Texas

So it’s been a few days since my last post. Let me catch you up.

The morning after our visit to the French Quarter the weather forecast included heavy winds, rain, hail, and possible tornados. Since our campground was near the edge of Lake Ponchartrain with the levee behind us we decided to ‘get out of dodge’.

An aside about levees:  The levee along the industrial canal (one of the breeches in Katrina was in that levee) ran right along the street our campground was on. At first I did not realize what it was – just looked like a concrete wall about 8 ft high, not very thick, crumbling in a few places, with some graffiti on it. A large densely populated neighborhood was just on the other side. I don’t know much about levees and I don’t know if the design of this particular levee changed when it was rebuilt after Katrina but it did not look to me like it could hold back the Mississippi and Lake Ponchartrain. My comment to Bill: “No wonder it didn’t work”.

So, back to our travels. We left New Orleans on Saturday and headed for Texas.  We really lucked out with the weather. We left NOLA, arrived in a campground in Beaumont TX, and set up before the rain started.  The rain ended before morning. The stop in Beaumont was just one night at Hidden Lake Campground – OK for one night.

Sunday we headed on to Ingram, TX – in the ‘Texas Hill Country’. The drive the our campground was interesting, to say the least. The campground was about 10 miles away from the Highway (US 10) and the GPS took us on a ‘Ranch Road’, RR479. The Ranch Roads and ‘Farm to Market’ roads in Texas are secondary roads that allow access to rural areas. Needless to say RR479 was not the ideal road for a motor home towing a car. But there were some interesting sites and Bill handled it like champ.

We arrived in one piece at Johnson Creek Campground. It is in a Pecan Orchard and Pecans are in season now. Pecans were dropping from the trees like acorns. You just pick them up and have a delicious snack (they were delicious).

Yesterday we visited Fredericksburg. A touristy spot but interesting. It was founded by German immigrants in the mid 1800s and still has some German flavor to it. They were putting up Xmas decorations in the town park and one of the decorations was a 30 foot Christmas Pyramid (you know the little wooden christmas decorations that have a windmill at the top, and you light candles at the base to make it spin).

 

 

We had lunch at Fredericksburg Brewery. They apparently brew the beer on-site and the Enchanted Rock Red is excellent.

Departed from Ingram this morning and arrived in Marathon, TX (about an hour from Big Bend National Park). The drive was interesting.

The landscape looks like an old western. We are staying at Marathon Hotel and RV Park (never would have picked this on our own but was recommended by a guy we met in Ingram). It is small and very nice. The view is great.