Current Location: Traders Village RV Park, Houston, Texas

We were hustled out of bed this morning by one of our smoke detectors. It went off for about two seconds then quit. Thinking it was possibly a battery issue, we put a new on in it. It did not chirp like it usually does with a new battery. As a test, we put a new battery in the other smoke detector and it chirped. We assume the smoke detector was going bad.

Given that we didn’t have to hurry out of town today, we got our day going and headed down to Lowes to pick up a replacement smoke detector (something a little better than the original detector). A couple of screws had the old one down and the new one in place and tested to make sure it works.

Cool old pickup truck in Lowes parking lot

We also removed the batteries from our fairly new RV Lock that we bought at the rally a couple weeks ago. It started acting up a couple days ago. The symptoms were that of low batteries, but Malcolm tested them and they were fine. Today as we were getting ready to leave, we could hear it making a light whining sound that Malcolm initially mistook for a baby bird somewhere under the trailer. We will call RV Lock on Monday to see what can be done on replacing it.

We finished hooking up and rolled out of Livingston around 10:00 AM. It was a leisurely 1 hour drive on down to Houston. It rained sporadically, but nothing major. Fortunately, the skies were clear when we arrived at Traders Village and got the trailer set up.

Set up in Traders Village

New jack pad in action

It was also very hot and muggy, so we decided to eat lunch out at Panda Express and shop at Office Depot for a business card holder and at Fry’s Electronics for a new external drive for Malcolm’s computer. The one on which he keeps all his digital photos (11 years worth) and other important files has been acting up lately (he has an off-site backup at another location, but it is not current) so he bought a new, larger drive today.

We also stopped at Target to pick up a couple things before heading back to the trailer. Since it had cooled off inside, we relaxed for a while until dinner time. We decided we wanted to eat some good Texas barbecue at Goode Co. We’ve eaten there before and really like it. Today was no different. Definitely recommended.

Tasty Texas BBQ

After that, it was back to the trailer where Malcolm worked on his computer while Val read. We broke out our new air popper and popped up a bowl of Amish popcorn that our good friends the Belettis picked up for us in Indiana and dropped off with us at the rally. It was excellent popcorn.

Pop pop pop