TXiceman

In general, we have had very poor cable service in RV parks. Especially the older parks with all the older cabling. The connections in the parks take a real beating because of the way some people treat them when connecting. Be sure to call the park office and have them check the cable at your site. Is it possible to run a cable over to the neighbors' site and check if it works for you on a different post? If they are home, just knock on the door and ask if you can try their connection. Ken

AZtex, you are a real rarity with such excellent service from USPS. Once Escapees turns the post over to USPS or Fed-EX, you are at the mercy of USPS or Fed-EX. I have had USPS Priority One mail leave Livingston headed to a city just northwest of Houston, TX. The shipment went to Houston to California, back to Houston, to Arizonia, back to Houston, to Livingston, back to Houston and finally Tomball, TX. Once in Tomball it sat there for 3 days before it showed it was delivered. It was not delivered for another 3 days....a total of 15 days to get it 75 miles. This was pretty much the norm for any USPS shipment that was a Priority One. Use USPS at your own risk. Ken

Kirk, we have had more than one Priority One mailing from USPS that shows delivered and it is nowhere to be found. A couple of days later, the tracking info show it was again out for delivery and again showed delivered. Mysteriously, the mail just appeared out of thin blue air and was delivered. I do not trust the USPS on anything. If it important, I'll pay the extra and get it handled by Fed-EX. Ken

The only reprogramming that will be needed is if you are using a different antenna on the road than at home. When you hook up the receiver to the portable antenna, you will need to go into the set-up menu and let the receiver scan and locate the new switch settings on the smaller antenna. When you return home, you will need to do a new switch scan. Ken

Every time I have had any trouble with the mail service, it is tracked directly back to the USPS. If the USPS could do 1/10th as well as Escapees, it would be a tremendous improvement. Any mail out of Livingston that has to go into Houston at the North Central Distribution center is subject to problems. We have found getting our mail forwarded from Livingston is much better handled by using Fed-EX. The cost is not much more than USPS Priority One and I can get my mail within 2 or 3 days anywhere in the USA. Right now we are in a small city west of Houston and out mail is sent on Tuesday and usually I have the mail on Fed-EX on Wednesday. Ken

In order to have the ability to record one show while watching another, your receiver will have to have more than one tuner. For a Wally, you can add an OTA tuner. To record, any external hard disk drive can be connected to the receiver via the USB port. You have to pay to have the OTA added to the Wally. https://www.dishformyrv.com/dish-wally-over-the-air-tuner/ https://www.satelliteguys.us/xen/threads/dish-wally-dual-tuner.379950/ Ken

Never had an issue with the Escapees mail service. Any time i have spoken to or emailed them, they have been very helpful and never had any attitude. The response you get from people on the other end of the phone is often a reflection of your own attitude, so approach them asking for their expert help, not start bad-mouthing them right off the bat. No saying your attitude may have been bad, but it could be that one or both parties were having a bad day. Ken

Seen many with the bottoms of the slide literally falling out. The other place is floors at the bottom of the slides. Ken

We found the National Wildlife Refuges to be much better than the state parks for volunteer work. The big plus was no campers to deal with. Most of the campers are pretty decent folks and are not an issue, but some of them are real problems. How much of a problem depends on what the park management lets people get by with? We found that the Federal agencies were much less tolerant of misbehavior. Ken

We see way too many Flagstaff/Rockwood trailers with serious rot issues in the RV parks. If you are looking for better quality in a bumper pull, look at Arctic Fox. Ken

https://winegard.com/plans/satellite-tv/dish Here is a list of Winegard antennas and Dish receiver compatibility. If you call Dish they will tell you not to use the home receiver in an RV. Pure manure. We have been using the home receiver in an RV for 15 years. If you use a home receiver, with a DVR, it will have a hard disk drive which can be damaged if it is left power up while traveling. We have an inverter in our trailer and I just unplug the receiver while traveling. The Hopper receivers will only work on a special Traveler or a modified Traveler antenna or a manual home style antenna. Currently, none of the automatic dome antennas will work with a Hopper. You will have to use a Wally or a VIP211 receiver with the portable automatic antennas. As for the local channels, we are full-time, and we just call Dish with a new service address, and they are up and running in about 15 minutes. If you have Dish at home, you can add a mirrored receiver for a few dollars a month and buy a Wally for the RV. They will mirror the existing home service. The Dish internet is only for home service and will not work on the road.

We have been RVing since 1984 and full time for 8.5 years and agree with others that where we seldom made plans more than a day or two in advance, we now have to plan months out. Shoot, we do not stick to that rigid of a timetable. We have given up on using state and Corp of Engineers parks. They have all gone to site specific reservations and it is virtually impossible to get a full week in one site unless you move every 2 or 3 days. To get a week or two, you have to book as soon as the reservation window opens, which is generally 6 months or more out. As a result of this, we have only stayed at one COE park in the past 3 years. The rest of the time we use private and commercial RV campgrounds. We are currently in a nice commercial campground and have an open-ended reservation as we are looking to buy a place and get off the road. It is no longer fun to travel and has become a job planning so far in advance. I wish all of the recent RVers all the success in the future and hope you get to enjoy seeing America. Ken

Often you can reply with a simple one word text....STOP Ken

At those prices, it should have a lifetime warrantyincluded. Ken

So sorry that you had to learn about Camping World/Gander the hard way. There are plenty of people that have related to others the misdeeds by these clowns. We had a pretty simple awning repair done by the CW in Katy, TX and it was a disaster. The canopy was replaced with the wrong material, and the wrong color. When I went to pick up the RV, they had lost the paperwork, then the keys and finally they could not find our 38 ft 5th wheel. I had the manager out on the lot looking for our RV after he had found the paperwork and keys. I complained to the manager as well as headquarters to deaf ears. Never again will CW touch any of my RVs. Ken

Some local and prelim elections are in March here. Ken

I am not against the ID, but the state and counties need to have all the forms accessible. Travis county is reporting a 50% rejection rate on the forms submitted and it is because they rushed it and do not have access to the forms. Ken

Texas has over complicated the procedure to get your request to vote by mail forms. There are voter information sites out there that do not have the latest form required by Texas. The newest form has a place to put your Texas driver's license number or your last 4 of your SS number. Best bet is to call your county voters' office and find how to get the proper form to avoid delays. The Polk County website access for the request will not accept the house number for a Rainbow Dr. address. Ken

And what about the families that have limited vacation time and need to put in 500 miles or so in order to get to their destination? 200 miles and stop for an overnight recharge will not work for them. Same goes for a service technician that has to drive several hundred miles to get to hos next assignment. EVs are just part of the answer to helping the planet. We have a long road ahead of us to get to the point that we are mostly driving EVs. I am 74 years old, and I doubt if I will see it in my lifetime. Ken

In our mail last week we did not get anything like this. Be interesting to see if the next mail has it. Ken

Were you parked near a hospital, police, or fire station? We were in Mission 2 winters back and no real difference than most places we have been. We never felt like it was less safe to out than any other places. There are areas that you do not want to go into just like any larger city in the US. As for state parks, check out this link... https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/parks-map Rio-Bentsen has no camping. Texas state park stay limit is 2 weeks. Ken

What we are seeing with some of the newer parks coming on line is that they soon find it more profitable to cater to the long-term permanent residents than the true RV community of full-timers. One nice RV park we have used for several years during the winter has added "resort" to their name and it is nowhere near a resort, the rules are not as well enforced, and it has become a "trailer park" and not a RV park. I doubt if we will be back there. If they want to cater to the permanent crowd, let them equally enfoce all of the rules to keep the place looking nice. Ken

Everywhere we have been over the past few years has an increasing crime, drugs and poverty rate. I'd sure like to know where I could go to get away from the crime. Ken

As I have previously noted, for a proper alignment, load the RV as for normal travel and then go to a truck alignment shop. The typical Ford shop does not know how to properly align the E450 chassis. Ken

Glenn, you can only bury your head in the sand for so long. Yes, the Earth has undergone heating and cooling cycles for ages, and we do appear to be in a warming cycle. Being an engineer and dealing with the energy industry for my career, I have seen many changes, and some are for the worse. Man is definitely accelerating and contributing to this climate crisis which can be helped by man. The nay-sayers will be the doom of mankind. The use of fossil fuels does need to be cut back and replaced with renewable energy sources. This is not something to be done overnight and some fossil fuel applications will be here for a long time to come. For the nay-sayers, they will sit back and watch the planet be turned into a wasteland. It won't happen during our lifetime, but future generations will have a mess to deal with. Ken