We have been in Corpus Christie the last three days and don’t have much to prove by it.     

I think that we are here a bit early for windsurfing as the weather has been foggy.  Nothing like what we are used to.  Fog and temps in the 70s and 80s.  Apparently that is usual for this time of year.

Tomorrow is another day so we’ll hope for the best.

Today we toured parts of the city and then spent most of the afternoon doing laundry.  We feel like real “elites” as my dad would say as we really aren’t used to hauling in our dirty clothes for everyone else to see !  Oh horrors ! Anyway has anyone paid to do laundry lately?  We spent around $7.00 all in quarters.

On our way back to the island we found a little german bakery that was a gold mine.  The owners are from the old country and brought over their own wood burning ovens.  Plus they hired workmen from Germany to install the units.  You should see the bread that they bake.  A real yum yum factory and quite close to our location.

Speaking of location we are located at Bird Island Basin in the Padre Island Nat’l Seashore.  With a Sr. pass we can stay here for $5 and can stay a total of 2 weeks for that price.  Quite a bargain as are all the Nat’l Parks  when you are an old geezer like I am.  I can’t include Claudia in that category yet but it is getting closer.

I should call this blog entry “Hug your loved ones every day.”  I talked to our neighbor who seemed to want to talk to me about Oregon.  Another one of those “Oregone” intros.

Bob said that he has fond memories of Oregon when he lived there many years ago.  He talked about camping with Timmy.  He had some nice fishing pictures of the two of them so I asked how old Timmy is now.  He said with a bit of a tear in his eyes that Timmy was killed in a car accident 6 years ago.  He would be 29 if he had lived.  I felt really bad bringing up the subject of Timmy’s age.

Then he proceeded to tell me that his wife passed away here on the island two years ago when they were camping on the beach.  Pretty sad story but it made me think about  

hugging everyone that reads this blog.

We are including pictures of white pelicans that we saw on our walk this afternoon.  Elliott you would like it down here as we know that you are studying all kinds of birds as there are some pretty awesome species to see.

I am also including a picture taken out our front window of the waterway.  Million dollar view and this type of location/view is why we like to spend time RVing.

Love to all.

Howdy Pardner or just a minute “hon” I’ll be right with you.  Ya, we’re learning cowboy speak.

Today we had a leisurely morning here at the motorhome.  Took Andie for a walk and gabbed with some of the travelers here in the park.Then we decided to visit Luckenbock which is on the same highway as the Western White House.  But worlds apart as you will see in our photos .

Mainly it is a place where the bikers can ride in dressed in their finest and have a beer or three and strut around like peacocks.  Does anyone feel that all black leathers is becoming to either sex.  Bikers are kind of weird I’d have to say.

There were four or five cowboys jamming with us visitors as their audience.  Leo ,you have fond memories of the place.  Here’s a joke one of the good ole boys told.  Question, what does a beer and a booger  have in common?  Answer, the beer always stays on top of the table.  The old boy in the big white goatee told that one :)

Anyway it is a dusty old place with unpainted barns with chickens running around and this time there was a rancher that had a Texas long horn bull saddled and ready for folks to climb aboard for a $7 picture.  Really hilarious.  Later we saw the owner ride the bull right out of the town headed toward the horse...uh bull trailer.  Fun place.

On the way back we walked through a good part of Fredericksburg.  This town has over 700 buildings on the Historical Registry.  It is full of history.  At the turn of the century over 6000 German immigrants sailed on sailing ships to ports south of the area.  Most settled here in the Hill Country.

Of course it was coffee time so we visited a famous  shop that serves fresh pies and coffee.  Claudia had a berry pie and I had chocolate pecan pie.  Both to die for.  We sat next to a young couple from Japan that couldn’t speak a lick of English.  But as we were finishing our coffee a couple came up to us and asked if we were from Oregon.  I thought that maybe I had an Oregon tattoo showing or something.  They took a chance and noticed our car parked in front of the place with Oregon plates.  They had lived in Oregon at one time.  We meet a lot of people this way.    

It kind of reminds me of Volkswagen stories people would come up with when we had our volksy.

Tomorrow we are heading out and will probably make Bird Island, Corpus Christie where we will have to get used to dry camping on the beach.  I kind of like full hookups and 70 ch on the TV.  Stayed tuned Ya’ll. 

Fredericksburg, TX. Hill Country

Had a great day today.  Temps were 30 degrees lower today which allowed us to take Andie on our adventure.  The high today was 63 with winds from the cold North.  It blew all night but we were quite snug in our little home away from home.
It was nice to get up and not have to break camp and get on the road the first thing in the AM.  So around 10:00 we hit the visitors center and got info. to tour the LBJ Texas White House.  Great tour and we had a real nerd (his words) for a tour host.
For those of you younger then us LBJ stands for Lyndon Johnson our 36th president.  Apparently he spent 25% of his days as president at his home here in the Hill Country.  He would fly into San Antonio on Air Force One change to a smaller plane (see pic) and fly to his home here locally.
His home was like a time capsule as everything was as it was in the 60's.  Including bright yellow formica in the kitchen, old time tv-s in each room, and rotary dial phones.  Oh and he wore boxers in case you were wondering.

The 60's were  turbulent times for the nation and for us personally as we had to contend with the draft and listen to Viet Nam issues daily in everything we did.  When the guide spoke of the circumstances of JFK's death I have to admit that I shed a bit of a tear thinking back to where I was on that fateful day.  Anyway think of what the President must have been forced into thinking.
We couldn't get a clear shot of his home or surroundings as it was surrounded by beautiful Texas live oak trees.  What a spot.  He had something like 800 acres on what seemed like on top of the world.  Talk about the Hill Country.  It was like you could see forever .  Really an inspirational place to say the least.
We finished that tour and next to the LBJ spread was a working farm set in the turn of the century.  Claudia took a movie of a 500 lb pig (for Jonah) but the video wouldn't upload.  It was a full- on working farm/ranch with volunteers doing chores, making and smoking sausages, bread and other basic necessities of life.  Apparently the Hill Country wasn't electrified until 1956.  Imagine that and no shopping centers or Freddy's to run to at the spur of the moment.  I took a picture of what the raw land looks like with live oaks, cactus, and lots of rocks.  Pretty rough country in those days.
Well enough of this.  Tomorrow we will spend more time in the city which is a special place out here in the middle of nowhere.
Bye of now.  Kyle it was really good to talk to you today and to just hear your voice.  Glad that you are healing nicely.
Love as always
Dad

Fredericksburg, Tx. Hill Country

Hi, everyone.  We had another day on the road.  We drove from Ft Stockton to here at Fred., Tx.  A trip of about 255 miles.  We lucked out with strong tail winds all the way here.  There have been times when we have stopped short of here and stayed a couple of days because of headwinds.  Wind is the bane of every RVr.
We are in classic Hill Country and we tried to contrast the topo of Ft Stockton vs the area we are in now.  This is G W Bush territory which doesn't speak well of the mentality of this region.  Oh there I go again talking politics.
Speaking of politics we will visit Pres. Johnson's ranch which is a National Park.  That should be fun.
It was hot here (89) when we got here and will be in the low 60s tomorrow.  They are having unusual weather in this region.  That's all they talk about on the news programs locally.
The park we are staying is
 Lady Bird Johnson state park.  A great spot close to town but very quiet.  Good 50 amp service with great cable TV.  We plan on staying here for the next three nights so that we can explore some of the sights.  Can't wait to post pictures of Fredericksburg as it is a unique German town.  Historically a contingent of Germans made their way here at the turn of the century to farm and ranch.  It's tough to see how they could do much farming as the soil looks really rocky and is full of Texas live oaks.  That's all you see for miles.
We did a FaceTime with Jonah and Elliott tonight and got filled in on their activities.  Jonah sounds like he is already an expert skier :)
Love to all

Gary

Yesterdays post Tues. 2/21/2012

We are still trying to get this blogging figured out.  I am trying to get this typed  off line as we haven’t had good luck with WiFi in the last two stops.

Yesterday was a good day as we drove from Tucson, AZ to Las Cruces, New Mexico.  A distance of about 260 miles.  Pretty uneventful except that we set a record on that leg of our trip.

It  was a “two finger” day for us which is a  typical problem with graybeards driving RVs.  The first finger was a merging situation where the mergers (College students I presume) with a car piled high with their belongings.  They couldn’t get up to speed and we had nowhere to go so we kind of used our bigness to intimidate.  As a result the first finger waved at us.

The second was a guy driving 50 mi. per hour down I-10 while reading his map.  He was all over the place so I gave him a toot and his retaliation was...you know what.  I probably won’t do that again.

We’ve never had two in one day. So that is our dubious record while driving in our RV..

Wed. Feb 22, 2012

Today we drove from Las Cruces to Ft. Stockton, Tx.  So we are officially in “yes sir/yes mam” territory.  With a little “boy howdy” thrown in for good measure.  We drove 288 miles and it took us most of the day.  It seems like we need to stop at every rest area and McDonalds so our day is usually 6 hours whether we put in 200 miles or twice that.  Not a bad way to see the sights.

We haven’t seen much as it is pretty much waste land through this part of Texas.  Mom took some pics to show the “lay of the land.”  Erik that is for you :)

We saw our first oil refinery today so that should mean lower gas prices as we work our way south.  Our experience tells us that we should be paying less especially in south Texas.

On this stretch of I -10 we saw way more semis then cars or RVs.  Pretty amazing how this country runs on trucking.  It is going to be hard to wean ourselves off our dependence on oil.  Yes, I said that while sitting in a rig that gets 10 mpg at best.

It seems like there is hardly a half a day that goes by that I don’t say “this is living.”  My favorite saying these days.  The only thing that would be better would be if we could all do this together.

I am going to make a call to Verizon this evening and speak to them about their setup using Mom’s phone as a mobile hot spot.  I’ll keep you posted.

Love to all.  We miss you a lot.

Starting our "epic" journey

I say epic in quotes as we are only to Tucson our first day.  That's only a couple hundred miles from Surprise.  However we always try to stay here at Lazydays rv campground (formerly Beaudry RV) as we bought our first motorhome from Beaudry.
We were on our way back from So. Texas with our pickup and camper and decided to stay here for the night.  Well, as the story goes, on the way to do some laundry we bought a new motorhome.  We realized  on that trip that a camper was just too small for two adults and a doggy.  So we traded in the entire outfit and bought a new/ used Class C motorhome.  What an exciting time for us.
Anyway off tomorrow early as we like to make New Mexico on our second day out.  Should be a long day of driving but not a lot of traffic and the road (I-10) is in good shape.

We love our new motorhome.  It drives great and is super comfortable.  Along the way we met some nice people from Oregon at a rest area and had a nice chat with our neighbors here who are from Calif.

First Blog

Hi everyone.  This is Grandpa and Grandma's  first blog on the eve of our epic journey to parts unknown.  Hopefully South will be the general direction.

Tomorrow we are doing our last task at Happy Trails which is dishwashing at the Chuck Wagon.  Then it is off to our first destination which will be Tucson.  We'll keep you posted.