As I have noted before, we are inclined to short days on the road if there is a place we feel like stopping and there is no schedule to force a long day. Crossing Texas will result in at least one long day, if not two. The I 10 mile post at the Texas Welcome Center just west of Louisiana reads 880. But I get ahead of myself.
After leaving Grand Isle we were enchanted with the low prices and high welcome of Louisiana State Parks and decided to stop at Sam Houston Jones SP north of Lake Charles, LA. Because we arrived with no reservation on Thursday before Mardi Gras weekend we were able to get into an end site in the older section of the park for only two nights. It was plenty! I could not find the sewer connector as it was under debris under several inches of water. We could not use the back half of the site as that was where the mud and water was. And two feet beyond our picnic table was the exit road for the dump and the units near us. There was just room for the bigger coaches to squeeze past our car which we refused to park in the mud. That being said the park is lovely and worth a visit for anyone who is passing. It is in the midst of wetland and on the bank of the Calcasieu River (don’t ask me to pronounce that). Our big adventures were a drive around the scenic loop on LA 27 which took us through Holly Beach yet again. We were impressed with the amount of rebuilding that we saw this year.. After our drive though last year we were convinced that Holly Beach would not be making any kind of a come back. We stopped at a Cameron National Wildlife Reserve and took an hours bird walk during which we saw very little other than a Golden Eagle and the usual Great Blue Heron and Great Egret and assorted little birds we could not identify. On our return to G2 we freshened up and went out to a local Cajun restaurant. Carol made do with asparagus salad and sauteed mushrooms while I ate stuff I don’t normally eat.
The next day we headed for Texas. We did not go very far, stopping at the Escapee community in Livingston, TX, about an hour north of Houston. While we were there we did many things, some that we seldom do, such as watching the entire Super Bowl. I am not much of sports fan, but the Giants have been my favorite since my college days when Y A Tittle was QB so we went into the club house and joined a bunch of others who shared finger food while we watched the game on a big screen TV. We also took a couple of hikes in the Big Thicket National Park.
One of the things that Escapees offers in Livingston is Care Center. We had heard about this before and were intrigued so we took the offered tour. Care provides Adult Day Care services for Escapees whose health has declined so that they can no longer travel or those who need to recover from surgery or injury but are not willing to give up the RVing lifestyle. There is a separate camping area where the sites include ramps fitted as necessary to provide access to the RV and help is available to deal with the physical needs such as changing propane tanks or emptying the holding tanks. Three meals a day are provided for the person needing care and for the caregiver (there must be a care giver living on the RV) . The adult daycare provides respite for the caregiver five days a week. Much of the work is done by volunteers and all of the construction costs were contributed. Nothing was built until the money was in hand. There are many other features and the cost is remarkably low. It is a wonderful facility and many of the people we know in Escapee consider it very important for their future.
We left Livingston and turned our wheels toward Austin and the the Rainwaters. We pulled into Austin Lone Star RV, where we have stayed before to find that it is operating under new management. The most immediate impact was that our frequent camper cards had become worthless. The good news was they had lowered the price dramatically and had not improved much of the facility that affects us – the roadways while putting money into stuff we have no use for, washrooms. Our visits with Leigh and Pat were fun as always, too much to eat and plenty of touring. Our first night there we had been promised “boot scooting” Texas for dancing. After dinner at the East End Cafe we went to “The Broken Spoke” a classic Texas Dance Hall. The entrance is though a bar into a long hall with a dance floor in the middle and tables around the edges, separated from the floor by a low wall. The dance floor is for dancing only as signs make very clear. It is filled with every number performed by Dale Watson and his group of rockabilly performers. We danced until we were exhausted and then drove Leigh and Pat home and returned to Gee2 for a good nights sleep in preparation for more activities they had planned.
The highlight of the day was a stop in Boern TX where we ate in an old Inn and in this out of the way old German town the menu was very interesting and the food was excellent. On our way back we stopped in Gruen (pronounced Green) to see some more small town Texas life and lots of tourists, mostly Texans, filling the eating places and buying the items offered for sale. The last stop of the day was Iron Works BBQ back in Austin where I finally got my teeth into some great beef ribs Texas style (too big and too good to describe). Sunday was some more touring, dinner at their home and then farewells until next year. There was only one little problem, Carol and I had not agreed on where we were going, nor had we planned a route.
We knew that Dan and BeverlyArmstrong whom we had last seen two years ago at Dockweilers in LA were traveling I 10 from Houston toward Gila Bend. For us to continue west it would be best to travel on I 10 because to get to our preferred route, US 90, would take us far more southerly than we intend this trip. We called the Armstrongs once we were on the road and confirmed that they were indeed westbound on I 10 about 100 miles ahead of us and they were willing to hold up in Ft Stockton, at the Wal Mart, to wait for us. Thus we found ourselves pulling into the smallest Wal Mart parking lot we had seen with the most RVs we had seen in a Wal Mart at about 4 in the afternoon. We managed to park along side the Armstrongs and we had happy hour until we broke for dinner and then we reconvened for after dinner conversation.
The choice of Ft Stockton is easy. If you are crossing Texas on I 10 and are not so insane as to commit to a 12 hour drive, you will stop there, because there is no other choice along I 10 that makes sense. This still left us with a question about the next day. Continue west, or turn north? We had been talking about Monahans Sand Dune State Park which we stayed at our first trip across and decided to include it in the itinerary. This opened up the idea of returning to Carlsbad NM which we also stopped at that first year. We stopped at Monahans for a couple of hours to take a hike in the dunes and have lunch. Then we pressed on to Carlsbad and the KOA north of town owned by former Rochestarians who are friends of Carol and Tim Kolb (Carol works in the office I have in Rochester). This is a very lux campground with the nicest club house facilities and bathroom facilities I can remember seeing. I won’t be using them since our on board facilities are very comfortable for us. We will tour tomorrow and Thursday we will move on to avoid a storm that is headed this way. I expect we will have to drive through the front again as we did last year.
Next post you (and I) will find out what our route decision was.