It was kind of funny to watch

Our almost 8 year old Trojan T-105 batteries are apparently still doing pretty well. We haven't seen the sun since Christmas Day. And we had been parked up boondocking at the free county park near Falcon Heights, here at the Texas/Mexico border for three nights.

But by day four, with our batteries at 12.2 volts we knew that they needed charging. Solar panels work great, except when there is no sun!

And so with no sun, and cold temperatures in the forecast, yesterday morning we moved over to nearby Falcon State Park to recharge our batteries and escape the cold. For 8 year old batteries, we are impressed that we can still go three nights without any sun.

Sherman, parked up for two nights at Falcon State Park.

We used another one of the four camping coupons attached to our Texas State Parks pass, and got two nights at an electric and water site for $24 USD ($30 CAD). Not bad. The coupons give you half off the first night of a two night stay.

Not great, but it will have to do.

There's an abnormal cold snap in much of the eastern part of North America right now. Here at the Texas/Mexico border it went down to 32F (0C) last night, with a forecast high of 41F (5C) today. Cold again tonight.

We feel like we've been trying to outrun the cold ever since we left the Ottawa area on November 16th. And we haven't been very successful at it! It's a little frustrating being this close to the Mexico border and knowing we can't cross until next Sunday. 

Mark and Barb who are coming with us on the Mexico caravan are parked right in front of us. We both have a view of Mexico across the lake!

We also have a view of some wildlife. There are quite a few deer in the park, but there are also a lot of javelina pigs. They're not really a pig, but they sort of look like one. 

Anyhow, yesterday afternoon we heard some kind of thumping noise. Ruth looks out the window... "Kevin, come see this...."

So here's this javelina (also called a peccary) trying to get inside this box at the campsite across from Mark and Barb. He's flipping it over and that's what is causing the thumping noise. It was kind of funny to watch. We think there were at least two javelinas, one larger than the other.

No idea what the story is with that campsite. It's not a host site, yet the occupant has pretty much moved right in with everything but the kitchen sink. And maybe that too! Nobody around, although a truck showed up last night, disappeared, then showed up again a few minutes ago.

We went over to Mark and Barb's after dinner and played a dice game called Phase Ten, They have a bigger Class A with a slideout so they have a little more room than we do. Anyhow, fun to get together for an evening and I'm sure we'll be doing it again a few times over the next three months.

Speaking of games, Ruth and I finished our annual score keeping of Yahtzee and Backgammon. We keep track of a running total of scores in Yahtzee, and wins vs losses in backgammon. We've been doing this for years, and this is the first time Ruth has won at backgammon! The tally was 54 to 52 for Ruth! We didn't get a chance to play much this year because we didn't get into the motorhome until middle of November, and that's where the backgammon game was stored.

In Yahtzee, I won with 98,077 to Ruth's 97,006 a difference of 1,071 points to the good for me! I've been ahead of her most of the year, but I was getting nervous a couple of weeks ago when she had caught up to within 400 points of me!

Anyhow, we're going to ride out the cold for one more night, and then head down to Mission tomorrow morning and do some laundry and groceries. Supposed to steadily warm up throughout the week, and be up to 73F (23C) by the time we cross the border on Sunday. We'll see!

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