If you don't like the weather...

How many times have you heard the expression "If you don't like the weather....just wait a few minutes and it will change"? In just about every town we've stayed, we've heard the locals make that very claim about their weather. Well, except for Southern Californians -- they claim that their weather is always perfect!

Just this week, we had a fine example of the truth of that expression. We were staying on Lake Georgetown (just north of Austin) at the Cedar Breaks Army COE park. On Sunday, the weather was sunny, warm and reached a high of 82°. We were in shorts most of the day and even turned on the air conditioning in the late afternoon because the direct sunshine had really heated up the RV.

A day later, a winter storm blew into town and for 72 hours the temperature never got above freezing and with gusting winds, the wind chill factor got down to 7° -- brrr. Ok, all your northern folks can laugh at this weather wimp, but that's pretty darned cold here in central Texas.

In addition to the cold temps, we had several hours of freezing precipitation that left a thick blanket of ice on everything and made the roads very slick and pretty much impassable. On Thursday, despite crews spending the night sanding the bridges and overpasses, the entire city shut down including schools and businesses. We sat and watched while the TV reports showed us dozens of auto mishaps all over town. Most were single cars meeting up with a ditch or guardrail, but there were quite a few fender benders and even a couple of very serious accidents. We were happy to sit at home and avoid the chaos.

To keep the RV warm we closed all our blinds, covered all our vents with insulation, put up a blanket to isolate the cab from the living space (the front cab has zero insulation) and ran our Pelonis ceramic disc electric heater pretty much non-stop for 3 days. We had to supplement the electric heater with a burst from our propane furnace -- just a few minutes each morning to take the chill off, but that little Pelonis cube worked fine the rest of the time. We also had an electric sheet on our bed and that plus down comforters kept us toasty warm at night. Frank tried warming his hands on his "campfire" screen saver program, but other than the warmth from his laptop and the placebo effect from hearing the crackling flames, it didn't do much good.

Of course, keeping all the windows and vents covered for that long really made the walls close in and we all suffered from a bad case of cabin fever. We went out a couple of times a day to walk the dogs and that helped, but it was so darn cold outside that we didn't linger very long. The process of bundling up typically took longer than our walks as we each put on about 4 layers. I'd even tried to put sweaters on the dogs, but they had no concept of what sweaters were all about, so they just stood there and wouldn't budge much less pee or poop, so the sweaters came off. The roads were so slippery that I didn't dare hook the dogs up on their leashes -- one good yank and I'd probably skate for a few thrill-filled feet before landing hard on my butt.

By day two, the RV was covered in a thick layer of ice and we had icicles hanging off of the front end. We lost our internet connection Wednesday night when a 1/2" layer of ice had frozen on the feed head. The ice didn't melt for two days and we were reduced to watching TV, reading and playing games. I know...I know...life is tough!

By Friday night, the ice had all melted and on Saturday we were back in our shorts. So, maybe we had to wait a little longer than just a few minutes for the weather to change, but change it did.