Big Changes for Tourtoise
We woke up to a fairly big surprise about six weeks ago. As is my very bad habit, I checked my email on Saturday morning while still lying in bed. Our RV storage company sends out marketing newsletters occasionally, which I usually just delete, but this time I did open it. Good thing I did, because it was an announcement that they had sold their land and everyone needed to vacate within thirty days.
Yeesh. Not the surprise I was hoping for. It was a pretty big lot with a ton of RVs, all of which were going to have to find new spaces. So, Aneel and I jumped on finding a new location pretty much immediately. We both started doing some research—I focused on the more niche RV storage companies while Aneel actually looked at more traditional storage companies. I had emails out to two RV storage places, but Aneel pulled together a list of closer facilities that might be able to store the RV. Bless Aneel—he spent time calling around, which was not as helpful as you would hope.
We debated about actually getting the trailer to test size while visiting locations, but I wanted at least do a drive by before doing that. At the time, I was more worried about street/alley space to be able to back the trailer up. But I should have been more worried about door frame size. We had three storage companies on our list. One very close (like 5 minutes) and two others both about 15 minutes away.
The close one was an absolute no go. Although they said they could store RVs and had the height of their doors listed as between 6’ and 8’ – they weren’t even a full 6’ high. Nowhere near tall enough. The next place was a possibility but it had pretty bad reviews; the biggest complaint? Rats. But they did have electricity for trickle charging.
The last place was the best by far. It was a better location than the second. Much cleaner and more open. Decent covered area. And it was by far the cheapest! Cheaper than our current one by about $100 per month. So, we signed up without even getting the trailer.
It has big positives over our past lot: cost and location. But two decent cons: no electricity, no dumping.
We were supposed to go camping that next weekend, and that is when we were going to officially park there (after coming home from camping). But then it ended up storming all weekend, so we decided not to camp and just do the location change. I had to learn a little about parking there because it wasn’t quite as open as the last place, but it was very doable.
Goodbye Easy RV & Storage (New Pics at New Facility Coming)
Cedar Hill State Park
Our first time taking the trailer out of that lot came on April 3rd. We did a weekend away at Cedar Hill State Park. We decided to grab the trailer and bring it home to pack, but next time (depending on park location) we’ll probably just load up the Hare and grab Tourtoise on the way. But it was easy peasy.
So far, the biggest downside of the new facility is that without trickle charge and with the covered space covering our solar, Tourtoise was dead. No power. Womp womp. But she charges on the Rivian, so we got the fridge turned on fairly quickly. Still it was disappointing that she died after just a couple weeks parked there. Aneel might talk more about his plans for that.
The weekend at Cedar Park was excellent. Better than expected for the most part. Yet again, it looked like we might have rain for most of the weekend, but I was VERY DETERMINED to go camping. We brought our EZ-Up and hoped for the best.
It only rained Saturday morning from maybe 6am to 11am. Then the rest of the weekend was gorgeous. Slightly warm, breezy, cloudy but nice sun peaking through. It was a pleasure to be outside. The only slight downside was that most of the trails were closed because it had rained the day before we got in (Thursday) and then again on Saturday. The only two that were open were 1 mile each gravel/paved trails. We did those, and one of them ended up being pretty great for birding. The rest of the time we just relaxed outside. Sometimes by the lake, and sometimes at our camp spot. It was cool enough in the evening that had a fire and made dinner over it.
The thing I really liked was how private the camping spots were. They looked small at first but that’s because ours (and all the other ones I saw) really kinda had two areas. The small area by the parking but then a second much larger space tucked back behind. Ours was just kinda tucked back but others actually had stairs up or down to the sitting/hanging area. These areas had a fire pit, covered picnic table, and lots of space. Each area had tons of tree coverage.
The other big benefit was that they did have a sewer hookup at the camp site. This is something we’re going to have to figure out on other trips. Our storage no longer has a dump where we can do a tank rinse. State parks (our go to for camping) always have a dump station, but usually that station has 1-4 dumps that serve an entire camping section. So, spending 20 minutes doing a tank rinse is ruuuuude. We could do it at our camp ground this time, but that’s pretty rare.
I’d go there again in a heartbeat. It’s at near the max of our easy weekend range (three hours away), but if we’re at full charge, I’m confident we could make it with only one stop.
Cedar Hill State Park Review TL:DR
- Great, private, nature-oriented camping spots
- Full hookup (50/30 (although our 30 didn’t work), water, electric, sewer hookup)
- Lake with beautiful views
- Good birding
- Should have good and plentiful trails, but we’ll have to give this a TBD since we didn’t get to see many of them this time due to weather.
