Friday, Nov. 22, 2013 - Weather Worsens

It rained and stormed through the night, and the gas furnace came on numerous times during the night, even though we had it set at 63 degrees, so neither one of us had a great night's rest. Freezing cold this morning, bundled up in our parkas to feed the horses, though they seemed comfortable enough in their blankets. Spent several hours trying to work online, but contrary to my first day's experience here, getting online has been a real pain. Even though our Kindles seem able to pick up a good 3G signal, my antenna booster is mostly getting a one bar, analog connection, which takes hours to do minutes of work. One thing we have discovered is that the forecast for next week has been continuing to deteriorate, now with ice storms coming in by Sunday, and rain and sleet and possibly snow until at least Tuesday. I had taken a quick trip into town yesterday afternoon, because I needed a post office and to pick up some gas for the generator, and discovered the nearest gas station was practically all the way into town, so a nearly 30 mile round trip for gas. By the time I got back yesterday, I was starting to consider that maybe staying here for another week plus might not be a great idea. Through the day, we ran out of propane and had to switch tanks, we've been using a lot more because of the cold, tried to find the nearest propane place, and that seemed like another 15 or 20 miles away. Suddenly this place we had been enjoying so much was starting to look like it could be a logistical problem. I was also concerned about the ice storm and the trees around which we were surrounded. We've seen what ice can do to perfectly healthy trees, and it doesn't take a great imagination to figure out that these drought-stressed and fungus ridden trees could be very hard hit. The last thing we needed was to have trees dropping on us or the horses. After much discussion, and some reluctance, the logic of the situation made itself clear, and we decided we needed to move to someplace with electric. The cold air was moving all the way down to the Mexican border and beyond, so we weren't expecting the weather to improve much by moving south, but electric was beginning to be important. Our original plan was to go from here to Davy Crockett National Forest, but they don't have electricity, and often in cold weather their water is turned off, and they also had stressed trees, and worse, no satellite signal, though I knew I could get a cell phone signal. That plan flew out the window, and I started looking a a number of Army Corp of Engineers camps which I had recently discovered, about 6 of them between here and Austin. Passing by East Fork, the closest but most expensive, we settled on Waxahachie Creek, south of Dallas. From the looks of it on Google Earth, it was mostly open, thus allaying any fear of trees falling on us, though it didn't look too exciting. Supposedly there are 12.5 miles of trails there, but I haven't found a trail map yet. There are only 4 spots, but the reservation system says two are reservable but empty, and two are walk-in. Somehow, with this weather, I doubt we're going to have much company. The closest town is Ennis, just 8 miles away, and has a full complement of stores, including Walmart, propane and feed, plus there's hay available nearby, too, so it has it all. Having made the decision, we set the alarm for 7:30 and did our best to continue to keep warm.