Week ending Jan 28, 2016 Victoria and Hondo

Friday after our weekly skype visit with Mom and Dad, we visited Fannin Battlefield  Historic site which commemorates the Battle of Coleto Creek, a battle of the  Texas Revolution, fought on March 19 and 20, 1836 between Texian forces commanded by Col. James W Fannin and the Mexican Army commanded by Mexican General Jose de Urrea.   Fannin was heavily outnumbered and eventually surrendered to the Mexican Army, expecting his troop to be treated as prisoners of war.  However, he and his troops were executed several days later at nearby Presidio La Bahia.  The site has a well-done display covering Texas independence events starting from 1810 through 1848 when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed.  This treaty settled the border between the USA and Mexico.

Saturday we visited The Museum of the Coastal Bend  which showcases the rich multi-cultural heritage Texas' mid-coastal region. The museum's purpose is to collect, preserve, exhibit, interpret, and educate using the history and heritage of the region. This  interesting museum is located on  the campus of the Victoria College. It covered indigenous people of the area with information on how they lived, including a replica atlatl which kids could try out to see how it worked.  Atlatl is word from an native language in Mexico.  

It also covered the expedition of La Salle, who tried to create a French settlement in the area near here that would have access to the Mississippi Valley, and aid France  to control the river and connect to the French settlements on the St. Lawrence in Canada.   There was a temporary display on birds of the area, including the whooping cranes.

After our visit to the museum we went to Riverside park were we enjoyed the parks trail along the  Guadalupe River.  We saw a pileated woodpecker trying to get insects out of a utility pole.  

There was a historical marker about Margaret Wright, the "Mother of Texas".  She aided Texas soldiers, supplying their needs as they hid from the Mexican Army.   She also had the first recorded divorce in Texas, as she believed her second husband killed her son from her first marriage over a land dispute.

Sunday we went to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge which is situated on the Texas Gulf coast along San Antonio Bay.  The 70,504 acres of the Refuge are host to an exotic array of wildlife, including  alligators, javelina (collared peccary),  snakes, bobcats and is the winter habitat of the whooping cranes. We only saw deer, alligators and although whooping cranes had been seen on Saturday they were not to be seem on Sunday.

We also completed 4 trails throughout the refuge, one of them to the Big Tree, sprouted around 1540, around when Francisco Coronado headed into northern Mexico searching for Eldorado.

Big Tree

Cardinal

 We also saw a cute little duck, diving for food in a swamp. 

Monday was moving day.  Our destination was Hondo, a town recommended to us by some Texas residents we had visited with 3 years ago on our way to the Yukon. We arrived at The Quiet Texas RV park, got set up. When we mentioned this to our hosts,  they didn't know why they would recommend it. We couldn't remember why the people had recommended it to us, but figure maybe because it is close to San Antonio??

Tuesday we headed into San Antonio to an  RV dealer to pick up a new Teflon plate for our the goose-neck on the trailer.  We stopped at  Laz-y Boy to check out some chairs we are thinking about. Then we returned to the trailer in time to watch tennis.


Wednesday was chores day.  Joan did laundry, John did windows and the monthly check of the generator by running it for a short while. After lunch Joan went for a haircut.

On Thursday morning, which started out around the freezing mark, we packed up and headed north-west to Garner State Park, near Leakey, Texas.   By the time we got setup, it was 25C.  We had been planning to go a bit further north to South LLano State Park, but were checking out where to stop for a half-way break, and discovered Garner.  It is supposed to be the most visited Texas state park.    After we got all set-up, then started to do the blog.  Our t-mobile hotspot didn't work, because there isn't any coverage in this area.  In fact, we won't see any more coverage until we get to El Paso.    The wi-fi at the park office was too slow to post a blog, so we headed 10 miles north to the library in Leakey.
  

Week ending Jan 21, 2016 Houston, Galveston Island

Friday we went to the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site.  This is the location where the Texan Army under Sam Houston won the battle which freed Texas from Mexico.  The history of the battle was recorded around the base of the monument.

The light green area in the following diagram shows the area under Mexican control which was transferred to the USA during subsequent negotiations, so this victory had a huge impact on the size of the country.

As there was a crowd of school kids on a field trip who were making a din, we decided not to tour the museum, which is supposed to be quite good.

We then toured the Battleship Texas, next door.  It was commissioned in 1914, and was the most powerful weapon in the world at the time, a complex product of an industrial nation emerging as a force in global events.  Over her service the life, the Navy repeatedly outfitted the ship with cutting edge technology.  Fate spared the ship. In 1916, USS Texas became the first U.S. battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns. She was also the first to control gunfire with directors and range-keepers. These early computers increased firing accuracy. In World War I, USS Texas joined the 6th Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet early in 1918. Her duties included laying a North Sea mine barrage, responding to German High Seas Fleet maneuvers, and helping prevent enemy naval forces from cutting off Allied supply lines.Late in 1918, she escorted the German Fleet to its surrender anchorage. In 1925, the Navy opted to modernize USS Texas instead of scrapping her. This meant converting the ship to run on fuel oil instead of coal. Tripod masts and a single stack replaced the ship’s cage masts and two smoke stacks. Torpedo blisters added another layer of protection to the ship’s waterline.  USS Texas received one of the first radars in the U.S. Navy in 1939. With new anti-aircraft guns, fire control and communication equipment, the ship remained an aging but powerful asset in the U.S. naval fleet. After Japan’s surrender, USS Texas carried soldiers stationed across the Pacific home from war. When she completed her final mission, the state of Texas acquired the ship. On April 21, 1948, Battleship Texas was decommissioned, and became a memorial ship. It is the last remaining battleship which saw action in both WW I and WW II.  Our tour took us at least 2 hours and was  very educational.

Saturday we did some walking at  the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center  which is part of Memorial Park, one of the largest urban parks in the country. From 1917 to 1923, the land was the site of Camp Logan, a World War I Army training camp. After the war, in 1924, the land was deeded to the City of Houston to be set aside as a park dedicated to the memory to the fallen soldiers of World War I.   The arboretum was created in  1951. The area has 5 + miles of walking trails in the heart of Houston.  There were interpretive signs about owls, hummingbirds, butterflies, and lotuses.  We arrived back to the trailer in time to watch some of the Continental Cup Curling taking place in Las Vegas.

Sunday we packed up leisurely with Galveston Island State park as our destination. As it was less than an hour away we were not in  hurry. We arrived at the state park and were set up just after noon. We had time to do a short  walk around the campground before heading back to the trailer to watch the Continental Cup final.  We saw some an interesting looking small trailer in the park.

Monday we headed into Galveston.  Our first stop was the Pleasure Pier,  We then wandered around historic downtown Galveston.  Many of the building are well preserved examples of Victorian era architecture.

Our next stop was The Ocean Star,  an offshore drilling rig museum.  The Ocean Star is a  retired jack-up drilling rig (i.e. once in place stands are jacked down to the ocean floor).  The museum features three floors of models and interactive displays illustrating the story of offshore oil and gas from seismic technology to exploration and production. Scale models of production platforms, actual drill bits and remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) as well as videos and exhibits explain drilling, geology, seismic, well servicing and production. We took the walkway out onto the drill floor of the rig and visited the exhibits on the pipe deck.  The picture below shows the size of several off-shore platforms compared to famous landmarks.

On our way back to the truck, we stopped in at the Peanut Butter Warehouse.  No peanut butter at the time, just a shop with a variety of stuff.  When we asked about it, they said a lady was setting up a shop that was selling food later in the month.  Maybe peanut butter? 

Tuesday we did some walking in Galveston Island State Park. We completed about 4 miles of trails but no alligators, snakes or other reptiles appeared. There were a few of ducks enjoying the warm Texas weather away from the cold Canadian winters.  We saw some interesting flowers, and what we think was a Mississippi kite in a tree.

Wednesday morning was beach day. Our walk took us from the day use area on the ocean to Jamaica Beach. Jamaica Beach is a small town mostly rental cottages, The walk took us almost 2 hours.

Later in the afternoon we drove into Galveston to look at the carvings made out of oak trees. The oak trees had been damaged by Hurricane Ike.  Instead of just uprooting them all,  many town people felt that oak trees should be honoured and this seemed like a good way of doing so.

After viewing the carvings we stopped at Olympia , a Greek restaurant that had been recommended to us.  We were not disappointed. John had lamb shank and Joan crab stuffed salmon.

Thursday morning we left early for Victoria, Texas. Just after noon we arrived at the Lazy Longhorn RV Park.  That was after an adventure with our GPS (not the GPS's fault this time).  Wednesday evening, we decided to see which route the GPS would take us to Victoria (along the coast, or back towards Houston).  We didn't have the RV park address with us, so we just put in an address in downtown Victoria.   Close enough for planning purposes.    When we arrived at this address, which wasn't any where near the RV park, we realized that we forgot to put the RV park's address in when we started off this morning, so we reprogrammed Greta. and soon arrived at our destination. The park seems to be very nice, full mostly with permanent snowbirds from northern USA.

Week ending Jan 14, 2015 Lake Charles, Houston Space Center

Friday after chat with John's parent's we headed off to drive the Creole Nature Trail. Our first point of interest was the community of Cameron, home of the first oil wells drilled in Louisiana.  We then stopped in the Sabine National Wildlife refuse and walked the 1/2 mile Blue Goose Trail, and the the 1 1/2 mile Wetland Trail. Despite being promised a proliferation of birds wintering in the area, not much wildlife was found.  We then carried on to Holly Beach, on the Gulf Coast.  It had an interesting line of trailers in a park, all color coordinated.   

Unfortunately fog had rolled in we had no views of the gulf.  We decided that we would make our drive into a round trip so headed to Cameron.  Following trip took us to a ferry, which we discovered was free traveling from west to east (our direction of travel) but cost $1,00 if traveling East to West. We stopped at T-Boys restaurant  at Creole.  Our next stop was the three mile Pintail Wildlife drive,  with a 1/2 mile boardwalk trail. We thought we might walk the three mile loop, but found big signs prohibiting people from exiting their vehicles. We completed the boardwalk, again not a lot of unusual animals or birds.  However as we continued back on the driving loop, we saw numerous birds that we had never seen before, as well as a many of the more common ones

White Ibis

Roseate Spoonbill

Great Heron

Then we spotted an alligator basking in the sun on the side of the swamp.  It scurried into the water, and all we could see was it's nose.   We waited for a while to see if it would come back out, but no luck.   So we continued along.  Then we started seeing lots of alligators.  This is the first time we have ever seen alligators in the wild.

Alligator

We must have seen a dozen or so turtles, a real surprise since we hadn't seen any turtles at the Desert Turtle sanctuary we had visited in Arizona last year.

Turtles

This turned out to be one of the most fantastic wildlife locations we have seen on our trips since we retired.

Saturday morning dawned sunny after a tremendous thunderstorm with rain and some hail. We visited Sam Houston Jones State Park. We did a few short walks along the Calcasieu River,which is supposed to be a bit above flood level, but we didn't see any evidence of flooding. The park has numerous ponds which we discovered were amass with turtles basking on logs in the water.  After lunch overlooking a pond and watching several birds we headed back to the trailer.  Upon arrival at the trailer we noticed that one of our rear tires had picked up a nail and was going flat. We found a Firestone tire shop close by that was open until 7:00 P.M. on Saturday, so off we went. We were back to the trailer shortly after 6:00 P.M. with the tire plugged.

Sunday we spent the day watching football playoffs and curling.

Monday we went for a walk along the shore of Lake Charles at Bord du Lac park. This seems to be a  popular wintering spot for many birds such as snow geese and Muscovy ducks.

Muscovy Duck

We then drove through the historic downtown area.

Lake Charles Historic City Hall

Tuesday, after doing laundry, we went to Steamboat Bill's for lunch. It is a restaurant highly recommended by locals as the place to eat. The food was really good, Joan had a shrimp taco and John a grilled chicken po-boy. We agree, rating it among some of the best food we've had. After lunch we went back to the trailer to do a few chores in preparation for tomorrows move.

On Wednesday, we headed to the Space Center RV Park in League City, on the south side of Houston.  We chose this park, as it is close to the Houston Space Center.    The park is not bad for a city RV park, but does have the narrowest sites we have been in for a while, but our choice here is all about location.

We spent Thursday at the Johnson Space Center. We started our tour with a tram ride. It took us to the Command Center, from which the space missions were controlled. Today the command center looks exactly as it did in the early years of space travel as it has been designated a historic site and the original equipment was restored (ie. from the days before desktop computers). The command center that controls the present space missions is located one floor below the first one.

We then visited  the astronaut training facility which along with many simulated space stations, etc. has a Canadarm to allow prospective astronauts to get used to using the technology.

Canadarm

Finally, we stopped at Rocket Park, where a Saturn V, a three stage liquid fuel rocket used in the Apollo program for human exploration of the moon, and was later used to launch Skylab, the first American space station. The Saturn V was launched 13 times from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with no loss of crew or payload. The Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever brought to operational status and still holds records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low earth orbit.

Back in the Exhibit Plaza, we saw Chris Hadfield's crew pictures, along with all of the NASA crews.  

We went to the Blast-off Theater which gave updates on present day missions and the latest news about the Mars rover, Curiosity. Our final stop was the Space Center Theater, a film about the future of space travel.  It covered the development by private companies of new space ships which will be used to man the International Space Station after the USA's current agreement  with the Russian space agency to carry crew to the ISS expires in 2018.  It also covered the Orion program, which is developing space craft which will carry people to the moon again, to asteroids, and eventually (2030's) to Mars.  The trip to Mars is projected to take about 6 months, at which point it would take much longer to return, as its orbit takes Mars further away from Earth.  The closest point is not reached again for another 26 months, so the return to Earth would be about 3 years after the departure for Mars.  Needless to say, a lot of the effort goes into how people would be able to survive on Mars for that long without any timely communication (it would take a message between 4 to 20 minutes), or ability to get supplies from Earth.  One of the interesting things being developed is an inflatable living area with solar arrays, which would be deployed once the space craft got far enough from Earth, as the actual capsule (below) would not be viable living quarters for that long a trip for 4 to 6 people.

Orion

Week ending Jan 7, 2016 Morgan City, Lafayette, Lake Charles

Friday we did some more sightseeing in the area, our first stop was Brownell Memorial Park. We got lucky because the lady who opens it didn't have anything else to do on New Years day so she opened the gates. We wandered around on a trail to the a thick swamp, and to the cypress-strewn shores of Lake Palourde. The bell tower in the park rings every 15 minutes. Although many people see snakes and alligators, it was a cold day and no reptiles ventured out.

Our next stop was Swamp Garden. Morgan City is really built on land reclaimed from the swamp and this area was protected to remind people of what the land used to be. However the swamp garden has been converted to Cypress Garden and the alligators, snakes and other swamp creatures have been relocated. It is however a very pretty garden which we wandered through.

Despite the drizzly cold weather Saturday morning we saw that people took advantage of the long weekend to sail on Lake Palourde. 

Since Saturday afternoon was rainy, we decided to spend it at the Amelia Belle, a docked riverboat, which is now a casino. We spent a few hours, went in with 20.00 came out with a bit more than 11.00, so not a big expense.

Sunday the clouds finally parted and it appears that the sun should shine for the last few days we are here. Of course the long weekend is over, so most of  the rv's are  leaving. We chatted with a neighbour, who was moving to another site in the park and found out some of the parks history. This park was built by FEMA, after hurricane Katerina. It was built on the lake. The lake was filled in so that the land we are sitting on is reclaimed from the lake.  After the hurricane,  homes were needed for displaced persons and this area was considered ideal, so the federal gov't  brought in tons and tons of rock and soil to create this rv park as an extension of Lake End Park.  After our visit we took advantage of the trails in the park . We spotted at bird unknown to us.  After some research we decided it was an Anhinga.  We also watched it swimming and it looked like a water snake. This bird swims with its body just underwater, only its neck and head are visible. Very odd sight indeed.

Tuesday was to be our last full so we went to Cypress Mill Museum and Wendell-Williams Aviation Museum in Patterson, just a few miles away.  

Cypress Mill museum.
Old trees were cut in the early 1900's when the cypress industry started in this area.   Most old trees at least 800 years old, and one as old as 3900 years.    Found out that there was even a Spanish moss industry.  The Spanish moss was harvested for stuffing mattresses and cushions for furniture, used in log house mortar, mulch and making toys.  It had been used for thousands of years by the natives.   Spanish moss got its name from a story about a Spaniard with a long beard who climbed up a tree to catch an Indian girl who was trying to get away.  She dove off the tree into the water, but he got stuck in the tree, and his beard became Spanish moss.

There were several examples of dugouts that were used in this area.   Dugouts were made, first by the natives, and later by the Acadians, by carving cypress trees with hand tools.  The dugouts were well designed for moving through the swamps.

Wedell-Williams Aviation Museum:
 Harry Williams was in the cypress lumber industry, and as the aviation industry was building, he invested in it.  He was a speed demon.  A story said that he got stopped for speeding in a small town.  He went to town hall to pay the $10 fine, and gave them $20, so they wouldn't bother stopping him again when he sped through on the way back.   He hired Jimmy Wedell, who was an excellent pilot, and plane designer from East Texas.     Jimmie, and other pilots flying planes made by the company,  won many national level air races in the 1930's.  Most of the company personnel died in various plane crashes.

Wednesday we left Morgan City for Guathiers' RV in Lafayette.  When we arrived in Morgan City,  we had a  problem with our kitchen slide-out.  One end was 3.5 inches short of going out when the other end was fully out.  We had phoned Gauthiers' and were able to make an appointment for the 6th.     We had explained the issue to the service manager over the phone and he figured he knew what the problem was.  We arrived at their shop about 8:30 AM.  They took a look at it, and confirmed that the mechanism was as expected.  We headed off for some coffee, then did a bit of shopping.  By 12:30, we got a call that the unit was ready for us to pick up, all fixed.  When we returned, we found that in addition to the slide-out being fixed, they replaced our shore power cord, a necessary repair.  The charge for these repairs was only $330 (plus tax), a bargain compared to our fears that we might either have to live with the  slide  out remaining in, covering our furnace cold-air return. and then trying to sell a trailer with a slide not operating when we got back to Canada.  We didn't even have to pay for one night in a hotel before continuing on our trip. In addition, the service manager had recommendations on lubricating the slide, which no other service has recommended, plus how to deal with a variety of less serious issues we have.   We highly recommend Gauthiers' to anyone needing RV service in the Lafayette area.

We headed to the A + Motel and RV Park, in Sulphur, just a few miles west of Lake Charles . A very nice park, good amenities, so we will be here for a week.

Thursday morning we went back through Lake Charles to the town of Iowa to check out an outlet mall we had seen yesterday as we went by.  It was not your typical outlet mall.  It looked like it had been located in a small old indoor mall.  There was one large store in it, another small women's clothing store, and a gift shop which was selling local crafts.  Not at all what we expected.
We returned to Lake Charles to pick up some more RV supplies and then headed to Albertsons to refill our freezer and fridge.  There are some items that we like that we know we can get at Albertsons, so we were glad to see one here.