May 25, 2012

We spent all day getting our stuff together for our trip to the Great Lakes.  Tomorrow we will hook up the trailer and drive to Freeport where Jim and his brother have a house on the Intracoastal Waterway near Surfside Beach.  We'll spend the Memorial Day weekend there before heading north.

May 26, 2012


We went to the storage lot and picked up the Casita this morning and drug it back to the house.  We loaded it and then took off to David and Jim’s house on the Intra Coastal Waterway in Freeport, Texas.  David lives here full time.  At the house I noticed the outside door to the hot water heater was missing.  Jim doesn’t know if it was on the Casita at the storage lot or if we lost it somewhere in between there and home. Jim thinks it was stolen for scrap metal by a petty thief.  We have had a couple of other instances of vandalism to our trailer at this place even though you have to have a gate code to gain access.  We notified the staff last Monday that we will be canceling our site there.  After we return from the Great Lakes we will be storing the Casita at my mother’s house.  It’s about 55 miles from our house so it won’t be as convenient to get to it as before.

We arrived at Freeport and got set up.  I fixed a broccoli salad to contribute to tonight’s dinner and then Jim wanted to go try to find some geocaches.  There were a couple in Surfside but one was infested with sticker burs and cacti and the other was in the middle of a park at the jetty overrun with families because of Memorial Day weekend.   We came back and sat outside and watched the traffic go up and down the Intra Coastal waterway.
 


May 27, 2012

We slept with the door open last night so we could get a good breeze through the Casita.  All of the windows were open and the shades were up.  It was very bright when the sun rose so we got up early.  After breakfast we drove to Lake Jackson and went to Lowes and WalMart.  More of David’s friends came today and there was a total of fifteen of  us.  The young people fished today and Sierra caught her first fish.  It was a redfish.  Taylor caught a really interesting looking fish.  David said it was a Sheepshead.  It had the strangest looking teeth.  They looked like human teeth.

David got crawfish this morning and we had them for dinner tonight boiled with potatoes, corn and sausage.  I made a slaw recipe that has ramen noodles in it.  I also made a banana pudding and there were chocolate cupcakes and some really good deviled eggs.  We watched the activity on the Intra Coastal and sat outside and enjoyed the day.  After noon the traffic got so bad on the road to Surfside that the police closed it and wouldn’t let anyone else go toward the beach.  It was reopened a couple of hours later.



May 28, 2012


We loaded up and left Freeport this morning and drove to our house.  I had to pick up some stuff I had bought for mom and leave it with my brother, Elton, in case she needs anything while we are gone.  I also watered the lawn and flowerbeds.  We are leaving the Toyota in the barn at mom’s house in case Elton or Allen need to take her anywhere.  After driving to my brother’s, we went to see mom and played bingo with her.  She didn’t win today.  We stopped and picked up Subway sandwiches for dinner and watched the first episode of “Hatfields and McCoys”.


May 29, 2012


I fixed migas and bacon and biscuits for us at breakfast.  Elton got ready to go camping near Coldspring, Texas with a lady friend of his.  We took the Toyota to my son and then went to visit my mother.  She finished reading a library book we checked out for her and I took it back and got her another one.  We stopped for gas at Wal-Mart in Liberty and then drove to Jim’s sister Judy’s house in Troup, Texas near Tyler.  She fixed a nice dinner for us and then the three of us went about a half mile down the road to a cemetery and found a geo cache.  It was in a small film canister tethered to a big oak tree.  We went back to Judy’s and watched part 2 of “Hatfields and McCoys”.

May 30, 2012


Thunder woke us up this morning and I had to close the Casita windows and the wing windows on the Silverado camper cover.  We got 1/4 inch of rain.  Judy drove us into Tyler and we did some shopping and had lunch at B J’s Brewhouse.  On the way back to the house we found three geocaches.  One was behind the “Welcome to Tyler” sign on Broadway (Hwy. 69), one in a tree at the New Life Church on Hwy. 69, and one in Whitehouse, Texas, behind a computer store.  A man came out to his car and saw us and asked what we were doing.  We told him we were looking for a geocache.  He smiled and said he was the one who had placed it.  He told us to come see him after we found it.  Jim went and told him we left a trinket in the cache.  At night we watched part 3 of “Hatfields & McCoys”.

If anyone is interested in geocaching, here is where you should go - www.geocaching.com.

May 31, 2012


It rained another 1/2 inch after midnight and through the early morning.  Judy went to her grandson John’s (Bubba)  kindergarten graduation this morning with her son, Tom.  After she returned we got the Casita hooked up.  We drove into Troup and filled up with gas and stopped at Brookshires to get some groceries.  Our first stop after that was Casita in Rice, Texas.  Jim bought a new outside door for the hot water heater to replace the one that was stolen.  He also bought a clear panel for the screen door to replace our black one.  A couple of push buttons on our cabinet door locks were broken and Casita gave us two new ones.  We drove to Waxahachie Creek Park on Lake Bardwell and got an RV site.  We have a pretty view of the lake.  After dinner we took a walk through the park and then came back to watch the Astros game and update the blog.

June 1, 2012

The weather was cool when we woke up this morning.  I fixed biscuits and sausage and we sat outside with our coffee.  After taking showers, we hooked up and left.  While we were camping at Bardwell Lake two different hosts asked us if we were here trying out our new Casita in case anything was wrong as we were close enough to go back to Casita if there was.  We told them ours was a 2006 model and we were just camping.  On the road into the park was a farmer’s field of sunflowers.  They were really large and heavy with seeds.

After entering into Oklahoma we stopped at the information center and McDonald’s.  We arrived at camp about 4 pm.  This is Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge just outside Lawton, Oklahoma next to Fort. Sill. They had 5 electric sites available. Doris campground has 23 electric sites and 47 non electric sites.  The sites don’t have water but there is a central water spigot in each loop.  We had put water in our tank at Lake Bardwell this morning.  This is a first come first served campground – they don’t take reservations. There is also a dump station.   We do have satellite TV but there is no cell service.  We used the On Star telephone in the Silverado to call my brother to tell him where we were.  Before supper we went for a walk through the campground.  There was a pretty lake with a bridge over it.  We also saw a summer tanager and a tarantula on the way back to the trailer.

 

June 2, 2012

It sprinkled a little last night and was cloudy when we woke up this morning.  The temperature was 60.  The clouds began to clear around 9 am and we decided to drive through the refuge and take a few hikes and look at the scenery.  There are lots of pretty lakes in the refuge. We saw buffalo along with longhorn cattle and quite a few different  wild flowers in bloom.  The information said there were elk but we didn’t see any.

We took three hikes and stopped for a picnic lunch.  There was a prairie dog town that we stopped at also.  We saw on the map a place named Holy City so we drove there to see what it was.  This is where the longest running Passion Play has been performed since 1929.  They only have performances twice a year now, on the weekend before Easter and Easter weekend.  There is a really pretty chapel on the grounds and they were getting ready for a wedding today.  While there I saw a postcard of Meers, Oklahoma and wondered where the town was.  On the way to drive up Scott Mountain we passed a highway sign pointing to Meers four miles down the road.  We stopped there to see if we could get a beer.  The restaurant had a line of about 20 people waiting to get in at 3 pm.  Jim and I were invited by a man and his son who were in line behind us to sit with them.  We shared a really great hamburger and a Meers Gold beer.  The man ordered peach cobbler and homemade ice cream and it was large enough to share with us.  We left and drove to the top of Scott Mountain which had a great view of the surrounding area.



 

June 3, 2012

During the night I woke up and there was a lot of lightening outside.  I woke Jim and he went outside and got our chairs so they wouldn’t get wet.  Just as he finished, it started to rain. He plugged in the weather radio and we listened to it.  We went back to bed and a few minutes later the weather radio alarm went off.  There was a line of thunderstorms from Cache to Oklahoma City producing hail and 60 mile per hour winds. Thank goodness we didn’t get any of the high winds.

We hooked up and struck out for Oklahoma City.  Our friends Kim and Steve moved there from Sugar Land.  We stopped in Medicine Park at the McDonald’s so Jim could research places to stay near them and update the blog for the past two days.  We found a site just outside Edmond on a really pretty lake, unhooked and then drove to Kim and Steve’s.  They gave us a tour of their house when we arrived. They bought a beautiful house in a very nice gated community.

Steve drove us to McNellies Pub and then showed us around town.  We all stopped and found a geocache and then went by the memorial to the Oklahoma City bombing.  Then we drove through Steve’s work complex at Chesapeake Energy.  They wanted to try a Belgian pub and we had very large order of French fires.  Then we went back to their house and Steve and Kim grilled steaks and corn on the cob.  Afterward we watched Ice Road Truckers.  We had dessert to serve but everyone was too full, so we saved that for tomorrow.