Gate guarding at Hinkle A-2H

We had to be ready to leave for the gate by 8:00 so we were up early getting things packed up and "road ready".

Hunter showed up at the yard and hooked onto the two flat bed trailers that held our generator, fresh water tank, black water tank and all of our other supplies. We followed him out of the yard where we turned east to head towards Cotulla.

The drive took us a little over an hour and we pulled into "our" gate. We are the first gate guards at this site as it is a brand new pad with no well as yet. The "company man", Earl, met us and showed us our spot and I backed the 5th wheel in and got leveled and unhooked. While Rudee and I got the 5er set up Hunter worked to get all of our utilities up and running.

The whole set up took him over an hour but once he was done we have 50amp service thanks to our large diesel generator, running water from our own "reservoir" tank and our tanks drain into what I describe as a portable septic system.

We have virtually no cell signal without the Wilson Cell Phone Booster I purchased before leaving Indiana. The booster unit is inside the 5er and I mounted the antenna to a telescoping pole that I attach to the rear ladder on the back of our Montana.

Once I got the booster set up we went from 1 bar of service to 4 bars. The downside is the range of the booster is limited so you only have to go 20-30' from the booster and you are back at 1 bar (or no bars!).

Our site is adjacent to the well pad so we will be able to keep and eye on all the action.

We didn't have to actually start working today, the boss man said he didn't want us checking people in and out until the rig arrives and gets set up for drilling. Right now we are just doing a lot waving :-). I'll keep you posted.

We got a gate!

I was up early this morning even though this area gets really really quiet at night. Rudee likes to sleep longer than me so I make a pot of coffee and catch up on blogs while she snoozes.

After we took our showers I decided to take a walk around the storage yard and check out the flat bed trailers with the "gate supplies". I checked out one the trailers with a big diesel generator on it and my new boss, Roger, drove up in his pick up truck. He told me that he had a gate for me if I wanted it. Heck ya I want it! That's what I came here for :-)

We will be moving out tomorrow morning to a gate near Cotulla, Texas. Roger will be meet us here at the lot and lead us over there and help us get set up.

We are a little nervous since this is all so new to us but I'm sure we will do fine.

I have followed Kit and Jerry Bertlesen's blog http://www.kitandjerry.com/index.htm for a few years now. They are gate guards too and are deployed at a gate about 10 miles from here. They have been keeping track of our progress and gave us directions to their place so we could finally spend some face to face time together.

We made the short trip in the Dakota and pulled into the drive to their gate. The company provides an alarm bell that is activated by a hose pulled across the drive. Remember those bells that dinged in the gas stations when you ran over the hose? Same thing here.

Jerry came out of their motorhome and opened the gate for us showing us where to park. Kit joined us outside and it was hugs all around!

Before we left Carrizo Springs we stopped into McDonalds and bought 2 large diet cokes. By reading their blog I knew they loved their diet fountain cokes and didn't want to show up empty handed :-)

We talked for quite awhile and they showed us the ropes as well as giving us some great advice of things they have learned along the way. Rudee took lots of notes! :-)

Before we knew it we were having to say "see ya later". We had some things we wanted to pick up at the store before before being "tied to a gate".

Thanks guys for a great visit and helping out a couple of rookies!

Corrizo Springs has a small Wal Mart but what we needed was a super center. The nearest one is in Eagle Pass about 40 miles away so we headed over.

Thus area of Texas is really not very scenic. Lots of short scrub trees, sand and cactus. The good thing is the speed limit in most of the rural areas is 75 mph so you can make good time between towns :-)

Eagle Pass is a boarder town right on the Rio Grande. We drove down to the boarder to take a look. There was no good place to park so we just did a drive-by and headed to the store.

Wal Mart was a total zoo! I guess Sunday afternoon is "shopping day" for people from both sides of the boarder.

We wound our way down the aisles and found most of what we needed and got the heck outta there!

They had a gas station there so we filled up using our shopping card so we could save an additional .10 per gallon. With our tank full and our card empty we headed back to Carrizo.

Before arriving in Texas I expected to see a lot of the border patrol out looking for illegals. Today was our first contact with these fine folks. There is an inspection station/road block set up between Eagle Pass and Carrizo Springs. I was not sure what to expect but when I stopped and rolled my window down the young officer just made small talk while another officer with a K9 did a quick walk around our truck and that was it. Guess we don't fit the profile of human smugglers :-)

Back at the 5th wheel we put the groceries away and will probably go to bed early since tomorrow is a work day! I'll keep you posted.

taking a day "off"

We decided to stay an additional night here at Gulf Coast RV Resort. The sites here are all pull through full hook ups with a nice patio. They are part of Passport America so we get a 50% discount on their rates making our site $17.50 including tax. Pretty good deal!

I checked out attractions in Beaumont on the computer and found a couple of museums downtown that sounded interesting so Friday morning we played tourist. :-)

Our first stop was the Texas Firefighters Museum housed in a restored Beaumont fire station. My Dad was a fireman for many years and my Brother is a career firefighter as well. I even started down that path for 5 years before becoming a cop. Both my brother and I grew up in and around the firehouse so walking into one is a trip down memory lane for me :-).

There is no cost to visit and they have 2 floors of displays. The engine bays have several pieces of apparatus including an early aerial truck and some of the old horse drawn pumpers.

On the walls were patches from Departments all over the U.S. We found several from Indiana including Lebanon and my old department, Plainfield.

Next was the Texas Energy Museum just around the corner. We had to pay $2.00 each to tour this one which traced the first oil discovery in Texas to present day drilling methods. The displays were nicely done but contained a little too much chemistry for me. I got lost a little with all the talks of molecules and strings of something or other.

We made a stop for a late lunch at Mike and Terri Hamilton's Catfish Kitchen. The special was barbecued crabs, a little pricey for us so we settled for fried Crawfish tails and crawfish ettouffe'. We tried their soup of the day based on our waitress' recommendation. I have no idea what she was calling it, she was talking southern and I was listening in northern :-)

The soup was a type of seafood stew and was really good.

Back at the 5th wheel we settled in for the remainder of the day and watched some TV. The weather was not particularly great today with the temperature barely breaking 60 degrees and the wind blew hard most of the day. I was sure glad we decided to stay put rather than try and travel in bad weather.

Saturday morning we got up early and got everything ready to hit the road once again. Today would be the last leg of our our odyssey to get to the oil fields where we will be working this winter.

We pulled out shortly before 7am and headed west on I-10 once again. The traffic was fairly light and we had an easy drive, even through downtown Houston with all of it's ramps and overpasses.

Our next big hurdle was San Antonio where we turned South on I-35. We stopped for a picnic lunch just south of San Antonio at a rest park. We turned off the interstate and onto SR 85 in Dilley Texas. Our destination was Carrizo Springs where our company, Gate Guard Services, has a storage yard. We met our supervisor, Roger, at a gas station and he led us to the yard about a mile out of town and showed us where to park.

We will be here for a few days until we get a gate assigned to us. There is one other guard couple here whose well was shut down due to a faulty piece of equipment. They will go back to the same gate as soon as parts arrive to get things back up and running again.

We have made contact with Kit and Jerry Bertleson, http://www.kitandjerry.com/index.htm fellow Hoosiers who are guarding a gate a few miles away. We made plans to visit them tomorrow and they invited us to ride along with them next Tuesday when they head back to their home park for a quick visit. Sounds like fun and will give us a chance to get to know them, of course this could all change if a gate opens up and we go to work. I'll keep you posted.