this is for the birds!

The gate continues to be slow overnight and only moderate during the daylight hours. This leaves us with lots of time on our hands. We keep ourselves occupied by reading on the Kindle, surfing the web, watching a lot of TV and doing some small projects.
A few days ago Rudee mentioned we had a full bag of sunflower seeds that a worker had given us last year while on the gate. She thought about sprinkling them on the ground across the road from the motor home to attract some birds to keep us company. I had a better idea, how about we fix up a bird feeder. How do you make a bird feeder you ask? Well we had no idea either but this is what we came up with :-).

That is a metal pie pan that once held a chocolate pudding pie with graham cracker crust yum! I punched four holes in the sides of the pan with my pocket knife and inserted two metal rods made by cutting a coat hanger. I used a tie wrap to hold the coat hanger pieces where they crossed in the middle of the pan and then tied a piece of clothesline to hang our new feeder from a nearby tree limb.
I quickly found out it was way too windy and the bird feeder blew all around like a kite. I tried adding some rocks to weigh it down but realized that wasn't going to work either. Rudee found a nice perch for it in a nearby bush where we can still see it but it is a lot more secure. She put some of the seeds in and we are waiting for our first visitors. :-)

Here is a shot of Rudee all dressed up waiting on the bell to ring.

We are enjoying the quiet here at our little corner of the world. I'll keep you posted.

end of the road for us

No we are not giving up full timing, our gate is at the very end if a lonely dirt road so I thought that would be a nice title for a post. :-)
There is one house on our road about 1/2 way between us and the paved road otherwise we are all alone out here. The traffic has been light with no activity after dark so I shut the gate once everyone leaves and so far have not been bothered overnight. I get up about 5:30am, open the gate and the first workers tend to arrive between 6 and 6:30. I sure hope this continues for awhile, I could really get used to it! I'm sure things will pick up around here soon though and my lazy nights will come to an end.

Yesterday I made our first supply run into Cotulla. The drive takes about 40 minutes and I timed it so I could go to the weekly gathering of gate guards at one of the restaurants in town. I found out about it through the myoldrvforum which is a virtual gathering place for gate guards and people interested in the work.
We met at JJ's Country Store Restaurant and it was packed! We had to wait for 30 minutes before enough room opened up to get us seated. I enjoyed meeting and talking with the other guys and the food was pretty good too. Next week will be the ladies turn to meet so Rudee is already looking forward to it.

After lunch I made a stop at the post office and then the grocery store. Outside the store they have a kiosk to refill water bottles, .25 per gal jug or $1.00 for a 5 gal jug. I refilled all of our empties and then refilled the Dakota's gas tank in their gas station. This store is a pretty handy stop for sure.
As I was pumping gas I checked my phone and saw that I had a missed call and voice mail. The number was a Texas number that I didn't recognize. I listened to the message and it was Rudee. Seems she went outside to answer the bell and somehow when she shut the door behind her it locked! Her keys and cell phone were all inside and she was stuck outside. She borrowed a cell phone from one of the workers so I didn't worry of I called her phone and couldn't get an answer.
Before I made it back to the motorhome she had been able to open a screen and, using our step ladder, reach through the window and unlock the door. We now have a key hidden on the outside of the motorhome :-)
So far we are enjoying our location here in the boonies and looking forward to the boost in the bank account. I'll keep you posted.

working for a livin

Saturday morning we met with Josh who was going to lead us over to our gate and get us set up on the generator, septic system and our water tank. He had a "generator emergency" he had to take care of first but promised to be back in a couple of hours.
We hung out in the yard and eventually met fellow guards Terry and Debby Tirey. They had been on a gate for several months and when that job ended they came back into the yard to wait to be sent out again. These two are veteran full timers having been on the road for over 10 years. They have worked at several jobs and we enjoyed hearing about their experiences.
Josh returned around noon and we got on the road to the gate. The drive only took about 30 minutes before we turned off the main road onto the "ranch road" to our gate. We are 2 miles down this rutty, rough, narrow road.

I worked at getting our motor home set up while Josh worked on positioning and hooking up our utilities. Rudee helped me in between checking people in and out. The weather was nice and we could work in our short sleeves. Josh finished his work and left us on our own. I worked until the sun got really low in the sky but got most of our "stuff" done as well as all of our "gate guard stuff" out and set up. I positioned our driveway alerts that we carry to give us a little more notice of vehicles coming in and out. Another preparation was hooking our external "extend-a-stay" LP tank up. The motor home has a large on board LP tank that, when needing filled, requires you to drive the entire rig to the LP supplier. One way around this is to install the "extend-a-stay" T connection to hook up a portable tank, thus bypassing the on board tank. We carry two extra tanks, one 30 lb and one 20 lb, that we can use for either the grille in the summer time or to supply the coach in times like this. Here is a photo of the connection that I bought at Camping World.

I installed it myself and it was very easy to do, just remember to check for leaks at all the connections when your done. Better safe than sorry. :-o

We are settled in and getting back into the groove of answering the bell! I'll keep you posted.