FUN WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Thursday, November 25 – HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! – We have so much to be thankful for this year. We have been so Blessed with a wonderful family, great health and the ability to travel.

We had a wonderful day at Carrie's house. We enjoyed family, friends and delicious Turkey and all the fixin's.

The happy Thanksgiving group.

We had appetizers by Nick and Carrie.

There was 10 lbs. of potatoes to peel. Bo and Kelly had a potato peeling contest. Nick cheers them on.

Kelly and Carrie prepared the potatoes. This was Kelly’s first time making real mashed potatoes. They were excellent.

Tom, Carrie and Kelly. Tom fixed delicious sweet potatoes and artichokes. Good job Tom!

Tom cuts the turkey prepared by Carrie. YUM!!!

Carrie and Kelly got the party started with a little drink. Yes, that is a wine bottle Kelly brought.

We had lots more food. Marsha and Carrie supplied the desserts. Paul made an attempt to keep them all happy by tasting everything....sometimes more than once.

He even volunteered to do clean up.

Bella celebrated with us but had to share the day with three dogs. She did her best to make friends with the littlest of the group.

After dinner it was game time. We had several exciting games of Catch Phrase. What a great group of young people. A real fun time!! Marsha and I couldn't keep up with these twenty-something guys and girls, so we loaded up and headed home. Driving through the city of Houston at night is beautiful with all the lights and NO TRAFFIC.

Friday, November 26 - BLACK FRIDAY! We made an attempt to go out shopping this morning with our daughter, Kelly, but I guess we just didn't have our hearts into it. We started at Best Buy, which was crowded and then headed over to the Katy Mall. We were surprised the mall wasn't too busy. We walked around for a couple hours but left empty handed. We didn't do our part to help the economy. Maybe another day.

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching #11 Alabama almost upset #2 ranked Auburn. In the end, Auburn came back to win. There was also the Oregon victory and don’t forget the Boise upset. We made a quick trip to Walmart for baking supplies. Sunday, Marsha and the girls are baking some Christmas cookies.

Saturday, November 27 – We headed out with the “kids” to the local sports bar to watch college football. Two games in particular.....Ohio State vs Michigan (We're from Ohio.) and Virginia Tech vs Virginia (our daughter, Carrie and most of her engineering friends graduated from VT). Both were exciting games with holiday bowl implications!!! Both OSU and VT won with the exact score 37-7.

Kelly represented OSU and Carrie VT.

Can you guess what this is?

Yes, it is a six shooter. But only in Texas will you find it as the door handle on the women’s restroom door.

We had a good time cheering and spending time with our daughters. After the games, we headed home to watch more football on TV and to relax.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day.

HEADIN’ BACK TO HOUSTON…HOUSTON…HOUSTON

 Monday, November 22 – We begin our “Holiday Travels” this morning by heading to Houston. Our plans are to stay in the Elks Lodge Campground. We stayed in an Elks at Gulfport, MS and enjoyed it, so thought we would try it in Houston.....actually it is Stafford, TX, a SW suburb of Houston. If all goes as planned, we will be there for about a month......Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

Arrived after a nice 3.5 hour trip. The Elks seems pretty nice. They have 10 concrete pads with 50-amp full hook-up sites. Nice price too! It was very easy access on TX-59 with plenty of shopping near by....looks promising!

There are currently five RV's in the campground. There were three here when we arrived and one additional one arrived while we were away. We are in one of the end spots. We always try to get the end spot, if available. That way, Bella our cat, has more room to roam around on her leash. One less neighbor too and a little more area for us to spread out.







Elks Lodge from our site.



We went over to our daughter, Kelly's apartment, to visit and go out for dinner. We had a great visit and enjoyed catching up with her busy life. Paul brought home her sweeper. It isn't working, so he took it all apart and found the switch needs replaced. He'll look for a new switch at Radio Shack tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 23 - We are meeting Duane and Louise Wegley for lunch today. We met them last year at Escapees Rainbow's End in Livingston, TX, and have been able to touch base with them several times during our travels. They are Workampers for Escapees and are spending some time relaxing in Livingston before their next assignment in Deming, NM.

We had a great time catching up on each others lives. Duane and Louise are doing great and finishing up their R & R. We had a great lunch at Olive Garden. It was nice visiting with them and we'll see them down the road!

Thank you again Duane for the two cravings you gave us. Duane gave Marsha a cute Santa Claus pin and a beautiful cross. You can see a picture of the cross on their website.

Duane, Louise, Marsha, Paul



After returning home, Paul went to the Office to pay our campground fees and to get his free “out-of-town” Elks visitor beer. It is only $325/month (a little over $10/day) which included electricity. He enjoyed talking to some of the men in the lodge. He then fixed Kelly's sweeper.....replaced the switch and a couple crimp connections.....all for less than $5. She's going to owe me big-time!
We heard that Houston set a record today with the high of 85. It isn’t too tough to live in this temperature in November no less.

Wednesday, November 24 – We did a little window shopping this afternoon at Ikea.  We are considering replacing one of the sofa’s with a chair and footstall and wanted to see what Ikea had available.

We passed this AWESOME looking motorhome.  Somebody did a tremendous job rebuilding this wonderful relic from the past!

 

We went to Lowes to buy a Christmas tree and this is what we found.







Marsha went crazy. It just doesn’t seem like Thanksgiving with temperatures in the 80s.

Paul is getting into the season spirit.



We did manage to wade through all the beautiful flowers and find Kelly a Christmas tree.  Kelly mentioned that we use to wade through snow to cut our tree….now we’re in shorts and t-shirts at Lowes…..lol.

We wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

LOTS OF R AND R IN ROCKPORT

Friday, November 19 - Another beautiful day in South Texas, so we headed to the beach. Relaxation, reading and soaking up some sun......ahhhhhhh!

Marsha took this picture from the balcony of the pavilion. Yes, that is Paul way out there. See any one else….NOPE!

Does this look like any commercial you have seen on TV?

Marsha got a kick out of a pelican feeding near shore. Those darn things dive for fish almost doing a summersault....making a pretty good splash too! Crazy!

We also saw a crane having a picnic.

Saturday, November 20 – Football Saturday. Ohio State and Virginia Tech won….YEA! Were are hoping that OSU wins next week against Michigan and Wisconsin loses. This will put OSU ahead of Wisconsin in the ranking, and they will go to the Rose Bowl! VT is already the winner of their division of the ACC.

Sunday, November 21 – Started with church this morning; then more R and R. We met a few more people. This is by far the friendliest park we have been in. Most all the parks we visit, we find people are very nice but here they are so nice and friendly.

Attended the ice cream social…lots of socializing goes on at this event. We have enjoyed our stay here. If we fished, it would be a place we could spend much more time.

Tomorrow on to Houston.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you come back soon. Have a great day!

INDOOR PLUMBING, GAS HEATING AND LIGHTING…1877…REALLY!

Tuesday, November 16 – We visited the Fulton Mansion State Historic Site today. 

Built by George Ware Fulton and Harriet Smith Fulton on the coastal plains of Texas. Named Oakhurst because it is surrounded on three sides by majestic live oak trees. The front of the home faces the stunning Aransas Bay.

George was a highly successful entrepreneur and Harriet was the daughter of Henry Smith, a powerful Republic of Texas politician. Together, they created a beautiful and comfortable home for their family and friends, decorated in the highest fashions of the day.

Foyer

The house is furnished with many pieces donated by the Fulton family and with other period furniture purchased to duplicate items listed on the household inventory.

Original light fixture

Gorgeous staircase.

Original Recliner in the Library from Europe.

What unique pieces of furniture in the parlor.

 

The Fulton’s bed where Mr. Fulton died.

It was the first house in Texas to have gas lighting, central heating and running water.  It has bathrooms off each bedroom equipped with flush toilets and bathtubs.

Bath tub

150 yr. old toilet tissue. That’s something you don’t see everyday.

Along with these modern conveniences, the house was built to withstand hurricane-force winds. Poured concrete and pre-cast concrete aggregate blocks formed the basement walls while the upper walls and floors were constructed by stacking and spiking pine planks.

This shows what bad shape the house was in before renovation.

For a cost of $6, you received a guided tour through two floors of the restored home lasting approximately one hour.

There is a beautiful garden to the rear of the home with signs describing the plants and trees found there. The grounds are also home to many of Live Oak trees.

We enjoyed this tour and recommend it to those visiting the Rockport/Corpus Christi area. If you liked to see more pictures of the Mansion, please click here.

It was recommended by fellow bloggers and friends here at the park that we must eat at the Big Fisherman Restaurant. The place is HUGE! On Tuesdays, they sere all-you-can eat Chicken Fried Steak, Fried Chicken Liver or Gizzards for ONLY $2.25. It includes mashed potatoes, gravy and cole slaw. It was delicious. They also serve Margaritas for $1. We had to try that also…very good.

They have an outdoor area with a sign that reads…

The only entertainment this day was the cats

and the monkey.

Before we close, in our last blog we wrote about the Tarpon Inn and the tarpon scales on the wall. We were asked what is a tarpon. Well, here is the answer directly from Mr. Webster…

–noun, plural -pons, ( especially collectively ) -pon.
a large, powerful game fish, Megalops atlantica, inhabiting the warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean, having a compressed body and large, silvery scales.

In all fairness to our readers, Marsha didn’t know either.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day.

GRAY DAY AT PORT ARANSAS

Monday, November 15 – We drove down to Port Aransas this morning and took the ferry over to the island.  Port A is on Mustang Island.

Port Aransas was a favorite of pirates in the early 19th century. Capt. Jean Lafitte and many other pirates used Mustang Island and Port Aransas as a place to make camp and, according to legend, a place to hide their treasure.

The 1916 Texas Hurricane destroyed Port Aransas except for a very few buildings. The docks, wharf and warehouses were now on the mainland and the entire island was flooded and infested with rattlesnakes. After the city was rebuilt, it became a popular destination for anglers, tourists, surfers, and vacationers.

It was a gray, drizzly kind of day, which wasn't the best for sightseeing. We weren't too impressed with the island. Maybe it would have been better on a nice summer day, but not too great today!

We did visit a famous historical Inn, The Tarpon Inn.

The Tarpon Inn was built in 1886 with surplus lumber from Civil War barracks. It was built to house workers for local jetty construction. It has been a hotel ever since the jetty was completed. After the 1919 hurricane destroyed the main structure, the inn was sold and rebuilt in 1923.

Two of the walls of the Tarpon Inn are covered with tarpon scales.

Each of the scales has the signature and hometown of the angler who caught the tarpon as well as the size, weight and date of the catch.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt stayed there and fished the coastal waters in 1937.

The lady that runs the Inn suggested we have some thing to drink and a bake good at their famous bakery. After describing the delicious pies and pastries, we said…Let’s do it! The Bakery was just in back of the Inn, so we drove back, jumped out of the car and were greeted with a…CLOSED ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY sign. Oh My…this wasn’t good. We jumped back into the car and agreed that we saved our selves at least a couple hundred empty calories. Always got to look on the bright side of things.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all again real soon. Have a great day.