Since we arrived in the Houston area in February of this year, we have stayed at 4 different RV parks. I am recounting the most notable details of two of them in this post.
When we arrived at the first RV park, we were given a page of rules and policies, many of which ended with the sentence, “You may be ejected from the park.” It was bolded, underlined, and italicized just like that. Violations that could result in “ejection” ranged from non-payment of rent to hanging a clothesline outside. Apparently those are equally egregious. The rules made me wonder if the people who lived there were really that bad, or if the management was going overboard.
In addition to the threat-laden rules, the laundry experience was not ideal. It had been a couple weeks since I’d done laundry, and I was planning to catch up. The laundry room was part of a building that included the management office, and public bathrooms and showers. Next to the building was the pool. This is a fairly standard RV park setup.
I did a load of laundry and faced the smelly laundry product woes I mentioned in my post about fragrances. I spend quite a while trying to use an app to pay. Finally, I concluded the app wasn’t working and I’d just use quarters. I had forgotten that sometimes these things happen, and put my laundry in before I figured out the payment, so I went back to the Airstream and tried to round up enough quarters for a load.
When I went back to switch the laundry to the dryer, I realized the washer didn’t spin properly, so I ended up wringing out a large load of sopping wet towels the old fashioned way. Then they took two cycles in the dryer to finish. I couldn’t hang them to dry, because of the aforementioned rule about clotheslines. (In retrospect, I probably could have hung them, but I try not to flagrantly violate rules, even when they seem ridiculous.)
On my way out of the laundry room, I noticed this sign.
“What the bunny slipper!” I said to Matt. “Who would steal the toilet paper? And who would use the magazines as toilet paper?! Are there actually people routinely living here who steal toilet paper to the extent that this sign is necessary?”
The showers were closed “due to COVID concerns” (although given the way everything else in the area was operating at that point, I’m assuming it had become more about saving time and money on cleaning them.) Closed showers were not a big issue for us, since we have our own, but added to the overall feel of the place. The pool was also closed. It was probably a seasonal closure, but meanwhile, it was full of murky water. Not a great look.
One of the other RV parks we stayed at was right by I-45. We were parked toward the front of the park, and it was very noisy. I’m not sure if I was feeling particularly sensitive, or if traffic noise just bothers me a lot, but I did not appreciate the noise level. We were considering staying there long term, but decided not to after concluding that even the sites positioned furthest from the freeway were still quite noisy.
Another factor that contributed to our decision to move on was the frontage road. I had never heard of frontage roads pre-Texas, so I’ll explain. Frontage roads are long, straight-ish highways which run parallel to the freeway. When you want to enter or exit the freeway, you merge on or off of the frontage road. The frontage roads have stoplights around each freeway exit, and usually a place to make a u-turn under the freeway overpasses at each light. I imagine this setup exists in other states, but I’ve never seen it in quite the same long, continuous fashion as here.
The RV park I’m discussing here was accessed by the frontage road. On frontage roads, the traffic runs the same direction as the side of the freeway it is on. If you visit a business that is on a frontage road, and then need to go back the other way, you have to drive up to the next light (typically the next major road, or freeway exit) and make a u-turn under the freeway overpass. There was also construction on the frontage road, so it was narrowed to one lane. Both of these factors made it rather inconvenient to get to most places, especially NASA, from that particular RV park.
One of the positives about this RV park was the hot tub. One evening we thought it would be pleasant to sit in the hot tub. We noticed a few leaves in the water, and Matt scooped them out.
A while later, he jumped and looked around. He said he felt something like a bite. This happened a few times, and he then noticed that there were tiny ants around him in the water. There were biting ants in the hot tub!
We thought we’d give the hot tub another chance the next night. Again, there was some tree detritus in the water and Matt gallantly scooped it out. But after a few minutes in the hot tub, Matt grabbed his armpit and yelped. And once again, we noticed tiny biting ants struggling in the hot tub. One of them had floated into his armpit and latched on.
We didn’t use the hot tub after that.
I haven’t been feeling well this week, and we have have spent quite a bit of time on our search for a house, so this has been a rather last-minute post. It is my last one in the April Blogging Challenge. Next week I may discuss our house search saga, depending on how it is going. Dorcas will post again tomorrow.
Phoebe Smucker 