new neighbors

Not a whole lot happening here in our little slice of heaven in South Texas. We are still in "ground hog day" mode and each day feels just like the one before and we know tomorrow will be more of the same old same old. :-)
We did have some new faces arrive yesterday.

The land owner rents out this area to a cattle rancher who moved a small herd onto the property. There is no cattle guard at our gate entrance so we now have to keep the gate shut and only open it to let vehicles through. This is not as hard as it could be because the gate is automatic and they dropped off the remote control for it so we just push a button to open or close it. :-)

The rig appears to be well on their way drilling the second (and last) well. Judging by the tempo of traffic and the different equipment and supplies coming in they will probably be finished by this time next week and may even be packed up and gone. This rig is being "recycled" so it will be taken back to the yard and torn apart after this job ends. This means we will not have an option of following the rig to their next job as sometimes happens and we are not sure what the next few weeks will bring for us. There are still several steps they need to perform to bring the wells up to the production level. We are hoping to stay for at least one more stage but not sure what or when that will be. Our hope is to stay working for the next month before starting our trip North. They could also just tell us to follow the rig out the gate and close things down for awhile. One thing we have learned working in this business is you can never count on what will come next. I'll keep you posted.

two down!

We have completed two full weeks at our current gate and have settled into a routine. Our hats are off to the folks who do this job months or even years at a time. The money is good but the days are mundane and repetitious. We do enjoy working with the crews on the rigs. They are all very polite and we do our best to learn their names and memorize their license plates. Rudee is a lot better at it than I am and our dash is littered with "cheat sheets" of names to help me out. :-)

We have made a lot of progress on our move to Texas. Our license plates, registrations and titles are all being processed and should arrive at our address in the next few days. We have updated our address on just about every account we can think of and have changed our insurance policies over to Texas. We still have to change our drivers licenses so I'm not running out and buying a cowboy hat just yet. :-)

We did have some rain here on Tuesday which made things a muddy, sloppy mess. Our pad is pretty well packed down and wasn't too bad but the road getting in was a mess. We are 3/4 of a mile from the main road on Pena Rd. which, for the first 1/2 mile is a mix of blacktop and hard packed gravel. The remaining 1/4 mile is mostly red clay and sand which turns into a quagmire when it gets wet. Once you pass our gate the quagmire continues and there are at least two more gates further down so we at least have it a little better then they do. :-)

We are not sure what the future holds for this job, they have finished drilling one well and are moving a few feet on the pad to drill another one. We figure that will take another 2-3 weeks by the time they are done and moved out. The next major step would be to Frac (hydraulic fracturing) the wells but I have no idea when this would be scheduled and information is a little hard to come by on this job. We are hoping to stay a total of 7 weeks before heading North of course I'll keep you posted. I will leave you with a sunrise shot of another day on the gate.

life in the oil patch

Yep Gang we are still here, workin away in the oil fields. :-)
Our days so far have been pretty predictable. Rudee normally relieves me around 8 am and I go to bed shortly afterwards. I'm usually up by 4 pm and we share the gate duties until after dark when I take over completely and She turns in around 10 pm. We have had some busier days but mostly things have been pretty laid back. I have even been able to catch a nap for an hour or two each night. As I said before our pad is pretty cozy and we are pretty close to the rig.

One nice thing is we are really close to town. We are able to jump into the Dakota and make a quick run for groceries and be back at work in a flash. Last year we were on a gate near Valley Wells, Texas. The road to our pad was 1/2 mile of craters and pot holes that you had to navigate really slow or risk substantial damage to your vehicle. We were also 20 miles away from the nearest grocery store. We like this site much better. :-)

Last year we established our domicile in South Dakota, mostly because it was convenient for us since we were spending the summer working at Crazy Horse. Full time RVers can declare most any state as their "home" but some, like Florida, Texas and South Dakota are desirable because of their lack of a state income tax. Each of these states have a large population of full time RVers and are very accommodating to us for the most part.
We, along with everyone else, had no idea how the new Affordable Care Act was going to effect us at that time. We had our own health insurance through a carrier in Indiana and maintained that until we were able to sign up for SD insurance on the government website. We did that in November, selecting a policy (the only one available at that time) that offered "nationwide" coverage. I called the company prior to signing up and explained our lifestyle, residence and our need for a wide network of providers. The customer service agent was very nice and gave me access to their list of providers stating I would have no issues anywhere we were traveling. They took our money for the policy starting in January, shortly after that I got a letter saying I had to provide them of proof that I lived in SD and had a physical presence for a minimum of 9 months per year. I called them and explained our full time RV lifestyle (the same thing I told them in November) and they said they have never and would never insure someone who lived and traveled full time and I would have to have a house in SD or I would be terminated. Needless to say I was not a happy camper. True to their word they terminated our coverage on January 31st so we were back to square one. After a lot of research and several days of discussing things back and forth we decided to switch our domicile from SD to Texas. Blue Cross of Texas welcomes full timers and the Escapees RV Club, which we have been members of for several years, operates a first class mail forwarding service from their headquarters in Livingston, TX. We made contact with the DMV office near our new address and we are in the process of getting our vehicles registered and will be getting our Texas drivers licenses before leaving here in April. We have signed up for health insurance and are getting things back on track. Rudee has spent literally two whole days updating our new address with our banks, pensions, insurance providers and pretty much everyone else that sends us mail. That is one big job! Not to be out done I decided to tackle the job of filing our tax returns. The last couple of years we have paid H&R Block to do the dirty deed. Last year they tripled the price on us and charged us over $500 to do our returns! :-o I decided then and there that I was going to start doing them myself again. I use one of those popular computer programs and it is not too hard but it does take some time. We not only had the federal return but two state returns to complete as well since we worked in Kentucky and had to file for Indiana. The whole ordeal took us 4 1/2 hours but we are happy we got it done for another year.

We got a call from Amazon the other day and had our phone interviews. We accepted their offer of jobs for this fall and will be going back to Campbellsville, Kentucky in October. Right now our plans include staying here and working until the first of April when we will head back to Indiana to spend a couple of weeks visiting. We are due to start at Crazy Horse the first full week of May and will work there through September when we will return to Indiana for another couple of weeks before heading to Amazon. We will be done there no later then December 23rd. This allows us to spend Christmas with our family. We'll kind of play it by ear after that but who knows, we may be back here, at our new home state, eating dust in the oil fields again. :-) I'll keep you posted.