For most of us, picking up the mail is either a necessary evil or an easy way to get outside with a destination in mind.
When you aren’t stationary for more than 2-4 days at a time, getting your mail is an entirely different experience and the route to our mailbox had us visiting armadillos, Aggies, and a gigantic statue of a Texas legend.
Our mailing address is in Livingston Texas. Having just visited Austin (post found here) and on our way towards Houston, here’s the route we took to pick up our mail on site, which we don’t typically do. If you’re only interested in understanding how we get our mail while travelling full time, skip down to the section on Livingston.
LAKE SOMERVILLE STATE PARK
We started the journey at Lake Somerville State Park. We camped at Nails Creek Campground which was on the southwest side of this park. Our site had both water and electricity, but there were primitive sites and sites in between – something for everyone.
It was quiet in late February, but we were told it gets quite busy later in the season. In addition to well-maintained campgrounds, mountain biking, hiking, horse back riding, birding, fishing, boating, paddling and swimming can be found here. The park allows fishing from the shore without a license (but you’ll need a license if you’re in a boat), and you can rent canoes and kayaks in the area.
This park has over 40 miles of trails and we opted to explore a few on the bikes. Glad we did, as we ran into the only armadillos that we saw during our 4 weeks in Texas!
COLLEGE STATION
Home to the Aggies of Texas A&M, we drove through College Station as we’d heard this might be a good retirement community.
The college campus is really spread out and the buildings look new (not like the historic colleges of Vanderbilt in Nashville or the University of Texas at Austin). The area we drove through near the college consisted mostly of modern strip malls with shops, salons, and restaurants and the surrounding land was pretty flat.
We didn’t get a retirement vibe here so kept moving.
HUNTSVILLE
Driving east from College Station we passed through Huntsville Texas which is known (at least in Texas) as the birthplace of Sam Houston and features a 77ft tall statue of the man himself. We had to stop. Not knowing our Texas history, we learned that Sam Houston was a War of1812 hero, a general during the Texas Revolutionary War, the first elected president of the Republic of Texas, and later a Senator when Texas joined the United States. He was an advocate for the Cherokee nation and was born in Huntsville; thus the gigantic statue and visitor center!
Next stop, our mailbox!
LIVINGSTON
If you’ve ever wondered how we get our mail, an organization named “Escapees RV Club” is the answer.
Essentially our mail is sent to a street and number in Livingston Texas, home to the Escapees mail center. We pay them to throw out any ads (but not catalogs) and scan the unopened mail we receive. We are notified of these scans and then, online, can choose from 4 options for each piece of mail:
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- Discard
- Open and scan all contents for $.25 per page
- Forward to the latest address that we”ve provided Escapees. (Often, we’ll use the address of the next friend, relative, or campground that receives mail that we plan to visit and Escapees will gather together a “package” of mail and send it on).
- Hold for pick-up.
As part of our downsizing process, we moved all bills and banking online. Now that Escapees removes the junk mail, it is shocking how little first class mail we receive!
There are several other organizations like Escapees that offer similar services.
Anyway, since we were in the area, we thought we’d check out “our mailing address” by picking up our mail on-site. Escapees also operates a huge campground, so we stayed overnight and then enjoyed walking historic downtown Livingston before getting back on the road for our second-to-last Texas destination – Houston!
