WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - On the Road Again - Pat Mayse COE Park, TX

Awwwwww we have now been on the road for a whole month! Yep it was four degrees below zero when we left Wisconsin in search of warmer temperatures. And we found them. 

Sadly, it was time to leave this lovely campsite at Buckhorn Creek, Corps of Engineers Park on Lake of the Pines, Texas.

We took care of dumping our holding tanks and filling up our fresh water before leaving the campground. It's nice to be back on the road and looking for our next location. Although, Lake of the Pines is going to be one of our favorites! 

Now we are seeing more terrain that looks more like "Texas" from our past experiences. We are seeing cattle and we are seeing oil pumps and more wide open terrain.

It was a cloudy day, but at least it was not raining. We traveled in a north west direction heading to another Corps of Engineer Park.  

MOOOOOOOOOO!  These are not the dairy cows that we are used to seeing in Wisconsin.

We wandered our way up to Paris, Texas. We did an Aldi stop to get some of our favorites and do also stock up on fresh vegetables. Being that the previous two weeks we were in the same spot, we had run out of anything fresh in the crisper drawer. We didn't have much room for frozen vegetables either. All we had were canned vegetables. We really enjoyed the fresh produce from Aldi, and the prices sure are right for the budget.  

We swung by Walmart and picked up our newest prescriptions that we had on order for pickup. This is the first time we've ever done where we've ordered our refills online, and had it filled at a different store than we normally do back in Wisconsin. It worked!  

We drove out of Paris and headed for the East and West portions of the Mayse Lake Corps of Engineer campgrounds  

We had to actually drive right over the Mayse Dam! Yep, the road actually went right over the top of the dam. 

We could look out at the beautiful smooth serene water. 

No wind at all... (but wait till later in the week though!)

We drove through the East Mayse Lake campground and it really didn't impress us with any sites that we wanted. There were a few campers there, but there were plenty of sites available. So we drove back out to the main road and headed to the West Mayse Lake campground.  There are three different loops to this campground and we wanted to be right down by the water. 

Much to our amazement, in Loop B we found a campsite that actually had a big cement slab on it for parking on! None of the other sites had this at all. They were all kind of lumpy blacktop, and many of them were not level. It was probably the prettiest site that I could think in the entire park. There was water around us on all three sides and nobody else in the entire B Loop, except the host way up near the entry. 

How do we keep finding such excellent campsites???  Winner!!!

We were set up in our new digs in no time flat...

Just look at this. This is not one of those fake AI pictures that makes an arc. Note that the horizon in the background is straight. This is exactly how it looks when you stand at our campsite and the water was curved around us on all three sides with our own little private beach.

We could not believe our good fortune in being able to take this site for an entire week. Next week someone else has it reserved. These sites are $20 that include electric and water. But with our America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass we are getting it for $10 a night. Amazing!

Far across the lake, there's nothing but woods. There are no cottages, no noisy neighbors, only beautiful serene peaceful water surrounding us on all three sides.

We were all set up and Steve rolled out the awning. There was no wind (yet) and we were really enjoying the relaxing sunshine and the calling of birds.

I walked down along the beach. As long as you stayed in the sandy area it was fine. But if you got a little too close to the water's edge, the clay sucked you right into the muck and it clings to your shoes!

I had to let them completely dry before I could start scraping it off. It finally did come off the next day, but it took a while. LOL 

The sun started going down, and we could tell we were in for a real treat. From our vantage position we could see that we would be enjoying the morning sun rising on the left...  and also catching the sun setting on the right. What an amazing campsite.

Soon everything became an orange glow as the bright ball crept closer and closer to the horizon. Reflection off the water was almost blinding.

Here was as close as I could get with my cell phone for a photo. It was so bright.

And then, before you knew it, it slipped right behind the horizon and it was all gone. The orange streaks across the sky we're all that were left until sunrise the next morning.

But the trick was on us, the sun didn't come up the next morning. We had clouds all day long. The birds were singing and twittering around from branch to branch. Look at the beautiful bluebird! 

I think from its song, this is a red winged blackbird?

We basically were going to have a cloudy day. The temperature would be getting up to 80°. But it definitely was totally different than the day before. The winds were starting to kick up...

SUDDENLY the power went out! In the entire campground. No power.  

Steve walked up over to the host site. He was a brand new host and this was his first day on the job. He had actually only been on the job for a couple hours. He did have a phone number to call a ranger but couldn't get through on his cell phone. Limited signal.  We went back to our motorhome with the Starlink and used the Wi-Fi Calling feature. We got ahold of the ranger and he said it would be fixed in a couple hours. 

That was okay with us. We have propane to switch over for our refrigerator. Other people who rely on electric only for their refrigerator systems in newer RVs find themselves in a pickle in this type of situation. Our refrigerator operates on either propane or electric. 

We were okay, and we have plenty of battery power between our house batteries and the Bluetti power station to take care of our needs. So the Starlink can run, the computer can stay on, we can charge up our cell phones or any of our camera equipment. 

Just for grins, Steve decided to try out our new solar blanket that we had gotten for Christmas. This is from Renogy and it is 400 watts.  Here is a link: 

https://www.renogy.com/products/renogy-400w-solar-panel-blanket

.

We like it because it can fold up into a 16"x16" shape about 5" thick. If fits easily behind the love seat when not needed. 

He flipped it open, and hooked the cables up to our Bluetti power station. The Bluetti is equivalent to maybe two or three big lithium batteries.  We decided to not upgrade the motorhome house batteries to lithium. Instead, we opted for the Bluetti so we could use it in other applications besides just in our RV. It is portable and can come in our house in case of a power outage to operate things like our refrigerator, sump pump, or our Starlink.  We can also take it out anywhere and have instant 12 volt DC or 120 volt AC power with us. 

Now, back to the solar panel...

Even with the partly cloudy sky, this 400 watt panel was bringing in almost 300 watts of charging energy from the sky!  

Isn't that nice? The only thing we had running was the Starlink and that's what was drawing out 28 watts of power from our system.  

We also have a 320 watt solar  panel on the roof of the cargo trailer as well as two 100 watt flexible panels that we could hang from the awning if we wanted to. That would give us 920 watts total if we needed to charge everything up quickly. It's nice to have options.

In a few hours, the power did come back on. It flickered a few times. Once we were sure that it was steady, we turned back on our Progressive Industries power management device to make sure it was good clean power and not low browned out or high arcing.  That protects all the wiring inside of our motorhome.

While that was going on, I cut up a bunch of veggies and started my favorite Aldi casserole with Polska kielbasa sausage, Aldi canned sliced potatoes, and vegetables.  I didn't have any fresh green beans so I used canned ones. It's baked in the oven with some olive oil and spices. Soon it's a delicious warm filling the belly meal full of comfort food.

The second night we had an absolutely striking amazing sunset, better than the night before!!! The clouds in the foreground made a beautiful accent for the setting sun from behind.

As it was going down, I just snapped these photos with my cell phone. No AI, no editing, no touching up. Straight out of my Samsung cell phone. I WAS SURPRISED TO SEE HOW ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS THIS PHOTO IS!!!

(I think it's my favorite of the entire trip so far)

We relaxed again on our second evening and absolute peace and tranquility. The campground is so quiet we don't hear a thing. There's no traffic nearby, and I think the host left and went somewhere. Everything was totally silent.

The next morning, after coffee, I want to work on my shoes. I found a bamboo skewer in our drawer that worked really well for gouging out the dried bits of clay from the treads of my favorite slip-on shoes.  They look a heck of a lot better than they did the day before, that's for sure.

We had a full day of just relaxing and not doing much of anything. I didn't even haul out my sewing machine! I have a quilt that I'm working on, but for some reason I didn't even want to do that. I think it was the peacefulness of the campsite that just kept us sitting there and looking out at the water.

It was near dinner time, I made up a tray of fresh veggies and some dip. Steve hauled out the grill and made up some of our favorite brat patties from Salmons Meat Market in Luxemburg, Wisconsin.

Adding a pickle spear and some lettuce and tomato to our burgers, with thousand island dressing on mine, it completed our meal. Steve of course, needs a big wedge of sweet Vildalia onion on his. 

I made up a video to go along with today's blog...

The next blog and video will detail why we ended up sleeping in the dump station overnight??!!??

128 mi traveled today 

1,249 mi traveled so far