Brian & Patty's Awesome Adventure!: Buescher State Park and RV Bill

It was only about 50 miles from Luling to Buescher State Park. It was a bunch of two lane roads, but of coarse in Texas all the two lane roads are 65 miles an hour!

State Park

We had wanted to meet up with Bill and Jenn because we had not seen them in over a year when they flew back to Ventura to do the ABC of RV'ing DVD's for Good Sam.

It looked like we again were going to miss them, but Bill called me up and told me to look up a product called JTB Power Solutions. He thought I might want it because I have two air conditioners in my rig. You need 50 amp power to run both and even them sometimes it doesn't work if it's week power.

Most Thousand Trails are only 30 amp. It WILL not drive both airs. In addition you need to be careful about running the fireplace heater and the microwave and water heater and the same time, etc...

Most power poles also have a 20 amp receptacle that is on a separate circuit. You used to be able use a 30 amp and 20 amp splitter to combine the two to make 50 amps.

By code the 20 amp now has a ground fault circuit or GFCI. That is like what you have in your bathroom or kitchen with the reset in the middle. The problem is that when you combine it with the 30 amp it immediately throws the breaker and will not work!

Using advanced computer circuit boards JTB has figured out how to safely (It is UL approved) override this problem.

Without going more into it because Bill is writing an article for Motorhome and Trailer Life magazines he used my 5th wheel as the photo shoot review RV. That means I got a free system and free installation! Camping World sells the system on sale for $799.00. That is not including installation!

Well that is all the excuse we needed to meet up with them! We originally were going to stay for 3 nights which was enough time for the install but after spending a day with them we extended for 3 more nights for a total of 6 nights! It was so good to see them again!

Bill , Jenn, Brie and Ginger

Here I am helping with the install.

Under the hood!

My 20 amp plug was not working. It turned out the breaker was bad so we had the ranger replace it. You can see Bill's rig next to ours. He was in 2 we were in 3.

Fixing the breaker

We had a walking path to each others rigs between the trees.

Bills Rig

The JTB works fantastic! You have to decide which circuit to put on it. Normally Bill said you would put the second air, but we decided to put both the fireplace and the second air. It would throw the breaker if you ran them both at the same time, but why would you??

If you do not plug in the 20 amp it runs like normal and bypasses that breaker.

Running off the 30 amp and the 20 amp I was able to run both airs. Then I turned off the airs and ran the fireplace, the stand alone parabolic dish heater, the electric water heater, and the microwave! This would have been impossible with just 30 amps!

If I have a weak 50 amps I can still plug in the 20 and make it 70 amps, or if I have a 50 and 30 amp in the box I can run 80 amp. I have even seen two 30 amps in a box and I can run both 30's. The 20 amp cord is actually a 30 amp with a 20 amp adapter so it is very versatile.

After we (I should say Bill) finished the installation we took the Gehr's out to diner. They wanted to go to Zimmerhanzel's which is a famous BBQ place in Smithville. Pretty amazing, Brisket for four, 5 sausage rings, and 1/2 rack of pork ribs for $28.00!

Zimmerhanzels

We also went into to town looking for the "Hope Floats" house from the movie. This is the house, but we found out they added a fence for the movie.

Hope Floats House

The magnolia trees were blooming and the flowers smelled great. It is what you would expect in a Texas city that Hope Floats was filmed. What is funny is that I have never seen the film, but I looked on the Dish guide after we saw the house and that very night it was showing on a cable channel. I recorded it just to look at the house.