LUNCH WITH JANICE AND DAVE

Saturday, March 8 – We awoke to crazy weather on Tuesday with cold and rain. This winter weather continues to amaze us and local Houstonians. If we've heard it once, we've heard it a hundred times that this is very unusual weather for Houston. Guess most of the nation would agree.

We have plans on meeting fellow full-time RV'ers and bloggers, Janice & Dave of Ready To Go Full Time RVing, for lunch. They texted and asked if we wanted to reschedule, but we decided to go ahead with our planned lunch. We thought a little rain shouldn't cause us to change plans, but never realized trees on the west side of Houston were coated with ICE.

We made a quick stop at our favorite used bookstore in Katy and were shocked to see all the limbs down from the heavy coating of ice. As we traveled the few more miles to the restaurant we were surprised with the ice coating all the trees. Beautiful and thank-goodness it was only on the trees and not the highways.

This was our first time eating at a Genghis Grill, and we loved it.

We were given a metal bowl when seated. We then served ourselves from a selection of meats, vegetables, spices, and sauces. Lastly, we selected among several choices of rice or noodles. We gave our bowl to the cook to stir fry the contents into a delicious meal.

The prices are reasonable; the service was outstanding. The company was delightful. We enjoyed sharing travel stories and travel plans with Janice and Dave and hope to meet again sometime down the road.

After lunch we were happy to see weather conditions hadn't deteriorated. It continued to rain (Houston received over an inch of rain today.) causing some uncomfortable driving conditions especially with the Houstonians being unfamiliar to bad weather driving, but we arrived back to the RV without any problems.

With temperatures hovering around the upper 30's, we stayed at home the rest of the day. With the blue flame heater keeping us warm, Bella showed us how to catch a cat nap to pass the afternoon away.

Here is where Bella spends the cold days.

Did anyone else out there see the ring around the Sun on Friday? The ring is known as a 22 degree halo or a sun halo. The ring is caused by sunlight passing through ice crystals in cirrus clouds within the Earth's atmosphere. The crystals bend direct sunlight, projecting it elsewhere into the sky, and at a certain angle -- you guessed it, 22 degrees -- a halo can be seen around the sun. Rings around the sun have been used in the past to predict the stormy weather. It was beautiful.

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

BAR-B-QUE COOKOFF PART 2

Saturday, March 1 – Before the thousands of people arrived, we took a walk around and looked at the hundreds of tents that were set up for eating, drinking and dancing. Some of these vendors sure put a ton of money in decorating the outside and inside of their area.

Smoke, Spice and Glory tent.

All the tents were required to have a sign outside the tent telling how many people it was permitted to admit.

275 was the limit on this one.

Many tents had signs outside letting us know what we can expect inside.

Carrie and I couldn’t figure out which one of these three was not the dummy. Any one want to give a guess?

Besides taking runner up for the Cleanest Team area, we learned that our Holy Cow Cookers also received 1st Place: Most Colorful Team and 1st Place: Most Outstanding Recycling Team. I think Carrie picked a winner to sponsor.

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

THE WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP BAR-B-QUE

Saturday, March 1 –  After the parade (Which we reported on in our previous post), we jumped on the train and rode it to the Reliant Center (The Houston Texan Football Stadium) to attend The World's Championship Bar-B-Que Contest.

Can’t go to a Houston event without our boots on!

The Bar-B-Que takes over one of the huge parking areas outside the stadium. There are over 100 entries cooking 1000's of pounds of meat. This is three days of cooking, competition, eating and dancing. There is entertainment in most of the tents, a large outdoor stage for bands, the rodeo carnival is in full swing, and thousands of Houstonians looking for a good-time.

Carrie, our daughter here in Houston, is one of many sponsors of the Holy Cow Cookers tent.

 

They flash sponsor’s names on the many TVs set up in the tent.

This is a huge tent nicely equipped with a full-service bar, a coffee bar, a small bakery (fresh cookies and muffins), photo booths, restrooms, and of course a buffet of every kind of barbeque you can imagine. I think these sponsors try to outdo each other in decorating the tents in various “cowboy” themes.

Bar would open shortly after our arrival.

They actually baked the treats right before our very eyes….yummy!

Any type of coffee or ice cream treat you can think of at this section.

Free boot shinning. Look who took advantage of this service.

Carrie arranges the sale of tickets for about 75 of her friends - heck, I don't even know 75 people ....LOL. Well, let me tell you, these young people (All young professionals in their 20's.) know how to have a good time. What a fun evening. We've been with most of these “friends” previously at different parties. They treat us like one of the gang – or is it like more like their parents :-).

This was suppose to be a photo of girls ONLY, but look who did a photo bomb.

Of course there is a lighted dance floor with a band and DJ's for continuous music.

Yes, that is Marsha out there dancing with one of the boys.

We ate BBQ brisket, ribs, chicken, corn, green beans, etc.  Delicious!!!

 

Runner Up Cleanest Team Area…our own Holy Cow cookers.

We ate, drank, laughed, talked and danced the evening away with this fun loving group. We definitely ate waaay too much.

I would like to report we were out with the youngin's till the wee hours of the morning but naw, we called it a day around 9 o'clock. We jumped on the train for the ride back to our daughter's apartment, picked up our truck and left the late partying to the kids.

Thanks so much, Carrie. It was one awesome party!

The official Holy Cow.

We will show you some of the other tents at the Bar-B-Que in our next post. This post is getting a bit long.

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