Lake Catherine to Missouri

Tuesday/Wednesday, April 12-13 - We drove out by the Tyler Fittings plant this morning.  It is huge, probably stretches more than 1/2 mile.  Eric said the main headquarters has moved to Alabama, but this is still certainly a sizable operation.

By the time we got on the road, it was 10:45.  We took 271 from Tyler to Mt. Pleasant, then decided to take the interstate (I-30) into Texarkana, since there were not any direct routes.  The last "indirect" route we took, from Giddings to Tyler, we relied on Lucille, and we took lots of backroads, most of them were not even on my map.  It was a nice drive, and we got to see some of Texas' backcountry, but we opted this time for the "direct" route.  But the semis certainly own the interstates -- there is very little traffic that is not a semi.   We crossed the Arkansas state line about 1:15, having spent 13 days in Texas!  It was windy every day, and our gas mileage suffered -- we averaged 6.5 mph on our last 3 tanks of gas. We were ready to leave that state, especially since we will be returning next month.  We drove 256 miles today, and lucked out to find the very nicest campground ever!

We were out of the wind today, and were able to drive without the air conditioner on, so our gas mileage improved.  We ended up at Lake Catherine State Campground, which was a few miles out of the way, but it was time to get off the road.  This campground was absolutely beautiful, and our campsite was to die for.  It was really a patio, right on the water, with a little dock right down from us.


I thought if we were going to have a day of rest, this would be the place. 


The water was laying nicely, and we would see an occasional boat go past.  There was some kind of power plant right across the lake from us.

We had full hookups here, and good tv reception, but when I asked the camp host about wifi, he didn't know what it was, so I assumed we did not have that.  However, that camp host is now my BFF -- when I raved about how nice the campground was (I told him I was going to build a house on my campsite and move here), he told me I should fill out a Comment Sheet.  The next thing I knew, he was back with a Comment Sheet for me, and told me that "Little Rock needs to hear these things, about how important this campground is."  So I filled it out for him, and all was well.  But he also told me that it gets over 100 degrees here in the summer, so Alaska may still win out on my relocation.

I got up early this morning and caught the morning mist on the lake.

Joe finally joined me outside and we enjoyed our coffee looking at the water.  A mean-spirited squirrel kept dropping things on Joe.  We saw turtles, fish jumping, squirrels, ducks, geese, and lots of different kinds of birds. But I'm still looking for my first sighting of a live deer on this trip.

Joe washed the windshield again this morning, and declared this a "No More Bugs" Day. 

But at the end of the day, the windshield was full again.  Looks like he gets to get that ladder down again tomorrow.

They have one rental tent (furnished with a stove, lantern, table, grill, cots and other camping equipment) and one rental yurt here. I'm not sure if the yurt is furnished or now, I assume it is. We saw these yurts for the first time on our trip last summer, in Idaho I think.

Reluctantly, we broke camp and headed out.  Here's what our camp site looked like when it was empty.

In my spare time, I seem to always be looking for something.  You would think I would know where every single thing is in the confined space of this RV, but I am constantly looking in drawers and cabinets for something -- usually successfully, after a while.  But I cannot find our tubes of ointments and medications that I was sure I packed a clear plastic bag, and I have searched high and low for them, all the time wondering if that little plastic bag is still sitting on the bathroom sink at home.  It's enough to drive a person over the edge!

Anyhow, we drove through Hot Springs, which was quite pretty.  There were some huge old buildings, and it appeared to be a really clean city.  If we make it back through here (and we might, because of that awesome campground), it would be fun to explore the town, and to drive out to the Hot Springs National Park.  We took Scenic Route 9 northeast through Arkansas, so we again got to see some backcountry. I finally saw my first deer, outside Paron, about 11:35 this morning.  She was standing in a real clear creek -- didn't get a picture, but it was a pretty sight!   We missed our turn once, coming out of Clinton, and ended up on a really squiggley road when we cut back over to Highway 9.  This one really slowed us down, but we spotted 2 wild turkeys so that was exciting.  We drove through Quachita National Forest, then along the edge of the Ozark National Forest.  Our road took us up and down the mountain twice, and we came out at Mountain View (I guess that should have been a clue). 

We drove through one town where Lucille was popular -- I think there was a Lucille's corner, in addition to this business on that corner.

There are not many campgrounds in this area, and probably fewer as we get closer to Vincennes.  We made it out of Arkansas today, barely, and are spending the night in Thayer.  There are no campgrounds around, so we are on the Walmart parking lot -- my how far we have fallen, from last night's beautiful setting to Walmart.  But free camping works too, so I guess it's ok.

So tonight we have no hookups (although it is cooling off nicely), no wifi, no TV.  So Joe is sitting here watching the Walmart customers come out of the store, keeping track of what they are buying.  He said he is taking a survey, and I believe he thinks he might be able to sell this vital information to the manager here.

We should be out of Missouri before noon tomorrow, crossing Illinois and into Indiana.  Not sure if we will arrive in Vincennes tomorrow or Friday morning -- we'll have to see how the day goes.

Texas A&M University

Monday, April 11 - Bridgette called from Tampa about 5:30 (Texas time) to let us know their flights had all been on time and they were in the car, just about home.  We were glad to leave the humidity and wind of Corpus, and we saw on the news this morning that a wildfire had burned 40 residences in the Ft. Davis area, where we were about 10 days ago.  We were sure glad to be away from that, but we have noticed that Texas is really dry.

We had a nice evening at our little campground, and we even had a few raindrops during the night -- just enough to mess up the windshield so Joe had to get out the ladder again.  But we liked this campground, which we just happened on because it wasn't listed in any of my directories.

There was a little waterfall here, and it is actually a working longhorn cattle ranch, so we got to see a few of these cows up close.

We broke camp and headed to College Station.  We parked on the Walmart parking lot and unhooked the car, then our first stop was the George Bush Presidential Library on Texas A&M's campus.

This was a very nice facility, and we spent about 2 hours there.  We watched a video and toured the various rooms.  A portion of the exhibits focused on the taking down of the Berlin wall, and there was a statute outside memorializing this event.  It is called "The Day the Wall Came Down," and depicts horses being set free.

We left there and drove through part of the Texas A&M main campus, which is enormous.  We entered it in the sports complex area, so we got a few pictures of those buildings.

We drove past some of the classroom buildings but only actually saw a small portion of the campus, which was really crowded with students.  This is one of the Engineering buildings.

Our last attraction to see in College Station was the Texas World Speedway, which John had raced his motorcycle on.  We finally found it, but the gate was shut so we didn't see much here.

Our GPS, Lucille, got a little confused in this area, so we were really glad to see our RV on the Walmart parking lot again.  We weren't sure how we got back there, but we did, so all ended well.  Our day got long, though, when we got to Tyler.  First, we were going to stay on the Walmart parking lot, but the first Walmart was really un-level, and the second one was closed, and posted No Trespassing.  So we decided to try to find Tyler Fittings, the company that Eric works for, but they didn't come up on our GPS.  We called Tiffany and got an address, but that didn't come up either.  So we found an address that was close and headed that way, but it was getting late and we really didn't know where we were going, and we were driving in rush-hour traffic.  Finally, I called a campground and we worked out way out to it.  We missed the turnoff to it and went to the next road (Lucille directed us there), and interestingly enough, we ended up on the road to Tyler Fittings (but it was back the other way).  Then, when we got the brochure from the campground, it had directions to local businesses, including an RV accessory shop.  The directions to that shop, it says, takes you past the Tyler Pipe Foundry, which is real close to that RV shop, so we may find it after all.

The campground, 5 Star RV Park, turned out to be another good one, and it was cheaper than the state park, so that was good.  We are going to run out past Tyler Fittings in the morning, then head out of Texas.  We think we will be sleeping somewhere in Arkansas tomorrow night.

Today Tiffany turned 40, so we called and sang Happy Birthday to her.  Cody got his beginner's permit on Friday, and she said she had aged more over the weekend with Cody driving than she had facing her 40th today.  She said it had been cold all weekend, in the 40s, and there was snow on the Superstition Mountains.  Since we suffered through the heat wave that caught up with us, we are hoping the cold spell catches us as well.  However, it is really nice this evening, in the 70s, so maybe we are out of the heat for a while.  We drove 240 miles today, even with our stop in College Station, so we are making progress toward Indiana. 

Corpus Christi Air Show

Saturday, April 9 - Bridgette told us yesterday that on graduation day in May, Corpus also has some kind of marathon relay, and they shut down the bridge from South Padre Island into Corpus.  We are camped just passed this bridge, so she thought we would probably want to stay in a campground closer to downtown when we come back, so this morning we picked them up at Megan's and drove toward downtown to check out a few campgrounds.  We came up with two pretty good possibilities, one much like a parking lot, but it is right on the bay.  The other is just across the Harbor Bridge, and it goes down to the water.  This one is called Sea Breeze, and that's probably where we will try to stay in May.

Then we stopped for lunch and decided to go out and catch the Blue Angels performance at the Air Show.  We got out there about 2:00, and they were scheduled around 3:00.  They had shuttle buses taking us from the parking area to the air strip, but we got right on and then walked around and looked at some of the planes.  This show was no where near the magnitude of the one in Anchorage, but the Blue Angels are always worth seeing.

 It was really windy again today, and there was some low clouds, but we did get to see a couple demonstrations in the air, and we looked over some of the planes on the ground.  This air show was honoring the Navy's 100 years of air support.

There was a pretty good crowd, all getting sunburned.  John and Bridgette both were a little red by the end of the day.  We saw some black smoke over by the runway, then the fire trucks go that direction.  I tried to get a picture of the smoke, but I missed it.  We later heard that one of the Blue Angel planes had caught on fire (#3).

They finally announced that there was going to be a 10-15 minute break, then the Blue Angels would perform, so we found a place to sit and wait for the big event.

 Finally, they sent Fat Albert up, as a precursor to the Blue Angels, and he made a few fly-bys.  Fat Albert is the support/maintenance plane for the Blue Angels.

Then they started the final check of the Blue Angel planes and introduced the crew and pilots.  One of the planes, #3, apparently had some kind of problems probably from the fire, and they finally towed it out of line and brought in #7, their back-up plane.

So #7 joined the rest of them on the taxi way, and #1 took off and made a couple trips around the airfield.  It was very windy and cloudy, and they announced that there was going to be a 10-minute delay, but the weather was clearing.  So we waited some more.  Finally, the ground vehicles came back out on the field and they announced over the speakers that the Blue Angels performance was canceled because of the weather.  They hoped to be able to perform tomorrow, but we will be gone by then, so we didn't get to see them this time.  John and Bridgette had never been to an air show, and we were really hoping they would get to see them because they are absolutely Awesome, but it was not to be today.  So then we got to wait in line for the shuttle buses for almost an hour.  We were pretty tired by then and glad to call it a day.

Megan and Brian graciously invited us all over for a cookout tonight, and she make an angel food cake so Bridgette had a graduation cake.  We had a very enjoyable evening with them, then went back to the RV for the night, turning our car over to the kids again.

This morning I got my laundry caught back up, and Joe washed the front windshield and put some more tape on his side window, still trying to track down that whistle.  The kids came out for breakfast and we had a nice visit with them before dropping them at the Corpus Christi airport about 11:30.  So far, their flights were still scheduled to fly, so they are hoping to make it back to Tampa today.  After we dropped them, we headed out of town and made it to Giddings, 223 miles, with the wind beating on us all day long.  We are about an hour from College Station, and we plan on driving through Texas A&M's main campus there tomorrow before leaving the area, since we now have two Aggie graduates.

Corpus Christi

Friday, April 8 - We met up with John and Bridgette at the airport about 1:00 on Thursday, they made the drive from Houston in a little over 4 hours.  Our first stop was Whataburger again (for John, this time), then we came back to the coach and turned our Explorer over to them, so they could go to campus and get things set up for tomorrow.  Bridgette needed to check in with Greg, her Ph.D. professor, and John needed to set up a meeting with Greg and some other people regarding the consultant work he had been doing for them.  We sat outside in the campground with a bird's eye view of the Blue Angels practicing for this weekend's air show.  They flew so low over us we could see the numbers on their tail fins.  That went on for almost an hour.  Then the kids came back and picked us up and we went over to Megan and Brian's where they are staying, then went out to dinner at one of their old haunt's, Montana Mike's.  Brian is a fireman and was at work, so only Megan was able to go with us.  Then they dropped us back at the RV and headed back there for an early night.  It had been a long day for them.

Friday, the big day, started off pretty early.  I was pretty sure Bridgette wouldn't sleep in, and they came and got us for breakfast shortly after 8:00.  Then we went to campus and they took care of the things on their agenda.  While Bridgette met with Greg, John took us through one of the labs and showed us the shark tags they had used.

When Bridgette met back up with us, she had us go through her slides with her for any  last minute edits, then John went to his 11:30 meeting.  Then we just hung out until time.  The minutes went past pretty slowly for Bridgette.  But then she put on her "power shoes" which she said makes her feel like she can conquer the world, and she was ready!

The room filled and, finally, 1:00 arrived. 

Bridgette did a fantastic job, her presentation was very interesting, and she handled the questions at the end very well. When the slide of her bio appeared, it was amazing to see all she had accomplished while she was here, including scholarships, grants, publications, balloon launching, and the various other activities and achievements she was involved with.  Texas A&M Corpus Christi Harte Institute, and we, are very proud of her and congratulate her on this!

Then she had to wait another half hour for the final "behind-door" questioning because Greg had an emergency meeting at 2:00, but he was available by 2:30 and they took her in and quizzed her for another 90 minutes. But then it was all over, and let me present, "DR. BRIDGETTE FROESCHKE."  CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU!

A group of about 10 of us all went out for dinner at Frank's, then the rest of the group went on to party at Cassidy's, but Joe and I were ready to call it a day.  We now have two Doctor Froeschkes in the family, what an amazing concept.  They both had lot of obstacles to overcome during this long road, but now it's over and they both have jobs.  Well, since John's is a "contract government" job, he may only have a job for one more week, unless the government gets the budget signed. But Bridgette has a full-time position with University of Tampa starting June 1, where she is has been an adjunct professor this year. We are coming back here next month to see her walk at graduation, then I think we will all be done with Corpus Christi, Texas.             

Laredo to Corpus Christi

Wednesday, April 6 - Posting the blog last night was rather inconvenient.  Wifi was available up by the campground entrance, inside and outside the entrance office, but apparently you had to be fairly close, and there were no picnic tables to set up at.  We didn't get up there until after they closed, and after trying to sign on from the car, I ended up having to sit on a lawn chair just outside the building, in the dark, catching up the blog.  That was about 9:30 p.m.  But the campsites at this park are very nice, they are just 1 1/2 miles back from the entrance, too far for the internet signal. The temperature got up to 86 yesterday and today appears to be about the same, so that's not too bad.


This morning, we ventured back into Laredo (foolishly) to try to find two places we had picked out to tour.  The first was the Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center Natural History Exhibit Hall on the campus of Laredo Commuinity College.

Now we know this college is old, because it was founded the year I was born.  However, in addition, it is on the site of Fort McIntosh, established in 1849, and many of those original structures are still used, both for housing and classrooms.

After making a couple circles through the campus and fighting the students for parking spaces, we asked around and finally found the exhibit hall, which was supposed to have mating alligators (Joe was interested in that concept - I guess they haven't covered this on the Discovery Channel yet).  But we only found a single alligator, so not much happening in that pen.

They did have some small alligators, I never did see the sign to see what kind they were.  And some fish in a tank with side windows, and a few other exhibits.

This is a ring tailed coatimundi.


Finally, we left there to head to our other attraction, the Republic of Rio Grande Museum, which was right downtown near the Border Crossing.  This didn't work out so well.  After turning the wrong way on a one-way street (and getting honked at), Joe turned onto another stree, which also was the wrong way on a one-way street, and traffic was heading at us.  So he cut across the other lane of traffic and pulled into a parking lot, which happened to be the police station, to get turned around,  Finally, we got on a street going the right way and it was blocked with road construction, forcing us off into the only direction that wasn't one way, which took us right down to the border crossing building again.  We really did not want to end up in Mexico, so we finally gave up and headed back toward the campground.

We got on the road about 12:30, with Corpus Christi as today's final destination.  Somewhere along the line in the last few days, we developed a whistle above the window on the driver's side, and it is driving Joe crazy.  He thought he might try to fix it with duct tape, and I'm pretty sure somewhere in this coach we have duct tape, but we can't find it.  (Would you believe on our trip to Alaska last summer none of us had duct tape!).  But I know we bought some since.  Anyhow, he finally pulled into a parking lot and tried putting scotch tape on the little vents around the windows, where the water drains. And we drove on down the road, but we still had the whistle.  I'm practically climbing on him as he's driving, trying to find a stream of air coming in.  No luck.  So when we got into Corpus Christi, he pulled into the first Walmart and we bought some duct tape.  He taped around the door this time.

Back on the road, we only have about 10 miles to go, but he wanted to try to find the leak so he could fix it while we are sitting here for the next 4 days.  But, no success, the RV still whistles.  Not sure what he's going to try next, but I really hope he doesn't silicon the whole door and window shut!

We got to the campground right after 5:00.  This is the same one we stayed at last year when we came down for John's defense, one week after we retired.  And I spent the evening doing laundry.  I talked to an interesting young lady from Switzerland at the laundry (she said she and her boyfriend didn't even have that many clothes with them when she saw my 4 washers full).  She and her boyfriend are here traveling for 2 years.  They quit their jobs, came over to Canada, bought a truck and 5th wheel, and are touring North America. She worked at a bank and her boyfriend is an IT person.  She said Texas is about 15 times the size of Switzerland.  This is their 3rd trip to the U.S., but they intend to return to their country and find new jobs when their travel money runs out.  She spoke very good English and talked a little about the problems in her country, which are very similar to ours (crime, immigrants who use the system but don't pay anything into it, language issues [there are four different languages spoken there]). She thinks this country is amazing and is excited about all there is to see (Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Yellowstone, Yosemite, etc.).

John and Bridgette are due in around noon, if their flights are on time.  I imagine Bridgette might be a bit nervous until she gets through tomorrow's presentation, but it will be good to see them and spend a few days with them here.

10:30 a.m. Thursday - Bridgette just called.  Southwest canceled their flight from Houston to Corpus, so they have rented a car and are driving this last leg.  It's about a 4-hour drive, so we are meeting them at the airport so they can turn in their rental car.  The stress continues to elevate for Bridgette as more roadblocks come her way as she tries to prepare to present her dissertation tomorrow.  But she is determined!

Laredo

Tuesday, April 5.  We left Walmart and headed to Laredo about 9:00 this morning.  We only drove 44 miles yesterday, but today will be a little longer.  We had intended to make a side trip to Alamo Village, a little east of here, the movie site where several John Wayne movies were filmed, including The Alamo, but we learned at the Visitor Center that it had recently been closed down.

A unique driving pattern in Texas is that they use the apron of the road to pull onto to let the vehicle behind you pass, even in "no passing" zones.  Usually, any traffic coming at you will move over onto their apron as well.  This is the courteous and customary behavior down here, and the aprons on the road are almost a full-sized lane.  It makes driving the two-lane highways a little easier, and everyone moves along a little quicker.

We were traveling on Highway 277 to Carrizo Springs, then 83 to Laredo.  Highway 83 has been named the "Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway."  We stopped here at a roadside picnic pull-off for lunch, and I talked with a Texas Dept. of Transportation worker who stopped here as well.

He said this immediate area (Carrizo Springs, Catarina, Artesia Wells) was experiencing a big oil boom right now, started about a year ago and was expected to last about 10 years.  (The town of Brundage was just a little east of this area, but he didn't mention it--Collins is probably keeping secrets again.)  We saw a lot of construction traffic and areas where they were putting in tanks and equipment for their service yards.  We also saw a lot of campgrounds that had been quickly laid out to handle the workers for this oil boom.  The DOT guy said these little towns did not have near enough housing to take care of this increased population, so the oil companies had brought in campers for them to stay in.

Another interesting thing about these Texas highways near the Mexican border is that there are usually dirt roads, like frontage roads, right beside the highway (sometimes on the other side of the fence, but not always).  We would see a pile of 3 or 4 tires every so often that they use to drag these dirt roads, looking for footprints from the illegals.  The Border Patrol is very busy along here, and we have gone through a couple Inspection Stations.  They just asked if we were U.S. citizens and if anyone they couldn't see was traveling with us, while their German Shepherd sniffed our tires and outside cargo areas.

One picture I missed today was what I called a "rooster farm."  We passed a place where there were 40-50 little A-frames set up, with a rooster on a tether for each one.  I couldn't figure out what they were until it was too late to take a picture, but Joe told me they were fighting roosters, and that a lot of them are raised in this area.  If we ever pass another one, I'll make him stop so I can get a picture.

We got into Laredo and found our campground (Lake Casa Blanca State Campground) about 2:00.  Our GPS, Lucille, got a little confused so we had an interesting time getting on the right road.  Somehow, she also got on Africanese language too, so that added to the confusion.  I think we actually hit all 4 corners of the clover leaf, but we managed again Not to go into Mexico (it was a little iffy for a while, but there was one more exit before the bridge that took us over into Mexico).  This is another really nice state campground, with electricity, and a big lake.

We rested for a while then ventured into the town.  It reminds me of El Paso, and we managed to get right down by the border crossing, in 5:00 traffic. I found an ad in our brochure so I picked out a place to shop.  It didn't take very long, but they had some interesting stuff.

There were lots of people heading back to the border crossing, and the streets were busy. I was a little anxious to get out of this part of town.

We managed to find our way back to the campground, thankfully.  We are going to attempt to go to a museum right down by the border crossing in the morning, before we leave here for Corpus Christi.  Bridgette has to check first thing tomorrow to make sure Southwest has not cancelled her flight from Tampa to Corpus on Thursday, since they have grounded some of their planes.  She said if her flight is cancelled, she's just going to start driving.  No way is she not going to defend on Friday!