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