The next morning we had a visit from Carl, the ranch
manager, and he said he wanted us to move up by the gate and he wanted the gate to be closed at all times. We found that puzzling, since there is no fence beyond the right side of the gate! We didn’t have a phone signal, so I had to
drive into town to call Larry and let him know that we had been told to move. We needed to have a pad prepared for us at
the gate and, since we don’t have a ball for our hitch with us, we needed Larry
to come out and move the utility trailers for us. Later that afternoon, someone came to see that
a site was prepared for us. He leveled
the site with two loads of caliche gravel (which was more dirt that gravel) and
then asked Ron to check and see if it met his approval. It did.
 | |
| Leveling our new parking spot. If you look carefully, you can see that the fence on the right side of the gate opening goes out to the road, turns the corner and ends. There is no fence beyond that point! |
Wednesday was moving day. Larry came out to relocate the utility
trailers and set everything up again. Soon
we were back in business and it was just in time! Trucks were beginning to arrive with supplies
for the drilling site.
 |
| Our home site for the next 9 weeks |
Our first neighbors: Texas Longhorns and a few Santa Gertrudis cattle on the property behind where we were parked |
| Santa Gertrudis Bull |
We're just less than 6 miles out on the dirt road.....a
horrible, rutted, bumpy dirt road that is traveled by a large number of trucks
each day. We are parked just off of that
road on a side road that leads to the drilling site. When it's not dusty, it's muddy....the kind
that makes you get taller as you walk.
The ranch manager’s brother
also helps out around the ranch. He was
nicknamed ‘Frito’ as a boy because he was always eating Fritos. Frito told us that the owner of this ranch is
an avid hunter and lives in Louisiana. He
is also a big game hunter and has made numerous hunting trips to Africa and
other countries around the world.. Across
the road from us, he has built a private hunting lodge that looks out on a huge
lake below it. Inside are trophies of animals from hunting trips around the
world. We can see the lodge from where we’re parked, but not the lake. The owner stays in the lodge when he comes
here to hunt and also makes it available to guests and rents rooms to other
hunters who come to hunt on his land.
 |
| Close-up of the lodge that's on the property across from our gate |
Ron had been using his cell phone to check the time each
vehicle entered the gate, but that system didn’t work well while holding a
clipboard and pen. Friday morning I
drove 40 miles to the Walmart in Pleasanton to buy a watch before they began
moving the rig and equipment in that afternoon.
The trip took much longer than I expected and I knew Ron would be
worried. I couldn’t call him because I
had the only working phone with me. When
I finally got back, Ron couldn’t understand what took me so long. I was gone 4 hours! It took 30 minutes each way to drive on the
dirt road, and an hour each way to deal with the heavy truck traffic pulling in
and out of drilling sites along the highway to Pleasanton. I spent another hour at Walmart finding the
watch and waiting in a long checkout line!
Crazy!
While I was gone, Ron had heard from one of the drivers
that a gate guard at another site had been hit by one of the big trucks. He had crossed too closely in front of the
truck and the driver couldn’t see him.
Luckily, he wasn’t badly injured.
Friday and Saturday were busy days, with a constant flow
of traffic coming through the gate. We
found it easier for Ron to use a steno pad to collect their info and for me to transfer
the information to the log sheet so it would be legible. (Ron’s handwriting isn’t
the greatest). Sunday was a fairly slow day and I took over the gate while Ron
got some much needed rest. Instead of
each of us taking a shift during the night, as we did when worked at the last
oil well, Ron decided he could go to bed and get up to open the gate as
needed. I cover the gate during the day
when he needs to catch up on sleep. Ron
has no problem getting up at night and going right back to sleep. So far this system is working well for us. We leave the gate open during the day and one
(or both of us) sits outside or by the window with the gate in view. The ranch manager has come through the gate
many times and hasn’t commented on the gate being open. It just doesn’t make sense to us to have to
open the gate every time, especially since there is no fence on side! However, we do keep the gate closed at night.
The crew is housed in trailers that were brought in to
the drilling site. In addition to the
roughnecks, men with a variety of specialties make up the crew. Most of the men work two weeks and are off
two weeks, but there are others who work longer. There is a day and a night company man from
Chesapeake that oversee the drilling. There are two wells at the site. A1H was drilled before we arrived and B1H is
the well they are drilling now.
The at&t cell phone signal seems to come in on the
wind. One minute I have no signal and
then suddenly I have 3 bars. Saturday
and Sunday night I was able to briefly get online using my phone’s hot spot… Monday I
rarely had a signal at all.
Tuesday we had guests!
Our friends, Karen and Galen, drove down from San Antonio and spent the
afternoon with us. They are hoping to
work at a gate sometime soon, so they got a glimpse of what it will be like.
The faces and names of the workers and truck drivers are
becoming familiar to us now. Many stop
to talk to us and several have offered to pick up things for us when they go
into town.
Wednesday night was a busy one. Ron was exhausted by the time the night was
over. I got up at 6:00 and took over the
gate so he could sleep several hours without an interruption. It continued to be busy throughout the
day…one vehicle after another came through the gate. I took another shift that evening so Ron could
rest up for the night. It turned out to
be an average night, with Ron having to get up 3 times between midnight and
7:00 am. I wake him up when I hear the
bell (Ron sleeps through it) and he goes out to open the gate and log the
driver in.
Friday night we had a special treat. A caterer brought food in for the oil rig
workers and brought Ron and I each a plate of food, too! Fish, Cajun shrimp, fried breaded mushrooms,
hush puppies, bbq beans, green beans, and banana pudding. He also gave us a gallon of lemonade and a
gallon of sweet tea.
In the first 12 days we have logged in 466 vehicles. The outgoing number of vehicles has been
close to the same. Some of the trucks will
remain inside until the drilling is completed.
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