Louisiana and Texas in January

January 5 we departed the lovely Bella Terra of Gulf Shores to make our way west to Cat Spring, Texas, for our next long stay.Bella Terra was just east of Mobile, AL and our route took us through this tunnel under Mobile Bay.  Next time we're there we are there we will explore Mobile.  Too many things to see and do in one visit!We had about 575 miles and about a week to travel so we built some exploration time into our schedule.  Our first stop was in Baton Rouge and I found a convenient RV park at the Baton Rouge Farr Park Equestrian Center.  I bet this place was rocking' in the summer but we were there in rainy, chilly January!  Apparently horse people don't travel in big motor homes like ours. You're looking at the spot where we parked, backed up to this "hitching rail".  We had quite a time getting there: very narrow two lane roads, no turn around when we missed our turn into the park, lots of trees overhanging our route, and an elevated train track to drive over.  We got the feeling that Baton Rouge wasn't embracing the RV lifestyle!We were parked next door to LSU and we were up close and personal with the "exuberance" of the SEC!   Tiger Stadium was bigger than some pro football stadiums we had seen.  Of course, the Cajun influence was everywhere.  The student population was about 31,000 students, compressed in a small area.  We drove through the campus on Saturday afternoon and found a section closed for a gymnastic competition, which must have been where lots of young ladies in sparkly outfits were headed.  Saturday, in spite of below freezing temps, we decided to go exploring.  We drove to the old downtown area and had hoped to explore the original capitol building, locally known as "the castle", and it really did look like that!  Too bad it was closed for renovations!.  






Our next stop was the “new” capitol building...the tallest in the US at 27 stories. It was built in the 1930’a on the former LSU campus.  We wandered through the public rooms, appreciated the beautiful wood and the architecture of the Senate and House chambers, saw the spot where Senator Huey Long was assassinated, and then took the elevator to the observation deck.  The observation deck on the 27th floor gave us amazing though chilly views.  The Mississippi River is in the upper left of the photo and creates the western boundary of the city.  The wind gusts reminded us of the gales coming off the frozen prairie of our childhood in Illinois.

The frozen fountain Jerry is standing near was part of a plaza that had contained the original fort, across the street from the new capitol building.
Sunday we were off to St. Paul's Lutheran Church.  The overhead streamers were a new idea for Advent and everyone liked them so much they were left up.  The altar area was very contemporary and their incorporation of video screens was the best we had seen.  This was another warm, welcoming, let's-have-coffee-and-visit-after-worship king of place.  Our favorite!  We learned that this was quite an active congregation involved in many community services and support.
Monday morning it was time to pull up the jacks and continue on our westward trek.  The bridge across the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and Port Allen, LA, was huge!  Baton Rouge was the furthest inland port on the Mississippi River that could accommodate ocean-going tankers and cargo carriers.  Cargo from here went by truck and rail to destinations all over the South.

The drive across the lowlands of Louisiana was just as one might expect…swampy and covered in vegetation.  Although wintertime meant not much green to be seen, we could imagine the hot, humid, murky swamp in the summer.


Monday night we were parked in Henderson, LA, at 10-10-10 rated Good Sam’s park.  We had lots of room, a concrete pad, and things to explore.  Cajun Palms RV Resort had a huge pool, water slides, a two-level bar/restaurant, and a pond for the ducks.  In the summer, I’m sure this place was hopping.
The afternoon of our arrival we found Bayou Teche microbrewery…out in the middle of nowhere north of Henderson.  In this tiny tasting room we met a couple from Cordova, Illinois (probably only Illinois folks will appreciate this little story.  Cordova, in the Mississippi River bottom, was not all that far from where we grew up, and was home to the Cordova International Raceway).  This couple, who were full-time RVers, were also avid motorcyclists, had biked all over west central Illinois and even knew the little bitty towns with which we were familiar…London Mills, Farmington, and even Bernadotte.  What a small world! 


Our server was the microbrewery’s QC officer (tough job, I’m sure!) and had a degree in Chemical Engineering from the U. of L.  He eagerly shared that he was interviewing for a job with a company from Sioux Falls, SD, and was ready to move.  What a culture shock that would be!

Cooking dinner that night in Abe proved to be an expensive proposition.  We heard a pop and Jerry saw a flash of light from the top right corner of the induction cooktop…and then nothing!  Dead!  The next morning we tried taking it apart to problem-solve the failure and (fortunately) cracked the glass.  Yay!  I was to get a new induction cooktop…one that will allow for better heat control.

Tuesday morning we drove south to Avery Island and the Tabasco Plant.  The Tabasco sauce that we saw in every diner across America has been made here by the Mclhenny family since it was first invented in 1868.  The self-guided tour took us through the greenhouse where pepper plants are started, the mixing room where peppers and vinegar are combined following a secret recipe, the aging warehouse where Tabasco is aged in white oak whiskey barrels, and the bottling plant where the 3 year old Tabasco is bottled and labeled for shipment throughout the world.  

We had lunch at the café and tried each of these hot sauces, but decided we liked the green sauce the best.  We couldn’t pass up a photo of the world’s largest bottle of Tabasco!!

On the way back to Abe we drove through the U of L Lafayette campus and were amazed at the huge live oaks.  What a pretty campus!  We stopped at Parish Brewing Co. in nearby Broussard....turned out not to be one of our favorites.  Imagine we found one we didn't like!Thursday, January 12, we were off again, bound for the Elks Lodge in Beaumont, TX.  We had had good luck camping at Elks Lodges in our travels and this one seemed a handy place to stop.  Well, we were proved wrong!  The “campground” was their backyard and had many long-term campers.  We did find one concrete pad to put Abe on…otherwise we would have sunk in the soft grass!  Even worse was the fact that this Elks Lodge was next to a pallet plant.  From 6:30 to 4:30 these busy workers made pallets by the score!  It wasn’t so bad in the afternoon, but Friday morning at 6:30 we just weren’t ready to listen to the pop of their nail guns!We were delighted to leave Beaumont, TX, behind us and made the last few miles to Lewis and Bonnie Smith’s new ranch, just outside Cat Spring, TX, about 40 miles west of Houston.  We’ve known the Smith’s for a long time (Jerry and Lewis both worked for Butler Mfg) and they’re two of a few brave souls who joined us on Cosmo Place in Alaska.  Their version of a retirement adventure was building a 40-acre ranch in the wilds of rural Texas.  They’ve owned the property for a couple years and expected to move into the new house in April.  When they built the shop they were kind enough to install 50 AMP service, water, and a sewer dump.  Amazing what folks will do for cheap labor!

(All of a sudden my font changed to all caps and I cannot figure out how to change it on the blogger site.  Sorry...hope you can put up with the change!)

Lewis is a great cook and an avid deer hunter, so we had some amazing meals built around venison and deer sausage off his grill.  Jerry, Bonnie, and I were glad to be the sous-chefs and the cleanup crew.  One night’s menu included spaghetti squash with venison sausage meatballs, grilled romaine, and a lovely red wine.  Tough duty!

Cat Spring, a cute little unincorporated town of about 300 actually had a country club!  The Friday night special was catfish, cole slaw, french fries and hushpuppies.  Even though the meal probably took minutes off our lives, we enjoyed every morsel!

Jerry and I took time off from the “ranch duties” to drive to College Station and wander through the campus of Texas A & M.  The university was the state's first public institution of higher education. With a student body of more than 59,000 and more than 5,200 acres on the College Station campus, Texas A&M was also among the nation's largest universities.  The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library was housed on the campus and that was our primary objective.  We’re big fans of presidential libraries and this library was particularly well done.
Sunday, January 22, meant time for church!  This area of Texas is full of German settlers’ descendants and every little town worth its salt has at least one ELCA Lutheran church…lots to choose from!  We went to St. John’s in New Ulm and, once again, found a welcoming congregation and a pastor with a great message.  Lewis and Bonnie will have several churches to choose from when they make the transition from Pearland to Cat Spring.  The fact that their church backgrounds are Baptist and Presbyterian has led to some interesting theological discussions!  It has also made Jerry and I aware of the need for a church to make its worship service understandable to someone who is new.  “Uh-oh, we didn’t fill out Communion cards!  Now what!”  Communion cards?...exactly!
The Smith’s returned to Pearland the next Sunday to attend a birthday party, so Jerry and I “tended the home fires” and went to St. John’s in Cat Spring.  We’d been here before and appreciated it was only 5 minutes away.  Between the two churches, we would choose St. John’s in New Ulm…friendlier.

Lewis has hunted deer on the same property for over 25 years and spoke fondly of he “deer lease” NW of Cat Spring in the Texas Hill Country and took us touring.  This turned out to be quite a day!  First we stopped in Luling, TX, (home of the famous watermelon water tower) at a favorite BBQ restaurant/meat market to pick up meat for lunch.

The facilities at the deer lease included a cabin with a patio, several RVs, and an outhouse.  What more could the laid-back deer hunter want?  

We got the grand tour of the 400 acres that the deer hunters used, including a stop at a swimming hole.  This turned out to be a great photo opp and a great shot of Jerry and I.

Lewis, his son Kenneth, and several of Kenneth’s friends hunt here every fall.  The group has started to grow to include a third generation of hunters.  Kenneth’s sons are 6, 4, and 2, so they weren’t hunting yet, but loved to go hang out here in this rustic camp. 

On the way home we stopped at a cute little microbrewery in Wimberly, TX, called Middleton Brewing.  Lewis kinda got into the whole try a new beer idea...even chatted with the folks at the table next to us!

            We did actually did do some work at the ranch and Jerry and Lewis had a great time doing some work moving rock, fixing washed out areas around the pond, and even hanging Bonnie's wind chimes.  Put two engineers together who have quite a history of problem solving together and things are bound to get done. 
Bellville, a town about 10 miles north of Cat Spring, was the county seat, location of a great meat market, and a spot we had wanted to visit…a blacksmith shop!  The building had been there for a long time and the city fathers found a young man to run the shop and provide demonstrations.  As luck would have it, the shop was open one day when we passed by.  Quite a place!  In the photo you see “Cowboy” operating the bellows.  He had refined (no pun intended!) his blacksmithing skills to making knives and his business was called “Phenix Knives”.  Check out his website here:  http://www.phenixknives.com   He was quite knowledgeable about smithing, forging, and this old building.  He was delighted to show us the smithing and forging equipment he had restored and still used.

Tuesday, January 31, it was time to pull up the jacks and continue west through Texas.  Tonight’s destination was Junction, TX, and an RV park on the South Llano River.  We walked into town and found “Paddlers’ Porch” and great hamburgers.  The owner told us that the Llano River was a favorite destination for kayakers and this restaurant arranged put-ins and pick-ups for them.  We were surprised to learn that the South Llano River actually flows north!  Even though the summer temperatures here can exceed 100^o, the owner told us this area was crazy busy in the summer with tourist coming here to enjoy the water sports.

Wednesday, February 1, we drove to Balmorhea State Park, on the edge of the Davis Mountains, just south of I-10.  We planned two nights here so we could explore the area.  The CCC developed the 46-acre state park and the 1.75-acre pool in the 1930’s. San Solomon spring, a naturally occurring spring fed the pool, delivering 15 million gallons of water each day.  The pool was up to 25 feet deep and held 3.5 million gallons of water.  We saw several swimmers enjoying the warm water, which stayed 72 to 76 degrees year-round, but we did not join them.
Twenty miles south of the park was Fort Davis the town and the ruins of the old fort.  This fort was one of a string of defenses in the south-western frontier to protect the El Paso-San Antonio Road from Indian attacks.  This fort along with others we had visited, such as Fort Sill and Fort Concho, made this area safe for settling.  By the 1890’s the Indian Wars had been resolved and many of these forts were abandoned.  This fort has a dedicated group working to restore the fort to its former glory.  The buildings in the photo are restorations.  We were interested in the bluffs behind these buildings.  We guessed correctly that these are basalt columns, remnants of a huge volcanic eruption about 35 million years ago that spread lava over thousands of miles!

Not far from Fort Davis, in the mountains to the west was McDonald Observatory, our other target for exploration.  On top of Mounts Locke and Fowlkes, we found three huge telescopes/observatories and research facilities for the University of Texas at Austin Astronomy Program.  Their primary research involved using spectrography to look for new galaxies, stars, and planets, using the properties of the light emitted.  I almost understood it!  Several other telescopes were scattered around the site, including a telescope on the valley floor, part of the “Very Long Baseline Array”. The parabolic dish antenna was 82 feet in diameter.  The adjacent control building contained the supporting electronics and machinery for the receiver, including low-noise electronics, digital computers, data storage units, and the antenna-pointing machinery.  Each of the antennas in the array was about as tall as a ten-story building when the antenna was pointed straight up, and each antenna weighed about 240 tons.  Incredible!  In the middle of Nowhere West Texas, amazing things were happening. 

We left Balmorhea Friday, February 3, to make our way to Las Cruces, NM, but that’s a story for another day!