Canyon Lake

From Galveston, we headed west about 250 miles to the town of Canyon Lake, to stay at Lake Pointe Resort, where we stayed for six days.  By using our Coast to Coast membership, we were able to stay there for only $5/night rather than the regular $45/night, plus a fee of $.12 a kw hour.  The park had lots of amenities that we like, like a pool, and trails to hike. Although it was too cold to use the pool at that point, it was quite a large pool for a resort that size, which from what I could tell, was less than 100 RV spaces.  When we got there, we didn't realize just how big our rig is.  But it barely fit under a branch of one of the trees in the first campsite we went to.  After we moved to another campsite that didn't have anything over our roof, we felt a lot better.  The big pull for this area, if not this resort, is the number of deer that freely roam the area.  When I'd take the dogs out at night and in the morning, I could always count several deer not more than 30' away from us.  One morning, I counted 21 deer lurking around other rigs and in the trees.  

Deer herd at Lake Pointe Resort in the morning.  Sorry the picture is so dark.  I count 10 deer, how many do you count?

We stayed at Lake Pointe because it was in the between Austin and San Antonio as we thought we might be going to San Antonio, but it didn't happen as we kept doing things in Austin.  One of the goals we had while we're traveling was to go to the capitol buildings of all the states we go to.  We haven't always done that in a few states, but we were able to do so in Texas.  It was kinda drizzly the Saturday that we went.  When we go there, we saw signs pointing to the capitol visitors center, and since it was kinda on the way to the capitol building, we went there first.  Turns out that the visitor center was in the old General Land Office building, and it was remarkable as William Sidney Porter, better known by his pen name of O. Henry, worked there from 1887 - 1891.  One of the many rooms there was devoted to him, telling his life story.

Old Texas General Land Office building, located on the grounds of the Texas capitol building in Austin, Tx.

There are free tours through the capitol building given every 15 minutes, if I recall correctly.  For a reason I don't remember, the tour didn't include a lot of the building, only going to the rotunda, the House of Representatives chamber, and the Senate Chamber.  However, the tour guide still told us a bunch of stuff about the history of Texas.  

"Surrender of Santa Anna" by William Henry Huddle in the Texas State capitol building foyer.  General Sam Houston, commander in chief of the Texas Army, is lying on the ground injured extending his hand to General Santa Anna of the Mexican Army.  The surrender took place on April 21, 1836.

Star of the Republic of Texas on the floor of the capitol building.  This was featured at the end of  the movie "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" where Dom Deluise (or a dummy that looked like him) went sliding across the floor to rest in the middle of the star.  The capitol building started to be built in 1885, and was opened to the public on April 21, 1888.

After visiting the capitol building, we did some lunch thing, and then headed to the Lyndon Baines Johnson library on the grounds of the University of Texas at Austin.  It's interesting to visit places like that to learn more about the person, as well as the history that was made while that person was alive. The folks that worked there thought very much of LBJ, and probably knew more than lots of other folks by a long shot.  I don't remember that much about him, except that he was president during the Viet Nam War, and declined being nominated for a 2nd full term of being President.  The folks at the library said that he was one of the busiest presidents the US has ever had, and accomplished a lot.  So much so that he only live four years after he left office.  I didn't take a lot of pictures at the library, but here's a couple of them.

LBJ howling with his dog, Yuki, while his grandson looks on.   Not sure if the grandson was amazed by the harmony of the duet, or who looked better: LBJ or the dog.  Apparently LBJ did this a bit as you can see here, along with a bunch of other photos of him.

LBJ's 1965 stretch Lincoln Continental limo.  This limo is plain compared to "The Beast", the current Presidential State Car (...limo).

We did go back to Austin another day to have lunch with a fellow gas sniffer, Debbie, as she was in the area near Austin, and we wouldn't be seeing her again for some time, if ever.  Debbie came to Houston from Salt Lake City also, but after we got there.  So we were able to show her a few things about Houston, and she was able to show us a few more things about gas sniffing and the company we work for since she's been doing the job for a few years now.

Debbie recommended to us, as did Katie's sister, Karen, that we go to Fredericksburg while we were that close to it, as it's a quaint small town that we'd enjoy going to.  It's about 65 miles northwest of Canyon Lake, so we were able to make it there in just a little over an hour.  There are several things that we were told about to see while we were there, including art galleries, the National Museum of the Pacific War, Admiral Nimitz Museum, and just taking a stroll up Main Street.  So we did that the next day.

Naturally, the first thing that ya go to in any town is the visitor center where ya can see all kinds of things, especially the little cards and flyers telling of places that ya might like to go see after ya leave the visitor center.  Fredericksburg visitor center was very nice with lots of information to share to visitors there.  It was cold that day, but Katie was happy to be in the visitor center where they hadn't taken down their Christmas tree yet, as it wasn't January 1st yet.  Take a look!

What a happy wifey!

There's many more cards and flyers of places to go and see that can't be seen here.  So why is Katie looking at her phone?  I don't know either...

The National Museum of the Pacific War is located right across the street from the visitor center, so it wasn't hard to find at all.  In case you were wondering, this is merely another way of saying that it's a museum about World War II in the Pacific Ocean.

I couldn't get a wide enough shot, but there are several WWII artifacts from the war in the front.  You can see a little more if you click here.

The National Museum of the Pacific War turned out to be very extensive and sobering.  In it, we found information not only on every battle of the war in the Pacific, but the history of the nations involved in WWII in the pacific, including the US, leading up to it.  The exhibits are done well, and the price of admission is well worth the education ya get while you're in the museum.  But remember that this museum is about war and the horrors of it.  It's not really for the faint of heart, and it could easily take six hours or more to go through everything there.  At the time we went, there was also an exhibit on Norman Rockwell, the artist who's paintings were on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post for many years.  His life history was given, along with copies of at least 15 of his paintings during the WWII years.

Willie Gillis: USO  Willie Gillis is a fictional character created by Normal Rockwell during WWII on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Willie Gillis in Church

The Admiril Nimitz Museum was part of the National Museum of the Pacific War (NMPW), in that you could include admission to it by getting a ticket at the NMPW.  Being a former US Navy man, I found it interesting to go to this museum, which is much smaller than the NMPW, that tells about the life of Chester Nimitz.  It only took about 1/2 an hour - 45 minutes to go through it all, and it wasn't quite as visually stimulating as the NMPW, but it was very informative telling about his life starting in 1885 when he was born, his life in Fredericksburg, joining the Navy, rise in the rank to become fleet admiral in 1944, being instrumental in the victories in the Pacific,  postwar retirement in 1947, and death in early 1966, as well as a few other items along the way.

This is the plaque across the street from the Nimitz Hotel.  I thought I had a picture of the Nimitz Hotel because it's a unique looking structure, but I didn't.  Here's a link to a picture of it still the same.

Following are other pictures of Fredericksburg.

After walking 1/2 way up Main Street, we were both getting pooped, so we went to the other side of the street and headed back to the car for our trip home.  On the way there, we stopped in the hamlet of Luckenbach, which I only know of because I heard the song "Luckenbach, Tx", or "Back to the Basics of Love" .  From what I was able to tell, there really wasn't a lot to the hamlet, only two buildings, and the population is only three.  But if you go to the website of Luckenbach, Texas, you can see there's lots of things happening for a town of only three people!  Wow!

Lastly, I wanna mention about our time in Canyon Lake, Texas, was the church we went to while we were there.  While we try to attend worship services everywhere we go, this church, Cowboys for Jesus Church, will stick with me for a long time.  Really friendly people, good message, and even though there is a praise band that was made up of a man and two women, the good old hymns were sung.  And on the last verse, they dropped out so it was sung acapella with folks harmonizing.  Really sounded great!  They have a lot going on there, including archery instruction, which Katie and I made use of.  Overall, I'd say that attending there was the frosting on the cake for out time at Canyon Lake, Tx.

So if you have the chance to go to Canyon Lake, Lake Pointe Resort isn't a bad place to stay.  The town of Canyon Lake isn't very big, but it has a large grocery store, several gas stations, and assorted shops and restaurants.  In addition to condos or motels for lodging, there's several RV parks or resorts available for RVers.  We enjoyed our time there, and I'm thinking you would also.

Galveston

Hello again.  

When our job in Houston ended on the 22nd of December, we traveled south to Galveston to stay for a week, figuring on seeing several of the sights there, and enjoying staying pretty darn close to the beach.  We found a site at Sandpiper RV Resort which was about 500' away from the water, but for some reason didn't put out the patio deck of our rig.  As it turned out, it was often foggy, and very humid, and we wouldn't have enjoyed being outside as much as we would've wanted.  In addition, the mosquitoes were relentless, and being out in them would've made things very unenjoyable.  From what we read about while sightseeing in Galveston, mosquitoes have been relentless there forever.  

RV site at Sandpiper RV Resort in Galveston, Tx.  Notice the moisture on the vehicles, it was that way everyday of our stay there.  Can't see the ocean from this viewpoint, but it's on the other side of our site about 500'.

The first morning after we got there, we went for a walk along the beach before the sun came up, because one of the brochures we got telling about Galveston, said we had to see a sunrise and sunset there.  We got to see the ocean (duh!) as the sun came up, as in the next pic, just like we were supposed to do.

While we were walking on the beach, we noticed houses on stilts nearby.  This was our first exposure to houses that were on stilts in Texas.  We didn't understand exactly how important those stilts were until we went to a couple of the touristy places and found out about the hurricane that hit Galveston on September 8, 1900 and killed upwards of 6,000 people overnight.  So, even though there is a sea wall where most of the city proper is, apparently the ocean can still make a deep push onto the island, and the following pix show what the houses close to the beach look like.

These homes are either rentals or vacation homes, I'm thinking.  Humongo jobs about 12', or higher, off the sand of the beach next to where we were staying.

Homes on stilts further southwest from our campsite.  Lots of homes this way in the area.

The above pix were on the beach side of the road.  But the picture below was on the opposite side of the road.  Maybe the architect wanted to be able to float away.

Not sure if it floats or not.  But it's unique!

As Galveston was, at one point, where more affluent folks lived many years ago, there were a couple of mansions still there: the Willis-Moody Mansion, originally built by Narcissa Willis who built the home after her husband, Richard, passed away in 1893, with the purpose of having room for all of her family to come live with her.  As she was estranged from her children for doing so with her deceased husband's fortune, none of them returned to live with her, and she lived in it for six years with a single housekeeper until her death in 1899.  Her daughter put it up for sale and had several bidders, among them William Lewis Moody, Jr., whose bid was $20,000 for the $100,000 home.  After the Galveston hurricane, all bids were pulled except Moody's.  The Moody family move in shortly thereafter, and William lived there until his death in 1954, at which time, his daughter, Mary Moody Northen acquired it and lived there until three years prior to her death in 1986.

The Willis-Moody Mansion, sometimes known  as just the Moody Mansion.  Mr. William Lewis Moody, Jr., was a philanthropist and entrepreneur founding a bank, an insurance company, and a large charitable foundation.

And Bishop's Palace, which was the former Gresham Castle.  Built for $250,000 from 1886 - 1892, it's now valued at $5.5 million.  The picture below doesn't do it justice for the opulence it had when it was built with steel framed walls that were up to 23" thick after the stone was added, and featured chandeliers that had gas and electric lamp fixtures.  For more, and better, pictures, I suggest going here.  

Bishop's Palace.

We also spent time going to Ocean Star offshore drilling rig museum on the north side of Galveston.  Prior to this, I didn't realize how much money is spent, and work is done trying to find oil offshore.  The museum is a great place to learn all about how oil companies go about doing that, and what life is like on an offshore oil rig.  It's a great place to learn all about that stuff, especially after seeing the movie Deepwater Horizon.

We liked being in Galveston, despite the constant humidity and fog which rolled in whenever it felt like it.  The worst part was the mosquitoes, as both of us had to host about 20 of them suckers with our blood while we were there.  But I'm thinking that if we'd stayed at a different RV park, one that was known for being next to a mosquito breeding ground (doing the research next time at RV Park Reviews, or something along the same lines.) would help.  It's a viable vacation or day off place to go to with a long beach, although it isn't very deep at times, lots of restaurants and lodging, and an amusement park, Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier.  If you're into history, there's quite a bit there and some really beautiful old homes that have been refurbished nicely.  Folks are friendly and courteous, and welcome visitors, as was evidenced by the numerous folks that visited Galveston while we were there.  I'm sure they'd welcome you if you went there also.

Hello folks, maybe you noticed that things have changed with the image at the top of the post.  This has come about because we no longer have a moho, but a toho (towed home) instead.  We changed our home because the 1999 Winnebago Chieftain we had was getting old so not everything worked the way it did when it was new, and it no longer fit our needs.  Which was sad because I'd always thought (and many RVers still do) that a motor home rather than a trailer was, and is, the way to travel for several reason:  Lots of room for friends and family to travel with ya whereas if ya have a trailer, you can't get up and move around in a truck or car pulling a trailer; Your refrigerator, bathroom, and beds are easily available for anyone except the driver while you are going down the freeway without having to stop, get out of your towing vehicle and get in the trailer, only to have to get back out of the trailer and back in the towing vehicle in order to get going again;  Backing into a campsite is much easier than trying to back a trailer into a campsite; And motor homes are always being compared to as the "RV Standard" rather than a trailer.

However, a trailer doesn't have the extra motor, transmission, drive line, etc that a motor home has, and it doesn't make sense to have it if you are gonna be stopped for weeks or months at a time as they just sit and don't get the exercise they need.  A trailer also will give you better space utilization than a motor home will because the area where the driver and passenger are, and any space forward isn't utilized as living or storage as it is in a trailer.  In addition, the engine and transmission, etc take up space as well.  Getting a trailer into a campsite is a learning curve for newbees, but with practice (i.e., doing it over and over because ya can't get it right the first time, or second time, or ...), it can be done easily enough to take much less time than when ya first start backing it.  Needless to say, it can be an exercise in frustration for the neophyte.  Probably best to take the easy way (no guts or glory way, ok?) and opt for the big rig, pull through campsite.  

But now, we have a trailer.  (And a 3/4 ton pickup truck to pull the trailer.  Which has the extra engine, transmission, driveline, etc.  But it's used in the job I work, so it doesn't just sit like it would if it was a motor home.  Go figure...)  It's Highland Ridge's Open Range 3X388RKS.  It has the largest amount of kitchen space that I've seen in any RV, a patio deck that drops down on the curb side so we just have to walk through a sliding glass door rather than walk down steps to get to the outside chairs (...it's an old person thing, ok?), and a 58" TV in the living room.  It has a king size bed so the walking area around the bed is really for sideways stepping as there's not much room there.  Compared to our previous bed, it's longer and wider, which is nice for the doggies when they want to snuggle, but the lack of room to maneuver around the bed isn't the best.  Here is a video of the 3X388RKS from Haylett RV in Coldwater, Michigan.  Although the salesman tells a lot about it, realize that ours has the patio option whereas the one he's showing doesn't.  As with anything that's new and complicated, such as an RV or automobile, there are foibles that come with it.  Ours had an awning that didn't have all the parts so it wouldn't work correctly, an oven that didn't (and still doesn't) want to go to the temperature that we select, and a shower door that leaks on the floor because the door guide on the bottom isn't sealed correctly. The awning and oven have been taken care of (kinda on the oven), and we're working with the shower door.

Floor plan of our new rig, Open Range 3X388RKS.  Bear in mind we don't have the u-lounge on the street side, but two recliners which we move out into the floor area opposite the TV, and that area is where Katie has her painting stuff.

New kitchen that's about four times the size of the galley we had in the moho.  21 cubic foot refrigerator and pantry is off to the left out of site.  

Patio deck with awning.  

58" TV above the electric fireplace, which has been useful when the outside temperatures were in the 20's, as they were in San Antonio.

Because we live in a 5th wheel trailer now, it makes sense to change the name of the blog to something like "where we take the trailer home" or "where the trailer home follows us".  And I tried to do just that.  But since it's been so long since I've explored the workings of a blog, I couldn't figure out how to do what was necessary to start a new blog carrying the same features and gadgets on the side like I have now.  So... you're kinda stuck with it, ok?  Just remember that we live in the 5th wheel now, ok, not the moho.  Good!

Enough of the new rig.  We've been busy working in order to get our financial ducks in a row so we could get the new rig, employed by Southern Cross, a company that contracts with utilities, gas utilities for our purpose, to survey natural gas lines and meters.  It's mandated by the US Department of Transportation to be done on a regular basis between 1 to 5 years.  They've been good to us paying us a good wage, in addition to mileage and paying for our rent in an RV park.  We did the survey for Salt Lake City last spring, then moved up to Logan for the summer.  It wasn't uncommon for us to walk between 5 - 8 miles every day with some days being even longer.  We carried a specialized instrument which detects hydrocarbons to let us know that there was something flammable in the area where we were surveying.  Here's a video of it in action on youtube.com (watch as much of it as ya feel like watching, ok?)  If the leak was above ground on the pipes, we'd spray it down with soapy water and note where the bubbles were, and report it.  If we couldn't find it above ground, we had to use another instrument to find it under ground.  We also carried a tablet computer which had maps showing us where the gas pipes were (supposed to be) located, and always had other related gear in our vehicles.  The gas lines for the gas utility for most, if not all, of Utah, are conveniently located in the streets and front or side yards making the survey easy to do, allowing us to go to more than 120 houses a day.  

We took a break beginning October 1st to go see family for a few days, and then pick up our new rig in southern California.  About a week into October, we were asked by our manager in Salt Lake City if we'd go to Houston to help out in a new survey there.  I'm thinking that we just didn't quite feel at ease about not working since we'd been hard at it for seven months, so we said "Sure!  Let's do it!"  As a result, we had very little time after we picked up our new rig to travel back up to Salt Lake City to move stuff from our moho into our toho (we still haven't found places for everything!), and start our four day journey to Houston.

The job in Houston was similar to what we did in Salt Lake City and Logan with the exception that all the utilities for 99.99% of the houses are in the backyards.  So a lot of time was spent knocking on doors to let folks know that we were needing to get into their backyards to check the gas main running along the fence and the gas service line to the meter.  If someone wasn't home, we did the best we could to let ourselves into the backyard, and we were usually successful in doing that.  There were a few times when folks didn't answer the door and we made our way into their backyard, but the homeowner was home and discovered us when we were in the backyard, which produced an awkward situation.   Most folks were ok with what we were doing after it was explained to them what was being done, but one woman told me to leave and called 911.  I met with the police officers after they left the lady and told them what I was doing, and what had happened, and they were totally ok with it.  Made my day much better after they left with smiles on their faces.  Turns out there've been folks (bad guys really) that had a uniform like UPS, or the gas company, and had gotten into houses as a result, and either looted the house, or inflicted damage to the person at home.  And the fact that it was prior to Christmas when there were Christmas trees with presents under them, deliveries made with packages left at the door, etc., only exasperated the situation.  So I can't blame anyone there for being cautious about someone lurking about in their back yard, even though I had lots of identification to prove who I was.

Right now, we're awaiting orders on when we're to arrive in Salt Lake City to start the survey there again.  Spending most of the time in the Parker, Az., area with short trips to southern California to see our son, Jeff, and Katie's family.

Although our time in Houston was mainly spent working, we were able to check out a couple of touristy things.  One of them was the Battleship Texas, BB35, which is now a museum and moored near the Houston ship channel, right next to the San Jacinto Monument where the decisive battle for Texas independence took place in 1836.  The battleship is now a museum which shows what life was like on a ship during the time from WW I - WWII.  I found it interesting because it served near Okinawa in World War II where my father was serving in the Army Air Corp.  It was also the only ship to serve in World War I as well as World War II.

The Battleship Texas, BB35

Just to the southeast of where the battleship is the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site where the Republic of Texas won the battle for it's independence from Mexico.  There's a 570' tall monument there that's 15' taller than the Washington Monument that has an elevator to the observation deck

San Jacinto Monument

It was very interesting to find that we were that near the battlefield where Texas got it's independence, and a lot of the rest of our time in Texas had to do with it's history, or figures of it's history.  More on that in the next post.

Until then, as they say in Texas,
                                                    That's all she wrote!