I am tardy in getting this issue of the blog out so will back up a bit and bring you all up to date. I began putting this together in early March....
Finally Spring has sprung. In March, the number of
activities held here in the resort and in the local area were in
abundance. The Winter Texans (us included) were all preparing to leave in April, but
not before we had some great fun here in the Rio Grande Valley. Our calendar included three dances with
theme celebrations that included Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day, and our last dance
of the season: a cowboy/cowgirl two-stepping barn dance with even a fiddle in
the band.
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| Masks, beads, and smiles to celebrate Mardi Gras |
Its hot in the RV kitchen...
We have other friends from Arkansas here in this park with us, Dave and Laurie. Dave is a BBQ master and Laurie is just crazy fun to be around. She spends a lot of her time and money baking stuff in the clubhouse kitchen for others to munch on. She often has persuaded me to cook 16 quarts of beans and ham or split pea soup to share. Well one of her ideas was to consider doing a park-wide breakfast serving creamed chipped beef. She asked if I had a recipe. This is sometimes called “S O S”. I invited her and Dave over to watch me prepare the dish. They liked its taste and its simplicity. Take a look at the recipe that follows.
We have other friends from Arkansas here in this park with us, Dave and Laurie. Dave is a BBQ master and Laurie is just crazy fun to be around. She spends a lot of her time and money baking stuff in the clubhouse kitchen for others to munch on. She often has persuaded me to cook 16 quarts of beans and ham or split pea soup to share. Well one of her ideas was to consider doing a park-wide breakfast serving creamed chipped beef. She asked if I had a recipe. This is sometimes called “S O S”. I invited her and Dave over to watch me prepare the dish. They liked its taste and its simplicity. Take a look at the recipe that follows.
Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast
Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons butter
½ cup chopped sweet onion
4 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1 4.5-ounce package sliced dried beef, rinsed
and chopped
½ teaspoon prepared yellow mustard (secret
ingredient)
8 slices bread, toasted
Directions:
1.
Melt butter in saucepan.
2.
Add onion and sauté 2 minutes.
3.
Add flour and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly.
4.
Add milk all at once.
5.
Cook slowly and stir until thickened and
bubbly.
6.
Add beef and mustard and heat through.
7.
Serve over toast with sliced tomatoes on the
side.
Makes 2 cups.
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| Laurie observing the master with awe. |
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| Dave snickering at the master. |
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| The final results were tasty. |
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| Sunrise from our bedroom window |
Visiting winter friends in other parks...
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| Al plays 1st chair. |
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| Al and Mary |
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| Tom looks good, Al sounds great |
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| Daisy, Lynne, Don, Mary, Tom, Al, Lee and Dee at Al's park |
Back to parties...
Instead of having to make the difficult choice of which parties to attend, we of course went to them all. Costumes are encouraged, and at the St Patrick’s dance you had best be wearing green. To honor my Irish heritage (smile), I cooked a stove-top pot of corned beef and cabbage for us. The left over juices and vegetables I stored for a soup base that was used on a rainy day in the following week.
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| Stove top corned beef and cabbage |
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| St. Paddy's attire for Daisy |
The Gulf shore...
By now you all know that Daisy and I love the seashore and oysters. So we planned a midweek farewell to avoid the college spring breakers and satisfy our gastronomical yearnings. The gulf coast was cool but sunny, windy, and populated with early spring breakers. It was somewhat amusing to watch the pale, bare-chested, six-packed males chasing footballs and Frisbees for the attention of the equally pale, bikini-clad sirens acting as if the boys did not exist. Daisy and I wondered if we ever looked that trim, young, and foolish.
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| South Padre Island |
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| Oysters did not last long |
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| Beach Party advertisement |
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| Volleyball, beer, boobs, and butts |
Seeing friends before we go...
This is a a view of one of our best buddies in a place of rest and inactivity. The humorous thing is that Janet is hardly ever at rest.
She inadvertently took a fall and split her patella in the process. Then to avoid surgery she had to immobilize it for 6 weeks. Barry and dog Mickey picked up the slack and were in charge. It still did not stopped Janet from traveling to pro baseball games and RV gatherings.
Short road trips...
Daisy and I took one last trip to San Antonio to meet my brother and sister-in-law Mark and Denise.
They had recently moved to Texas
from Virginia and we arranged to meet them in the middle part of Texas for a
get together.
We had to explain that it was a shorter trip for them to drive from their new home near Dallas and visit us in Arkansas that it would have been to drive all the way to our Rio Grande Valley winter home.
Texas is one big freaking state. We love it.
Daisy and I took one last trip to San Antonio to meet my brother and sister-in-law Mark and Denise.
They had recently moved to Texas
from Virginia and we arranged to meet them in the middle part of Texas for a
get together. We had to explain that it was a shorter trip for them to drive from their new home near Dallas and visit us in Arkansas that it would have been to drive all the way to our Rio Grande Valley winter home.
Texas is one big freaking state. We love it.
The night before Daisy and I met with Mark and Denise, we arranged to
have a dinner date with an old college roommate and his wife, Ed and Jane. They
are retired and living in San Antonio and also have a place in South
Padre. They picked us up at our hotel on
the Riverwalk and took us to one of their favorite eating places called La
Fonda on Main.
The regional sweet 16 college basketball play offs were occurring and the place was packed. It is San Antonio’s oldest Mexican restaurant, having been in continuous business since 1932. The food was excellent and their very basic margarita was top shelf. Besides that, Ed and Jane picked us up, dropped us off, and paid for the meal. Life is good!
Colorful and tasty entrees!
Back to brother Mark...
Mark and Denise checked into the same hotel the next day and
we met them downstairs and strolled to the Riverwalk for lunch and street adventures. We first took
a river barge tour to get them oriented to the area. Next on the agenda
were the Alamo, the Hotel Menger (where Teddy Roosevelt recruited for his
rough riders), and then a BBQ lunch at a Riverwalk eatery called the County Line. Next was the new Briscoe Western Art Museum. It is located right on the Riverwalk and
highlights the art, history, and western heritage of this part of Texas. It
opened in the fall of 2013 and is still in the stage of developing exhibits and
acquiring additional artifacts. It is well worth a visit, and we intend to go back.
We spent about an hour at the museum before returning to the
hotel. I promptly took a nap. From the hotel we walked up the canal a short
distance to the Tower of the Americas for heavy appetizers at the top of the
Tower. Daisy and I then took Mark and Denise to the Riverwalk shopping center for a dessert
and cut them loose to continue more of the night life on their own. They headed north and we south the next day,
after agreeing that San Antonio is an ideal place for us to meet again in the fall of 2014.
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| The Riverwalk is the place to be when in San Antonio. |
Remember the Alamo!
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| Another must visit |
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| This diorama of the Alamo is in the Briscoe Museum. |
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| And of course we had to find some western ribs on the Riverwalk. |
The Briscoe Western Art Museum
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| Big Brother and Little Brother--the oldest and the youngest |
Other things we did before leaving the valley....
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| One more trip across the border to Mexico |
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| Visiting Fran and Judy in another park |
The departure journey...
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| Leaving the 5th wheel in Texas |
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| On the road again in the truck camper |
We arrived on a Thursday and left on Sunday. There were 62 truck campers of various brands. The majority were Lance, the nation’s top seller. There were 3 more Eagle Caps like ours.
The rally was held at the Guadalupe River RV Resort. Their claim to fame is that the “water is clean, the hills are high, and the trees are big.” I have been to several rallies over the past 4 decades and this is a perfect place to host an RV rally. They have numerous large full hook-up sites, shade, pools, graveled roads, hot tubs, Wi-Fi, clean bath/laundry houses, indoor meeting rooms, river frontage, ponds, and an onsite saloon with weekend live music.
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| The river was running low. |
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| When we travel from Texas to our house in Arkansas, Daisy follows in her car. |
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| Maintenance tech sessions answered lots of questions. |
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| Ideas from other TC users |
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| Old and new styles |
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| More truck campers in one place than I have ever seen |
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| Resting up for our turn at hosting an open house session |
Daisy searched for things to do after hours and...
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| we made more friends |
She found things for me to do.
And of course we had an on-site BBQ catered by local hill folks.
On the last day, Daisy and I unexpectedly hosted a session for Alaskan travelers and wantabees. We expect to encounter many of these folks on the road this year in our adventure travels there.
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| Group photo of this year's gathering |
The journey continues...
After the Alaska meeting we departed and drove 30 miles north to the town of Fredericksburg. This town is noted for its wineries, having one of the top 50 BBQ joints in the world, and being one of Forbes' best places to retire in 2014. The area has a strong German heritage, which is reflected in some of the local eateries. It was late afternoon when we got there. We did not make a reservation at the campground and were surprised to find out the only available site was in an overflow area, but it still had electric and water hookups. That suited us just fine. It was also cheaper.
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| Overflow area |
What to do?
It was a Sunday afternoon, and many of the tourist places were closed. Even most of the eateries were resting up from the days before. So what does one do on a Sunday in the Hill Country of Texas?
Like any other red blooded Americans, we decided to go visit a distillery, yep, a bourbon distillery.
In a previous blog I told you that Kentucky was the only
place in the world that by an act of Congress could use the word bourbon to
describe its product. I was mistaken. Texas can.
It seems that Congress mandated that bourbon must be:
It seems that Congress mandated that bourbon must be:
- Produced in the United States
- Made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn
- Aged in new, charred oak barrels
- Distilled to no more than 160 proof (called white dog)
- Entered into the barrel for aging at no more than 125 proof
- Bottled at 80 proof or more
Texas born from Texas corn is the slogan used by Garrison Brothers Distillery of Hye, Texas.
The first legal straight single barrel Texas bourbon was produced by them in 2010.
It is the only bourbon produced outside of Kentucky.
Garrison Brothers gets its corn and
wheat from only Texas farmers and its barley from the Pacific northwest. The distillery uses
Texas water from similar limestone geography as the Kentucky bourbon
distilleries. The differences are that this Texas distillery has only 6
employees, ages its brew in 15 gallon charred white oak barrels, and uses
volunteers to bottle its annual distribution of 18,000 bottles.
Oh, and they make it a point to tell you that their bourbon is NOT for every day drinking. It should be consumed in moderation, straight up or with a little ice only. BTW, it costs about $80 a bottle.
It was a Sunday when we went on our quick tour. They did not rush us, but a small operation just doesn’t take long to go
through. Oh, and they make it a point to tell you that their bourbon is NOT for every day drinking. It should be consumed in moderation, straight up or with a little ice only. BTW, it costs about $80 a bottle.
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| The dog was on the tour too. |
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| Limo of tourists showed up as well. |
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| Texas still has to have a few of these to rest in. |
We got to taste the sour mash as it was fermenting. It was sour. We got to taste the clear 160 proof spirit after it had been distilled. Took your breath away and has no flavor. We finally got to sample the 80 proof finished product after it has been aged in charred 15 gallon oak barrels. It was silky smooth with hints of caramel, vanilla, butterscotch, and nutmeg.
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| Copper cooker |
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| sour mash mixer |
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| 15 gallon charred barrels |
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| It's time for a taste test. |
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| Roll out the barrels |
That evening we found a German
restaurant to dine at and enjoyed a Liebfraumilch to wash away the
bourbon tastings as Daisy says. We had a great day and evening.
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| Oops, this is all that was left. Sorry! |
The South Pacific comes to Texas...
The next day we went to a museum. And believe it or not, we went to Fredericksburg especially to visit the Admiral Nimitz National Museum of the Pacific War.
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| The museum front door |
Nimitz was a Fredericksburg native. I had seen only part of this facility over 3 years ago and Daisy had never been. The museum strives to teach the history and lessons learned in the South Pacific, as well as preserve the memories of those who served there and those who never returned home. My father and uncle served there, so I had a special interest to learn about this part of dad's life that he seldom talked about. We spent about 4 hours exploring parts of the various exhibits and will need to return to finish.
This is the actual conning tower of the USS Pintato SS-387. She sank 15 vessels of the Japanese naval and merchant fleet in the South Pacific.
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| Navy Avenger TBM |
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| Actual PT boat |
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| Reenactment area |
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| Marine landing craft |
Japanese battlefield entrenchments
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| Pillbox |
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| Japanese 3 man tank |
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| These crosses bear the number of causalities in the South Pacific for each military branch. |
We left the museum for lunch at a local brew pub known for its Reuben sandwiches and decided that we would take in completely different facilities afterward – a local winery and chocolatier. Daisy especially liked the candy shop, and decided that dark chocolate and red wine make a great combination.
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| Brew pub for lunch |
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| Fredericksburg Winery on Main Street |
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| and the chocolate place of course |
That evening we decided that we should have a change of pace and went to a Thai restaurant. We found out later that by chance we had selected a place noted in the local area for its great food choices.
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| Coconut milk soup |
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| Soft shell crab |
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| Pad Thai |
One more stop before home...
As luck would have it, our last night on the road home we spent in a Oklahoma park that was not truly ready to host guests this season. The facilities needed help, but the good neighbors included a wild turkey, the park had beautiful quiet surroundings, and the economical price eased my discord.
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| Our location |
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| Lake view |
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| Bath house in a caboose--a first for us |
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| a feathered visitor |
The next day we made it to our Arkansas home base where we would be for 3 weeks before heading east. Bye for now!
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| a good place to rest for a bit |
