Isla Blanca

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted and it's been a much needed rest for me.  We got settled in the campground and then had to pull up stakes and drive the motorhome to Brownsville, Texas to get a VIN Verification so we could get our license plates and finish up the paperwork on the purchase.  Then I've spent some time reorganizing and moving things around - it always takes a few tries until you get things in the best places!  I want to get one more piece of art replaced and then will be done, at least for now.  The long term plan is to replace the carpet with wood or vinyl flooring, remove the cornice boards and pleated shades and install woven blinds and paint the interior.  But that will all wait for a while.

I wanted to write up a post about the RV park we're staying in, in case anyone might be interested in staying here at some point.

Although winter is not their "high" season, they welcome "Winter Texans."

Entrance gate

You must have a ticket to enter, but the public can also come in by paying for a day pass.

Park office

This is actually outside of the park, but where you check in, get your mail and just generally do any other business you have.

This is definitely the most unusual park in which I've ever stayed.  Owned and run by Cameron County, I had read mixed reviews before I booked a reservations, so was a bit nervous about staying here.  Having almost 600 sites, the park is located at the very southern tip of South Padre Island, with unlimited access to the Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna Madre lagoon that separates the island from the mainland.  Besides being in a perfect location, the RV sites are generous and people, literally, come back yearly to the same site.  $100 will reserve your site from year to year, but each site is available for others when you are not occupying it.  The winter people, the summer people and travelers are welcome to improve the site in any way with approval from the office.  Most people have poured concrete patios, but some have wooden decks or just grass.  Others really go to town, building fences for windbreaks, planting flowers and trees and putting in gardens.  Park model home are even moved in for the season, then returned to storage for the rest of the year.  Now, remember, these sites are owned by the county, not the individual.  But the sharing seems to work, because in talking with people who have been coming here for years, nothing is usually removed, taken or damaged from season to season.  It's a very cheap way to have a vacation "home" in an area where the median home price is $275,000!  We were very lucky to get a site with a concrete pad and two beautiful palms trees and found out by talking to neighbors that the usual winter occupant didn't come this year due to a death in the family.

Views of the RV Park

I had to get on top of the coach to get these views!

There is a walking/biking track all around, multiple rest room/shower facilities (no laundromat, but the new rig has a washer/dryer, so no worries for me), activity center, bingo hall, boat dock, beach access just over the dunes and the people who run the show are very friendly and helpful. Welcoming and very quick to help with any problem, the county employees go above and beyond to make you feel at home.

As I said earlier, we've spent time fishing (Sid),  going to the beach and eating in great restaurants on the island and just across the bridge in Port Isabel.

One of the two pavilions on the beach

These have picnic tables, bathrooms and are a great place for viewing the gulf waters.

Beach activity

Sunny days bring out more people - most of the time, the beach is empty except for the kite boarders.

Real or fake?

You tell me!

 

Granite seawall

Every time I walk the seawall, I can't help but think of how many counter tops these huge granite boulders would make.

View from the beach looking north

This was taken on a yucky day, but you can see one of the pavilions on the left and a few hotels up island.

Nipper's man cave

This is Nipper's home in the new motorhome.

Sittin' on a sign in the bay 

The pelicans spend their days sitting near the fish cleaning stations and I'm getting a good view of them doing their thang every day!

Ship entering the channel to the Port of Brownsville

Although not as busy as other channels we've camped near, we still get to see some large ships entering the shipping channel.

English or Spanish?

All the signage in the park is in both English and Spanish.

We have our very own statue of Jesus...

...which may or may not be a columbarium.

Each block has the name of deceased relative on a plaque.

Interesting signage

A couple new signs I've never seen before for my caution sign collection.

A new addition to our motorized family

I call him Zipper, because I zip here and zip there every day.

My day usually starts with a mile and a half walk with Nipper around the park, then a ride down to the boat dock area, which is the best place for shelling.  Then it's off to the beach or piddling around home or some shopping or reading until dinnertime.  Evenings we either go out to dinner or to some activity in the area (we saw a great play the other night put on by the local theater group).  Bedtime and then it starts all over again. I'm not sure where the days go, but I'm never bored.  It's hard to believe we've been here almost three weeks - that's the longest time we've spent in one location since February!

I'll still be blogging about our grand adventure for the next few months, but the posts will be farther apart. I'm sure those of you in the more northern parts of the country would tire quickly of hearing about cold fronts of 75 degrees and days spent on the beach.  Don't forget about me, though, because there are more experiences still on the horizon!

Until next time...

Hitting the Coast

The final leg of our time in Texas began with a trip from East Texas to Galveston, where we were scheduled for our first-ever seven day cruise to Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Jamaica.  Along the way, we saw the giant Sam Houston (you can read about that here) and, although the bluebonnets were done for the year, the wildflowers along the highway were spectacular.
 

Houston skyline

Houston is one city in America that I don't care if I ever return to!  I've driven through it twice and both times the traffic was horrendous!  Although this picture doesn't reflect it, the stop and go traffic jams started in Conroe, a suburb about 40 miles north of the city and never really let up until we passed over the bridge to Galveston.  This was on a Saturday and the same held true on the following Sunday for the return trip.  (As an aside, I have a new friend, Dolores, who lived in the area for many years, so I may have to give the city another chance one of these days with a "native"!)

We arrived in Galveston with enough time to do a little sightseeing, but the most important activity on the agenda was...

Toes in the sand!!!

Galveston, on a Saturday afternoon, was understandably very busy and to park on Seawall Blvd. you pay by cell phone.  I had some trouble with it and one of the parking monitors who was patrolling on a Segway kindly saw that we had out of state plates and told us not to worry about paying and to have a nice time. Way to be friendly and welcoming, city of Galveston!  

We walked the Galveston seawall for a bit and saw the 1901 Storm Memorial, in memory of the victims of the 1900 hurricane which flattened Galveston.

This memorial withstood a devastating storm in 2008 that flattened Galveston once again.

Before tucking into our hotel for the night, we drove over to the Houston Space Center.  The center is no longer used for space missions and has been turned into a learning center. They were closed by then, but they did have an unexpected display on the grounds.

Entrance to the Houston Space Center, which is on a busy street among retail strip malls.

Space Shuttle Independence atop a Boeing 747

Dedication in front of the building

And just down the same street is the Johnson Space Center.  We tried to get in, but were stopped by a gate guard who told us the only way to enter was via a paid tour and it was too late in the day for that.  This facility is still in use today for some kind of NASA goings-on.

Secret stuff, apparently, going on in here!

Even though we didn't get to actually tour either of these facilities, it was goose bump time for me to stand before the places where so much important history occurred during my childhood. It was amazing to discover the mundane settings where critical functions of the space program took place.  Okay, so maybe I could be convinced to give Houston another chance, just to be able to tour here!

Next we checked out the parking lot where we were going to leave the car just to be sure we knew where to go in the morning.

Shades of the Caribbean??

A quick dinner and it was off to the hotel.  Getting excited now, next stop will be a ship larger than anything I've ever seen.

Royal Caribbean's Navigator of the Seas

Until next time...

Fried Pies, a Lumberyard and the Father of our Country

This post is going to be kind of a catch up of the last bit of time we spent in Texas before going on our cruise, so I hope you enjoy it!

When I said the Father of our Country, I'll bet you immediately thought of George Washington.  Well, from the point of view of a Texan, you would be wrong.  Children in Texas schools were taught that Sam Houston was the "Father of our Country", the country referenced, of course, being Texas!  And in Huntsville, TX is arguably the second largest free standing sculpture in the United States (the first being the Statue of Liberty), honoring the Texas statesman in the way that only Texas can - with a 67' tall statue that towers over Interstate 45!

While you can see the statue from the highway, our GPS routed us off the highway north of it.  Winding along a country road and following the signs, we came first to the Visitor Center.

The Visitor Center is built in the style of a dogtrot house that would have been popular in Houston's time and sits on heavily wooded acreage.

We have not yet seen any sign of a statue, let alone a giant one!  But walking a meandering trail behind the visitor's center, we came across this...

A giant head

Interesting, but not really indicative of what's to come.  We rounded a corner on the trail and this vision appeared...

From the rear

But even this view does not do justice to the enormity of this statue.   To put it into perspective, take a look at this...

That's Sid, standing in front of Sam Houston!

That's all there is to the park/attraction (aside from the ubiquitous gift shop, of course!), but it was well worth the detour.

We started seeing signs for fried pies in Oklahoma, but didn't have a chance to stop for any.  So, once we got into Texas, finding an authentic fried pie was high on the agenda.  As some of you may know, Sid's mother used to make the most amazing apricot fried pies and we hadn't had one in a long time.  So we finally found a place near where we were camped and we made the detour one night to pick some up.

Fried pie - couldn't wait to sink our teeth into it!

Big disappointment!!!  Turns out, these were actually made in Oklahoma, frozen, then shipped to franchises in Texas to be fried and sold.  It tasted nothing like the fried pies we remembered and more like the packaged "fried pies" you get at Walmart.  But we did have fried pie success at another stop; read on!

Eating out is very popular with all of Sid's relatives so we did that a lot while we were in East Texas.  One restaurant that stood out was the Lumberyard Cafe, in Edgewood, TX.

Nondescript exterior

Unique menu

The cafe sits right on the main road and was once actually....wait for it....a lumberyard!  The lumber barns are still in the back although they look to be used for storage now.  The food is mostly Texas comfort food, good simple fare that fills you up for a reasonable cost.

We can't really go anywhere without Sid checking out the chicken fried steak!

We made a return trip on a Friday night for fried catfish.  Big portions and excellent hush puppies.  And the fried pies were heaven!  We scarfed them up so quickly I didn't get a picture!

Next up...cruisin' the Caribbean!  The next few posts will be about our first ever cruise with 8 of Sid's elementary school friends on the occasion of their 50th high school reunion.

Until next time...

The Richest Acre in the World

World's Richest Acre, in fact, is what downtown Kilgore, TX advertises as its claim to fame. And after pumping over 2.5 million barrels out of the ground on this acre, I'm pretty sure they've got a lock on the title!

World's Richest Acre in the late 1930s

Oil Derricks on the World's Richest Acre today

In the days before regulations were enacted forbidding it, there stood a forest of oil derricks over more than 1000 wells on this one acre plot of land.  The city has recreated some of that skyline with the World's Richest Acre Park in the original downtown area.  Not confined to the park, abandoned oil derricks and pumps are seen in yards throughout the city and the few grand old homes remaining from that era are falling into disrepair.

Lou Della Crim home 

Each derrick in the city sports a large star on top and Sid remembers his family making the trek to Kilgore every year at Christmas to see them lit up.  For this reason, Kilgore is also know as a City of Stars.

Kilgore, as some of you may know, is also the home of the world renowned Kilgore College Rangerettes. Organized in 1939, it is still today the dream of many high school girls to be a Rangerette.

The Rangerette Museum was closed the day we visited, but this painting is on the side of the building.

Falling under the category of weird, we saw this on our way home from Kilgore.  It's a little hard to see in the picture, but each table in this rest area sits under an oil derrick.

Rest Area on I-20

We've now moved to Sid's cousin's house in preparation for boarding Nipper and leaving Julie in their care while we cruise the Caribbean.  Not sure when the next post will be, but it's off to blue skies, sumptuous food and ocean breezes for us!

Until next time...

The Salt Palace

It's been a somewhat quiet week here on the home front and very rainy, but we have managed a little sightseeing.  I've been dragging Sid around to the little towns he grew up around and forcing him to be a tourist. He says it's giving him a whole new perspective on places in which he spent a good portion of his childhood!

Grand Saline (meaning "large salt") is a tiny little town of about 3200 people best known as the "saltiest town in Texas" and the site of the largest and highest-quality salt deposit in the country (owned by none other than Morton Salt).  The town was named for the large salt deposits found to the south of town in the 1800s; deposits are so large that it's estimated that they could supply the entire world's need for salt for the next 20,000 years!

The plant is one of the largest employers in the county.

This plant produces the majority of table salt used in this country.

Surprisingly, they also produce all the iconic packaging on site.

The plant no longer gives tours, but you can visit the Salt Palace to take a virtual tour and learn about the salt industry.  Originally constructed by proud residents of the city in 1936, the building resembled the Alamo.

Photograph of original Salt Palace

But, exposed to the East Texas rain, the building gradually melted away (yes, I said melted!) and had to be rebuilt.  Again, the second building suffered the same sad fate and, with the third iteration, while not "palatial" by any stretch of the imagination, the city figured out a way to protect it's creation.

Current "Salt Palace" in Grand Saline, TX

It is, in fact, constructed of rock salt chunks (ask me how I can be sure!) and houses a little museum full of all things salt related.

Outside the museum sits a huge hunk of rock salt

A little off the beaten path, but worth the detour, the drive to Grand Saline was beautiful.  There has been so much rain down here that every little depression in the ground is filled with water and the multiple lakes are filled to capacity.  And, while the bluebonnets are on their way out, the sides of the roads are filled with other wildflowers in white, yellow and purple and everywhere you look is lush and green.

Until next time...

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The Jalapeno Tree

The Jalapeno Tree is a Tex-Mex restaurant chain that promises "crazy good Mexican food" and, given its bright colors outside, was a place that spoke to me.  We had seen them in different small towns around east Texas and decided to try one for an early dinner in Mineola, TX.

The inside was as colorful as the outside, with brightly painted walls, quirky tablecloths and ceramic iguanas covering the walls.

Colorful lizards everywhere!

The menu wasn't huge, but had all the combos and sides that you would expect from any Mexican restaurant.  They make their own, handmade tortillas in the restaurant, which you could watch being made and were delivered to the table gratis.

The tortilla were really quite good.

The food itself was good, but we didn't think it was "crazy good."  However, relative to what's available at home, at the restaurant that shall remain nameless, it was delicious. But we have had better.

My dinner. I like the fact you could get the black beans and sauteed veggies instead of refried and rice.

Sid couldn't wait for me to take the picture before digging in!

To me, the most impressive thing about the chain is their commitment to public service.  Their Pepper Posse works in the local communities where these restaurants are located to provide fund raising, sponsorship and other benefits to schools and organizations.

The food was good enough and the philosophy outstanding, so we would definitely eat at this restaurant  again.  Besides, who could resist these guys?

The Pepper Posse

Until next time...