Monday, May 06, 2002

Today was a full day.  I am in New Iberia, Louisiana in the heart of Cajun country.  First thing I did was to drive to Avery Island and the home of Tabasco Sauce.  I took the free tour of the plant.  It was quite interesting, although my eyes burned a little from the pepper in the air.  The plant is located on an estate owned by the McIlhenny family for several generations.  They produce 500,000 bottles of Tabasco Sauce every DAY and ship it all over the world.  They gave me a one ounce sample.  After the tour, I went through their Jungle Gardens which is located on the same property.  This is a beautiful drive through park, with thousands of Egrets (birds) and lots of alligators, turtles and snakes.  It was quite a communion with nature.  I ate lunch there, and then drove back into New Iberia.  First thing I did was to go to Bouligny Plaza.  There are several plaques there about Francisco Bouligny and a bust of him in the center of the one square block park.  I had been here once before, and wanted to see it again.  The park is slightly run down, but it could have been a whole lot worse.  From there I went to the library and picked up my e-mail and sent week five to Charlie.  I talked with a lady at the library and she convinced me that I should tour their number one attraction, “Shadows on the Teche”.  I’ve been there before too, but I enjoyed it again.  This is the plantation home of the Weeks family who occupied the house from 1834 until 1958.  It is a beautiful old house and when the park service took it over in 1958, they found thousands of letters, bills, etc that gave them a much better than average idea of life throughout the 124 years that the house was occupied.  Most of the furniture was original and there were clothes from many of the occupants including the slaves who worked the plantation.  I was glad that I took the tour.  After leaving the plantation, I drove up to St Martinville, about 20 miles North of New Iberia.  I stopped and washed the princess, and then returned to the Belmont Campground where I had a very good steak dinner.

 

Tuesday, May 7, 2002

Another great day today.  I have had nothing but bright sunny days since I left Charleston, SC.  It is pretty hot, most days the temperature is in the 80s, but I love it.  I left New Iberia this morning and drove toward Lafayette to get back on I-10.  I stopped at Wal-Mart to get a few things.  I decided to buy a poncho among other things.  I figure this great weather cannot last forever.  I also saw gas at the Wal-Mart at 1.26 a gallon, the lowest I’ve seen it since I left home.  I filled up with $50.00 worth of gas before I realized that I pressed the Premium gas.  My gas was $1.46 per gallon.  Oh well, so much for bargain gas.  Once I got back on I-10, I was rolling at 70 mph and headed for the Texas border.  It is 100 miles from Lafayette to the border.  Casinos at just about every little Louisiana town.  I stopped at the Texas Welcome center.  Texas always has very nice welcome centers and this one was no exception.  It is located at exit # 878, the highest numbered exit in the country.  I-10 crosses almost 900 miles of Texas.  From the welcome center, there is a wooden walkway that goes out quite a ways over the Blue Elbow swamp.  It was a very scenic and enjoyable walk.  I had a late lunch there and after talking a while with the staff at the welcome center; I drove about another 30 miles to Winnie, Texas.  From there I left the interstate and headed South on back roads down to the Gulf.  I was surprised at how good the roads were.  I went along the Gulf coast to Port Bolivar where I caught the ferry to Galveston.  The ferry was waiting for me when I got there.  It was free, compliments of the Texas highway department.  It was a nice ride across Galveston Bay, with lots of cargo ships passing in the channel.   I drove through Galveston and about 20 miles up I-45 to a campground that I heard about at the welcome center.  It is called Space Center RV Park and it is the nicest campground that I’ve stayed at yet.  Yes, even nicer than Disneyworld.  It is nicely landscaped; everything is spotless including the Laundromat, which I will use tomorrow.  They have telephone lines and cable TV including HBO at every site.  And it’s right next door to a Cracker-Barrel restaurant.  I think I’ll spend a few days here.

 

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

Every once in a while, I have to take a break and take care of maintenance items.  Since I was completely out of clothes, I thought it would be a good idea to do laundry.  The Laundromat at the campground was empty this morning, so I put the clothes in the washer, went into the community room, got my free breakfast and newspaper, finished my paper and breakfast, transferred the clothes to the dryer, and read the rest of the paper while the clothes dried.  I took the clean clothes back to the RV, folded them and put them away, cleaned and vacuumed everything, and then I went out looking for a cleaners that would clean my windshield curtains.  They are stained from water stains that came with the purchase last November.  Maybe they have gotten a little worse since then.  The dry cleaners that I found that would do it, said that the water stains will not come out and it would be a waste to try.  Guess I’ll eventually buy new ones.  I had a little trouble hooking up my telephone last night and found that the telephone connection on the RV did not work, so I had to run the line from the utility pole thru the window, but I was able get on the internet, so I was happy.  I drove around the town of League City for a bit and came back to the campground and went into the swimming pool.  Had dinner at the Cracker Barrel next door.   I talked to Charlie today and we agreed that I would see him in Dallas on Monday.  I made reservations at the Cedar Hill State Park near Dallas per Charlie’s recommendation.  I also made my reservation for the Alaska Ferry in August.

Tomorrow I am going back to Galveston to see Moody Gardens.  More on that tomorrow.

 

Thursday, May 9, 2002

Moody Gardens was much better than I expected.  If you are ever in the Galveston area, I highly recommend it.  As I crossed the causeway on I-45 heading South into Galveston, I could see the three large pyramid buildings that are Moody Gardens.  It didn’t seem very crowded at first, but it wasn’t long before it was crawling with people.  The first pyramid was a giant Aquarium.  Now aquariums don’t usually interest me, but this one put the great Baltimore aquarium to shame.  As you walked through the building, there were huge glass windows looking into a seemingly endless ocean landscape with such a variety of sea creatures that I was surprised at every turn.  This building would have been worth the visit alone, but my admission price also included a cruise on the giant paddlewheel steamboat, Colonel.  This 45 minute cruise was narrated and gave a very interesting history of Galveston while passing in front of the beautiful homes along the waterway.  After the cruise, I went through the water park called Palm Beach, not the best water park I’ve seen, but still pretty nice, from there I went to the visitors center for a gourmet soup and salad lunch.  Then to the second of the three pyramids.  This one was called the rain forest.  It was a rather long walk through a lush rainforest of tropical plants, birds of every color and fish, turtles, frogs etc. It was a photographer’s paradise.  Too bad I didn’t have a camera.  From the rain forest I went back to the visitor’s center and saw a 3-D movie called Into the Deep.  This was a very good movie filmed mostly under water of all kinds of fish from all over the world.  I have to admit, that I did fall asleep during the movie, but movies do that to me.  I enjoyed the nap.  From there I went to the third pyramid called the discovery pyramid.  This one contained a motion simulator ride, which was OK; the rest of it was mostly about space.  A good part of this building was under construction, so it was not as good as the other two, but still quite impressive.  The visitor’s center and the three pyramids were connected by elevated covered walkways, which created appreciated shade from the 90 degree heat.  The walkways looked down on beautifully landscaped grounds.  After I saw everything, I went back to the RV and drove around in Galveston.  I don’t know why, but before coming here, I imagined Galveston as a run down border town.  I was wrong.  The city is very well kept and the architecture is fascinating.  I drove along the seawall, which provided a fantastic view of the Gulf of Mexico.  The beach was not as pristine as those in western Florida, but there were still some pretty nice sights on the beach.  Again I saw some beautiful mansions including one called the Moody Mansion and another called the Bishop’s Mansion.  Both of these were open to the public, but it was late in the day, so I missed my opportunity.  I headed back up I-45 to my campground, had dinner at the Cracker Barrel, went for a swim and turned in for the night.

 

Friday, May 10, 2002

Yesterday I called a guy who washes RVs.  He had an ad in the campground map.  He said he would be at the Space Coast campground on Friday morning and I asked him to wash mine.  It was almost noon by the time he got here, and he had his hands full with all of my neighbors, one after another, asking him to wash theirs.  He had a crew of three guys and they had all their own equipment including a large water tank and high pressure hoses and they cleaned and shined the princess in no time.  It was expensive, but worth it.  I finally got under way around 1:00, and went to the Lyndon Johnson Space Center.  This was a giant NASA facility which reminded me of Cape Kennedy in Florida.  They had a huge Saturn V rocket on display and lots of other relics of the earlier space programs.  I took a 90 minute tram tour of the facility which included 3 stops in training facilities used to train astronauts.  It was very interesting.  There were people on the tour from the four corners of the earth.  The main museum building was good.  There were a number of exhibits that were very well done, and several interactive exhibits which were fun to use.  Time was a little short because of my late start.  The museum closed at 5:00.  From there I went to a place called Kemah Boardwalk.  I saw this advertised in the campground paper, and the word boardwalk caught my attention.  It was only about 4 miles from the Space Center, and about 4 miles from the campground, so I didn’t really drive a lot today.  The Kemah Boardwalk was a very nice development right on Galveston Bay.  It was a boardwalk along the shore of a 600 acre park like setting.  There were a few rides including a ferries wheel and a train that wound all through the rest of the park.  There were boardwalk type games and about a dozen very nice restaurants.  I had dinner at one called Landry’s.  I had the fried seafood platter which came back to haunt me later in the evening, but it was good.  I parked the RV way out in the parking lot as usual, but when I came out, I was pinned in by people desperate to find a parking space.  With the help of a bus driver waiting nearby, I was able to maneuver out of the tight area and drive back to the campground.  All in all it was another wonderful day in paradise.

 

Saturday, May 11, 2002

My kind of day, today!  I drove into Houston right through the heart of town.  My destination was Bayou Bend.  This is a beautiful estate formerly owned by Miss Ima Hogg (no kidding).  Miss Hogg was the granddaughter of Jim Hogg who was the first native born Texas Governor.  You might call him “Boss Hogg.”  Anyway, this family had plenty of money and they built this 29 room mansion with beautiful gardens in the best part of Houston.  Miss Hogg died in 1975 at the age of 93 and left the estate to the city of Houston.  I thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the mansion and the tour of the gardens.  I left there around 2:00 and made my way to the Houston Astrodome and Six Flaggs Astroworld.  Since the theme park was open till 10:00, I figured it was worth the price of admission even though it was fairly late.  I went on a lot of rides at Astroworld, but the best by far was the 25 year old Texas Cyclone.  This old wooden roller coaster is modeled after the famous Cyclone in Coney Island, New York, but it is bigger.  WHAT A RIDE!!!  There was another steel coaster called the Serial Thriller, with two loops and several twists.  It was pretty good but no match for the Texas Cyclone.  I spent the next 7 hours walking around the park and riding quite of few of the rides.  I was glad that I went.  Bayou Bend was on my original plan, but Astroworld was not.  I had dinner at the park, of course, so it wasn’t exactly a gourmet meal.  Like most Six Flaggs parks, it is not as well run as Disney or Paramount or Busch, but they did have some great coasters.

 

Sunday, May 12, 2002

Today was a total waste.  If I didn’t have reservations in Dallas tomorrow night, I would have left today.  I have accomplished everything that I wanted to accomplish in the Houston area, so I slept in late this morning, read the paper and finally went out around 1:00.  I went to a nearby mall called mall of the mainland, browsed around a little but many stores were closed.  I also went to a Wal-Mart and picked up a few things including a step-stool to clean the windows and a telephone to test my telephone system.  When I first got here, I tried to connect to the telephone and got no dial tone.  So I had to run the phone cord through the window in order to connect to the internet.  I wanted to get to the bottom of that problem.  Eventually I realized that I just didn’t have the phone cord plugged in correctly.  I hate to leave this campground.  It is what I expected every campground to be.  Completely level paved sites with water, electricity, sewer, cable TV and telephone hook-up.  Tomorrow, I head out to Dallas.  I am looking forward to seeing Charlie for the next few days.  When I leave Dallas on Thursday, I will be covering all uncharted territory from then on.  My trip is a lot less planned from here on out, but I’m sure I’ll find plenty to keep me busy.