The Shady Side

 

After a couple of nice days at the Shady Creek park in Aubrey to the north of Dallas, we motored about 17 miles east, over to McKinney to the MCD factory to have some more shades/blinds installed. MCD is the foremost motorhome/RV blind supplier for the country and most new rigs come with their products ... so we went to the source.

 

Their factory is in McKinney and the front of the place below is what you see when you come in ... looks like an old country Texas farm property on a country road.

 

And the people are just as welcoming. We had already been told which parking space to set up in and got our electric hooked up and checked in on Monday the 27th. There is no sewer or water hookup but we were told where the nearest dump stations were if we needed them. The process was to be to measure on Monday, production on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday, and then install on Thursday ... so settle in to our new park.

Actually a very nice place and we got the primo spot on the end ... extremely quiet and secure. The weather was great so we spent the first couple of days taking advantage of the clean concrete lot to do some major cleaning of the Flying Scotsman ... wash and wax ... oooo sore shoulders.

On Thursday our tech Calvin arrived to do the work. As we had already done most of the other blinds in the bus all he had to do was the cockpit ones. Below is the before picture of the ugly pleated curtains on the sides ... dumpster ... which was just in front of the RV.

Then, in about an hour he installed the three new dual blinds which will provide both privacy in the daytime and then total blackout at night ... cool ... and about $800 for the three, and I didn't have to smash any more body parts doing it.

Some of the other rigs had left earlier as they had reserved earlier, leaving us as one of the remaining ones.

I can't say enough good about this company which puts customer service above all and provides a perfect reasonably priced product when and where they say they will do it ... and a level secure place to park, wow! This is an impressive team effort by MCD and they are managed well.

On Thursday, as promised, we moved from their lot in McKinney and went back to the Sandy Lake park in Carrollton for another 10 days or so of medical stuff before blasting off on our trek to the south first and then north.

Foodies

 

We haven't blogged about our culinary adventures lately so here are a couple of our more recent ones. While in the Bryan area we went over to Navasota and the Martha's Bloomers nursery and café.

 

Below is their website photo of the entrance to the place with the cat theme.

 



After you go through their wonderful nursery and garden themed gift shop you get to the café at the rear of the place.

You get seated at the white linen set table and are immediately served a hot spiced tea and scones ... note the pyramid shaped tea bag package. You place the tea bag in the pot and a single green leaf sticks out the hole in the top for dunking.

In front of me below is their Santa Monica sliced maple turkey sandwich with bacon, provolone, on a toasted wheat berry bread with lettuce tomatoes avocado and ranch. Also their tomato bisque soup was really great.

Jo-Anne had their special of the day which was a chicken pasta with feta all done in a white wine sauce. Great tea and great food for a Sunday morning brunch.
 

A couple of hundred miles to the north is the really neat little town of McKinney. On the historic town square is a neat place called Harvest we went to last week. This place is cool.

These two pictures, above and below, are from their website. We were seated at the tables for two at the left of the below picture. The chairs are upholstered wing backs just as you would have at your dining table at home.

With tea again, this time with a different method for dunking the bag came some really eclectic dishes. I guess mine was a more normal chicken soup but laced with all kinds of kale and black beans and other veggies.

To complement my soup I also had half of an egg salad sandwich on some wonderful multigrain bread that seemed right out of the oven.

Across the table and a bit hard to see is the star of the meal. Jo-Anne had their Farm Egg and Squash Griddle cake. Actually this was a single sweet potato pancake with a butter mushroom sauce, then asparagus, and an over easy egg on the top ... pure comfort in the mouth!

Both of these restaurants source all their food locally and organically if possible and return some of their profits to charitable causes involving how we might eat better.

Roanoke Texas

 

 

After our trip down to see Mom in Bryan, we needed a place in the Dallas area to stop before the place at Sandy Lake could accommodate us. We got out our trusted Good Sam "bible" and looked at the Dallas parks. Not really very many for a metroplex this size. The Good Sam rating of a maximum 10/10/10 for the Northlake Village place in Roanoke to the northwest of town looked like it fit the bill. We had just been to the Palm Creek place in Arizona with the same rating (look back a couple of posts) so we thought it would be really, really nice ... ooops.

 



We have stayed in over 250 parks and the Good Sam folks really need to rethink their rating system as today it is meaningless for the RV community. If Palm Creek in Arizona is the top 10 park then this older mobile home park is an 8 at the very most. What they have done is take the old mobile home sites and put two RV spots in the original space ... double the occupancy with no, absolutely no, further improvement to the place!

To get to the place you wind behind some light industrial buildings that you see in the above pic and are stuffed into a very tight unleveled gravel spot. The concrete patio they boast about is really the remnant of whatever the mobile home owner put in twenty years ago and every site is different. There's about 10 sites for transients and the rest are permanent RVs that just doubled up after the larger mobile homes were evicted ... pretty sad ... but I guess fills their bottom line.

Even though you were on top of your neighbor it was a fairly quiet place even though there wasn't a level spot in the park. These pictures really make it look good but are very deceiving. I guess the Texas racetrack is nearby and it is on I-35W so for the tailgate party it might be OK for a couple of days ... but for normal big rig folks looking for a decent park with all the amenities that the super rating would suggest ... don't even slow down.

Yeah I know, he just keeps following us around ... my fashion and RV park statement for the day ...

Spring in Texas

 

Above is a view as we left Bryan to head back to the Dallas area today. Rainy, a cool 46 degrees this morning, not great photo stuff.

Ok time to catch up. We came back from Arizona which was really super and finished up Leigh's new laundry room project. The next couple of weeks were devoted to the normal medical stuff which is a bit more complicated when we are on the road so much but no major problems.

And a bit of summer planning which might involve a Europe river cruise, time in Quebec City, and time with the kids and grandkid on Georgian Bay. Wow, too much thinking and planning for all of that. And of course we will be in Barrie with the Flying Scotsman from the first of May to October or so as usual.

While all of that was occupying our brains we went down to Bryan to see Bruce's mom and spend a week there. She's doing pretty good for someone who just turned 98 and can talk about it. We looked at old photos of her from high school and college and then listened to some old WWII era music from the big band era which got her tapping her feet and doing a dance with Jo-Anne; if even while sitting down. I was also able to glean some more great photos from the Gunn/Parris family files for genealogy research so the several days talking to her were great.

We also had a great time with Rich and Kerry and ate at some of our more favorite places we have already described and photographed. Super week "down south" and now back in the Dallas area.

The roadsides today on the way up to Fort Worth on I-35 were ablaze with the bluebonnets and paintbrush that Texas is famous for; even if the weather was a bit cloudy and foggy.

And of course you know I love to photograph animal life as often as I can. As we were filling up with fuel at the Walmart in Bryan this buzzard spotted a nice juicy ( I assume ) meal right in front of the RV ...

... my caption being, " I really hate it when dinner gets stuck to my foot like this, it's just not proper buzzard etiquette; my mom told me so."

Tonight and tomorrow in the Northlake RV park in Roanoke, Texas, about 20 miles northwest of the DFW area; we'll let you know what we think. Hey spring break and not many options available.