Thursday, August 15 Through Friday, August 16
The drive from Kerrville to Lubbock was mostly uneventful. There were delays along US-83 north of Junction, Texas from road construction. These delays weren’t as bad as the last last year when we drove it.
At lunch, we stopped at a picnic area to walk the dogs and eat lunch. Climbing into the camper I noticed that the refrigerator display was flashing. Possibly, the fridge hadn’t been running for four hours. Not so good on a 100 degree day. It wouldn’t reset. I went outside the camper to check the propane bottles. The valve on the active bottle wasn’t all the way open. After opening the valve all the way, I went back into the camper to reset the fridge. It still wouldn’t reset.
The truck camper has two propane bottles. Both bottles are attached to a propane switch that automatically switches the propane source from one bottle to another when the first bottle runs out. In the past, when changing propane bottles, I’ve noticed that the switch can become confused if the valve on the replacement bottle isn’t opened before it is needed. Since both bottles had propane, I flipped the active propane bottle from one to the other.
Back in the camper, I reset the fridge. It started up correctly. After lunch, I checked it again. It was still running correctly.
This made me wonder if the problem we were having with the water heater was caused by the propane being off.
After checking in at the KOA and hooking up water and electricity, I tried to run the water heater again with the propane turned on. No luck. After following the reset instructions printed on the inside of the water heater cover, the water heater still wouldn’t start. Checked all of the DC fuses. Reset the AC fuse. Still wouldn’t start on water or electric.
We decided to defer getting the water heater fixed until we could find a mobile RV repair service that could work with our travel schedule.
In the late afternoon, a thunderstorm passed by. Dust blew through the park to the point where you could taste it. Thankfully, the storm passed quickly. In the storm’s wake, we did have quite a bit of dust/mud stuck to all the windows. Winds do blow in this park of Texas and dust is just another occupational hazard.
Friends of ours who live in Lubbock picked us up at the park and we went to a chain steak house for dinner. Service and food were good.
The Lubbock KOA Journey is a small KOA. It has an indoor pool and dog park. It looks like they pickup poop in the dog park as the park was full but the dog park wasn’t full of poo like other parks I’ve seen. Cleanliness is an aspect of this park that I appreciate.
They do sell propane but it is by the bottle. That is, they have a price for each propane bottle size. You pay to fill the bottle based on its size (e.g. 20 lb propane bottle). This works find when the bottles are completely empty. I prefer to pay by the gallon or by the pound.
WIFI was usable which I appreciate. I don’t like to use up my meager bucket of mobile data gigabytes if I don’t have to.
The bathhouse is clean but worn and would benefit from an update. The showers were almost too small to shower in. The water pressure was low so the stream of water coming out of the shower head was well below normal for KOA’s. We would have showered in our truck camper but no hot water.
The only other Lubbock RV park we’ve stayed in is Mesa Verde RV Park (see Lubbock Winter Camping). In many respects, Mesa Verde RV Park is much better. However, Mesa Verde is on the southwest side of Lubbock and the KOA is on the northwest side of Lubbock. It turns out that the KOA is next to the highway that we needed to be on for the next leg of our trip making it the better choice. Location, location, location.
Hope to see you on the road ahead!