Catch up time!

March 9th

It's been a whirlwind since I last posted! Monday,  February 25 we moved from the Mustang State Park to Port Aransas (Port "A") into a nice RV park within walking distance of the beach and a couple miles from town. Moving day was horrible wind. We thought we'd get blown to China! We had a couple more days of the terrible winds and sand blowing but all-in-all the weather did improve daily. We picked up Jeff from the airport on Wednesday and Gene and Charlene Thompson also arrived to spend time with us again.

We visited the King Ranch on Thursday. The ranch sprawls across 825,000 acres of South Texas land. It is a working ranch with 60,000 head of cattle and 300 quarter horses. A 1 1/2 hour bus tour took us through parts of the ranch and we even saw newborn colt born the day before. The home where the family lived "only" has 17 bedrooms and 19 bathrooms! Google "King Ranch" as there's alot of information on the history and present day. The ranch also has its own museum, located in Kingsville.

Friday Jeff and Buster toured the USS Lexington, docked in Corpus Christi. It is over 3 football fields long, 19 stories tall and weighs 33,000 tons. The guys spent at least 5 hours looking through the ship so I am very glad I didn't go with them! They both really enjoyed seeing this huge aircraft carrier. It was nice they could enjoy a "man day" together.

Julie and her family and Rob (Thompson) came for the weekend. Everyone had a great time -- walking on the beach, flying kites (and sacks?), drinking a few cocktails each day, shopping the local tourist shops and eating! Time went by too quickly, everyone left us by Monday and Jeff left on Tuesday. Yesterday, Friday, we had to leave as Spring Break is starting and every nook and cranny on the island is booked solid.

Buster did not do any fishing while on Mustang Island, mostly due to windy days. He did go with two neighbor guys this week but didn't fish. The other two didn't catch any fish but another fisherman gave them two large Redfish. We had a potluck and the fish was delicious. They also gave us a Sheepshead fish, which we cooked one evening, and it was also very good. What an odd name for a fish, huh?!

We are now in Fredericksburg, west of Austin. What an interesting area! We will be here for a week. Today we went downtown and started looking through the local shops. There's enough shopping here for a month! Many buildings retain the traditional German and frontier styles with more than 700 historical structures.  It is also the birthplace of Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet during WWII. There is a large museum, which Buster will visit this week.

This week we plan to visit the LBJ Ranch and take a self-guided tour with a CD and also go to Luchenbach (population THREE!). Luchenbach has one unpainted general store that serves as a beer tavern, a traditional rural dance hall, a sometimes used blacksmith shop and Sunday afternoons is live music. Maybe we will see Willie Nelson??  Johnson City and Stonewall also have attractions. There's something to see and do every day!

Yesterday I visited a quilt shop, spent a few dollars and got my "fix" taken care of! There's two shops in town and one sells pies! Today we had a piece of chocolate cream pie and coffee for lunch. The shop makes 17 pies each morning from scratch and sells out by the end of the day. A whole pie costs $25.95!

We plan to visit friends in Austin but will not go there for another week or two. There is a huge music festival in Austin until March 20 with over 2,000 bands. We've heard traffic is horrendous so we will stay away! We could not get an RV space in Austin so will stay in Georgetown instead.

May 1st, our target date to be home, is coming much too quickly. This adventure needs to never come to an end! Time to go RV'ing FULL TIME?? YES!!!