Luling, Texas

Luling (pronounced "loooooling") looked promising as a spot to stop instead of going the full distance past Houston and is the start of the Texas BBQ Trail so we went to City Market in town to try some BBQ out after we "landed" and got all hooked up in the local RV park.

You walk into this "store/restaurant" and, at the back is another windowed-room that has three guys chopping away on a butcher table and a couple others taking orders and cash...kinda different.

No waiters, waitresses or menus...just the meat items and prices on the wall. "A couple of links, half-pound of brisket and four ribs, please" we order. They chop, chop, chop and put it all down on some butcher paper. We pay in cash and out we go to grab a table.....

Notice the rib bones are already picked clean !

These links look kinda gross (due to the flash on the camera) but they sure eat good. The ribs were terrific. We came back the next day for lunch and had them only....amazing.

We had to go back to New Bruenfels (above San Antonio) to get our tires re-done (our tires cost $4,400 for six tires !) and the place messed up the valve stems so we spent the night in the parking lot....spooky...all by ourselves.

While they were doing the tires we visited an old, old hardware store in town.

...and a fabulous Christmas store chock full of holiday stuff.

One last thing we did in Luling was to visit the Tiny Texas Houses manufacturing place right on the interstate.

You can just make out one of the tiny houses off the interstate to the far right.

These people make houses from salvageable materials....and I quote "I have spent the last 5 years pioneering and developing ways of building houses that are 99% Pure Salvage, 100% American grown and mined materials, refined and manufactured into building materials inside the USA, and our houses are built entirely in the USA.  Best of all they are healthy houses. " 
http://tinytexashouses.com/

They are no more than 10x30 or 20x30 feet at most....and extremely imaginative in their designs. I encourage you to look at their website.

You can see the size with Kim in the foreground.

This one was designed to put on the bayou for hunting and fishing for a dad and his boy.

notice how they combined a staircase with a bookshelf.

A nice lady named Brill gave us the tour and filled us in the details. Kim was particularly enthralled as she likes to draw house plans as a hobby.

Lastly, here are some photos of the town itself (pop: 5,500).

They have a festival called The Watermelon Thump and one of the main events is the watermelon seed spitting contest.

The town's merchants each have one of these Christmas displays made. All very unique and charming.

...amazing what we can find to see and do as we travel through the country. It's very heart warming to see these down-to-earth places, events and people.

Next Stop: Stanzel Model Aircraft Museum in Schulenburg, Texas
http://www.stanzelmuseum.org/

Forgot the Garden !

While laying in bed last night, I realized I did not post any photos from the Japanese Gardens in San Antonio even though I put "garden" in the blog title.....soooooo.... Here are some for all you garden lovers!

very unusual lilly pads

a couple of little girls were feeding the fish, hence the frenzy

at this time of year not much was in bloom

entrance

Okay, that's all for now !

San Antonio Alamo, Gardens, and River Walk

After the Hill Country we headed over to San Antonio....decided to see a big city for a change. Our destination was the Sam Houston Army Base. (Kim is ex-Navy so she has base privileges. )Nice place. The military bases are usually clean, safe and orderly...not many frills, but about 50% the cost of a private RV park.

Our first stop was the Alamo downtown. I did a bunch of research to get a feel for the battle and where everything happened so, when we got down there, I could orient us to better understand what happened. However....when we got there, things were not quite what we expected.

This is the "icon" of the Alamo (the chapel) but very little fighting was done here.

They had some wonderful gardens in the back of this chapel but none of that was part of the original plot of land.

The circled area is the Alamo Chapel and the green area to the right are the gardens

This is a great overlay of the old, original Alamo area superimposed on what is there today. The large courtyard out front is where the battle took place and, as the walls to the left were breached, they retreated to Number 3 and fought there.

This is a great depiction of the battle (which happened before dawn). You can see the breach to the left. Most of this courtyard is either present day streets or buildings.

Another visit we made was to the River Walk. LOTS of restaurants but some very colorful places and, at night, the lights were wonderful.

We ate at Pat O'Brien's on the street. Had a couple of Hurricanes (ymmmmm!) and muffalettas...wonderful sandwiches.

Delicious !

Anyway...nice time in San Antonio....the downtown was safe and the River Walk was extensive.

Next Stop: East Texas and the Piney Woods area.

Roads, Vistas, and Horizons

Once we got to the Hill Country outside of San Antonio and Austin our roads-that-went-forever ceased. I've always loved being on those roads that go waaaay off into the horizon...don't know why...maybe the explorer in me. Driving the motorhome is so easy on these roads (with cruise control and air shocks) and all that just adds to the enjoyment.

Anyway, Kim and I decided to take photos of the roads as we went along to show them sometime in the future. We've posted most of them here.....

https://picasaweb.google.com/stevenlstrick/Roads?authuser=0&feat=directlink

But here are a few to look at.

This is looking west towards El Paso from Fort Stockton, Texas. 240 miles in the distance.

Some of these roads went 150 miles like this one from Carlsbad, New Mexico to Pecos, Texas

Just something different to view. California desert, Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas.  It might look boring but we just couldn't get over the vistas, how far you could see, and that there is nothing out there....just miles and miles of horizons.