OFF TO LAS VEGAS VIA THE HOOVER DAM BRIDGE

Come Sunday morning we were heading to our next destination at a TTN park in Las Vegas, Nevada. But by adding only 11 miles through Kingman, AZ we would be able to drive across the magnificent new bridge overlooking the world famous Hoover Dam. On the way we stopped at a Pilot truck stop for the last diesel fuel purchase in Arizona where we were only charged $3.70 per gal. A bargain price compared to the states to come. At least 10 miles of Hwy 93 leading to the new bridge has been rebuilt to freeway standards and we kept looking for the new bridge until finally there it was. This new bridge has only been open for nine months and is already a major draw in the area with hundreds (thousands?)of people walking along on the North side walkway for a magnificent view of the Dam from 900 feet above the Colorado River and 150 feet above the dam.

But we continued on to Las Vegas to save a closer view for another day. The weather was in the 80's with clear blue skies, we parked, set up the motorhome and relaxed after a good day's drive. Our Wi-Fi here is barely adequate but it is free so we can't complain too much. At least the Verizon cell phone signal is good and our satellite locked in right away. So tomorrow is another day and perhaps we can get the pictures to load on our blog, we have some nice ones to show you. So that will be all for now, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bye

OFF WE GO FOR A NEW 2011 ADVENTURE!

Thursday June 2nd we left Tempe where the temps were getting to 100+ and headed for the Colorado River where the temps were only 90+ (at least for a few days).  After a 186 mile drive under beautiful blue skies we arrived at the Havasu Springs RV Resort on Lake Havasu.



One of two marinas

We had been invited to spend three nights at the resort for free for only listening to a sales pitch, but that ain't all, we also received a very nice Netbook computer and $100 of Shell gasoline, who could resist?

Havasu Springs Resort has been around for a while but was recently bought  by the Colorado River Adventures (CRA) Group who have about eight more resorts mostly along the Colorado River between California and Arizona. The CRA group have big plans to upgrade the resort to their standards which sound great but somehow we didn't buy just yet; sorry, Jeff!

So, with no pool to lay around and cool off,  but with excellent Wi-Fi and great power for our A/C units we spent a lot of time  hanging out in the motorhome, sure made a difference having all the slideouts for "lebensraum".  Their full service restaurant over-looking the marina offered a Friday night special of all the fish you can eat prepared in any of three different ways for only $9.95 and had a live piano/singer to entertain while dining.  Pretty tough life!

It is amazing how many people here have beautiful power boats and hot golf carts all with super fancy paint jobs.  This recession is really terrible but you certainly wouldn't know it around here.





Parker Dam downstream



 Sunday we will be off to Las Vegas where our route will take us over the fantastic new bridge bypassing the Hoover Dam, with any luck we may get some good pictures of the dam from the bridge, at least I hope so.

So much for this first effort of the year, see y'all down the road!   Bye!





Lake Havasu























 









WITH THE LACY'S AT LAKE LBJ, KINGSLAND, TX

October 16 – 19, 2010

Before we leave Waco I must mention that the name is pronounced “Way-co” and never “Whack-o”: Got it? And from the Texas Ranger Museum; I’ll bet you didn’t know that the western “White Hat for good guys / Black Hat for bad guys” came from the Texas Rangers who started with the white hats as a sort of uniform way back in 1823 and has continued to the present day.

So it was off to the Lacy’s compound on Lake LBJ (That’s Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson for you non-Texans) near Kingsland, TX. We arrived before noon and with several hundred acres to choose from, we found a parking space right in front of their large metal building where we had an electrical hookup; cell-phone and internet service was good as well as our satellite TV. “Life is good!”


Jerry and Gay Lacy greeted us and after settling in, we took off for a light lunch at a little Mexican restaurant in Marble Falls called Janie’s.

The Horseshoe Bay Wooden Boat Show

Jerry drove us off to a Wooden Boat Show at the exclusive Horseshoe Bay Resort on the south shore of Lake LBJ. The boats ranged from the 1920’s through to the 1970’s and many were the famous Chris Crafts.

A very pretty Chris Craft

 Most were inboard powered and many featured picnic layouts complete with a bottle of wine with glasses. You could just see the many hours of loving work put into restoring and maintaining these beautiful power boats; but since the 70’s the fiberglass hulls are so much easier to maintain that the wooden boats have all but disappeared. There were probably thirty boats on display and we enjoyed inspecting them all; it isn’t often that you get a chance to see such a gathering.

We headed back around the lake to their home, and after a little rest, Fran and Gay got together to fix dinner: Fran’s special barbecued baby back ribs, beans, corn pudding (which Fran forgot to add the cornmeal so it wouldn’t set up properly), fruit cobbler and ice cream, all cooked in Gay’s brand new kitchen! We sat around and chatted until the mosquitos started eating their dinner on Fran, and then retired for the night.



Fran, Jerry and Gay Lacy at Trade Days

 Sunday dawned bright and clear and promised another beautiful Texas day, perfect for touring the area and showing off the Hill Country. We headed out for the monthly Trade Days flea market in Fredericksburg, about an hour’s drive away. We first visited Fredericksburg in the mid-90’s for a Revconeer rally and enjoyed the little “German” town, with several German restaurants and numerous boutiques and stores to wander in and out. It is also the home of the Museum of the Pacific, which contains individual museums devoted to Admiral Nimitz and another for George H. W. Bush. Although we didn’t go into it this time, we could see that the museum has expanded in size since the last time we visited there.




Gay Lacy shopping at the Trade Days Market



 We spent a couple hours at the flea market, in which Fran found a cute pair of Indonesian-made wooden sandals decorated in purple beads. Unfortunately, they were too small, so she didn’t buy them. Awwww!.




We continued our drive and Jerry soon found a back road called the Willow City Loop.


"Take me back to my Sweet Texas Home"


This is about a 20 mile narrow roadway through Hill Country ranches with canyons, water fjords, cattle crossings and often makes for quite a challenging drive through private ranches that showed off the beautiful countryside, particularly in the spring when the blue bonnets are blooming. We stopped at a very ornamental ranch gate that said “Take me back to my sweet Texas home.”

Glad that Barbed Wire is there!

Further along this route we found a longhorn bull that fortunately had a barbed wire fence to keep the bull in (or the people out!).





Feeling hungry, we headed to Llano and Coopers Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que where ribs, brisket, chicken and sausage are cooked/smoked in huge outdoor smokers/ovens.



Our Cook/ Server

Meat is purchased by the pound, so as you walk up to the smoker to look at the meat, you tell the cook/server how much you want and he cuts off a chunk for you. Inside, the servers slice the meat and sausage and you can add any of the side dishes they offer.

Fran with Gay and Jerry Lacy finally eating!

Beans are complimentary, as are bread and HOT pickled jalapenos. Delicious! Even though it was only 4 p.m., the place was crowded and people were lined up out the door.

Just up the street in Llano is The Living Stone Co. with a huge outdoor display of granite from all parts of the world in almost every color and texture one could imagine.

They also had on display a gravestone engraved with a check for one million dollars and titled “I did take it with me!” Good for a few chuckles!

"If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it"

The road along Lake LBJ passed by the Lacy’s friend’s new construction, a beautiful and very expensive home along a waterway where he had bought an existing house, tore it down and built this beautiful new home, taking advantage of the gorgeous trees along the waterfront.

 While the house is not quite finished, it is nonetheless an outstanding place. We didn’t bother to ask the price. (If you have to ask, you can’t afford it!) So that completed our tour of the Hill Country, but we had only scratched the surface; we saved the rest for another day.


For those of you who don’t know, Jerry and Gay’s house is a labor of love and is a house within a house, or a house within a metal building. Jerry has been doing most of the work himself and for folks who know Jerry, he is a true perfectionist. The kitchen is surrounded with seven foot dual paned windows with one of them having the outer panel cracked into hundreds of pieces, although none of them have broken out. This would make an interesting display at a modern art museum. In the evening all the cracks pick up the light from inside the kitchen; very beautiful! And it all came about when Jerry was running his lawn mower and it threw a stone at the tempered glass window--------crack!


On Monday morning, Gay, in anticipation of the big family reunion the following weekend, tried out her new appliances and made an excellent breakfast of pancakes and bacon. We sat at the table gabbing for several hours and suddenly, it was after 2 o’clock! Gay and Fran took off to do some shopping in Marble Falls, and a few hours later, Jerry and George drove in and we all met at Francesco’s Italian Restaurant for dinner.


Our next stop on Tuesday would be at the Escapees Tra-Park at Pecos, TX.


See you there folks! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bye!





CORPS OF ENGINEERS MIDWAY PARK - WACO, TX

October 13 – 16, 2010

We found the COE Midway Park online and since we had only briefly passed through Waco last year we wanted to explore the city in more detail. Little did we know of all the interesting places there are to visit in Waco. When we arrived at the COE Midway Park Campground we were somewhat concerned that there were too many trees to get a TV satellite signal, but not to worry, our MotoSat found the satellite through the trees and the Verizon cell phone worked well so we had TV and Internet as well.

Fran at the Texas Ranger Museum

On Wednesday, when we arrived, we first headed to the Visitors Center and found it next to the Texas Ranger Museum. The museum has to be one of the most interesting places to visit of all we have visited; it is huge and can take most of a day to do it justice. A 45 minute film gives an excellent overview of the Rangers history.

The Rangers started in 1823 with 10 men hired by Steven Austin to help maintain law and order in Texas and to help protect the settlers from attacks by the Indians in the area. They were soon augmented by another 10 men and eventually numbered many hundreds.



Roll 'yer own!



Surprisingly, many of the early Rangers were also surveyors who were sent out to settle boundary disputes. Today, there are about 144 Rangers doing investigative work; most famously, they were instrumental in the shootouts that resulted in the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde and Baby-Face Nelson in the 1930’s. One of the legends involves Capt. Bill McDonald, when the Mayor of a border town asked for help to combat the violence from across the border during the Mexican revolution in 1910. When he saw only Capt. McDonald step off the train he exclaimed “We’re done for, I asked for a whole company and they send me one Ranger”. Well drawled McDonald, “There’s only one riot isn’t there”. That is the origin of the Ranger legend “One riot – one Ranger!”

 On Friday we started our day at the Dr. Pepper Museum, a three story structure in what was the original bottling factory. We were amazed to learn that Dr. Pepper preceded rival Coca-Cola by one year in 1892. It is fascinating to see the changes that took place in the bottling and distribution of their sodas. The original sodas were all made up by pharmacists in drug stores with fountains; they would keep trying different formulations until one became the most popular.


The original manufacturing plant at 100 years old

 Unlike Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper has never used any cocaine which was an original ingredient in Coca-Cola for .about 12 years. At a soda fountain in the museum we were introduced to “Dr. Pepper with pure cane sugar”. This is only available in Texas and does have a sweeter flavor. Needless to say we bought a 12-pack at Wally World.

Then it was off to the Baylor University campus which we did not expect to find in Waco. Since the school mascot is a bear, there is a Bears Lair to house two live bears in a zoo type facility.

The two Baylor Bears

This is a very nice campus open to visitors and right in the heart of the city. We then found the Robert Browning Museum building, a really beautiful building housing the memorabilia and writings of the famous poet and his wife. He is noted for numerous poems but probably the most famous is the “Pied Piper of Hamlin”.

The Browning Treasury Room

The museum is also noted for the 63 large stained glass windows throughout the building. While the building is over 100 years old it has been upgraded a number of times and looks new.



The Pied Piper of Hamlin Window







While we are not enthusiasts of poetry, the museum and library are too beautiful to miss.

Of course Waco does offer many excellent restaurants and theaters but with so little time we had to get ready for our next destination at the Lacy’s house on Lake LBJ. We certainly enjoyed our short stay in Waco and look forward to returning sometime.

See y’all ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bye!

CORPS OF ENGINEERS HICKORY CREEK at LEWISVILLE LAKE, TX

October 7 – 13, 2010

It was a short trip south to the Corps of Engineers Hickory Creek Campground at Lewisville, TX, near our friends, Elmer and Sandra Jenny, in Bedford, TX. We arrived on a Thursday and were pleased at the typical neat and clean COE Campground; if they provided sewer hookups they would be the best deal around, but unfortunately, sewer hookups are few.



Welcome to Hickory Creek Park



 We called our friends and made arrangements to have lunch together on Friday. Meanwhile, thanks to a list of good sites from Harris Benoit, we had reserved a site with a little view of Lewisville Lake and just relaxed in the beautiful Texas air.

Friday, we all met at Babe’s Chicken Restaurant in Roanoke, one of 9 branches of the chain, for one of their special chicken lunches. With all her health issues, we were really pleased to see Sandra looking so fit and in really high spirits. Lunch was delicious and we all enjoyed it, as we sat and visited for quite a while.


Elmer (Fox) and Sandra Jenny looking good!

   Fran and Sandra went next door to shop at a little boutique. They returned empty-handed, a rarity!

On our way home we spied what looked like a Thai Buddhist Temple in the distance, so we drove by and sure enough there was a whole compound with a number of Thai buildings and gardens.

Since there was no-one there and the gate was open, we drove in through the ornamental gate and looked around the compound. I had spent some time in Thailand some years ago, and while the architecture was somewhat garish and colorful, it was nonetheless very beautiful and quite similar to the Wats (temples) found in Thailand.

Unfortunately, while we did spot one Monk in his typical saffron robe, we never did find anyone to ask about this beautiful facility here in the middle of Texas.













If you should want to visit this outstanding monastery, the address is Wat Buddharatanaram, 13075 Sehepayak Rd., Keller, TX. (There is more information available on the internet)



Saturday, the Jennys invited us to dinner at their home and showed us the many home improvements they had made in the last year. Elmer (Fox) is always up to something to keep busy since he has sold his motorhome and does not RV any longer. After dinner we all settled back in their overstuffed recliner chairs and continued catching up on all the latest gossip. Sandra made her famous pork loin –delicious as always!


Somewhat reminiscent of our winter activities in AZ, we again met the Jennys for breakfast at Mimi’s in Lewisville on Sunday morning and we certainly never seem to run out of more things to talk about.



At Lewisville Lake

 Monday was a day off so on Tuesday we went to the Grapevine Mills for her favorite pastime, “window shopping,” and then to see the movie “RED”, which we liked and recommend to all our friends, much (non-bloody) violence but no sex (yuck) or nudity (more yuck).

We prepared to leave the Dallas area on Wednesday morning on another beautiful Texas morning, heading south to the COE Campground at Waco, TX.

See y’all down the road! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~George and Fran





THOUSAND TRAILS LAKE TEXOMA, TX

October 2 – 7, 2010



Saturday we were off to the Thousand Trails Preserve at Lake Texoma which was new to us, and we were pleased to see it is one of the best TTN preserves we have visited.


Welcome to Lake Texoma



The weather here was such an improvement over that of the past few weeks, and we really appreciated it..We found a very nice site near the pool and family center, which were both open with the store and food service available. There is a beautiful adult pool and lounge down the road a’piece as well; and although it is called Lake Texoma, it is quite a way to the Lake itself. Sunday we found a Marina and the Pelican Landing Restaurant just a few miles away. The restaurant had a history of flooding at least five or six times and had been rebuilt each time. Why there should be flooding on a controlled reservoir is a mystery to me. 

On our way back to the preserve, however, we noticed a thumping in the left front and discovered a large lump in the left front tire of the PT Cruiser. The tread was separating and the tire was finished after only a year of service. We never did find out why it happened. An internet search found a Discount Tire shop in Denton, TX, and we made an appointment for Monday while I was tasked with putting on the dinky spare tire. No fun! Monday we had a new tire installed and lunch in Denton. 



Frisky bull?



On our way back from Denton we passed a field with some Long Horn cows so we had to stop to watch while one of the cows (bulls?) got pretty frisky.



At the entrance to TTN Lake Texoma

 On Tuesday we learned that most of the campers were only out for the weekends and had gone home; somehow we found that a bit strange but I guess most people are working during the week and their kids are in school. Pretty good to be retired!

We managed to have a lunch at the Pelican Landing before heading to the COE Hickory Creek campground on Lewisville Lake near Dallas!

See’ya!

TO THE OLD GERMANY RESTAURANT - CHOCTAW, OK

October 1 – 2, 2010

Our next trip was to Midwest City, OK (a suburb of Oklahoma City) to dine at the Old Germany Restaurant and to once again have one of their outstanding German dinners.

The nearest place to stay with the coach is at the Elk’s Lodge in Midwest City so we headed there and arrived on a beautiful sunny day to be the only coach in their campground. No sooner were we hooked up when there came a horrendous roar and a huge multi-engine AWACS aircraft came directly overhead on short final to land at the adjacent Tinker Air Force Base. How we didn’t notice RRRROOOOAAAARRRR!!!! the Air Base before, I have no idea but it was a training day and they were doing touch and go landings every few minutes,

RRRROOOOAAAARRRR!!!!

RRRROOOOAAAARRRR!!!! oh great! The Elks folks seemed to think that they would be finished by about 5:00 pm and that was right, thank goodness! Not only that, but they also warned us that the next day, Saturday, the Oklahoma University Sooners were playing the University of Texas Longhorns and traffic was going to be a huge logjam. “It’s going to take HOURS and HOURS, they said, so get an early start and you MIGHT miss some of it.” Oh-kay!



The Old Germany Restaurant



So we headed out to the restaurant, found a nice booth and ordered our favorite German dishes, Jaegerschnitzle with spaetzle and red cabbage, then to top it off we shared a TALL glass of Paulaner Optimator beer. Mmm-mmm good!!! Of course, schnitzel is usually breaded veal but many restaurants are using pork instead, that’s right it’s cheaper, but still good.

This is the third time we’ve been to the restaurant and it was just as good as the previous two times.

So there really wasn’t much else for us to do here in Oklahoma and after a good night’s sleep, we were off to our next destination of the Thousand Trails Lake Texoma Preserve just over the border into Texas. To our surprise, traffic was light and we didn’t experience even the slightest slow-down on I-35South. Come to find out, the football game was being played in Dallas, so if you weren’t already down there, it was going to be too late to start driving now!

See you in Texas ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bye!