Happy New Year!!!
If you sent us a tray of Christmas cookies, cakes, or a stack of $100 bills to our temporary residence in Whitsett, Texas, we never received them!!
We hope that 2026 is an amazing year for each of you. We pray for good health, peace, and joy for you all. We are very appreciative of you following us on our “Quitirement” journey!
We’ve MOVED!! Our gig at the oil drilling field in Whitsett, Texas, has finished. On New Year’s Day, we received word at 11:30 a.m. that we would be done at the current site and were now needed for a new drilling pad near Cotulla, Texas, by 8:00 a.m. the next day. So we quickly got in “pack n go” mode by getting the RV ready for a travel day. We arrived at the new location yesterday at 7:30am and are just 70 miles west of where we were in Whitsett.
The new site is a drilling pad with two wells. The interesting thing about this location is that we are at the entrance of the access road, off of Hwy 97, and the drilling pad is 5.2 miles away from us!
The pad in Whitsett was a three-hole pad. They had finished drilling on Wednesday and were in the process of backing the drill out of the ground and pumping “casing” cement into the space around the piping so that in a month or two, they can go back and frac the well, and start oil production. From start to finish, it took five weeks to drill the three holes, each to about 22,000 feet (8000 feet vertically, then turn to horizontal for 10,000 feet. It takes about 2-3000 feet to make the turn from vertical drilling to horizontal drilling.
We expect to be at this site for about five weeks. Thenā¦ a surprise!!
Please look at the photos and read the photo captions. If you have any thoughts, comments or questions, please put them in the comments. We really enjoy your interactions!!
This was our drilling platform at the site in Whitsett, Texas.
The full moon in the beautiful South Texas sky.
Moonrise in Whitsett, Texas.
Our oil rig in the morning sunrise.
A drone shot of our site in Whitsett, TX.
A drone shot of our site in Whitsett, TX.
Chef Hal!
We saw lots of wildlife, including this buck.
Our generator ran 24/7. The diesel for the generator was replenished on Mondays and Thursdays. Here, the technician is doing an oil and filter change, which is done every 21 days!
One of the company reps gifted us some beef jerky and two amazing seasoned butt steaks.
Benny, after Hal served him some cereal for breakfast. Peep the amount of rice crispies!
We (Chris) decorated the inside of the RV for Christmas, and we bought this snowman to help bring some seasonal fun to the gate!
While in Whitsett, we went to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Three Rivers, TX. Because we can’t both be away from the oil field at the same time, we took turns with attending Mass every other Sunday. If we didn’t physically go to Mass, then we would watch Mass on TV.
Here we were gifted chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes, jalapeno, salad, and two cookies!
We finished this puzzle on Christmas Day!!
Methane is a natural by-product of the drilling process. Each drilling pad, and pads in production burn off the methane.
Another buck!
Clearly, times are tough. Can anyone organize a “GoFundMe” so Ken can get some new jeans?
The sunsets and sunrises have been BEAUTIFUL! This is the view we had of the drilling rig from the RV.
This is StarLink. INCREDIBLE speeds! The system cost $300 and we pay $165 per month for the service. Absolutely worth it!
Mickey Mouse Cactus?
New neighbors moved in a few days ago!
The rig “company man” and his wife sent this out to us on Christmas Day!!
Just moments after we got the notice that we needed to pack up and move to a new site, as we were flushing the black tank, we discovered a water leak. Just water, not black water!
