We spent four days in Livingston, Texas at Rainbow's End RV Park. We needed to get Pat's Texas driver's license, pick up some very large packages at our mail service, and meet-up with some family friends from Pat's childhood who are longtime full-time RVers that happened to be staying in the same park for several months.
We are members of the Escapees RV Club based in Livingston. They provide services that establish our residency in Texas and our mail forwarding solution. They also own a few RV parks that have substantial discounts for members. The Escapees Mail Forwarding Service enables you to receive your mail, no matter where in North America you travel. When you subscribe, you get a unique mailing address in Texas. When they receive mail for you, they scan your mail and give you the option of trashing it, holding it for pickup in Livingston, or forwarding it to you on the road. We had ordered several large items delivered to our address that we needed to pick up "live" rather than paying for shipping, so we decided to stay a few days in their Livingston park.
We had planned this trip some time ago but recently learned that some of Pat's childhood family friends were staying at Rainbow's End for a few months. Kenneth and Anita have been full-time RVing for many years and Pat often thought of stories he had heard second-hand about their lifestyle as his and Tim's RV plans began to form years ago. Kenneth's parents and Pat's parents became the best of friends when they moved to Silsbee, Texas, the year before Pat was born. Kenneth, and Pat's oldest brother, Robert, were classmates, teammates, and best friends throughout high school. Pat had recently connected with Anita on Facebook and learned that they were going to cross paths. The park even moved us to a site next door to them upon our arrival at the RV park. Pat had not seen Kenneth and Anita in probably over 50 years! We really grilled them for all of their wealth of RV/travel knowledge. We came away from our visit feeling much more prepared for our travels!
Kenneth's sister, Roni, got wind of our visit so she and her husband, Fred, came over from Houston one night to join the fun. We had connected with Roni and Fred a few times in the past when visiting our grandkids (and their parents 😉) in Houston, but it was great to get this group together to reminisce about Silsbee and our late parents; our other siblings John, Danny and Mollie REALLY missed out!
Tim was kind to sit through all the Silsbee talk so we rewarded him with Cajun food.
Fred was too and he even helped out when Kenneth was teaching us about RV maintenance.
Our Internet and TV solution
Besides the old friends, we got a new friend in Livingston, our Starlink arrived in the mail. We had planned on using hotspots from our phones and a standalone device for our streaming, TV, and Internet services; however, we found that the streaming latency began to be very annoying. Starlink is a satellite constellation (3,000 now with 12,000 planned) providing Internet access coverage to 40 countries through a small antenna dish that is constantly searching for the nearest satellite. We aren't crazy about the company owner, but the service is tailor made for our full-time RV lives.
"Quick" Rainbow's End RV Park Review 11/28-12/01
Rainbow's End RV Park is a quality RV park with level sites, laundry, and somewhat dated bath and shower facilities. They have a community center with a DVD library, a (book) library, and some games. They have activities in the community center, but we didn’t take advantage of any this stay. It has lots of trees and feels like you are deep in the woods even though it is right off of a decent highway (some road noise accompanies that). The Escapees RV Club Headquarters is onsite and the mail center is there. While we were there, we took advantage of their SmartWeigh service, which details your weight distribution, gives a precise height measurement, and provides information on how much air you should keep in your tires given the weight distribution. Our weight was good for all tires and sides! We will stay at this park often to get our mail, but we would probably choose to stay here even if that wasn't the determining factor.
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