SpringTrip07 - Report 11

Thursday, May 17, we spend the day exploring nearby towns and villages. Tampico is where Ronald Reagan was born; Dixon is what he considered his home town and where he graduated from HS. Grand Detour is home to John Deere’s home and museum. There are also county courthouses to see and beautiful residential areas with large, old homes with wrap-around screened porches, set on spacious tree-shaded properties. Everything is fresh and green now, not wilted by summer, and lots of May flowers. There are museums in most towns, but we didn’t have time for any of these besides the Reagan and Deere sites. The countryside is sprinkled with proud, sturdy farms and barns sitting on the prairie that was turned into productive farmland (thanks to John Deere). Susie says it just makes her feel good to see the farmers working their land. Gives me a charge, too. And another thing that makes you feel really good are the volunteer workers in the museums. They know and love their subject and they’re eager to tell you about it and grateful that you came to see them. Dedicated, gracious people, usually seasoned citizens. Is this a great country, or what?

Ronald Reagan was born in an apartment over a bakery in downtown Tampico (pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable). His father, Jack, worked in a dry goods store across the street. When Ronald was born (1909), weighing 10 lbs., Jack said, He looks like a fat Dutchman. Hence the nickname, Dutch. Previously his brother Neil was dubbed Moon, because Jack said he looked like Moon Mullins. Good thing there wasn’t a girl in the family.

The apartment was spacious – three good-sized bedrooms – not what you might expect for turn of the last century small-town living quarters. (One thing we learned is that residences of the time tended not to have closets. If the tax assessor could walk into an enclosure, he counted it as a room and taxes were based on the number of rooms a home had.) The apartment is furnished with period pieces – Reagan moved his parents to California after he became successful in Hollywood and the possessions they left in storage burned. When the restoration was done many years later, Dutch and Moon went through old Montgomery Wards and Sears catalogs picking out furniture that looked familiar.

The lady who showed us through the museum and apartment set the tone for the day – a very gracious, knowledgeable person; wish I’d gotten her name. The little museum has lots of photos and memorabilia, including something like 35 original movie posters from Reagan’s 59 movies. Ronald and Nancy were in only one movie together – Hellcats of the Navy. The Tampico website has a large collection of photos.

Reagan visited the Tampico museum while president – an imprint on the carpet says “Ronald Reagan stept here.” When his body was flown from Washington to California three years ago, Air Force One flew low over Tampico. Everybody was out in main street. A great thrill for the town. Now there’s a beauty shop in town named Hair Force One.

The museum has some playbills for a Tampico theater group, listing Mrs. Reagan, Nelle, as a performer. She gave dramatic readings and taught elocution. Also took in sewing to help support the family. Guides at both Tampico and Dixon told us that she was a strong, practicing Christian. In Dixon, she provided newly released prisoners room and board to help them back into society. It’s clear she had a strong influence on Ronald. I need to read his autobiography to get a fuller feel for this. I did read a good book recently, “The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister” by John O’Sullivan. That book emphasizes Reagan’s spirituality as a contributor to these three remarkable leaders’ efforts to free Eastern Europe from Russian control.

It’s theologically interesting: Jack and Neil were Catholics; Nelle and Ronald were members of the Church of Christ in Tampico, the Christian Church in Dixon. Must have been some sort of family deal.

The Reagan family lived in various Illinois towns after Tampico and settled in Dixon in 1920 where Jack ran a shoe store.. Their Dixon home was restored in 1984 and the Reagans were there to celebrate the restoration and his birthday. One of his comments on video: “How did they shrink it?” The house was smaller than he remembered it and indeed is more cramped than the Tampico apartment. Nelle kept one bedroom for guests and the two boys shared a small bedroom.

The Dixon museum plays a video of Reagan reminiscing (the guide, who must have heard the video hundreds of times, said hearing his voice makes it seem like he’s still alive). Did he ever get in trouble? Well, he did get caught setting off illegal fireworks and his dad had to bail him out of jail. He was band drum major and one time in a parade he noticed the sound of the band was fading, turned around and realized he was off the parade route; the band had followed the route, not him. Susie, a HS drum major, identifies with this. One time she strutted her stuff onto the football field and at about the 50 yard line realized that she had not signaled the band to follow – they were still waiting in the end zone! She recovered nicely and the show went on.

Five of us were in our tour group. After the tour a man in the group went to his car and brought back a picture of himself with the Reagans, inscribed with a note from Ronald, thanking him for keeping him supplied with beef jerky. As a teenager, this fellow had participated in the 1980 campaign – said he was with Reagan for the whole campaign, the youngest member of the staff (unpaid, but the experience of a lifetime, obviously). He lives in Colorado and I think the story was that he was moving his son’s belongings home from college, stopped here, and remembered that the picture was in his stuff.

There are also some Abraham Lincoln connections to Dixon. He served in the army there as a young man during the Black Hawk Indian War. Here is a commemorative statue – said to be the only statue of Lincoln in uniform. Later a Lincoln-Douglas debate was held in Dixon and the hotel where he slept still exists.

May 17 story to be continued. Next up: John Deere.

Let us hear from you.

Cheers,

Rob and Susie

SpringTrip07 - Report 10

Tuesday, May 15, we leave Nashville, en route, leisurely, to Ames, Iowa for a conference starting the following Monday. Our first planned stop: the International Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro, KY. We find it, park, and enjoy. The museum has nice exhibits, historic photos, and lots of good music to listen to. Here’s a picture of the Seldom Scene band, circa the mid-70s when we were living in the Washington, D.C. area and the group that turned me into a bluegrass fan. Also a picture of three who started it all: Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt, and Earl Scruggs.

Late afternoon we cross the Ohio River to Santa Claus, IN – Lake Rudolph RV Resort. This (very large and highly-rated) campground is near an amusement park and a water park, but all is quiet now. Before we go to bed, Susie hears a mouse trap snap. Sure enough, it worked. We hope that’s the only mouse, but we set traps again. We have some hard rain and then it rains all night. No TV reception here; also no wi-fi internet access where we are parked (memo to self: when checking in ask for a spot with good wi-fi reception.). I discover that we can get wi-fi at a picnic shelter on higher ground, closer to the office, so we try to watch Dancing With The Stars there via internet. All we get, however, is stuff from the previous night. Somehow couldn’t get set up to stream it live. Camping life on the road is tough.

Wednesday we’re heading for NW IL – Reagan country. About 400 miles to go, Magellan has laid out an interstate route, which is OK with me for the sake of time, but Magellan doesn’t know the on-ramp to I-64 is closed and the alternate route sign can’t be read – due to wind and rain (Oh, the dreadful wind and rain – that’s a line in a folk song about a beautiful young woman who is murdered and her body parts are later used to make a fiddle) which has made the sign unreadable. So we just keep going north and work our way up the SW side of IN before crossing into IL at Terre Haute. This has taken us through really beautiful country and we’re glad for the closed on-ramp that put us on highways instead of interstates. Susie shoots this courthouse on the fly.


One intersection points to French Lick, IN, so that leads to a few minutes of thinking about Larry Bird, as does Terre Haute, home of IN State U, where he played. Also brings Bob King to mind who coached there after coaching at UNM. We find a place for lunch just down the street from this courthouse in T-H.


Illinois’s flatness always impresses me. On this route we see a few hills, slightly rolling country, but not enough to revise my impression. I think there must be a statistical way to measure and compare the flatness of states, but I haven’t pursued that yet. Now we’re on interstates. Incidentally, the weather has turned cool – 60s now mid-day vs. 80s two days earlier in TN. Windy, too.

We go by Bloomington, IL, home of Colonel Henry Blake of MASH. Last year, we were disappointed that Ottumwa, IA didn’t honor Radar O’Reilly, didn’t even acknowledge him(!) except on a wall of an Applebee’s (we were told), so I’m not even going to check for any Col. Blake tribute here. Couldn’t take another shattering disappointment.

With a little bit of difficulty (we're routed off the highway through a residential area with low-hanging branches, but we persist), Magellan gets us to the Yogi Bear campground. However, it’s closed when we get there. Usually late arrivals can just pick a site and pay in the morning. Here there’s a barrier across the entry. There is an emergency number posted, so I call that and a maintenance guy shows up and lets us in and we settle in. There’s been no mouse evidence today and no traps go off overnight, so it looks like we just had a solo traveler.

Yogi Bear campgrounds – we’ve stayed at two now -- are summer resorts: several hundred sites, most of them occupied by year-round mobile homes, “park models” (cottages on a mobile home frame), camping trailers, and a few motor homes. Decks, porches, and landscaping have been added. There’s a lake, swimming pools, game rooms, miniature golf, etc. People spend summer weekends and vacations at their wheeled, but immobile, summer homes at these resorts. Like this one:


The Yogi campground we’re in is near Amboy, Illinois. Susie says as she lay in bed it came to her that town and state rhyme. Fascinating.

Lakeside culture is a big part of Midwest life. Often you see lakes ringed with summer homes and cabins. Yogi Bear resorts are trailerized versions of that. Right now, not many people are here, but there’s lots of work going on getting ready for Memorial Day weekend when I’m sure the crowds will materialize and the busy season will start. Oh, the wi-fi is not strong enough to use at our site. I wonder if I should have parked elsewhere, but the next morning I’m told that a wire got cut or something, so wi-fi is not available. This is delaying our blog-posting and I’m sure many of you have been wondering when will the next post appear. Hope the wait was worth it.

Cheers,

Rob and Susie

SpringTrip07 - Report 9

Saturday, May 12, 3007:

On Saturday the nearby town of Old Hickory is holding a town-wide garage sale. I drive around sampling a few offerings and then find Old Hickory United Methodist Church and its members’ garage sale. They’ve got quite a few books for sale and I find a few paperbacks. (Note: Old Hickory is a town built by DuPont which has a large plant there. Albuquerque friends Alan and Julie Eaton work there. You may recall that on our fall 05 New England trip we stopped to visit them and their family in Delaware. They’ve since transferred to Nashville and work in the Old Hickory facility. An update and picture below.)

Next I head downtown to Elder’s book store, located near Vanderbilt U. I get there early, before it opens, so I go to the nearby Soda Shop café for breakfast. I find out later that it’s listed in our Roadfood book. Lucky me to happen upon it. The book says the Soda Shop opened in 1939 and has scarcely changed since. It’s known for great biscuits and waitresses with an attitude. I experienced the first, not the latter. There’s a jukebox in every booth. I put a quarter in but it doesn’t drop. Waitress has obviously seen this happen before. She shows up with a piece of scotch tape and says, Here, you can pull it out with this. I wonder if none of the jukeboxes work, or just mine. At any rate, I enjoy a country ham and biscuits and eggs breakfast – just what I would have ordered if I had read the Roadfood write-up ahead of time.

Elder’s is a treasure trove of old books, stacked and piled everywhere. The website says it's often been listed as the best bookstore in the South! The books are organized in sections, but within sections I don’t see any alphabetic or other rhyme or reason behind the organization. In some sections you will see a sign saying, For more X books, look in the Y section or ask for assistance. The search is part of the experience. Of course if you’re just browsing, waiting for something to catch your eye, I guess order is not that important. If you have something in mind, when you ask the owner or, he can usually go right to it. The store has a huge collection of Civil War books, so if that’s your interest, if you’re ever in Nashville, check out Elder’s.

There are lots of signs, such as: Don’t handle these books, Don’t stand on this chair, Ask for help in removing books from this shelf. … . In the Religion section: Please refrain from loud Bible discussions in this area (must be a story behind that one). Also: If you just like to handle Bibles, go to a church or library. I spend a couple of hours in Elder’s and leave with only a “facsimile first edition” of Grapes of Wrath – my choice for best book ever. I had sort of been looking for books on World War II battles in the Pacific, based on our Fredericksburg museum visit, but didn’t find any stand-out books on this topic. Most books, I think, I would only like to read once, so I’ll make notes and maybe check them out of a library some day.

Sunday we go to church and brunch with Paul, Mandi, and Heidi. That afternoon we visit the Eatons. Alan and Julie have four kids under six years of age. The youngest are twins. The house pulses with energy. It’s simply amazing to see. Occasionally, grandparents Roger and Donna Eaton fly to Nashville to stay with the kids when Alan and Julie both have to be away – they both work for DuPont. When they come home it’s like Wow and Whew (and those are just the twins!).

Sunday evening Mandi and Heidi treat Susie to Mother’s Day dinner at The Palm – Paul and I get to go, too. Very nice meal, though once again, as in Doe’s, I wrongly pick a seafood dish in a steak house Just before we went to dinner I found that my camera is not working – the lens jams as it tries to close. I go to plan B: this picture of the three girls was taken with Susie’s camcorder which also takes stills.


Monday I call a couple of camera repair shops, but nobody in town works on digital cameras. Nevertheless, I take it to a shop that says they will mail it in to Sony for me. I just want an expert to diagnose the problem. Tech looks at it: says your lens is so dirty it’s a wonder you get any pictures (I hadn’t noticed any problem). Then he finds that there appears to be sand in the lens mechanism (Did you take it to the beach?), keeps it from extending and retracting. He obviously thinks I’m not fit to use a camera, but he spray-cleans/lubes it and all is OK!

Also, Monday, Susie discovers evidence that TuziTwo is now occupied by a mouse. (We’ve been sleeping in the house. Tuzi is parked in driveway; when their house was built, Paul and Mandi had the driveway extended to accommodate a motor home.) I buy some “modern” (build a better mousetrap … “) traps at Lowe’s traps, but they don’t work – the mechanism is too stiff; mouse gets cheese without suffering extreme penalty. So Tuesday I get some old-fashioned spring type traps from Home Depot. We’d tried these at home before (we occasionally get mice in our garage) and I hadn’t been able to set the traps – couldn’t set the spring and trigger mechanism. Well, I have trouble again – mechanism goes off, repeatedly, while I’m trying to set it, but fortunately, doesn’t catch me. All fingers are intact. Susie gets so tickled she can’t stand it – but eventually I get a couple of them set.

Tomorrow it's off on a slow trip to Ames, Iowa for a statistics conference. This is going to be good!

Cheers,

Rob and Susie

SpringTrip07-Report 8

May 9. Our first objective is a Flying J station near Shreveport. Flying J's generally have the best prices, they have a dedicated RV pump island and a 1 cent/gallon (!) discount card. But, they generally have lines of RVs waiting and antiquated pumps. I often end up going inside to tell a clerk what pump I'm on. At any rate, on the way, just leaving Carthage, TX, I spot out of the corner of my eye a Jim Reeves Memorial Park. There had been no advance notice that I’d seen and there wasn’t a place to stop. I consider returning, but this is going to be a long day, so I decide against it.

Jim Reeves was one of my Dad’s favorite singers. Carthage (I learn after getting to Nashville and internet access) was Reeves' home town. He died in a plane crash in 1964. He was flying the plane and evidence is that he was disoriented, flying upside down, so that when he tried to fly over a storm cloud he actually flew the plane into the ground.

I also learn that Carthage is home to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. If I’d known that, I’d certainly have stopped. First year's inductes (1998) included Reeves, Tex Ritter (also from this county), Willie Nelson, and Gene Autry. Pretty impressive. Bob Wills didn't get elected until 2000. That's an outrage!

After gassing up, diesel for Tuzi (it seems like diesel prices so far are about 25cents less than regular gas -- which seems unusual, but hey, we've only been in Texas so far), junk food for us, our plan is to cross Louisiana on I-20 to Vicksburg, MS, then plot a route to Nashville from there. But, I-20 is just a boring tree tunnel, nothing to see but the same thing mile after mile. Moreover, the trees are tall enough and thick enough to cut off the XM satellite radio signal. Oh, woe is us. We have a book on roadfood – good places for travelers to eat – so we stop and do a little research. There’s a place called Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, MS, not too far up the river from Vicksburg. We can make it there by late afternoon. Heidi says, Oh, I’ve heard of that restaurant; it was just selected a prize winner by James Beard, (the late) big-time chef. (We confirm this when we get to Nashville and internet access.)

Here’s the Beard Foundation’s America’s Classics citation:

Doe's Eat Place (502 Nelson, Greenville, MS); Owner Doe Signa, Jr. Located in Greenville on Nelson Street, this family-owned and operated restaurant is an icon of the culinary and cultural landscape of the Mississippi Delta. Doe’s Eat Place grew out of a 1940s grocery store that sold homemade hot tamales, eventually transforming itself into a casual steak joint that served both the African American and white communities in segregated Mississippi. Pivotal in the Civil Rights era, Doe’s Eat Place has become a symbol of the region’s multiracial culture.

Our roadfood book notes the restaurant’s unassuming appearance and outstanding steaks. It says, "This unique combination of top-drawer steak and downscale atmosphere is priceless Americana." Here's an exterior view -- sneak preview.

To get there, happily, Magellan soon takes us off I-20, angling across NE LA and SE AR. We traverse lush Mississippi bottomland and then cross the Mississippi on an old, narrow bridge, adjacent to a new bridge being built. (Note to self: I should try to make a list of all the Mississippi bridges I've crossed.)

Magellan winds us wierdly through Greenville and we arrive at Doe’s about 4:30. We’d skipped lunch and just snacked, planning on a late afternoon early supper before driving on a ways. Well, they don’t open until 5:30. There is an RV park at Warfield Point State Park -- a few miles away on the banks of the Mississippi -- so we decide to head there to set up, then go back to the Eat Place. The campground is largely deserted. We’ve been assigned one spot, but Susie says that if we park on the other side of the road we will be facing the river – will have a nice view through the front window. A drawback I find, though, is that they just have 30 amps electrical on that side of the road vs. 50 amps where we were assigned. It’s fairly cool, though, which means we shouldn’t need a lot of electricity, so we decide to go for the view. We set up and go back to Doe’s. I’m a little concerned, though, because the appliances aren’t coming on the way they should – e.g., the refrigerator is supposed to automatically switch from gas to electricity when you’re connected to external electricity, but it doesn’t. But the view is great.

When we get back from Doe’s, to continue the campground story before getting to the eating story, after some experimentation it becomes clear that we’re getting no electricity externally. That row of sites must have the power turned off. And, it’s gotten hot and sticky. We run the generator a while and run the fans off of that, but that’s not an all night solution. Susie says, Let’s move to the other side of the road. This means backing into the space in the dark and I’m not too keen on the idea, but she convinces me. Heidi stands at the back of the parking slot holding two flashlights in outstretched arms, like the landing officer on an aircraft carrier. I can see her in the rear TV monitor once I get lined up. Susie coaches me – STOP! STOP! TURN! TURN! -- and with a little back and forth I do get backed in OK. We connect the electricity, hold our breath, and find that yes, Houston, we do have power.

Back to Doe’s Eat Place: When we get there around six a crowd has assembled and it’s quite a scene. There's even a policeman directing traffic. Doe’s is in a former grocery store in a rundown part of town. It’s been there since 1941. You enter through the kitchen and can see and feel the heat from the large stove where the steaks are cooking. Next room, below, is part kitchen, too, where the salads, soups, and fried food are prepared. There are some tables in that room, too, and other dining rooms off of this room. Décor is standard downhome stuff – pictures and posters and newspaper clippings. Old diner-type tables and chairs. But I notice a signed picture of Peyton and Eli Manning, which you don’t see everywhere.

There's no printed menu. Waitress describes our choices. Susie and Heidi order steaks, the headline fare. I go against the grain and order shrimp and gumbo. We order tamales as an appetizer – another item they’re known for. They’re not NM-style tamales – thinner, like a cigar, and in a paper wrapping, not a corn husk, and gray, not red, maybe not pork – but they’re tasty. From where we’re sitting Heidi can see French fries being cooked the old-fashioned way in a huge black skillet, not a basket. They’re very good. The steaks and gumbo are outstanding; my shrimp is a little more ordinary (my bad), but we enjoy the whole experience quite a lot. We think it's history and atmosphere that are the highlights here, as highlighted in the Bear citation. Fine steaks, too, but not that unusual, at least at $31 per. Anyhow, if you’re ever within a half-day’s drive of Greenville, MS, go to Doe’s Eat Place.

Next morning I check out the river traffic. This string of barges seems awfully close to shore.

As I watch, the riverboat connected to all of this executes a 180 deg. pivot, then pushes the barges upstream into a channel where Heidi has seen empty barges being collected.

We get an early start -- 400 miles to go-- avoid Memphis and angle NE to connect with I-40 at Jackson, TN, then hit Nashville at rush hour (great timing). One nice town along the way, with county courthouse square, stately homes, where we try to find a place for lunch is Holly Springs, MS. Didn't see anything with parking space. Should have looked at the Roadfood book again -- Phillips Grocery there has famous hamburgers. So, if you're ever ... . We ended up eating Hardee's takeout in TuziTwo at a Love's on I-40. Bummer.

At any rate, we slowly get through bumpertobumper Nashville traffic intact -- three interstates intersect there and there's one jammed up merging-lanes intersection after another -- and get to Mandi and Paul's place on the NE side of town. We'll be here a few days, washing clothes, hanging out, sleeping indoors.

Cheers,

Rob and Susie

SpringTrip07 - Report 7

May 7. Best laid plans … . We go to San Antonio as planned, have lunch, as planned, with Elizabeth and Alan Anthony, parents of son Matt’s wife, Suzy, then head down to the River Walk area, as planned, to kill some time waiting for Heidi’s 7:20 arrival from Las Vegas. The phone rings. It’s Heidi. She didn’t get on the Las Vegas to San Antonio flight – flying standby. There had been around 30 empty seats the day before, but suddenly the flight is full. Something about Cinco de Mayo celebrants. What to do? Turn it over to Mandi, source of all our Southwest Airlines free-flying. She works out connections from Vegas to LAX to El Paso to San Antonio – at 11:20 pm.

So, now, we’ve got a lot of time to kill. We think maybe we shouldn’t plan to drive back to Fredericksburg after midnight. We think we’d kind of like to see our favorite Monday night TV programs – Dancing with the Stars (Susie), 24 (Rob). Hanging out at the River Walk, or going to a movie, or doing anything else during the wait, doesn’t appeal. So, we drive out near the airport and get a motel room. This sort of freaks Heidi out, when she talks to Mandi, but Mandi assures her that all we’re up to is TV. She knows our interests. We don’t know whether to be insulted or not, and if so, by whom, but as soon as the TV shows are over I don’t feel tired and start to think that we/I can drive to F-burg (about 70 miles) after we pick up Heidi. Also, I’d like to leave Fredericksburg by 10:00 am Tuesday and I doubt that we could get around early enough in the morning in San Antonio to accomplish that. So, we leave the motel, meaning our payforview TV expense is probably similar to what people paid for the big boxing match a few nights earlier.

We drive over to the airport, circle through various construction zones and unmarked exits and intersections until on the third circuit we find the short-term parking lot. (This whole city, I remember from being here often years ago when son, Jeff, was in school at Trinity University, has lots of weird, badly signed intersections, streets, and highways and it hasn’t gotten any better.) By the time we get in the terminal I’m starting to feel a little punchy - I tend to blame myself when I can't drive directly to my destination - and think maybe we should go back to the motel when Heidi arrives (we didn’t check out – that would have been embarrassing; we just left and left our key cards in the room. We figure now we could make up a story and get the room back). But, by the time she arrives I’m revived and we drive back to F-burg with no problems – Susie and Heidi heroically talked all the way to keep me alert.

Speaking of Jeff reminds me: to see granddaughter Malia dancing go to http://bringinghomemalia.blogspot.com. There's a video to click on in the May 6 posting.

Tuesday goes as planned. Gastronomic highlight is lunch at a barbecue joint on the south side of Lampasas where we had eaten before (intersection of 281 and 190). This is one of those places where you pick your meat off the smoker grill outside the restaurant, ask the grill guy to slice off what you want, take your meat in to be weighed, pick your drink and sides, pay, then eat off butcher paper. Of course, country music in the background. Texas barbecue the way it's meant to be. Monday, on the way to F-burg we had followed the Calcotes’ advice and stopped at Cooper’s in Mason, which has the same modus operandi. Heidi, who works alongside world-class cooks for the Bellagio restaurants, is quite impressed. RVing is pretty exciting foodwise. It would get even better, come Wednesday.

We have a Lampasas story that Susie loves, so I’ll insert it here. Next time she starts to tell it, you can say you already heard it. Our second night out in Tuzigoot, back in 02, we stayed in a Lampasas RV park, located near the aforementioned barbecue joint. It’s an old park with a jumble of sites, not neat ranks of parallel sites as in new parks. Also had low-hanging trees. As I pulled out and headed for the exit I was paying particular attention overhead, dodging branches, but still scraping some. Susie said "Someone’s hollering at you to stop." But I didn’t until too late. In the side view mirror I see a geyser. I’ve broken off a water faucet and scraped the side of our brand new motor home. The park manager shuts off the main valve and heads for his hardware store – he owns it, too -- to get repairs – it’s happened before. We disconnect the car and extricate ourselves from the mess. A bystander says, “Yup, there’s sure a steep learning curve with these RVs. The worst are them doctors that can’t even program their VCRs.” (Well, a few days earlier, before leaving home, we had spent most of our practice outing trying to get the VCR to work.) Not wanting to provide any more entertainment for the Lampasas folks I told Susie, "Just drive the PT and follow me to Austin. We’ll hook up later" – in the RV sense, I mean.

My Tuesday objective is Camp Tonkawa Springs, near Nacogdoches, TX. (Somehow I came across this site in looking where we might get to after F-burg, going generally in the direction of Nashville.) Here’s another Texas locale named for the same Indian tribe as my hometown in Oklahoma. (Click here for a scholarly website on the Tonkawa Indians. Nothing is said about cannibalism, so maybe that report is a myth. Interesting fact: Tonkawa means people of the wolf. They wouldn’t kill a wolf and they wouldn’t farm – said wolves don’t farm.)


We get to the camp, several miles down a narrow, rough road off of the highway, after the office has closed. Lots of room, we park, I check out the springs, planning to swim, but the pool below the springs is pretty stagnant and full of leaves and twigs. The water level is several feet below the spillway – not attractive for swimming, though you can tell that’s the usual activity. Next morning I find out that the pool had been drained for repair and it was just in the process of refilling itself. Once it’s full, the trash would have washed out and it would be a nice swimming hole. So, if you’re ever near Nacogdoches, check it out. I also find that a Boy Scout camp at the site had been the source of the Tonkawa moniker. There doesn’t appear to be a local Indian tribe connection – ditto from the above website.


We have a pleasant evening, the skies threaten once again and Susie and Heidi try to figure out where we should take shelter, but nothing much happens.

Enough for now.

Cheers,

Rob and Susie

SpringTrip07 - Report 6

Sunday, May 6.

Decision to stay here over the weekend led to kind of a bonus weekend -- instead of traveling we took it easy. This will be eight days in the same place -- may be a record for us.



Albuquerque friends, Terry and Marie Clements, have bought a house near Fredericksburg to be their retirement home one of these days. Susie called Marie and got directions to the house. We checked it out Saturday. Here it is:

May need a little work. Hope it works out for them.

Just kidding. This is actually the Clements' hill country house:

Sunday featured an all-day drizzle. We went to church, then late Sunday afternoon drove 22 miles to Kerrville to visit with Pat and Wayne Young who were there for a car tour. Pat and Wayne are former neighbors in Cedar Crest (they found our house and recruited us) who moved to Bastrop, TX, about three years ago. Great to see and visit with them again.

Enough for now. Fredericksburg pictures below.


Cheers,


Susie and Rob

Downtown:

Fredericksburg houses:

This little Sunday house was converted into a small chapel adjacent to the present-day Episcopal Church. Note how beams are embedded diagonally in the limestone blocks.
We were told Lyndon Johnson and family sometimes worshipped here when he was a lad in nearby Johnson City.

Here's the former county courthouse, now a city library.

SpringTrip07 - Report 5

Thursday, May 3, turned out to be incredible. A friend of Lynda Calcote's invited us to see her restored ranch. This friend, Dian Stai, was formerly the CEO, I believe, of a major pharmaceutical firm. I saw a magazine article listing her among the top 20 women business leaders in the US, based on annual company income. She's been a major contributor to Texas arts and philanthropic concerns, including the Grace Museum in Abilene, where we were just last Friday evening. When you meet her, you can tell she's a real dynamo.

At any rate, for years she had had her eye on a ranch property not far from Fredericksburg and 11 years ago she bought it (she had been told, no way, that property was not and would not be on the market, but the Calcotes happened to be in F-burg one weekend -- they're frequent visitors -- and learned that the place was suddenly for sale. They told Dian and that was that.)

The house, three stories and basement, was built in about 1880 by a member of the Bode family who had decided to move out of the crowded town of Fredericksburg. Well, Dian, her husband, Harlan, and a Fredericksburg designer/decorator renovated the whole house, added a new wing with kitchen and dining facilities, converted various outbuildings into guest houses, filled all of this with great period art, furniture, crafts, memorabilia, etcetera, etcetera. It’s now known as Mansefeldt – mansion plus fields. Our jaws dropped and continued to drag as we went from room to room, building to building. This is the sort of project and property you see only in fancy magazines and books about great country homes. All new construction was made to look like 1880 construction - hand-hewn rocks and beams. Plaster was scraped from old walls to reveal the underlying stonework. It's just awesome. Elsie kept saying this topped many European castles they had toured.

In this picture you see the original house and part of the addition on the back.

The view out front.

Here's a dining room piece.

Here's the third floor attic, all one large room. That large picture in the center is a screen , painted with various Fredericksburg landmarks, including Mansefeldt, covering the TV set. Dian doesn't like exposed TV sets. One of the more unusual features in the house is the TV in her bedroom that pops up through a table covered with family photos.

Dian makes her home available for church and charity functions, retreats, whatever. For example, TX Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson used it for a staff retreat three days after Dian had moved in. The sheep barn has been converted into a banquet or concert hall, next picture, and is the site this coming week for a series of concerts and other events.

Here's a view of garden, swimming pool, and beyond. A current issue in the area is a proposed windmill farm set on one of those distant ridges.

A new barn, constructed to look like an old hill country barn.

In the new wing an old cistern was left in place to form the base of this glass-topped table. New staff are told that their first job will be to be lowered into this 40 ft. deep shaft - it's lighted so you can lean over the table to see down into it -- to clean out the cobwebs. Ha!

And here's our hostess and guide:

Friday morning we went to Dian’s “Sunday house” in F-burg. Sunday houses are generally small homes built long ago by area ranchers who would come to town on Saturday, stay the night and go to church, then back to the ranch. You spot them, the houses, not the German ranchers, all around town. As you might imagine the interior of the house was authentically decorated and furnished.

Back to reality. Friday morning the Rays headed back to Abilene. We and the Calcotes did some shopping and gawking around town. Oh, I haven't said much about eating, but we've been sampling the local fare quite liberally. Lots to choose from.

Our plans have changed to stay the weekend. We were planning to leave Saturday for the Dallas area where we would pick up daughter Heidi on Sunday to continue our trip to Branson, MO, and then Nashville. Turns out it's better for Heidi to fly on Monday, either to Austin or San Antonio, so we'll stay here until then. We'll skip Branson this time. There's a big motorcycle rally going on here, so we'll put on our leathers and bandanas and hang with the bikers.

Cheers,

Rob and Susie

SpringTrip07 - Report 4

Wednesday, May 2, was spent mostly learning about the Pacific part of WWII. We started at the National Museum of the Pacific War, a new museum adjacent to the Nimitz museum which has been a Fredericksburg attraction for quite a while -- WWII Naval leader Admiral Nimitz being a Fredericksburg boy and the hotel started by his grandfather being the site of the museum.




I've never studied the Pacific War in any detail. The painstaking and deadly island by island rollback of the Japanese was particularly interesting to learn about. Why certain islands -- there are hundreds (thousands?) of them in the western Pacific? But some were critical locations for airports or control of shipping lanes. Those are the ones we had to capture from the Japanese (but there are disagreements among historians and participants about some of them). Nimitz and MacArthur led the campaign. Their relationship seemed to work. One note: at the signing of the Japanese surrender, MacArthur signed for the Allies, Nimitz signed for the US.

Chester Nimitz was a Naval Academy graduate. At age 22 (1907) he was an ensign in charge of a destroyer that was run aground in a Phillipines harbor. He was actually court-martialed and reprimanded, but this was not the end of his career, as one might have expected. He continued to advance, spending much of his career in submarines, and after Admiral Kimmel was removed after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt named Nimitz to the command of the Pacific fleet.

Here's the Nimitz museum. At some point, upper floors were added to the hotel building to resemble the superstructure of a ship.

The Pacific War museum also features a George H. W. Bush Gallery. We saw the film of his rescue in the Pacific. Here's a portrait in the gallery.

At noontime we rendezvoused with Bart and Lynda Calcote, more friends from Abilene who have spent a lot of time in Fredericksburg and who had planted the idea of this part of our trip back in 05 when we lived in Abilene. Bart, Ken, and I returned to the Pacific War exhibits; the ladies sampled shops and desserts.

Wednesday evening was a weather rerun of Tuesday evening -- severe storm bearing down on F-burg. We battened down the hatches -- in naval terms -- and holed up in the RV park's clubhouse until the threat had passed. We just had a short period of wind and rain, nothing severe. Will tomorrow threaten again?

Cheers,

Susie and Rob

SpringTrip07 - Report 3

May 1. May Day! May Day! Mid-morning we take off driving north of Fredericksburg. Two objectives: The Willow City Loop for wildflowers and the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, a very large rock.

The Willow City Loop was spectacular. We're mostly past bluebonnet season, but the yellow flowers were really standing out. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (I like the cactus, too). See the Willow City website for more.

Enchanted Rock is a big granite outcropping that rises 425 ft. above its base and covers a square mile. It's not at all what you expect to find in Texas, even in the hill country. Here are views from the bottom and top.

If you go to the Rock's website, you will find that the Tonkawa Indians occupied this area at one time. When we were in Abilene in 05 I came across references to the Tonkawas. My home town in northern Oklahoma is named Tonkawa, because, the story goes, the Tonkawas had a nasty habit of dining on their neighbors and so were relocated northward.

We picnicked at the Rock's base and Ken and I climbed to the top.

We got back to Fredericksburg in mid-afternoon and decided to drive to Luckenbach, immortalized in song by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. I had been there a few years ago; the other three had not and I didn't give them a hint. They were expecting a quaint little town with craft shops and cafes. Surprise! The main feature is a funky general store and bar.

The proprietor told a couple of stories. One lady had asked him in all seriousness, When does Willie Nelson have his Fourth of July picnic here? He asked another tourist what he thought of the Alamo. Said it was smaller than he expected, but why did they put it downtown?

Here's a couple of honky-tonk gals looking for a good time in Luckenbach.

On the way to Luckenbach we stopped at the Wildseed Farms, the nation's largest working wildflower farm! (the website says!). There are 200 acres of cultivated wildflowers (question: can you be cultivated and wild at the same time?) and a large nursery and gift shop. All very nice.


Back at the RV Park that evening we had some excitement. Elsie, Ken, and I were preparing to watch a movie when Susie, who was watching Dancing with Stars, said the TV says there is severe weather heading our way -- possible tornadoes. I'M NOT KIDDING! Skies to north were pretty ominous, but not much movement. We talked to other RVers and decided to close the motor home slide-outs and take shelter in a sturdy rock building on the premises. About that time, though, the TV said the tornado watch was over. Whew. We got some light rain, but nothing more.

That's enuff for now.

Cheers,

Susie and Rob

SpringTrip07 - Report 2

Notes: Report 1:
a. I should have said "when the Rays and we are motor homing."
b. I don't know how Blogger decides to put in spaces between paragraphs. Report 1 didn't look like that -- especially the itinerary -- on the screen before I posted it. Oh, well. I've seen professional bloggers complaining about Blogger.

Saturday, April 28.

Ken and Elsie, along with their two sons and their families, all of whom now live in the Abilene area, have spent much of their "spare time" the last year "flipping" two houses: buying houses badly needing renovation and doing major work to rehabilitate the houses. They gave us a tour of the second house, now nearing completion. This one featured an attic that became a three-bedroom second floor, complete with a new staircase to get there. Pretty impressive. A lot of hard work, though, and they're ready to put that business on hold for a while.


Here are a couple of pictures of their house and yard, and them, not one of their flipped houses.























Sunday turned out to be College Day at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, where we met the Rays in 05. There were various university singers and musicians leading the service and the the church's campus ministry director -- an enthusiastic young man -- had a great message, illustrated by several McMurry U artists. Theme was that we are not an accident -- we have been created for a purpose. Also, it's not an easy process -- illustrated by a potter, right there in the front of the church, who puts stress on a spinning lump of clay to create something beautiful and functional -- cup, teakettle, plate, vase, ..., all different, all having their function. A parallel illustration: every word a poet uses has a purpose. "God don't make junk," as the saying goes.

Heavy rain Sunday night, 1.5 in., and windy, but nothing severe. Monday morning we're off to Fredericksburg. About 180 miles from Abilene, beautiful drive -- mesquite trees with the light green of new leaves, wildflowers of various sorts, more shades of green from pastures and live oaks, all against a purple background of clouds. Sorry, no pictures, but maybe as we do some car touring the next few days.


Went through a couple of county seats. Here's a 2005 picture of a courthouse along the way.


In F-burg the Magellan GPS misdirects us and we end up turning around in a HS parking lot in order to make our way to the RV park. If I'd looked at the map provided by the RV park, I would have known better, but I chose to trust Magellan. Oh, well. We did a leisurely set up, went to the visitor center, walked a couple of downtown blocks, particularly enjoyed a couple of art galleries, ate, and returned to the RV park. Here's a historical house in downtown Fredericksburg.


Our leisurely pace his day is decidedly different from that of the same four people who did Florence in a day, Rome in a day, etc. two years ago. See: http://rgeasterling.com/05AbileneReport/Abilene%20Report%203-final.htm. We plan for more of the same this week.


Yawn, more later.


Cheers,


Susie and Rob