The list is gettting shorter; GO HOME is nearing the top

What can you say about Thackerville Oklahoma? Hmmm, the people are friendly; the campground is nice; OK, that about covers it. It is not a really pretty area although there are a lot of ranches. This is one of the prime areas for raising quarter horses! They have 2 pool tables vice one and they have all the balls and some adult sized sticks. We have played pool both nights we have been here. Cheryl is starting to pick up the essentials and is playing quite a bit better. Another couple challenged us to doubles last night. After we said yes, they pulled out their own pool cues and we knew we were in big trouble. It didn’t work out quite that way though; we split 2/1 with them having the 2. Of course, the one game we had in our column was more of a loss by them than a win by us. It was fun. There was live music last night; 3 guys with guitars playing western music.

Yesterday we went in search of a memory foam mattress topper. Cheryl’s back has been getting worse since we have been on the road so we needed to do something. We found what we were looking for at Walmart. They had several different variations and we settled on a mattress sized 8 inch thick with 5 inches of heavy foam and 3 inches of memory foam. It was the right width but is 10 inches too long for the bed. We put it on the bed just like it was to try it out. It seems to have worked wonders. Cheryl felt much better this morning.

We had apple pancakes and then headed out. We went up to Gene Autrey, Oklahoma. Gene wasn’t born there but he did have a very large ranch there that he used to winter his rodeo (he had a touring rodeo and western show for quite a few years). The people changed the name of the town in his honor and then built a museum dedicated to the singing cowboys of the silver screen. It was quite a collection of movie stills, props, movie posters and all manner of saddles, guns, clothing, toys, records and whatever else you can think of. We have been watching some Roy Rogers movies and it was interesting to see many of the people exhibited in the museum in the films. We have always seen them but we just didn’t know their names. We learned a bunch of information like Ken Curtis of Festus fame on Gunsmoke spent time as one of the Sons of the Pioneers. Didn’t know that. It was a neat experience but the museum had so much stuff in it that it was cluttery. Cheryl and I could go along a wall of exhibits and see completely different things.

We left Gene Autrey, Oklahoma and headed up to Ada, Oklahoma. Cheryl was curious as Ada was her mother’s name so we drove over to Ada. It was a fairly large place although there were a lot of empty stores. As we approached town we found a place called Martin’s, an old fashioned meat shop. We are always on the lookout for different places and throwback places so we turned around and went in. It was a large butcher shop. They had several long meat counters with the largest variety of meats we had seen for some time (the grocery stores here seem to have a very limited variety of meats). Amongst the wide variety of meats were their own sausages, and a whole line of smoked meats.

They had a line of something they called jerky although it was more like a thin sausage than the strips of meat we are used to seeing for jerky. There was a young man from California behind the meat counter who snapped off about a foot long section of this jerky and handed it to us to try. It was more like a dried sausage about the size of breakfast links or a little smaller. It was delicious with a real smokey taste. It did not have the leathery texture we are used to in jerky and had a spicy flavor. We also bought some smoked beef bacon that they made. I had beef bacon once years ago in Pennsylvania. We stayed over in a b&b which was on a dairy farm. I had seen it in a National Geographic Traveler Magazine and on a trip to Williamsburg, we stopped there. Breakfast was served about 8:00 and you ate with the farm hands who had just finished their morning milking. The breakfast was huge and varied. One of the items was this beef bacon (made from beef raised there on the farm). They also had an Amish Cook who made breads and pastries. The people who owned the farm told us that they believed every meal should end with some kind of desert so the morning pastries and pies were incredible.

Martin’s also had a small lunch area. Among the things they had was their own smoked pulled pork. We had pulled pork sandwiches. They were very moist and were delicious served on fresh hamburg rolls.

Back to the business at hand. We added a nice steak to our booty and bailed for Ada. We drove through the town. Cheryl was looking for a building marked “Ada Town Hall” but we never did find one. The big buildings in town were administration buildings for the Chickasaw Nation. There were some really nice buildings as part of that complex but we did not find what we were looking for.

We turned around in a Home Depot parking lot. They had the usual sheds and storage buildings but they also had a line of barn house shells. The one on display was 16 x 20; was 2 stories with a stairway inside and a nice porch on the front. The inside was one large room with another upstairs. It was probably small to live in but it was also the smallest version. The base unit was 14,000 with the nicer display model 21,000 (installed on your foundation). You had to put in all of the wiring and plumbing and any walls you want and finish off the inside but it was kind of a neat idea.

We headed back to camp and had supper and headed over to the community hall (when we were kids, it was the rec hall, as adults it is the community hall) for Bingo. It has been years since I have played Bingo but hey, it was an activity. Like everything else around here, it started before the advertised hour but we got there in time. They played the game a little differently; no balls. Now, how do you play Bingo without balls you ask? With cards says I. Each table had up to 5 people and a deck of cards marked with all of the Bingo letters and numbers. Each deck was dealt out into 5 hands and the hands distributed to the players at your table. If you didn’t have 5, there was a dead hand in the middle. Then the caller (who had their own deck) would shuffle and draw the cards on at a time calling out the combination (B4, O75, etc). The goal was to get rid of all of your cards knocking when you were down to one and yelling Bingo when your cards were gone. At the beginning of each game, everyone threw in their ante (for want of a better word). The winner picked up the pot and collected the next one. We played 7 games (nothing goes very long here, short attention span) with the ante being a dime for the first three games, a quarter for the next 2, a half buck for one game and the last game of the evening was a buck.

We were seated with another new couple from the park who, it turned out, were camped right next to us. The games moved pretty fast. The caller ran off the numbers quickly and soon we had us a winner. I was down to 2 cards remaining. The next game went about the same except that I did get to knock with one card remaining before the same guy yelled Bingo! Hmmm, I just hate it when the same people win every time. The third game went quite a bit longer and I got to hell Bingo (along with 2 other people, one of whom was, you guessed it, the same guy!). After splitting the pot, I got $.40; better than nothing but not much). That was about it for the night. A woman won the two quarter pots but neither of us won anything else. It was fun though.

Saturday arrived with more gorgeous weather. We headed for the community hall for an advertised flea market and craft sale. Cheryl thought about tossing some of her scrubbies out for sale but we wanted to check the place out first. It was a good thing. No one showed up so we went for a walk around the park stopping to chat with people who were out. We headed out to find a store to do some grocery shopping as we were running out of some of the perishables. We drove down to Gainesville, TX (another pretty good sized place) and set out to find a grocery store.

The first one we saw was a Tom Thumb. They are one of the chains that are putting out bags of groceries that you can buy and then donate to the relief programs. The store was really busy and we were interested in the program so we went in. This was another of those stores that have ridiculously high prices and then put discount tags on most everything forcing you to get the store discount card. We have played that game in several places getting the card for a single shopping trip (and saving about $10 on an $80 grocery bill). We looked at some of the items trying to decide whether to get the card or just buy what we need and discovered that the discount prices weren’t all that good. An example is Beringer’s White Zinfandel wine that we pay $4 a bottle for at home was $9 marked down to $7 with the card. Many of the items were like that so we put everything back and left to find another store.

Down the road we found a Walmart Supercenter (out here, they are all supercenters). The prices were way better here and the selection much greater. We are starting to see some of the “home” brands again. For the first time on the trip, we were able to buy Hellmann’s. We bought the same thing but out west it is Best. For the first time, we saw Pepperidge Farms bread and a few other things. We spent all afternoon grocery shopping. We scoured the coffee aisle and found nothing that interested us. There was very little decaf and no decaf that was the least bit interesting. Even the bulk “better” coffee (Millstone) had only flavored coffee and the coffees on the shelves were all mild or medium roasts (this wasn’t just Walmart; all of the stores were like that). We moseyed over to the Starbucks and bought some Pike Place Decaf. It is more money but at least it is interesting coffee.

We stopped at another western shop but the hat Cheryl is looking for still eludes her. She looked at boots but didn’t buy any of those either. Back at Camp, we made supper and watched TV while we played on our computers.

Another day has dawned brightly. The people down here have talked about a rainy season during the summer but we have seen no sign of it (of course we spent a lot of the summer in the desert). We have had to close the curtains of the camper and manufacture rainy days just to get days off (just kidding).

We are thinking about what church service to attend today. There is one here in the campground and a lot of churches around to choose from. The one that peaks our interest is the Baptist Church just off the campground. They are having a bluegrass gospel group in to perform at their service so we may just go there. More afterwards. OK, it is more time. We didn’t make the church service. I don’t know what happened to the time but by the time we took our showers and got ready to go, it was too late so we settled in for a relaxed Sunday.

We did discover that the Cup Race was on ABC so we got to see that. It was in Dover, De and is one of the races we used to go to every year so it was fun to watch. Beyond that there was good news and bad news. The Patriots game was not broadcast in this area so I had to follow it on the computer. Is that the bad news or the good news? The way they played it was probably the good news because it was easier to shut off the computer than it is to shut off the TV when they are actually on. The Pat got schmucked but Kyle Bush blew an engine and finished 43rd and Jimmy Johnson didn’t win so there was enough good news to make the day worth while.

We have had a nice interlude here in Thackerville. We haven’t done much sightseeing but we did meet an awful lot of really nice people and participated in some of the campground activities. They played Bingo twice while we were here and we had fun playing that. On the second night, as we were walking over to the community hall, I told Cheryl that it was her responsibility to win the big pot that night. I had won a pot the first night but it was her turn and she should really win the big one. Well, there were more people the second night (16 vice 12) and the games were lively. Cheryl got down to 1 card a couple of times and I got there once but without any finality. On the last game (the big pot of the evening) Cheryl got off to a furious start then fell off as her card count dwindled. Eventually a couple of people knocked (1 card remaining) and Cheryl still had 3 cards. Then she got a couple of calls and knocked with just one card remaining. They called another number and 2 other people knocked. Finally they called her remaining card and she stared at it for a brief moment not believing that they had called her number. The caller was just about to call another number (they call them fast around here) when she yelled “BINGO” and took home $16 as she didn’t have to share the pot with anyone else. (do you suppose the IRS reads these blogs?)

We mostly drove around the area and looked at things. We drove over to the WinStar Casino and spent the afternoon walking around watching people play the slots and play cards. We talked to a woman in the high stakes bingo room (not operating at that time). We were there on a Monday afternoon and I was surprised at a couple of things. First, this casino was huge. It was all gambling rooms (no shops or hotels like the Vegas Casinos) although they are building a hotel in the back. It was probably the biggest gambling area I have seen (the woman in the Bingo Room said it was the third biggest casino floor in the country). Second, the place was really busy. There were a lot of people in the slots areas and quite a few playing blackjack. I never did find the craps and roulette tables but there were a lot of blackjack tables in two of the rooms. There was also a separate poker room. They listed several different games but it looked like all of the working tables were playing Texas Holdem. They had 14 active tables with 10 or more people at each table. There were several restaurants as well.

This morning, we went back to the Casino. They have a senior’s free buffet on Wednesday mornings so we decided to check it out. What a spread! They had a whole buffet section of just pastries and about 4 other sections with about anything you could imagine including chicken fried steak. You may run into chicken fried steak occasionally but down here every restaurant has it. It seems to be a staple of their diet. It is a piece of cube steak battered like fried chicken and fried. Interesting.

We drove down into Gainesville for most of our shopping. We scoured the western shops for a specific hat that Cheryl was looking for. We have seen them other places but here in Texas and Oklahoma, they have been scarce. This last shop had some but they weren’t very good. We shot pool here in the campground several times. Cheryl is picking it up pretty well.

Well, that about describes our time in Thackerville. It wasn’t exciting as other stops on this trip have been but it was nice weather and really friendly people. We have met so many people that live in their motorhomes or trailers and just meander around the country. Some of them have “home” parks where they spend large chunks of time and others spend a month here and a week there and just keep moving. It is fun to listen to them talk about the different parks and the things they have done in them. Every once in a while, they talk about a park we have been to. It is fun to compare “war” stories about the places we know about. They are also filled with advice of places to go and places to avoid (we have been to some of them too).

They have talked about Coast to Coast (to which most of them belong) saying that the parks for the most part are nice but more often than not are out of the way. They are located in places away from the real attractions. We have noticed that and spent quite a bit on gas seeing the attractions from Coast to Coast campgrounds. It is a long argued debate whether to spend the money on the campground or on traveling to the attractions from Coast Campgrounds (which are substantially cheaper since they are a group of linked campgrounds where you must be a member to use them). My opinion is that next time I will probably balance them better staying in the national park campgrounds when we visit a park even if it is for just a few days and then use the Coast campgrounds in between. We missed one important park because we just got tired of driving around. We picked a central Coast Campground and discovered it was a 2 ½ drive to get anywhere and we only got a single day at most in any of the parks.

Just as a note, we heard that one of the arches fell soon after we were there. Looking at the pictures brought to mind the Old Man of the Mountains. It was beautiful when you saw it but was just a piece of rock with a lot of memories afterwards.

Today is moving day. We leave Thackerville and head off towards Memphis. We could make it in one big moving day but we will just go half way and stay in the Flying J in Texarkana, Arkansas. That is about 5 hours on the road and it will take another 6 to get to Memphis. We got up early to hit the buffet before the busses get to it. It was really funny to get up before the sun (6 am). It doesn’t get light for at least another hour. Since breakfast, we have been working on the mattress we bought for the bed. It was too long. We had to shorten it by nearly a foot. It is an 8 inch foam mattress with 5 inches of dense foam and 3 inches of memory foam. It has helped Cheryl immensely but we cannot close the slide with that mattress on the bed. We had to take off the covers (2) and cut it. Cheryl is now sewing up the first cover then we will reposition it on the bed and make the bed again before closing the slide. We have several things that we put on the bed for traveling, and then we will unhook the facilities and hook up and load the trailer and hit the road. We usually hit the road around 10. That gets the traffic for the working people out of the way and lessens the traffic for us.

We will take our time and stop somewhere to make lunch before arriving at the flying J just at supper time. They have spots for RVs to stay overnight so we will stay there.

Then we will make our way into Memphis in the middle of the next day. Hopefully we will be staying at a campground near Graceland. Then it is off to DC and home after that. This blog is about done. A few more entries then we will be home preparing for winter.

Happy Trails to y’all from the great American West!

Clayton & Cheryl

A quiet week just north of Waco (except for Ike)

The dawn of a new day, a new location, new things to see and do and another area to explore. This campground advertises waterfront and a golf course. Now that we are set up I can’t even see the water and have no idea where the golf course is. They advertised 50 amps but I only seem to be able to find 30 amps but who’s counting. We have only had 30 amps in many of the places that advertise 50 amps. This place said that only 40 foot RVs were allowed but I am sitting in a space in my 35 footer with my 28 foot trailer hooked to the back and my car sitting directly behind the trailer and not hanging out in the road. There is still room in front of the camper to park it there too so you could easily put 85 to 90 feet of rig in here (but who’s counting?)

We were talking on the way down here that we are running out of moving days. Don’t get me wrong, we still have several places to go but the majority of the really great places have already been visited and in spite of all efforts, we are working our way back towards New England. It has been an interesting trip. It would have been nice to spend a month or two in each of the places but this was a journey of exploration. Neither of us has ever been to this part of the country. I have been to southern California for work a few times but that does not give you a feeling for the area just a taste; the knowledge you want more. This has been the more.

It has been an exciting trip; a visit to an alien landscape for someone from New England. Dealing with Temperatures of more than 120 degrees day after day in a desert scene gives you a chance to grow. You learn about dehydration and learn how to drink 4 or 5 quarts of water a day. You learn about the warning signs of dehydration and how to hop barefooted from a shady spot to the pool. You watch the level of the pool drop several inches in a single day with temperatures exceeding 123. The desert can be an exciting place. Certainly it is not the same as backpacking through the New Hampshire mountains. There are a completely different set of survival skills needed to live there. The natives talk about how cold the water is in the Colorado River but we all know that it can’t compare to York Beach in July.

We have seen spectacular scenery in the National Parks out here. First and foremost, the Grand Canyon is just that; GRAND; beyond the pictures and films we have seen throughout our lives. It is massive and you can’t see much more than a small bit of it. Seeing the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde brought to a close a dream of mine that formed when I was a child. Monument Valley was used in several of the great westerns of my life and seeing the area and the films during the same period was a thrill. Seeing the Carlsbad Caverns added to our cache of caves. This one was totally different from any of the others in that it was created very differently from the rest.

Then there is our visit to Texas. We have not seen anything as spectacular as the Grand Canyon but just being in Texas (can’t say that word enough times) has been really fun. Seeing the Alamo where one of my childhood heroes (Davey Crockett) died in the single most important act in the war against Mexico. There were several pieces of “real” Davey Crockett memorabilia on display including books, journals, letters, clothing and firearms that actually belonged to Crockett. I realize that the real Davey Crockett and the Davey Crockett of the Walt Disney films are different but those stories on Disney World really worked up an interest in some parts of history in me.

Being in San Antonio, Austin, Pecos, Waco and later this week, Dallas and Fort Worth provides a great cross section of recognizable Texan cities. Visiting all of the LBJ sites gave a new image to one of our presidents in a time of conflict. And then there is the hill country of Texas. Bandera was one of the most fun times on the trip. Nothing spectacular like the National Parks but a trip back into the “old west” of the shows and movies and heroes that we grew up with. Gunfights and Cattledrives through town along with horses everywhere provided a glimpse back to a different time.

The people we have met are the centerpiece of the trip. We have met a lot of really nice people. We have spent time with a lot of people who have spent several years of their lives traveling around the country living in their motorhomes or trailers. These aren’t a few scattered people but a lot of them. They spend time here and they spend time there. Sometimes they work in a place and stay there for a month or even a summer working part time and living in an area. They are members of Coast to Coast like we are and several other groups that are similar. They told us which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t like (differing feelings on the same places).

We have had places were we were on the run all the time and places where we just melted into the landscape and enjoyed the solitude. We spent time in places where the summer was considered the off season and the campground was practically empty (too hot). Winter around here is the busy season. We stayed in a place near San Diego that had a snow storm a few years ago that dropped 4 feet of snow at one dropping (mountains but still Southern Cal). We stayed in a campground that was one of the crummiest campgrounds you have ever seen but the view from your crappy site was one of the most beautiful of the trip. Go figure!!! It is a big country and the southwest is very different from anywhere I have ever been.

As you drive across the southwest, you can just see herds of cattle being driven along the trails. You can picture the chuckwagon moving on ahead to set up the chuck and have dinner ready when the herd arrives. You wonder what went through many of the pioneer’s minds when they uprooted from the fertile valleys of Pennsylvania and headed west through the deserts and mountains and areas like the Capital Reef National Park that just threw up great barriers along the route. Wow, this is just a great country.

Ok, that’s about enough of that. Now we have to face the fact that Hurricane Ike is headed our way. We moved back further from the coast but the path last night was headed right for us. We are a little north and west of Waco, about an hour or more south of Dallas/Fort Worth. The path this morning seems to have shifted even more to the east. Ike’s path looks like a big hook. It is coming through the gulf and curving towards the Texas coast. As it comes ashore, it continues to curve towards an easterly heading ending up almost due east.

We came up here to put more land between us and the storm. It is so big that we may not be able to avoid it completely but the more land we put between us and the coast; the more the storm will degrade before it hits us. Their warnings were getting worse but this is the area that they are sending the people evacuated from the coastal areas so we should be ok. I thought last night of bailing completely but I would have headed east from Dallas and now that is in the path too so we will just hunker down here and see what happens. We can be on the road in 20 minutes if the paths change. The trailer is still on the camper so all we have to do is batten down the hatches inside, pull in the slides and load the car on the trailer and we have gotten real good doing that (practice makes perfect). We have a full tank of gas in the camper so if the power fails, we can run the generator for quite a while.

Another day has dawned. Today is laundry day. It is foolish to try to go anywhere. The highway is loaded with people evacuating the coast and heading inland. There are more than a million people evacuating the coastal areas and parts of Houston. The traffic reports have all of the highways slow and crowded so we will just stay around here and not contribute. Laundry is a good bet. We are a little early but we can restock using time that we can’t go anywhere with.

It is sunny and bright. It is hot and the weather says that the air will continue to be hot and humid as a precursor to the storm. We will be ready with the A/C.

We headed into town and did our laundry and went to the post office. We mailed a bunch of stuff and found that our mail didn’t get here. We have found that the post office’s Priority (2-day) mail rarely gets to us in 2 days. Most often it is 3 days and in Bandera it missed the 3 day delivery. Unfortunately we forgot to check it on the 4th day, they were closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Labor Day) and we did get it on Tuesday so we have no idea how long it really took there. At least here they checked each envelope that we thought was over the weight limit and found 2 ok and 2 over the limit. In one other place, they felt to find the heaviest envelope and then charged us for every one at that weight. I pointed out that 2 of the envelopes were much lighter but she just looked me in the eye and put the extra postage on the envelope and told me how much I owed her. Not really friendly or cooperative (or fair).

When we came out of the laundry, the sky was overcast. It has been hot and humid today. The TV said that would happen. The tropical air is part of the storm system and is very humid. We watched pictures from Galveston in the morning. The surf was really high and was coming up over the sea walls already and the storm was still 12 hours away. Heraldo Riviera was interviewing some firemen along the seawall when a rather large wave broke on the seawall and completely covered them. The firemen looked out to sea and left the area, Heraldo continued to talk to the camera but kept looking over his shoulder.

The woman at the Laundry said she wasn’t worried about the Hurricane as much as the Tornados that sometimes accompany them. Oh Great, Something else to worry about. We will get the storm in the daylight that is a positive. Galveston will get it around midnight. They are expecting a storm surge of 20 to 25 feet and the water is coming over the seawall already. The TV stations here are showing the Doppler of the storm in the corner of the picture all of the time.

We watched the storm coverage as it came ashore last night. Ike is so big that it covered the entire Gulf of Mexico. The storm surge hit Galveston long before the storm hit the area. Galveston is a barrier island much like North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The buildings are mostly constructed on stilts but the feeling is that that may not be enough. Houston is next on Ike’s itinerary. Houston sits at the northern end of a large bay and is the oil center of Texas. There are refineries and storage depots. This hit on Houston will most certainly affect the gas and oil prices and availability across the country. If the oil business in Houston is down for any period of time, we will all pay for it.

We got up this morning to some wind. It is not heavy. The storm is so large that we are under the storm’s influence yet the storm is still down in Houston. The predicted path still has us on the outer left edge of the storm as it begins its turn to the northeast. Fort Worth has a huge festival (Grapefest) in the town of Grapevine. They were expecting a quarter of a million people visiting the festival. They plan to still hold it but know the count of people will be way down.

In the town of Carrolton outside of Dallas, a group is holding a pancake breakfast. They have an evacuation shelter next door and invited all of the evacuees to attend the breakfast free. We expect the worst of what we will get closer to noon or early afternoon.

It is now Sunday morning. Ike is history for us but the Galveston Houston area will not be right for one long time. We made out great. I have been through more dangerous heavy dews. We had some 20 to 30 mile an hour winds and some rain but not really very much. The storm stayed on the eastern side of I 35 and swept into Arkansas. There was a large low pressure area to the north and west that forced Ike to the east. We, Dallas and Fort Worth escaped everything but the outer ring of the storm. Gas Prices have shot through the ceiling well into the $4+ dollar range. It is also scarce and hard to find. We filled up the camper in Waco so we have most of a tank (80 gal). I think we can get to where we are going in Oklahoma on this tank of gas so there will be another week for the gas situation to straighten out.

The Refineries seem to be in good shape but there is some concern as to how long it will take to get them back on line. Much of Galveston has been destroyed and Houston is in pretty bad shape. They are talking about the evacuees no being able to go home for quite some time. They showed Houston already cleaning up the city yesterday as soon as the storm moved out. The biggest building in Houston (75 stories) lost nearly half of its windows. Confidential documents were blowing around the streets. When the windows were popping out, furniture was flying out of those windows and hitting the buildings across the street. Not pretty.

There is a building in Galveston that housed a nightclub that Frank Sinatra used to come sing in that has survived the worst hurricanes to hit Galveston. It didn’t survive this one. The pictures are frightening.

This campground has its own non-denominational church. We will wander over there at 10. ….The church service was nice. There were about 40 people there. This building used to be the campground’s clubhouse and they used it for church services on Sunday. The building needed quite a bit of sprucing up so the management moved the clubhouse to a new building that was much bigger and gave the building to the campers for their church. They renovated the inside and have made a nice building out of it. Their group puts on a good service. They have a piano and an excellent piano player. They sang a bunch of hymns and one of the members sang a solo. I would guess that he was a tenor. He had a very strong voice and got all broken up before the hymn was over.

We went to a small place outside of the park with some of the people from the church for dinner. We finally got our chance at chicken fried steak. It was very good but not something I would eat very often. I had rice and broccoli and Okra and tomato with it. The rice was interesting in that it had cheese in it. I have had broccoli and cheese but never rice and broccoli and cheese. The Okra was just something different. It was good at first but I lost interest in about the 4th forkful. We also had unsweetened ice tea and that was about the worse we have had on this whole trip. It almost had no color and definitely no flavor. I have had water that had more flavor (unfortunately it wasn’t any good either).

On the way back, we stopped and looked at the lake. It seems that all of the lakes around here are dammed up rivers. We drove across the dam on the way in. The lake is narrow and long.

We seem to have gotten something right. The Cup race is on ABC this week so we get to see the race from Loudon. The Pats have a 4:00 game so I have some hope of seeing that as those are usually nationally telecast. It was a good afternoon. Jimmy Johnson was passed with about a dozen laps left by Greg Biffle for the win (bad news, he did come in second) but Carl and junior were near the top; good but not great. Then as the race was winding down I switched over to see if, in fact, the Pats were on out here. That was when I remembered the time zone. The Pats were indeed on but they were breaking for halftime. As many of you may know, the Pats won.

Today we headed down to Waco to visit the Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame. It was a nice museum. They had a film about the Texas Rangers that had been made for the History Channel and a big exhibit with all of the mementos from the years of the Texas Rangers. They had a large collection of guns, saddles, chaps and spurs along with exhibits about their life and times. It is interesting to know that the Rangers are older than the State of Texas. They were formed to provide some law in the Republic of Texas.

They had a room dedicated to books, TV and Movies. There was an exhibit to the Lone Ranger containing memorabilia from the radio show, Television and movies. There were pieces about the Ranger, the people who played him.

On the other side of the doorway was an equal exhibit for Walker, Texas Ranger. There were not as many pieces in it but they were of equal size and were probably the 2 most recognizable shows covering the Texas Rangers.

They had an amazing number of western bronzes. There were some full sized pieces including a bigger than life bronze out front of a Ranger sitting on his horse carrying a Texas Flag. There were some great paintings and sketches also.

On the way back we stopped at Buzzard Billy’s Swamp Shack for some Cajun food. I had some seafood gumbo and a fried oyster po’ boy while Cheryl had Corn & Crab Soup and a popcorn chicken salad. The soups were really good but the oyster po’ boy was terrific.

Well, we didn’t do much here in Whitney. We mingled with our campground neighbors and explored the surrounding area. We did some grocery shopping and rented some movies to watch. We played some pool and played cards with the denizens of the campground and we ducked both the hurricane and the traffic created by the evacuees.

This morning, we listed to an interview with Chuck Norris who has a place in Dallas and a 700 acre ranch in Lufkin, south of here. He has just published a book about patriotism and taking back the government. He was a Huckabee supporter and pretty much ducked every question regarding who he was backing in the upcoming election taking each chance to boost Huckabee and the tax program he pushed as a campaign issue. He took on the tax code here in the US and was pretty much abandoned by the people although Norris said it was a money thing.

That is about it. We are about to move up to Oklahoma. I don’t know what we will find but it is another place to go. Time is growing short and soon we will be heading back to New England and hanging up the motorhome for another winter. Talk to ya from OK.

Clayton

All the Way with LBJ just don't forget JFK

I forgot to mention something interesting that we saw here in Bandera. When we drover here from Canyon Lake, we passed by a ranch that had a herd of zebra grazing out by the road. While we were here, several people asked if we had seen the “animals” along the road. Well, over the weekend we did. We left the campground headed for town and came to an immediate halt less than a quarter mile from the entrance of our park. There grazing by the gate of the ranch next door was a wilderbeast. We stopped in abject amazement. Then out of the woods came a zebra and some kind of gazelle or antelope. Just behind them was a small herd of about 8 more zebra and several more of the antelope (the kind with the sweeping horns about 5 feet long sloping back from their heads). Rumor has it there is an elephant back there too although we never saw it. There is a kind of deer that only grew in India (the name escapes me at the moment). Several of them were brought to Texas and raised on ranches here. Several years ago, there was a serious flood in this area and many of these animals got loose and have become wild. I was told that there were now more of these deer (Axis Deer) in Texas than there were in India. The weather here is perfect for raising these exotic animals and there are a lot of them on ranches around here. It is really funny to run into these circus or zoo animals just grazing along the sides of the road.

That’s all for now. We still haven’t moved so I will save this and add to it when there is something to say. Bye for now!

It was a pleasant drive over here from Bandera. I can honestly say that Bandera was the first place that I have been really sorry to leave. We drove through what is known as the Texas hill country. It is rolling hills and is just beautiful. We found some pretty towns like Fredericksburg, a town built by German Immigrants. We saw some really nice houses and ranches although most of the large ranches are still so far off the road that all you see is the archways that mark the beginnings of the driveways. I should have made an effort to photograph some of these archways as they would have made an interesting collection of pictures much like the collages of doorways you see in New England. Each one of these entry arches is unique. Many carry the name of the ranch and/or the owner but many also carry some form of western art. Cut steel art has been popular in this area.

Like our Strawberry Festival Flags we display every June, Bandera had these cut steel ovals hung from every pole throughout the downtown area. They were striking and everyone was different showing scenes from the old west. Cattledrives, roping, bullriding and bronco busting were common themes but the daily life of cowboys and the cattle drive theme was common.

We found our campground after a couple of accidental side trips. The instructions to get there were pretty thin and not very good. Texas is such a big place; the maps are not very detailed. We ended up relying on the computer to find our way and some of the road numbers were missing on the computer (we use Delormes program, without the GPS satellite reader because we forgot it). Fortunately there is not a lot of traffic in this part of the country because we had to back up on the main road to get down the roads we needed to go on. One time we took the wrong road completely but there were plenty of other roads to correct the problem.

Soon we found Kingsland and moved to the directions in the Coast to Coast book. They said to take the road behind the Wells Fargo Bank but didn’t tell us that you can’t see the bank until you are in front of it and have already missed the turn. Fortunately, there is a really tight (for 58 feet of vehicle) turn on the other side of the bank that does meet up with the road. The Campground is a small tight place but is very nice. There is a trailer park at the beginning but then the road opens into the campground. It is located right on Lake LBJ another lake formed by damming up a river. The lake runs all the way from here down to Austin some 21 miles. It is a pretty lake but like most dammed up lakes it is long and narrow. This town’s economy seems to be mostly tourism and with the passing of Labor Day, it is pretty quiet around here.

They suggested that our space was big enough to put our trailer on the site with us and park next to it. The problem, other than the tightness of the campground in general, was that the utility post was in the wrong place. If we backed in, it was on the wrong side of the camper and if we drove in it was at the wrong end of the camper. When I tried to put the trailer on the side, I ran into tree branches that prevented me from putting the trailer where I wanted it. There was a place to put the trailer but the only empty space was not where I could get at it. They suggested that I drop the trailer in the road and they would move it to a storage place. That worked but I still had the problem of placing the camper. The first try put me where the connections wouldn’t fit so I turned it around. I could get things to fit but only by placing the camper where I had no front patio area. I compromised. I had quite a bit of space so I put the camper in diagonally. The rear was close to the utility post and the front was right on the boundary on the other side of my camper. Even with that, the sewer hose barely fit. It is stretched to its maximum but I do have enough space to put out my awning and put a picnic table there.

We do look strange at the angle we are at. I don’t know how people set up here. Nothing is in the right place. We are just up from the lake and right across the street from the rec hall and the pool. There is no beach here but people swim off the docks. The rec hall has a large screen TV with premium channels and a pool table. We played pool last night and watched Talladega Nights on Starz. The pool table is not quite level and all the adult size cues are broken and there are 2 balls missing but we had a great time. We had the whole place to ourselves.

We originally booked this place for 5 nights to see what was going to happen in New Orleans but they way things are going over there, we may not get the chance to go there. I changed our booking here to 7 nights and figure we will head up towards Dallas then Oklahoma and Arkansas or over to North Louisiana and Mississippi before hitting Memphis. We have all week to figure that out. At first, we planned weeks in advance to get the reservations in the places that are hard to go to (Mesa Verde and Grand Canyon) and then filled in around them. In the post Labor Day world, we can pretty much go where we want to. It is not like New England where things start to fold up right after Labor Day.

Cable TV is a bad influence. We sat up way too late last night watching shows that we haven’t seen since we left; mostly the food channel. We are still out of sorts with the TV scheduling since we are in a different time zone and the cable channels maintain their EDST timing.

We did watch some of the convention last night. I wanted to see Gov. Palin’s speech and learn a little more about her. It sounded a lot like her speech when she was introduced a few days ago. I am a Democrat. I have been one since I was young and looking for an outlet for my activism wanting to “change to world” and was forced to be a Democrat by the South Berwick Republicans who liked the world just the way it was and had no room in the Grand Old Party for any rash young people looking to “improve” things. We first looked towards the Republicans since we grew up in a highly republican town and we all “liked Ike”.

Following our rebuke by the Republicans (they ran things and weren’t willing to welcome anyone new), we then attended the Democratic Party Meeting and found 4 people, most of them over 75 years of age. They seemed glad to see anyone new attend their meeting and by the end of the evening, we controlled the South Berwick Democratic Party. Here was our platform to work from. We were enthralled with Gene McCarthy and the changes he talked about. We loved his plan to change things in both the party and the country but like McCain in the last 2 elections, he wanted more changes than the party was willing to accept and he was torpedoed by the party itself who chose party regular Hubert Humphrey to carry the banner.

The fact that Humphrey chose Ed Musky for his running mate brought us back into the fold after the McCarthy debacle. We worked hard for the party ticket and even did some work for local candidates. We got a storefront (the old A&P) and set up an office to work from. It was a great time to be young and made us realize that you have a better chance to change things working from the inside than from the outside.

That is how I got to be a Democrat but I have always felt that I would vote for the best person rather than whomever the Democrats put up. It was easy to be a Democrat at first with Ken Curtis as Governor and Ed Muskie as our elder Senator. Over the years, however the quality candidates became more equal and the state even elected an Independent Governor. Now we have a pair of superb Republican Senators in Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. I have liked them for a while. Both have drawn the ire of our Republican President since they study issues for themselves and decide how to vote based on common sense rather than the party line.

This is all a roundabout way to talk about the conventions. I watched parts of both conventions. I am not sure when politics got so confrontational. Candidates have always pointed out their own strong points and the other candidates differing views on each issue but in the last few elections, it has gotten truly nasty. Starting with Newt Gingridge (spelling is wrong I am sure) if you don’t support the party, you are an enemy of the country. I thought the Democrats had a great convention. They developed a party solidarity and pushed their presidential candidates talking about the upcoming election and the changes they want to make over the Bush policies of the last 8 years. The Republican convention however seemed to do nothing but run down the personalities of the Democratic Candidates and use scare tactics to tell how they will destroy the country and make laughing stocks of Americans all over the world. They told us how O’bama wasn’t qualified for the job even after being a Senator but that Sarah Palin was qualified to be president if something happened to McCain.

OK, that’s enough. I do not dislike McCain and I do not think that Obama is the complete answer to everything we as a country need. Nixon did not destroy the country and neither has George Bush so we can survive with either one. They both have an opportunity to sway me. Bring it on!

We drove over to Sunset Beach and checked out the neighborhood. It is an interesting place on the shore of Lake LBJ. There are a lot of canals which allow people 2 streets back from the lake to have access to the lake. Each lot on these canals has a dock and a boathouse. The roads were narrow and went basically nowhere except to the canals around the lake. We ran into herds of those smallish deer that we saw in Canyon Lake. In one place, there was a man on a ladder working on the light over his garage door and there were 3 deer grazing on his lawn.

We looked around town for a smoked meat shop that we were both sure we had seen here in town. We drove through town several times (it isn’t that big) and didn’t see a sign of the place. We must have seen it somewhere else. We did stop at the DQ and had a sundae. That was pretty refreshing. Then we went over to the quilt shop and Cheryl made arrangements to use their sewing machine to assemble a quilt she has been working on this trip. She has been worried about finding a place that would let her use their machine but there was no problem.

Then we did some grocery shopping. They have a HEB Store here in Kingsland but it is much smaller than the other ones we have experienced along the way. We found pretty much everything we needed and a few things we wanted but the selection was smaller and there was no deli or bakery.

Today we got up and hit the road early. The handy man here told us last night that he would be shutting our electricity down about 6 to rewire some of the utility towers on the sites. We got up around 6:30 and found the electricity still on. We got ready and headed out. We didn’t want to run anything electric in case the power went out so we decided to eat on the road. We found a place called the New Orleans restaurant over in Round Mountain and figured this might be the closest we will get to New Orleans so we stopped there to eat. We met a man there who makes rocking chairs and was out on the road delivering some orders. His chairs are heavy rustic wood. He had double rockers and double swing chairs in addition to regular rustic rockers. We talked with him for quite a while. He loves the Texas Hill Country (as does about everyone else we have met here).

Following Breakfast, we headed on to Johnson City. We passed another ranch with exotic animals. This one offered public tours (safaris) by appointment. Soon we pulled into Johnson City and immediately drove right by the road we were looking for. We were looking for a couple of places and missed them all. It didn’t take long to realize our mistake and we corrected it. Johson City is the home of the Johnson Family, the most famous member of which is Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife Ladybird. We stopped at the Visitor Center and were told by a ranger at the door that there was a tour starting in 2 minutes over at the Johnson’s Boyhood Home. We headed across the street and toured the house. It was in great condition.

I am always amazed when I tour old historical houses especially those of famous (& rich) people. It always seems that they have little. Each bedroom had an amoire that was the only closet and a small bureau. The kitchens are always devoid of gadgets and have simple kitchen tools. The houses are small. There is little room for the mountains of stuff that we all seem to feel are necessary. The house had 3 basic wings that were only one room deep to allow ventilation in the heat of the summer. There was also a large rear porch where everyone slept in the summer. They did have a small 3 burner gas stove that they took outside in the summer to keep the heat out of the house. Inside they had a wood kitchen stove which did the cooking and heated part of the house. There was also a pot bellied stove in their parent’s bedroom.

That bedroom had a double purpose. Lyndon’s father was relegated to that bedroom when he had visits from his farmer and political buddies. His wife did not want his rantings, bad language and back room planning to affect the children so he was relegated to the bedroom. There was a transom over the door to let out the cigar smoke and that room had a porch all of its own. Unfortunately, keeping the children away from the men didn’t work. On the end of the building, there was a door into the crawl space underneath the house and Lyndon used to crawl into that space underneath his father’s bedroom to listen to the political talk. It was here that he got his love of the political process and the intrigue that went with it.

There was a windmill that pumped water into a raised tank to provide water in the house. There was an outhouse that was way on the other side of the yard (wouldn’t you put it as far from the house as you could?). Of course it was on the corner of 2 streets. There was also a smoke house that is now a shed and a barn.

We saw films about Lyndon and Ladybird outlining their lives and their careers. I knew a lot about Ladybird’s life in the Whitehouse and the programs that she promoted but I connected LBJ’s Presidency with Viet Nam and really couldn’t see past that. The information at the Visitor’s Center told me a lot about Johnson’s Presidency. He was an important player in the Civil Rights battle and was responsible for passing much of the 60s legislation. Among the other important programs were the battle against poverty, improvements to education and many other things that were important. Not all of the programs were unqualified successes but they did move all of the programs forward.

The information also showed how much Johnson was pained by the whole Viet Nam thing. He felt that the only thing he could do to try to resolve the problem was not give up running for his second term. Ho Chi Min would not come to the table with Johnson regardless of the concessions that Johnson made so the only way out was to let someone else deal with him. There was also a village down a path were Johnson’s Grandparents lived. This was a collection of buildings that made up the elder Johnson’s farm.

After this, we headed down the road to the LBJ Ranch. His ranch was not only beautiful but was an important place in the history of the country during the Johnson Presidency. He had made several additions to the original house. One of these additions was called the Texas White House. Johnson spent considerable time here during his presidency but they were often working times. He entertained world leaders at the ranch and at one time or another had political allies and his cabinet there for sessions to develop important legislation. There is a group of chairs and a big round table under a huge live oak tree in the front yard of the ranch house that was famous for its meetings. He would often gather groups of Senators and Representatives there to hammer out compromises to legislation.

There is a large runway on the ranch and a hanger. There is a small house by the hanger that was the main office of the Secret Service at the ranch. There is also a collection of Johnson’s cars. It includes several Lincoln’s, a 1940 Ford Convertible, the oversized golf cart that he gave tours around the ranch in and the unique Amphicar, a convertible amphibian car that drives along the road and can slide right into a body of water and become a boat. They told us that he used to scare the daylights out of people around the ranch when he drove down to a body of water and just drove in. It was blue. I remember that someone around South Berwick had one. I saw them drive into Lee’s Mills one day. It was pretty amazing.

They had a reconstruction of the house that Lyndon was born in. It was not open as there was some renovation going on. It seems that the rope across the doorway to keep people out of the building itself while allowing them to see inside it was not enough. Children would go under the rope and touch the items in the rooms. They were putting Plexiglas across the doorways. We did talk to the gentleman who was doing the repairs. He seemed to want to talk about the house and the area. It was a pleasant interlude as there was no one around. Most of the people who came were met by a ranger in the parking lot who points you to the cemetery and then explains that the house is not open for viewing but you can wander around the grounds.

The cemetery is beautiful. Lyndon and Ladybird are both buried there. As much as he loved the ranch, it is impossible to think of him being buried anywhere else. Ladybird does not have a stone yet, someone said that the heirs cannot agree on design for the stone. Ladybird once found a pillow that she immediately bought for Lyndon and gave him. It is a light green (or was before it faded) and had the words “This is My Ranch and I do What I Damn Well Please!” The story goes that she was a little worried about what Lyndon would think but that was dispelled when he just loved it. That pillow was always on display in the ranch and still sits in the Texas White House Office. His daughter is quoted as saying if the ranch were on fire, that pillow would be the first thing that Lyndon would grab.

We were fortunate on several fronts. First, the Texas White House Office has only been open to the public for a week. Up until now, the house has been off limits to visitors. This room is now open and there are plans in the future for other parts of the house to be opened.

We drove into Fredericksburg to find something to eat. Fredericksburg is a town built by German Immigrants. There are several German Restaurants but we were on a mission. When we had come through town a few days before, we had seen a place that advertised Smoked Meats so we had to find it. We searched the road out of town with no success so we turned around and checked out the road coming into town. We found the place. It was a factory with a store of its own. We went in and were immediately confused by the place. We thought it would be a restaurant or at least a place where you can buy meat and get something to eat. WRONG!!

They did have lots of smoked meats for sale and lots of German goodies like mustards, sauerkrauts, pickled most everything (but pastries the best things Germans have to offer). We tried a couple of offerings and bought smoked turkey and beef and some takeout hot goodies. Cheryl had a Brat and I had a beef sausage with jalapenos (and spicy mustard). They were very tasty but the knotted part of the casing was very hard to eat.

We headed out of town again but felt that we hadn’t found a pastry shop yet so I did another U-turn (in the same place) and once again headed back into town. We parked and checked out a couple of places (one was closed (Thurs?)) and settled on a lunch counter kind of place with an ice cream case and a pastry case. We split a Reuben and then a turtle brownie. After the brownie, we bought a Crocodile, a pastry roll with a filling kind of like pecan pie and a drizzle of maple glazing on top.

We wanted to try something else but weren’t hungry any longer. We finished our coffee and headed back to camp. We took the right route this time. It was another route and was also a scenic highway.

Another day has dawned. We headed down to Austin to visit the LBJ Library. It is located on the University of Texas campus. We checked to make sure they were playing football at home and they weren’t. It was a good thing. The LBJ Library is right next to the football stadium. The library is a great visit. It is a 10 story building with the public areas on Floors 3, 4 and 10. The first floor holds the theater where they show the LBJ movie. It is a nice cross section of his career. The rest of the floor is a timeline of his public life. It shows all of the things that happened during his public career. The 10th floor covers life in the White House and has a nice exhibit about Lady Bird and her public life.

There is a mock up of Johnson’s oval office and pictures of many of the rooms in the White House. The 4th floor covers his involvement with the space program. Jack Kennedy assigned Johnson to oversee the space program and the race to the moon. There was also an exhibit of examples of Johnson’s humor. Johnson is represented by an animatronic figure that tells stories of his years in public office and other stories. There were also many of the gifts that the Johnson’s received during their White House years.

There was an exhibit regarding his rise to the presidency following Jack Kennedy’s assassination. There was a second exhibit in the 60s section with busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. This exhibit really affected me. I had to walk away and sit for a few minutes. It was very emotional. They always talk about remembering where you were when you heard about Jack Kennedy’s assassination but I also remember where I was when both of the other assassinations happened. I was watching the California returns when Bobby Kennedy was shot. I sat up all night watching that one. It seems like we had more than our share of tragedy during the 60s and I don’t know about you but all three of these events affected me.

As we left, we walked down into the campus. It was strangely quiet. I don’t know much about Texas but we didn’t see much going on and very few people. There was a great fountain outside the library. It consisted of several nozzles which shot straight up in the air and landed back in a pool that then ran over the edge into a lower area. Over the top of the fountain, we could see the tower where that gunman shot all those students many long years ago. That is another one of those things that you don’t forget.

We walked over to the stadium hoping to get a glance at it. It is a big stadium. Someone told me it seats 100,000 + people but I am not sure it looked that big. We checked out the Longhorn fan shop and walked around to the end where it is open. You could see the inside but a worker there that was hauling stuff out to the dumpster said we could go in and take some pictures. What a nice place. I am not sure about the orange motif but the field was nice.

By the time we finished, it was getting late and we were hungry. We set out for home (that is still a strange phrase but we are accepting it after 3 months) and found a place called Mimi’s Café. The food there was really good and not too expensive. They served muffins with each meal. They give you a basket of bread to open with and then serve you a muffin with the meal (?).

The drive back seemed much quicker than the drive down. We did stop at a Starbucks to get coffee and wandered down to the lake when we got here. We sat in a swing chair and watched these people trying to water ski behind a jet ski. They didn’t get very far and finally broke the Jet Ski. Then the guy’s daughter dropped the car keys in the water. It was a three ring circus but they did get the keys back (the girl wouldn’t go in to get them, she made her father go). They loaded the Jet Ski onto the trailer and figuring the circus was at an end, we headed back to the camper to watch Jeff Dunham. Jeff is a ventriloquist. If you have never seen Jeff, by all means rent one of his DVDs. There are 2. He has a group of characters he refers to as his Suitcase Posse. He is a very original comedian and is funny.

Well, tomorrow is on its way. Tomorrow is our 11th Anniversary. We will hit a church in the morning and take it easy in the afternoon. We will have a special cookout and a bottle of champagne which I brought for this very occasion. I will probably not write tomorrow. We do have to figure out where we are going next and make some reservations so we can order some medicine (as well as having somewhere to go). See ya!

It’s Monday. I was right, I didn’t write yesterday at all. We got up and headed over to Sunset Beach to go to church at the Sunset Beach Federated Church. We found this church on our wanderings and figured we would check it out. It turns out to be a federation of Presbyterian, Methodist and Disciples of Christ. They have a primary minister (Rev. Dr. John Alsup) that is a professor at the Austin Seminary who preaches on the first and third Sundays of the month. They have a student minister (Michael Lauziere from Massachusetts) from the Seminary who is responsible for the service on the second and fourth Sunday and for those months that there is a fifth Sunday, they have a guest minister. The Student Minister is usually there for 1 or 2 years. They do not get a different one every week, they have the same one for an entire year at least.

Rev. Dr. Alsup (seems like a rather large title for someone who wears a cowboy hat and boots) has a ranch with several horses. He had a bit of his sermon where he talked about having one of his horse tied to a hitching post while he brushed it. His cat was sitting on top of the hitching post. He felt that the horse was not paying enough attention to him and his ministrations and looked up. Both the horse and the cat were staring towards a gorgeous sunset. His first thought was that this sunset had been sent to them by God and he was not paying any attention. He then painted a picture of the three of them standing in a group watching the sunset.

Rev. Alsup is an older thin medium height gentleman with white hair, a meticulously manicured white beard and a black preacher gown (is this a cassock?) with a very old fashioned lace collar with a rectangular section approximately 3 x 5 hanging down from the collar. Add to this his black cowboy boots and you have a western preacher. He commented that they plan to add a hitching post in front of the church to signify that they have a traveling preacher man.

The people in the church were really nice. Rev. Alsup introduced us from the pulpit and everyone wanted to know whether we were visiting people in the area, what our trip was like, why do we ever go back to Maine for the winter (don’t we have that backwards?). After the service, they had a fellowship time with coffee and “stuff”. We pretty much closed that down. Rev Alsup the got ready to leave and added a white straw cowboy hat to his wardrobe and looked every bit the traveling preacher. All he needed was a horse tied up out front to get on to.

The organist was another traveling soul. There was a Baptist Church right next door that she also played at. One service is at 9 and the other at 10:45 so all she has to do is walk next door.

We did watch the NASCAR Race afterwards and keep track of the Pats game on the computer. I expected to be able to listen to the game because most of these radio stations now stream their programming over the computer but that was not to be. It seems that the NFL took a page out of Direct TVs book and now sells a package of all of the radio broadcasts from all of the teams. If you buy the package, you can listen to any radio broadcast of an NFL Game from either side of the game. It also means that none of the stations that broadcast NFL games can offer those games over the internet and they either leave the streaming outlet empty or program music that isn’t being broadcast over the airwaves.

Just as a note, we have listened to WHEB on many occasions as a touch of home. We have listened to the early morning show and the late afternoon show much as we do at home. It has seemed funny to be sitting out in a 120 degree desert listening to people talk about Portsmouth and Manchester. We have also listened to several NASCAR races over that station as we have not been able to get the radio broadcast anywhere we have been. When the cable stations take over the televising rights, the radio is the only relief and all we can do is hope that we have a connection on our wireless modem or whatever wifi is available. It hasn’t always worked out but then we write off the racing pretty much when we travel. We don’t even get the results on the TV or radio out here.

That is one gripe I have. Radio and TV stations out here seem to only provide scores and results of the teams in their areas. Our stations usually give results of all the professional and major college games but not out here. You had to buy a newspaper to get all of the scores. Cable TV would do the job but way fewer campgrounds had cable than I had planned and some campgrounds with cable only provided the local channels. I have tried 3 times to hook up the satellite dish on my camper but no one seems to want to do it. Camping World told me there would be no problem so I traveled to a campground just because there was a Camping World near it. First they tried to install a High Def receiver on my low def satellite dish which I figured out before they actually did the work (the mechanic caught it before he opened the box). Then they talked me out of doing it because they told me the dish was no good (reputation). There is a satellite dish place just outside the campground so I stopped in to talk to them. They didn’t even care what dish I had, they couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. They only seemed to be interested in house installations. I give up. We only have 2 months (at most) left so we can put up with most anything.

Cheryl worked on her quilt much of the day and then we went out to dinner. It wasn’t a good restaurant; it was a take out kind of place that masqueraded as a restaurant. You put your order into a window and then waited watching (whether you wanted to or not) the Dallas Cowboys (I hate the Cowboys) kick the snot out of the Cleveland Browns with the sound turned up so loud you couldn’t find a quiet corner. We ate there but postponed our official anniversary dinner until we can find a more appropriate place (it was a choice between this place (which honestly looked like a nice restaurant) and the DQ which here is a sit in/eat in.

I spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out where to go next. Ike seems to be headed into the gulf with early predictions of New Orleans, Mississippi or eastern Texas so we reluctantly wrote off New Orleans and will head north. Of course, this gives us another place in Texas we can check out. We will stop at a campground about an hour outside of Dallas/Fort Worth before heading up into Oklahoma before heading east again into Arkansas and then into Memphis, Tennessee and probably Nashville. The next 2 stops are booked with the next 3 probables. Time is growing short and soon we will have to face the reality of coming home. We have accomplished most of what we wanted to do and will soon run out of Southwest. We never made it to Memphis so that will be new but Nashville is a return visit. We loved the area when we were there 2 years ago and will enjoy returning with a car which will greatly improve our mobility.

We went to Walmart this afternoon to dump my camera. On the way out, we stopped at a western wear place so Cheryl could look for another hat. She has been looking for a colored cowboy hat and has not been very lucky. When we saw them, she wasn’t sure she wanted one and now that she wants one, we can’t find any. She did see some at the festival in Bandera but the prices weren’t marked on them and the booth master kept telling her how nice the hat she already had was so she gave up. We haven’t seen any since and this place wasn’t any better.

We shifted gears and were looking at boots. They had a series of boots called “Fat Babies” that we had never run into before. They told us they were very popular and were quite colorful and unusual. They had thick rubber soles, medium rubber heels, and blunt toes and were very short compared to other cowboy boots. They were very colorful. Cheryl tried some on but didn’t like the way they fit. She has a problem with the upper part of her foot where it rolls up onto the leg. These didn’t help. Chris (the young man waiting on us (her)) measured her foot very carefully and decided that the shape of women’s boots and the compromises made in their design did not fit her foot. He measured her with a man’s measuring device and came up with a size in men’s boots that came closer to her foot’s measurement. The boots fit much better than the other ones. The addition of some half soles made the fit much better. He then suggested a line of handmade boots that they carried. He suggested that she try them just so she would know what a good fit was. He told us that once she put these boots on, she would never want to take them off. Once she got them on, she agreed. The agreement held up until she saw the price on the boots. They were nearly $400. That made them quite uncomfortable. My body bailed us out with a low blood sugar attack so we bailed to the BBQ place 2 doors down. I had the chicken and Cheryl had pulled pork with unsweetened tea and the appropriate sides. The chicken and pork were delicious and the sides were good. The sauce had some bite to it and was a thin tomato based sauce.

We drove back stopping at one of the dams that make Lake LBJ. There was a big sign telling us the dam was there but when we drove down to see it, it was all fenced off. There was also an RV park that had a big sign inviting people in to see the park (on the water). That also had a gate to keep out the people they had just invited in. We could have called them on the intercom but decided not to. There was an exclusive gated community right next door and their gate was invitingly open so we drove right in. The houses there were big, new and beautiful. Several were under construction. There was a canal that held boat houses and big decks and every one of the places was landscaped. We expected to be stopped by some security guru and thrown out but we weren’t. I have to assume that the gates were open to help the service people that were working on the houses under construction.

It was cloudy and the lake was rough and soon it was raining. We haven’t seen anything but an occasional thunderstorm (very occasional) since we left home.

Tomorrow is moving day so I will close now and upload this. See you on the other side.

Clayton

Git Along Little Doggie! A new respect for Longhorns

After Note: I noticed the title of the last entry was "Deep in The Heart of Texas!" I am sorry I didn't save that for this selection but I had no idea what I was getting into when I booked us in Bandera. If this isn't the heart of Texas, I don't know what is. This was "Gunfight at the OK Corral, "The Way the West was Won", "High Noon", "Shane" and every John Wayne, Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey movie ever made. (Think I liked this place?)

A new home town, a new lease on life and new adventures. We have arrived in Bandera Texas, the self-proclaimed cowboy capital of the world. In days of old, this was one of the places that cattle drives started to the railheads of Kansas City and Denver. The whole town has a cowboy identity and there are cowboy shops and lots of cowboy sounding bars. In all, this seems to be an interesting town and one of those places that is out of the way enough to keep its identity.

The road from Bandera to our campground was an adventure in itself. It is a narrow winding up and down road. There are a couple of places where you can see that the campers driving along the road bottomed out. We also heard that a modular home coming up the road got hung up on the road and required the assistance of a second truck to get here.

This is not just a campground but a resort sitting on a manmade lake that was dammed from the Medina River. The goal of the resort was to sell lots to people looking for a recreational opportunity. Most of the houses are not expensive and the resort is not spectacular. The lake went dry a couple of years ago and the cattlemen put fences across the lake bed to keep their cattle separated. Then the rains came and the lake filled back up but now there are barbed wire fences just under the surface of the lake so no one can use it with their boats. I don’t know what the end result will be but the lake is pretty much useless. I think the campground is here for the people who bought lots and don’t have houses yet. Many of the spaces are occupied by people who appear to be there for a long period of time (lots of stuff around their camper and no one there). When we were in town, we were talking to the proprietor of the Cowboy Gift Shop; she told all about the events of the weekend and mentioned that all of the campgrounds in the area were full. When I mentioned that there were spaces available here, she didn’t know there was a campground here (it is a private campground).

We have arrived in the knick of time. Labor Day (can it possibly be Labor Day Weekend already. It seems like we just left town but when you look over the list of places we have been, it does seem like a long time) is a big time around here. They have a big celebration over the weekend. There is a rodeo in the next town on Friday then the Professional Bull Riders are here in Bandera for a 2 day meet. There is an Indian Pow Wow, lots of music, a parade with a longhorn cattle drive right through the middle of town, a craft fair and many many other things. It is a full three days of activities. I had just about given up seeking a rodeo. The closest we came was in Moab but we had a 2 ½ hour drive back to camp which meant we would have returned about 1 or 2 am.

They advertise the PBR but the PBR website does not list Bandera as one of its several locations for the weekend. More on that as it develops. My mail packet (guaranteed for 2 day delivery) did not make it in 2 days. That is not unusual as we have been in several places that took 3 days vice 2 and the post office has told my mother on some occasions (but not this time) that a particular town will take 3 days for a 2 day delivery. In Alaska, everything took 3 days.

I have been agonizing over what to do with my Birthday and Labor Day (just 2 days apart this year and over a weekend to boot) weekend. I wanted to be in the San Antonio area because I felt this was my best shot at finding something fun to do. It is amazing how these things work out. I booked this place in Bandera to stay in the region for a second week. Canyon Lake was only available last week and Bandera was available over the holiday weekend which most places weren’t so here we are. Now we find out that the place has a huge cowboy celebration with a rodeo and bull riders and Indians and a cattle drive through the middle of town. Throw in a couple of bbqs and the weekend will be complete. We do have to leave early on Saturday morning to view the cattle drive as its route takes in about a mile and a half of the road we use to get to town. With the bull riders in the evening, it will be a complete day in Bandera.

While we were in town, we hit the local cowboy store and looked at boots and hats. I have been wanting another set so I looked. The straw type hats are on sale for 50% off. In this part of the country, these hard straw hats are the kind you mostly see. I have never like them but they are growing on me. I really like the hat I have but I do need another. I would also like a pair of tanish boots. I have to go back and look again. For odd items, I need to look at them, go home and think about it and then come back and buy. I am too much of an impulse buyer so I need to walk away from purchasers to make sure I really want them and not just buying for buying sake. (Does that make sense?).

Well, the temperature is beginning to rise and I need to go check in. The office was closed yesterday so the guard at the gate told us to just take any empty space. We drove around the entire camping area twice and checked out the spaces. There were 8 or 10 empty ones but several were not usable. The campers were places in the spaces willy nilly in opposite directions. Now a camper has all of its utilities on one side and its entrance and patio area on the other. With these campers in different directions, many of the utility posts were in places that we couldn’t use them. A camper would be placed in one direction using a post, then there would be an empty space and then a camper pointed in the other direction using the post that was for the middle space. If you wanted to use the middle space, there was no utility post to use. Then on the other side of the camper there was an unused post with no space because the camper in that space was in the other direction and used the post behind them. ??? not good management of your spaces. That greatly reduced the number of spaces that were available. We ended up with a space with a trailer next to it that was in backwards. We are sharing a patio area that isn’t big enough for either one of us. There is no one there but I expect someone for the weekend. That should prove to be interesting. I’ll let you know what happens. I am sure that this is not the first time they have had to share a spot.

Well, everyone here is watching the weather. Gustav is headed either for N’orleans or the gulf coast of Texas. Here they are watching it even more closely because this is (one of) their big weekends of the year. They have 3 days of celebrations planned with a cattle drive of longhorns down Main Street, a chuckwagon cookout and rodeo tonight, a two day Indian pow wow, the Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Show, A horse mounted shooting competition, two days of professional bull riding, a craft show, a medicine show and lots of other things. I hope the weather holds out because we plan to take in pretty much everything and several of these things depend on decent weather.

We got up in the morning and walked over to the office, snack bar, rec hall complex to howdy the troops and check in. They didn’t need much from us as the guard at the gate took most of the information they needed. The snack bar was nice and the 2 women that run it were friendly. The coffee pot was empty so I made a pot of coffee and we demolished a couple of Danish (not homemade and very mediocre). We met the new manager of the campground and talked to her for a while. Then we wandered into the rec hall and talked to a couple of people who were preparing everything for a Bingo game.

The rec hall was huge. They have a nice stage (something we would notice). The hall didn’t look all that old. The building had a cathedral ceiling but it was plywood. The walls were texture 1-11 so there was a lot of wood showing. We found out a little more about the lake. It is the only project of its kind in Texas (and probably a lot of other places too). The cattlemen built the lake. It was not built for recreational purposes; it was built to be used for irrigation. It is owned by the cattlemen and their agreement was that if it went dry, they could put up fences to keep their cattle separated, which they did when it dried up a few years ago. When it filled back up, it came as a surprise so the fences remain in the water. I haven’t seen any boats on it and most of the boats in the resort are for sale so go figure!

After talking to the bingo people, we headed back into the snack bar area and once again had to make a pot of coffee just to get a cup. This is too much like all my years of work. No one ever chooses to make a pot of coffee. They are all perfectly willing to drink it but no one will make it. Both times there were 2 tablespoons of coffee left in the pot (if you don’t empty it, you don’t have to make it). At work, people would only take a half cup so there would be a tablespoon of coffee left and they didn’t have to make a new pot. Hmmm. The more things change the samer they are!!

After making all these pots of coffee, we drove out to Medina to visit the Love Creek Orchards and their store. Actually, we were looking for pie (again). This is turning out to be a journey to the pie centers of the southwest. Adam’s Apple, part of the Love Creek Orchard has been featured on “Food Finds” on the Food Network specifically for their apple pies. So we went “In Search Of”. You have never seen apple pies as high as these. They are made in regular aluminum throw away pie plates but they are easily 6 to 8 inches high. We sat under some trees we couldn’t identify with the cicadas buzzing so loudly you could hardly hear yourself talk eating our pie. Even with all the pies we have consumed on this trip, we have yet to find one that doesn’t live up to our expectations. Yummm!

On the way out, we found Mansfield Park where the Wild West Show, Indian POW wow and the bull riding will be. Returning to town, we turned off and found the spot where the rodeo will be so now we know where everything will be. The rodeo is what they call a “ranch rodeo”. There are actually 2 of them in Bandera; one on Friday and one on Saturday. The Saturday night rodeo ended its summer run last weekend as the Professional Bull Riders are in town this week. The Friday night rodeo at Twin Elms Ranch is a go tonight so we plan to be there (the weather could be an issue).

We stopped at the OST Diner (Old Spanish Trail) and grazed the salad bar. This was an old west kind of place with wooden tables and a bar (no alcohol here) that has saddles to sit on (we ran into one of these at Jackson Hole Wyoming). Then we walked around town and checked out a couple of more stores before returning to camp. Once back at camp, we faced the fact that we had to do laundry (again?). I sent Cheryl out to find the laundry as we hadn’t seen it in the office complex. After about 45 minutes, I went looking for her and found her talking to the neighbors and playing with their dog (more like a rodent), a tiny dog of several varieties although it looks like a single breed (don’t ask me, ask Cheryl).

By then, it was too late to do the laundry so we left it for this morning. We planned to get an early start this morning but why should this be any different than any other morning. We awoke at the usual time and I realized that this was my last day at 61. Tomorrow will be 62…what a frightening thought. That slowed me down for a little but eventually I got out of bed. Cheryl made coffee and breakfast and soon I was heading out with the laundry. The laundry room had only 2 washers and 2 dryers. I loaded them up and had another washer full. I set the first 2 running and then headed up to the office to get some more quarters since there was no change machine in the laundry room. Well, guess what? The office didn’t have any quarters either so I had to head into town for quarters. It took a lot longer to do the laundry because I had to do a second round which took an extra hour.

Eventually we were done and headed out for town. Cheryl had to do my birthday shopping. Then we headed for the intown park for supper. Part of Celebrate Bandera was a chuckwagon supper with a western swing band. They played the old country music. They were good and the food was good. We had beef stew just like it was cooked in the old chuck wagon on the cattle drives. We had corn bread with it and peach cobbler. The stew was tasty, the cobbler was terrific and the music was very good. It was drizzling when we got there but we could see a tent so we figured we were all set. Unfortunately, the tent was a mesh sun screen and was anything but a shelter from the rain. It never rained very hard but it was damp.

We left around 7:30 to drive out to the Twin Elm Rodeo ring. On the way out there we passed several horse trailers headed the other way. Not a good sign! When we got there, the rodeo had been cancelled. The man that came out to see us said that the promoter had cancelled the show. We headed back to town and stopped into Mansfield Park. There was a competition there that involved horses and six shooters. This competition involves riding your horse and shooting balloons while riding as fast as you could. You shot at 5 balloons, changed guns and rode back shooting at 5 more. The guns were loaded with shells that had no projectile (bullet). The force of the discharge was enough to break the balloons.

Each division rode 4 different courses picked at random from a catalog of courses (the highest number we heard was the last run which was on course 24). It was interesting; we had never seen anything like this before. The participants came from all over the west.

Tomorrow is the big day.

Ok, not only is tomorrow, today but it is pretty close to over. It was a great day. Not just a good day but a great day. We had a great time all day long. We woke up at a normal time (about 8) and Cheryl immersed me in presents. We got dressed and headed into town. We were told that we had to be there fairly early as the cattle drive came down the road that we use to get to town. We landed early enough to get a parking space on Main Street and headed in search of some breakfast. We walked by a Mexican Restaurant (it was close to our parking space). We hadn’t gone far enough to stop. We walked down to the Town Hall and checked out some of the craft booths looking for food. Eventually we found the food out back. Most of the food booths were not ready but one had tortillas filled with a mixture of chorizo and egg. We each had one and headed deeper into town looking for real breakfast.

Busbies (BBQ) was not open yet (I was curious what they might have for breakfast food) so we wandered down to OST. They were open but the line outside completely blocked the sidewalk for a substantial distance. We turned around and headed back to the town hall. We wandered amongst the booths and saw some pretty neat stuff but managed not to buy anything. The time was passing rather fast so we scoped out the front of the town hall (raised wall) for a place to sit. Many people had placed their chairs along the road but the wall was raised up enough to give us a great view. I think the seats were available because they were in front of the speakers. As soon as we took seats there, the rest of the spaces filled right up.

There were lots of comparisons to our Strawberry Festival (always the last Saturday in June) except for the longhorns and the horses (and the mess in the road). Sometime soon after 11, the traffic stopped and the buzz started to pick up. Now, they have been doing this for 7 years but there was nervousness in the air. Any herd of cattle is unpredictable and a herd of longhorns is more unpredictable. Like any cattle, these are big animals but the horns make them even bigger. The wingspan of the horns is 7 or more feet. That makes for an impressive herd. There must have been 50 to 75 of the animals and about 10 wranglers keeping them in line. When they hit the biggest concentration of the crowd, they got real nervous and started shoving the other steers around. It got a little dicey for a minute but the cowboys broke up the “fights” and the herd moved on. Then came the honorary wranglers. That was about a hundred of more mounted people (from the 9 dude ranches around town I heard someone say). Then civic groups, clubs, town and county officials, representatives from the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, the Bull Riding Group…..well the parade went on for more than an hour and there were more horses in the parade than I have seen in all of my life. It was pretty cool (The street was a mess though).

It was fun. I was dressed for a western outing and looked so much like a native that tourists were stopping me to ask directions. I looked the part but all I had to do was open my mouth and my Maine accent definitely blew away all the work on the looks. One person looked askance at me as I gave them directions and followed by saying; “You’re not from around here are you?”

I had a steady run of phone calls wishing me a happy birthday. My mother called during the parade with a steady narration through the speakers behind us. My friend Stan called while we were watching the medicine show band playing. Jen called right in the middle of a backstage tour of the gunfighter show, my son called while we were on the road to the bull riding show and my daughter called during the wrap up of the Wild West show. Noise everywhere.

After the parade, we wandered down to Busbies and had some genuine Texas brisket, smoked for 16 hours and just as tender and moist as it could be. I have had brisket before and found it to be tough and dry but this was the other end of the spectrum. The place was ahoppin’. There was a line (like every other eatery in town) but the bottleneck was not the food but the availability of tables. Once you got a table, they took the number of your tag and within minutes, the food was on the table. That is the advantage of BBQ, the cooking is done overnight and all you have to wait for is the preparation of the plate.

After lunch, we wandered down to the park by the river to see what was going on there. There were some longhorns there. You could have your picture taken on a saddled longhorn in front of a huge Texas flag or you could get a ride on one. There was a blacksmith there and we watched him make a lid remover for a dutch oven. Then we wandered down the river a ways and ran into the Brazos Bottom Cowographers (western take on choreographers). They are a group of western skit people. They are a large group and they tell stories in action. They bring a town consisting of 10 or 12 buildings with them and using them as a backdrop, they act out stories of the old west. They all involve gunfighting and are a lot of fun. Each of their shows lasts 45 minutes to an hour and consists of a little history of the west, history of the group, gun safety and just plain fun. At the end of each of the skits, the ground is littered with bodies and as usual, the good guys win (although they mostly wore black).

I guess I looked like a kid in a candy store. After the show, the leader of the group singled me out and took me around to introduce me to everyone there and pointed out all of the family groups. The “cast” ran from 12 to 80 and everyone seemed to have a great time. He showed us how the town was put together and how they moved around in the back. He showed us the arsenal of weapons and introduced us to the weapons master. Some of the guns are real 1800s weapons and some are modern day “Hollywood” replicas that release the smoke/discharge from the side of the barrel and not the end. The costumes are semi-traditional. They did not dress accurately but tried to incorporate modern materials that would be more comfortable.

After that show, we wandered (we try not to deliberately walk places, wandering or meandering is shows a much more relaxed way to get around) up a side road that we found while we were in the park. The road was one road off Main Street and was way cool. There was a saloon (the 11th Street Saloon) on that street and there were horses tied up in front of the doors. There were 2 water troughs there and a tie rail in front of each of the doors with horses jammed along the rails. Between the rails were a group of Harley Davidson motorcycles (the modern day cowboys ride). We took a picture of me in my western finery standing in the swinging doors of the saloon and meandered on. The saloon in town had a bunch of horses in front of it too. All day long, there were horses riding through the town. If we could have gotten rid of the cars, it would have been even cooler.

We went back to the town hall and continued our search for the kettlecorn. Every once in a while during the parade, we could smell someone making kettlecorn but when we looked for it, we couldn’t find it. Well, we were determined and finally we found it. Armed with our bag of kettlecorn, we checked out a couple of booths that had caught our eye earlier. One was full of metal scenes. Many of them were welcome signs and most had western scenes cut from the metal. They were quite nice but most were big enough that we would have to rearrange our house to fit them in. We are still thinking about them and may go back today and look at them again.

We left there and went back to camp. We decided that we had looked the part long enough and wanted to change into shorts and t-shirts for the rodeo. We grabbed a peanut butter sandwich to eat on the way and headed to the rodeo park. The Wild West show was good but something put together locally and not a professional show. Then while they were setting up the bull riding arena, we went down and checked out the bulls; big nasty mean animals. They weighted about a ton apiece and looked docile most of the time. Every once in a while one would get a little rambunctious and require the intercession of a cowboy to keep the piece. They put up some fencing to halve the size of the arena. Bulls stay close to the chute until the ride is over then they tend to wander away rather than go down the escape route.

The National Professional Bull Riders is the name of the organization. They introduced the top riders in the group; past champions, event winners and riders who have qualified for PBR (the top bullriding group) Championships. Then the first chute opened and the first head to head meeting of man and beast. The beast won. The cowboy lasted about a second and a half before becoming part of the ground. As the evening went on, it became clear that on this night, the bulls were far and away the leaders. After the first round, there were no full rides…zero! The second round started off pretty much the same but about half way through, we got our first full ride. Now, you would think that you could do pretty much anything for 8 seconds…WRONG! It is not unusual for cowboys to score in the 80 point range with spectacular rides going in the 90s. This ride scored 74 points and the cowboy was offered a re-ride because the bull did not perform up to par.

Throughout the rest of the second round, 4 more cowboys made the full 8 seconds on their bulls but the high score was only 77 with the low a 68. Our first rider decided to take the reride. He though he stood a chance of winning with any kind of a decent ride. Once again, WRONG! The bull threw him in about 4 seconds and he didn’t even make the finals. They took a couple of cowboys that almost had full rides to make up the minimum of 6 required for a final round. Then they announced that they had kept the meanest of the mean bulls for this championship ride off. Well, we knew the winner at that time since no one rode any of the bulls in the final round. A whole evening of nearly 50 rides and only 4 full rides. Bad for the cowboys and great for the bulls. The announcer suggested part way through the second round that they should start scoring the bulls and ignoring the cowboys. Great Evening although I was disappointed that we never did see a full scale rodeo on this trip. Imagine Texas and no Rodeo.

During the Wild West show, there was a huge black cloud complete with lightening heading our way. It looked like we might have something else get rained out but at the last minute, it veered to our left and missed us completely.

Back at camp, Cheryl pulled a cheesecake out of the refrigerator that she had made the evening before. She put candles on it and we finished celebrating my birthday. We put the plates in the sink and went to bed, tired to the core.

The day dawned bright and clear. We got up late, showered, dressed and headed to Cowboy Church. They bring the church to the park in Bandera for the festival. They start out with a breakfast, eggs, sausage, bacon, coffee, juice and pastry. Once the breakfast is done, their band comes up and plays some cowboy music and moved toward gospel music and then Pastor Cliff came out and gave his sermon. He talked about his relationship with Jesus and its start in the 70s and talked about Jesus searching out a man who had been waiting for a miracle for 38 years. There were more than 200 people there. It was a beautiful setting. As Cecil Horr used to say in articles in the South Berwick Chronicle: A good time was had by all!

We headed downtown to walk through the craft portion of the festival once again. They had these metal wall hangings with scenes of the west and Welcome in big letters. We had looked at them and liked them and wanted to look at them again. I had taken the business card of the gentleman for later thought. We really don’t have room to carry one with us. As I pulled into a parking place, I realized that I didn’t have my wallet or money or anything else so we got back into the car and headed back to camp. We changed back into shorts and fixed lunch.

We headed back to the park to catch the last show of the Cowographers but got there while they were breaking down the town. The schedule had changed from Saturday and they played their last show at 3 vice 4 so we missed it. Chuck was standing at the top of the hill catching his breath from the whole weekend and watching the younger folks packing up the town. They had a large closed in trailer that all of the equipment went into. The main grouping of buildings sat on a trailer and folded up onto that trailer. The rest of the buildings folded up and were piled on top of the main buildings so that the entire town travels on a single trailer. The guns travel separately. Can you imagine getting stopped by the cops for some minor reason and having them spot a vehicle full of guns?

During the year that I worked in Norfolk a lot, I developed a friendship with a Viet Nam Veteran who was active in recreations at festivals. I went to one of the festivals that he was re-enacting at and was impressed with the array of weapons that they used in these demonstrations. The Monday following the festival, I went to lunch with him. As we were returning to the shipyard after lunch I turned around and lifted the blanket covering up some stuff in the back of the car and found 3 rifles and a rocket launcher. I was a nervous wreck going through the gate back into the shipyard but we didn’t get stopped. Whew!

We talked to Chuck for a while and met a few more people in his entourage. I also met a man who runs a western history museum at Fort Hood. He used to be a member of the Cowographers but now has his own historical organization.

We have been keeping a close eye on Gustav. Our next port of call was New Orleans. We were supposed to go there tomorrow but as the story developed and the storm got closer, we cancelled our reservations and made others near Austin. We are going to stay in this area a while longer and see what happens in NO. If everything works out ok, we will head there next week, if it goes badly, we will probably head north to Dallas/Fort Worth and figure it out from there. We didn’t get to Austin last week and we certainly didn’t get there this week so we picked a campground near Austin. We may just take a few days to catch up on things or we may go into the capital. We will be near the LBJ Ranch so we will certainly check that out. IF we go into the city, we will check out LBJ’s Library and some of the music venues.

This is Labor Day. I think we will stay right here on the campground and check out the pool. Nothing much happening today. We are watching the storm. It seems to be landing slightly to the west of NO and in the eastern part of Texas. We are kind of in the central part of Texas slightly west of San Antonio and just south of Austin. We should be safe. We expect to see the outskirts of the storm but that is it. We took the day off…big time. We never left the camper all day. We wrote and played games, watched the tennis and golf (saw some of that great weather you are getting via the golf match), took naps and had time to fix good meals. The hurricane hit much easier than expected and the damage was a lot less than expected. The bad thing about it is that next time people will remember how easy this one was and won’t evacuate next time.

Today is our last day here. We got up early and went for a walk. We walked down to the boat launch and sat on the hill staring out into the lake. It was a pretty morning. We wanted to get out before the heat started to build up but stopped to visit with our neighbors who were loading up to leave. So much for the cool of the morning. We visited for about an hour then took off. They weren’t going very far and tomorrow neither are we. Wouldn’t it be funny to end up in the same place? They are from NY and are full timers. They usually go home in the late summer for a few weeks to visit their friends and family but with the gas prices they are staying out here this year. They have a home park out here and are members of Coast to Coast (like us). We compared places and have been in several of the same places.

After the walk, I fixed breakfast (sausage, onion and cheese scramble w/scallions as a garnish). Then we headed to town to find our wayward mail that should have been here on Wednesday, still wasn’t here on Thursday (forgot to look on Friday) with the post office closed (completely) on Saturday and a holiday on Monday. It was there!

Then we went in search of a cup of coffee and found a donut shop on the road out of town. We stopped there and met a local woman and talked with her and her daughter for about an hour before we hit the road again. We drove out towards the Natural Area (state park). This is where the cattle drive started on Saturday but we were told it was a nice drive. It is out into the hill country. There are rolling hills with small trees and range. The first thing we found was a dead deer on the side of the road with about 8 vultures picking at the corpse. These weren’t the red headed turkey vultures but black headed vultures (don’t know the actual name of them). They were so enthralled with their cache that they totally ignored us as we stopped to watch them.

This area is famous for its dude ranches and driving around we wondered where they all were. Well, we found them. Most of them were out on this road. It seems that the state park is famous for its horse trails. There is 5,500 acres in the park and it is a famous local place to ride. On the way back, we stopped at “Hills of Bandera”; a subdivision in the hill country. This was a much nicer development than the one our campground is in. The lots are 5 acre minimum and are located in a beautiful area which includes a (small mountain or a big hill) with views in all directions. There are more than 60 lots of which about half are sold. The developer is only developing the subdivision and is not building the houses meaning you can design and contract your own house. The subdivision is “horse friendly” meaning that horses are not excluded and the lots are big enough to house a couple of horses. There is also an easement at the top of the park to enter the state park directly from the development. The roads are all in and the poles for the electricity are scheduled to be started by the end of this week. The owner is responsible for his/her own well and septic system. This will be a gated community and the lots run from $15,000 to $17,000 an acre.

The same developer has another development on the other side of town that is nicer with underground utilities and waterfalls and other niceties. These lots are $30,000 an acre but the lots are smaller (2 acres). After this, we went downtown and Cheryl looked for another cowgirl hat (colored) but couldn’t find one. Then we looked through an antique shop (warehouse really) that was waaay overpriced. Needless to say, we didn’t buy anything.

Now we are back at camp getting ready to move tomorrow morning. We are headed up near LBJ’s Ranch and Austin. We are looking forward to somewhere quiet for a few days. Then we have to figure out what to do next. We have no plans past 5 days up there. It depends what shape New Orleans is for visitors and how long they think it will take to welcome visitors. We certainly don’t want to get in the way of the cleanup but if everything is under control, we would like to go there. We’ll See.

Well, that is about all for this leg of the trip. I will upload this now and next you hear from me, I will be in the next location.

Hope all is well with you. Enjoy the fall, it is my favorite time of the year and I won’t be there to enjoy it. Miss yo’all!

Clayton