use it. I was going to by the GoPro video editing software but discovered that I could download Windows Movie Maker for free. It seems to work just fine.

So—what do you do when you are camping in the rain? I never thought it would be possible for me to do this, but you lead a dog’s life—you lie around and sleep. The dogs loved it.

The DeWalt vacuum got put to good use the next day. Since it is also a wet vac I was able to suck up a lot of the water that got into the tent as well as the sand. 

Finally it was time to pack up and leave. Note the shadow in the picture below. Of course the sun had come out!

So, with not much of an expenditure, you can turn your camping experiences into Glamping experiences.

Be sure to visit my YouTube channel: Greg's INTO (I'm not too old) Channel