The shoulder...

We had been anticipating it, but it happened faster than we thought.  No, not the shoulder on the side of the road as we cruise through a curve - this is the start of the shoulder season.

When I took my walk this morning, there were plenty of people getting ready to roll, or have the storage folks move their rig.  The storage area connected with Hart Ranch is huge; hundreds of rigs in there.  Members get a heck of a deal: $225 a year for an RV storage site.  A lot of members store their RVs here and pay the $12 to have a rig moved from storage to an RV site... you can have a towable RV and not have to own a big truck to tow it, as long as you are only using it here at Hart Ranch.

It is not unusual to see a travel trailer or 5th wheel all closed up on Monday morning - the occupants have gone home and it is waiting for the very efficient storage movers to pick it up and put it back in storage.

There is a rhythm here with RVs coming and going: there are folks like us who as spending a couple months here, utilizing their 21 days on an RV site, then 9 days out (or into the Meadowlands, if they have a membership that allows that).  There are the weekenders who come in on Thursday or Friday, then leave again on Monday morning.  And, there are some folks who essentially live here, doing the 21/9 day rotation for months at a time.

This Monday morning is a bit different, though... the flow of incoming RVs to fill those empty sites has slowed to a trickle.  For families with kids, if school hasn't already started, it will soon - RV getaways take a back seat to back-to-school activities.  Seasonal guests are thinking about heading south, perhaps taking their time to RV along the way to a winter destination.

We expect an upswing in usage for the Labor Day weekend, then the retired folks who like to RV in the shoulder season will come to the Black Hills.  The motorcycles that populate Iron Mountain Road will be replaced by minivans and sedans.  And, we'll still be scooting.

For years, we did the "fun summer jobs" to escape the heat of south Texas and not have to be in the search for an RV site during the summer, competing with families with screaming kids and barking dogs.  Now, we enjoy being in a cooler place for a while... and Hart Ranch is that place.  We really like being at home during south Texas's shoulder season, which is October, November, and early December... it is quiet (the summer vacationers have gone home), but the weather is still lovely.  It's kinda like leaving the Black Hills as the weather turns cool and getting another "summer" at home.

Retired RVers know and appreciate the shoulder season in different parts of the country... you can take an easier pace.  RV parks won't be booked solid.

Here at Hart Ranch, they will close down some of the perimeter areas of the park, keeping the center portion of the resort open year 'round.  That process won't start for a couple weeks; about the time we are ready to start our trek south.

In the meantime, we'll enjoy this shoulder season for a while.  The high today was 70º.  Breezy.  It was cool enough this morning (56º) that I needed a sweatshirt on my morning walk and bike ride.  Pretty nice, actually; especially compared to the thunderstorms that rolled through last night.  The radar was active enough that we took a moment to pull in our slideouts... we did get some small hail along with the wind and rain.

Everything is still lush and green here right now.  Typically, the ground cover has turned to its fall colors by now, but this has been a wet summer.  Soon enough, Mother Nature will give those plants the signal, regardless of the moisture.  We understand that same signal.  ;-)