Day 4 - Beaumont, TX to Victoria, TX

A slightly different routine today - Sunday morning extra lazy start and we pulled out right at the rather early 11 a.m.  check out time.  We stopped about 15 minutes down the road at a picnic pullout and fixed “breakfast”.  Nice!

Then a fairly easy drive through Houston …

and into Victoria’s “Gateway to the Gulf RV Park“.  “Gateway” is a small RV park right on TX Hwy 59 just north of Victoria.  New owners have been working on this little park - new concrete pads and redoing grass areas.  The pull thrus have opposing hookups so that 2 rigs are parked fairly close on their non-door sides and each facing a different way.  There is a larger amount of separation on the “door” side.  Still close, but fine for an overnight and the owners are VERY nice and obviously working very hard to bring this park back.  This night, the park was full for the first time since they took over - they were so excited!  Great fun to be part of that.

As the sun started down…

Bill and I enjoy watching “Modern Marvels” - a “how things work” type of show.  Sometime within the last couple of weeks we saw a show on “Idle Aire” - developed by an RVr to allow truckers to hook up to various services - what they call “in-cab” services.  The idea is to allow them to shut down the engine while they are stopped for the required 10 hour rest.  

It is an umbilical cord for truck cabs.  Yesterday when we pulled in to a Petro Truck Stop/Beacons Truck Wash to get the bus washed we saw Idle Aire in action… and nearly all of the spots full.  

The Magic Bus truly is magic! It has many marvelous things that work all by themselves, monitor themselves and keep internal systems humming away as well as all manner of creature comforts for the creatures on board. AND, these things work away VERY QUIETLY… there is the occasional thrum of something going and it is very comforting as you say to yourself, “Oh…the bus is doing something”…but there is water, heat or cool, ICE (!!!), leveling – I’m sure other stuff – all magical.

And there are lights that tell you what’s working, that are part of sensors, and I don’t know – lots of little lights…you can navigate your way in the dark by the various little lights.

If there is a problem that it can’t fix itself, something beeps and then you find the beep and it tells you what’s wrong and usually you just push some button and it’s fixed.

I answered a comment yesterday from an RV friend about the inverter on board. Magic Bus has a 3000 watt inverter which converts 12v battery power into 110. The Winnebago has a 300 watt inverter…it runs the tvs - not exactly mission critical ! MB can run nearly all of itself running down the road with the inverter and power converted/inverted from the engine-alternator. You can’t run all of the AC AND the microwave at the same time, but you can run the microwave without starting the generator and the 110 plugs have power (I think that’s from the engine-alternator) and the critical internal systems work away on their own…

Magic…

Back to the mundane details of today’s “plan”… we will probably barely roll out before the 11 a.m. check out - bound for Victoria, TX for tonight. Gulf RV Resort, where we are currently parked, has a Sunday brunch as part of the deal - it includes Texas Waffles and “No”, I don’t know how TX Waffles differ from other waffles. I hope to know a bit later.