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