Houston, Galveston and Kemah Texas
Today we begin our 5th week on the road, boy where has the time gone? We are heading to Houston today, the fourth largest city in the US. It certainly looked like it based on the traffic we encountered on our way into and through the city. Can you say “grid-lock”? All was going well, a bit of stop and go, lots of merging traffic, but we slowly we made our way through the downtown of Houston. Suddenly we heard a thump and looked over to see that we had clipped the side mirror on the passenger side – not sure what happened, but suddenly it was folded in and Mike couldn’t see a thing. So I opened my window and tried to push the mirror out, huff and puffed and could not budge it, failing to do it I tried sticking my leg out and using my foot to push it back into alignment --- no luck!! So when Mike needed to move over I became the spotter, sticking my head out and checking the lane for traffic, quite comical, anyone that was watching us would truly wonder about us. After a few miles we were able to get over, get off the freeway and Mike was able to readjust the mirror. Oh the adventures we have!
Saturday, March 26th we spent the day at the Space Center Houston. Wow what a great place it is. We really enjoyed ourselves on the tours, the presentations and the exhibits we saw. NASA has done an excellent job of presenting the space program from beginning to present. The tram tour over to Johnson Space Center to see the Mission Control was excellent. They also took us to the rocket park where we walked around and saw up close a Saturn V Rocket. We excitedly listened to a presentation about the International Space Station and the up-coming launch of the Endeavor on April 19th in Florida. Boy we sure hope that the launch goes off while we are there.
Galveston Island was the agenda today; it was a bigger than we had thought. We enjoyed driving along Galveston Bay, and took a walk along the beach, the water was quite nice and the weather WARM; we were joined by many of people enjoying a nice Sunday at the beach. We ate lunch on the Strand, right next to couple of big cruise ships that were in port. The old town was fun to walk through; there were many nicely preserved old buildings with very colorful paint, wrought iron trim and ornate facades. It was interesting to see the shutters and shades that many businesses and homes have in place for protection from the hurricanes that frequent this area fairly regularly. A fellow camper at the RV Park we were staying suggested that we drive over to see the town of Kemah, just about 20 miles east of where we are staying. Again down at the water, we walked along the boardwalk, enjoying the cooling ocean breezes. There was an old amusement park, complete with wooden rollercoaster; we might have been tempted had we not had our furry chaperones with us. Tomorrow sees Our Southern Safari leaving the state of Texas and we are heading into Louisiana.

Austin, Corpus Christi and the gulf

Austin, Corpus Christi and the beginning of our tour of the Gulf Coast
The Wraights and the Toucan MoHo continue their trek across Texas. Today is March 19th. We have been in Texas 5 days and probably will be here 6 or 7 more; this is one big state with an awful lot to see. We have been playing with the itinerary to give ourselves a bit more time in each place and still stay fairly close to our schedule. We left San Antonio and headed to Austin, and we hit TRAFFIC, long gridlocks on the interstate --- little did we know that this was the South by South East Country Music Weekend, a very BIG deal with 500,000 folks gathering in Austin. Finally after a long day of driving we pulled into an RV park about 25 miles out of town, and settled in, glad to find a place to stop. Guess what, they were having their own music festival.
We took Sunday to drive the 70 miles back into Fredricksburg, (the little town we had stopped in a few days previously) to see some of the sights we had missed. We first took a tour through the LBJ property and the Texas White House during 1963-1968, when Lyndon Johnson was President. There was a lot of interesting history and information about his growing up in Johnson City and of course the years of his presidency. We were very impressed with all the legislation and improvements that LBJ accomplished in his 6 years, interesting what one remembers or doesn’t remember about past presidential times. After a quick lunch we took a whirl-wind tour of an incredible Museum, The World War II of the Pacific. We took about 2 hours and still had at least 1/2 of the displays left un-attended; definitely a 2 day visit would have done it more justice. The town itself would also be a fun place to have more time to browse the shops and restaurants.
With the music festival being over we headed into Austin. We found the Elks Lodge, located very close to down town, with a great view. We pulled in, unhitched, took the Boys for a walk along the river in a beautiful park. Very dog friendly town, we saw dogs everywhere. We drove into center of town, and walked around their striking state capitol building, and then toured around the Texas sized University of Texas (50,000 + students with a $6 billion budget (largest public university in the USA). We walked through the beautiful Zilker Botanical Garden – their azaleas, rhodies and wisterias were already in bloom; there are parks everywhere you look in this city. If one were to live in Texas, this might be a very nice place. It seems to be quite modern, young and liberal. That evening we returned downtown to see the largest urban bat colony. These little beasties live under the Congress Street Bridge. We arrived about an hour before sunset, waited and waited for the ritualistic departure at dusk. This was a bit unimpressive, but we can check it off our list. The numbers are largest in August when the pups start flying.
Day # 26 we head out of Austin and down to the coast, yippee, we are finally heading toward the water. We drove south towards Corpus Christy and the Padre Island Sea Shore. We were so anxious to find a place on the water, but the coast area wasn’t exactly the coast region we had envisioned. There is a lot of coast, but not a lot of camp grounds right on the water. We finally stopped at the Island RV Resort on Mustang Island and squeezed into our space, very, very narrow site with very, very narrow roads, but Mike was able to get us in and safely set-up. Think we were about the biggest rig that could realistically get in. Dinner that night was some truly wonderful gulf shrimp and mahi mahi--- so good, have been eating a lot of red meat, this was a refreshing taste.
The next day we headed out in our “towed” to explore Corpus Christi and more of the Padre Island area. We drove around and saw much of C.C., walked a bit on the boardwalk along the coast, and through the Water Street Market Place. Weather is still amazingly warm and humid, know how lucky we are not to be home and in the cold weather, we are starting to pick up some sun tans. Making our way back to the islands we drove out to South Padre Island National Seashore. We had hoped to walk on the beach, but no dogs were allowed, so we headed back toward camp and found a bit of beach where the Boys could stretch their legs. Guinness was not very impressed with all of the water action, but loved the all of the gross smells.
This morning we continued our eastward journey, trying to follow the Gulf Coast, the highway does not follow the water very closely, we went about 80 miles and stopped at a rustic fishing type of campground in Port Lavaca TX. We pulled into the campground and drove around looking for the office. Finally getting out we walked around and found a couple of “old guys” sitting on bench outside of office. Mike asked if they had room for us, there was a pause and the one of “gentlemen” started to respond, I think so, then nothing……. Finally Mike asked if the place across from where we were standing was open (there was no trailer or motorhome in it), the guy said (very slowly) that he thought that was reserved (who the heck would reserve here?) So after what seem like minutes he said he thought there was a space back a row. So we paid him the $20 fee and walked back to the MoHo and got into our site. The funny part about this place is that they have better Wi-Fi and cable TV than some of the better RV parks. Who would have guessed from our initial impression? Tomorrow we are heading toward Houston, the fun just keeps on finding us.

Texas Twosome:
Monday morning March 14th, we are well into our 3rd week of this safari and heading into the wild state of Texas. We finished up the Caverns with a morning walk through the Big Room and hit the dusty trail for Fort Davis, TX. We made some changes to the route after talking with others who live in the area, it was recommended that we not go down as far south as we had intended and we were being to feel the effects of going and going. The old folks think they need a more leisurely pace? The road was a good one and a bit more varied than our earlier dessert drives – quite a bite of sage brush, rolling hills and live stock made the route a good one. After getting into camp at the Prude Dude Ranch, we headed up to the Mc Donald Observatory on 6,791 foot, Mt. Locke, the highest point in TX. We had an educational evening with a great presentation on the solar system; the constellations; and the galaxies. Surprising how much one can forget about astronomy and how interesting it really is. The evening ended with the Star Party, where they had a dozen or so big telescopes set up each aimed at a different astronomical site, this was really fun. Mike wants a telescope!
Day # 19, now this is going to prove to be an odd day. We awoke, and prepared the rig to head off towards Fredricksburg, TX, when Karen said I smell something “hot” – Mike quickly scanned the coach – finding smoke wafting up from next the navigator’s seat. “What the hell?” Not just smoke, but flames: imagine this, Karen’s magnifying glass was sitting in her cubby shelf, pointing towards the front window, the sun shining brightly caught the New Mexico map and a paper sack with brochures in it on fire. YIKES, talk about an adrenaline rush, quickly outside, the fire was extinguished, the map only a bit worse for wear, but no damage to anything important. Jeeze that got our morning going. Needless to say that could have been a lot worse if we had walked the boys a few minutes earlier. Mike then went outside to finish the readying tasks and took the Boys out to enjoy the cool morning. Mr. Guinness’ lead was hooked up to front awning arm, when suddenly he spotted the neighbor dog coming over for a visit, guess who pulled that arm off the body of the coach? All of this fun within about 10 min. of each other. Time to go back to bed?? Thank goodness the day got much more boring; we had an easy route to Fredricksburg, where we enjoyed a nice Tex-Mex dinner out on the patio of a local restaurant on the main street of the very attractive little town.
Next morning we intended to stay in Fredricksburg, but with the broken awning we thought maybe we should find a repair stop and tend to our mistakes. We drove to San Antonio, where there is a Camping World. By mid afternoon we had the MoHo all fixed up and we off to our campground for the night.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. We spent the late afternoon and evening walking in downtown San Antonio. We walked by the Alamo and then enjoyed the River Walk area with many 1000’s of other folks. Spring Break for Texas kids and of course St. Paddy’s Day, it was CROWDED. We went in to Michelino’s (Italian? not Mexican or Irish??) The Margaritas were quite good, the pizza - yummy and the Texan Wine, Falls Creek Red Blend – Very Nice! Karen paid the Mariachis (yes strolling Mexican Band Guys) to play a romantic song to Mike. This was a lot fun, we sat for quite a while enjoying the river view, people watching and soaking up the balmy evening air (81 degrees still at 8:30pm).
Our last day in San Antonio – we headed into town and visited the San Antonio Museum of Art. It is housed in the old Lone Star Brewery Building. There were a number of great exhibits from ancient Greek and Roman Antiquities to many interesting modern projects and a very interesting show featuring pictures, art, and audio visual set-ups on the Dali Lama. We spent over 2 hours and still only saw about ½ of the offerings. We then went to the Spanish Governor’s Place and took a tour through the dwelling and beautiful gardens. This old adobe home has been well preserved and the exhibits provided some good history of how things were almost 300 years ago. The day ended with a GREAT Dinner from Rudy’s BBQ – “the worst BBQ in Texas”. DELICIOUS!!! We feasted on ribs, brisket and a sausage link served with an incredible sauce, should have bought more of that for future enjoyment. Tomorrow we are heading back north to see Austin.

Heading out of Arizona and into New Mexico:
We have enjoyed our couple of days in Tucson and are eagerly heading east to New Mexico. It is the end of our second week on the road and we have been really having a fantastic time. Our stop early this afternoon was in the infamous Tombstone. The streets, buildings and many of the people looked like it could have just been cut out of a picture of the 1850’s. We walked the “Boys” through town, getting several “what is he” - questions” about our Nigel. We then decided to take a narrated stage coach ride (a real old Butterfield Stage Coach) they said we could take the dogs on it for free. We were able to get Guinness up and in, but Nigel was having nothing to do with this idea, so he stayed with woman who sold us the tickets. It was a fun ride through history, seeing the old homes that were opium dens and brothels. Of course there was the Bird Cage Theater, the Cosmopolitan Hotel and the site of the Wyatt Erp shoot-out. We then boogied down the road and stopped at the THING – a funky/touristy place that advertises for at least 100 miles in either direction. We paid our $1. and saw “it “---- hmmmm what silliness.
Lordsburg, New Mexico was our stop for the evening. We got a good start on Friday morning and headed off in a bit of different direction. Mike looked at the map and the itinerary and decided that we should veer a bit north and go see White Sands National Monument. It was truly beautiful. If you didn’t know that the outside temperature was in the low 80’s you would swear it was snow. These are the largest gypsum sand dune fields in the world covering 275 square miles of the Tularosa Basin in the Chihuahuan Desert. Quite a sight to see, we spent the afternoon walking amongst the dunes and went on a ranger led sunset hike across the dunes. That night we stayed in Alamogordo, our first experience as guests at an Elks Lodge.
Mike’s 63rd birthday is today and we had Carlsbad N.M. in our sights. We enjoyed this drive as it took us over the 8650’ summit of the Sacramento Mountains. The little town of Cloudcroft up on top had a bit of snow and even a small ski and snow play area (not open at this point) – beautiful terrain with evergreens, pines and very mountainous looking vegetation; a nice change from the ever present desert that we have looked at these last weeks. We quickly descended back into the arid landscape and made it to the caverns by late afternoon. We bought tickets for Sunday’s guided tour. Birthday dinner was at the Carlsbad Elks’ quite an up-scale lodge, we enjoyed a very good steak dinner to celebrate the old guy’s day.
Guess what? It is Spring Break for many kids in New Mexico – wow it was crowded. We did enjoy our tour of the “King’s Palace” about a 1 ½ hour tour down some 825 feet under the surface with the typical stalactites, stalagmites, flow stone, etc. We love going through caves. The bad part was the 2 hour wait to catch the elevator out of the caverns – 2 of the elevators were down for repairs; the line was very long. Wish my knees were a bit stronger was tempted to hike it out, but didn’t think I could make it. Damn sometimes it is a pain getting older!!
Tomorrow we will head back up to caverns early to take one more hike and then get on the road to Texas.

The Desert Southwest: Yuma and Tucson
Sunday morning we packed up and started on our eastward swing of Our Southern Safari. Leaving San Diego was difficult, because we had had such nice weather and so much fun. BUT, we knew there was a lot more on our itinerary and time was a wasting. We quickly left the green rolling hills, palm trees, and picturesque homes and entered the DESERT; beautiful in its own right to be sure, but definitely a very different landscape. I-8 (also much of it the old Historic US 80 Highway) is a fairly straight and unassuming road across the last part of California and into Arizona. Early afternoon we came to Jacumba CA where we visited the very quirky and interesting Desert View Tower. This structure was built in 1922 as commemoration of the early settlers that struggled across the desert. The view from the 4 story tower of the Anza-Borrego State Park was fantastic. They say you can see about 100 miles in any direction on a clear day. The most fun we had was hike up the hillside of huge granite boulders; they had build in steps, so the climbing was fairly easy even for the creaky old knees. Guinness was in his element, scampering a head of us and enjoying his exploration freedom. We then got back on the road, driving through El Centro, the Algodones Dunes Area and Felicity (the center of the world in a children’s fairy tale book). We stopped for the night at the Quichan Casino, just west of Yuma. We experienced some good desert winds; they seemed to blow all afternoon, through the night and much of the next morning.
Monday we headed into Yuma and found the Yuma Territorial Prison (not before we had to un-hitch and re-hitch the towed, cuz the parking lot was too small to U-turn in). It was an interesting place with well preserved grounds, showing the old cells and quite a bit of memorabilia from the prison and after it was closed the grounds and buildings were used as the Yuma High School 1910-15 after their school burned down, and later a hospital, homeless shelter and animal shelter. The setting is right on the Colorado River – near the narrowest point across the river. On through the desert we drove, stopping in Gila Bend for a Dairy Queen treat. We past Picacho Peak, just west of Tucson, the western most battle of the civil war, April 15, 1862 – 12 Union Soldiers skirmished with about 17 Confederate Cavalrymen. We arrived at our camp sight, tired and ready for an early night. We read the park rules after getting set up and realized that there might be a problem. The park rules referred to 20lb dogs, uh oh!! The office was closed for the night so we decided to lay low and hope for the best
Tuesday we decided we had better go discuss the dog size discrepancy that we had, for we were sure that someone had noticed. The office was very nice and said “yes” that there was a problem, but if we could keep them to out of sight for the most part, it should be ok. We are lucky in that our site is right across from the doggie park, so we try and sneak the Boys across when no one else is around. That being settled we found a dog park for the “guys” then we headed into the city and had a wonderful day touring the Pima Air and Space Museum part of the Davis-Monthan Air Base. What an amazing set-up, museums, displays and aircraft of almost any size or description. We took 3 tours: a naval aircraft tour led by a former Navy Pilot, then a tram tour takes you around to the planes that are tied down out on the grounds that surround the 4 hangers and the 3rd tour was a coach tour of the Bone Yard – where all military planes that are retired go to be either refurbished and to be reused by our forces or to be sold to friendly militaries from other countries, or used as parts or to be dismantled, destroyed, and sold as scrap. The planes were all lined up by type; in very straight rows; amazing to see so many military war toys from World War II up to planes flown in our current war activities. We ended our day with a good Mexican dinner at the El Charro Restaurant built in 1922.
Our last day in Tucson, we headed up to the mountains to see some of the famous saguaro (“sah-wah-row”) cacti. We had a tour of the Saguaro National Park – took a short walk into the desert floor and a 5 mile loop drive with 1000’s of the incredible cacti that can live to be 150 years or older. The little Prius headed us back into town where we took a quick driving tour of downtown, saw much of the University of Arizona campus and surrounds. Tucson has been great and we have enjoyed our stay, we headed back to camp to ready ourselves for hitting the road again tomorrow morning.

Family, Fun and Lots of SUN
Tuesday, March 1st, we arrived in Long Beach at Mike’s brother Steve and family. Was a good drive south from Bakersfield and on into the Southern California area. We parked the “Big Assed Bus” BAB in front of the Long Beach families home and settled in for a couple of nice days. We took some time to do our laundry, housekeeping tasks, MoHo cleaning, resting and relaxing and enjoying some nice weather, good food and fun with the family. Great seeing Elena, Morgan, Marina, Mie, Ginger and of course Steve.
Thursday we headed to San Diego – what a wonderful place. We camped on Mission Bay just a few miles north of the City. We spent 3 days enjoying many of sights on our itinerary. We had a wonderful lunch at the “Del” enjoying a sunny deck and a very good margarita. We walked around the grounds and through the lobby, “what a gorgeous place”. With temperatures in the 70’s and the sunshine, this all felt amazing to us.
Friday morning we spent some time at Balboa Park. We took the “Boys” to a very nice dog-park, where they romped and ran themselves ragged. Mike and I enjoyed going into one of the 14 museums, we visited the Museum of Man that had a very interesting display on Race. There also was a good exhibit of games through the ages. We then sat and listened to an interesting pipe organ concert in the outdoor theater. Lunch was at the Café Coyote near Old Town --- yummy fish and shrimp tacos with the obligatory margaritas. We took a nice walk through “Old Town” thinking that it looked much the same as we remembered on our honeymoon almost 42 years ago. In the evening we had a nice camp fire, a bottle or our merlot, snacks and s’mores.
Saturday was another grand San Diego Day – sunshine, warmth and just a hint of sea breeze. We took an interesting and informative walking tour of the Gas Lamp District. We followed this up with lunch at the Hard Rock Café, formerly the Elks Lodge of San Diego. We sat and ate beneath this beautiful old stained glass dome (imported from Italy in the early 1900’s) for the Elks Lodge in San Francisco. This was great for the newly “inducted” Elk in our family. The Horton Plaza was one of our last stops in city. We walked along floors of this Seuss like designed shopping center, enjoying the unique layouts and the glorious sunshine. Leaving the city we found our way down to the harbor where we drove along admiring the boats and very attractive neighborhoods. San Diego certainly has lived up to its description of “America’s Finest City” while we have been here. Tomorrow we are moving east to Arizona