"This Week at Al's Hideaway" 3/8/26

This week at Al’s Hideaway has been a little quieter than usual. We’re expecting some much-needed rain, so we had to cancel FRY-DAY this week — but don’t worry, we’ll be back at it next Friday!

In the meantime, we’ve been doing a little spring cleaning around the campground and getting things ready for one of the biggest events of the season — Thunder in the Hill Country. It won’t be long before the rumble of motorcycles fills these roads again.

Our Story – Turning the Dream into Dirt

Last week we left off right after finding what we believed could be the perfect property.

So we decided to make an offer.

And just like that… the seller accepted right on the spot.

Suddenly things got real.

Al’s Hideaway was no longer just a dream floating around in our heads — it officially had a home. Now the real work could begin.

After closing on the property, the first challenge was simple: figure out what we actually had.

The land was thick. Overgrown. Cedar everywhere. You could barely walk through parts of it.

Jennifer was working on a project down in Corpus Christi at the time, so every weekend we would meet out at the property. We'd camp, clear brush, cut cedar, and whenever conditions allowed — we'd burn.

Our “camp” was about as simple as it gets.

A 14-foot trailer, a 10×10 pop-up canopy, and an air mattress. If the weather got bad, we’d climb into the Jeep and sleep there instead.

Every weekend it was Jennifer and me, along with BoBo and Betty, and usually a friend or two who would swing by to lend a hand. Little by little the place started opening up.

You could finally begin to see the shape of the land.

The possibilities.

Once we had it opened up enough to really understand the terrain, we brought in Jason with Yellow Dog Land Clean-Up — and what that man could do with equipment in a week or two was nothing short of amazing. Areas that had taken us months to fight through suddenly began to look like a real property.

Now we could finally see it.

The roads.
The cabin sites.
The spaces where people would gather.

The next step was finalizing the layout and design so we could start crunching real numbers.

And let me tell you… designing a campground sounds simple until you try to agree on exactly how it should look.

Stay tuned for next week’s chapter to find out how many arguments it took to finalize the design.

Until then…

Happy Trails.
Be Safe & God Bless.

— Al

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