LoriBarb

Driving to Corpus Christi, we decided to make a stop for some sightseeing. The USS Lexington, CV-16, is a World War II-vintage Essex-class aircraft carrier that’s been turned into a museum. The people working there are a lot of vets or people just darn proud to be U.S. citizens. The Lexington is over 900 feet long, has more telephones than a city of 5,000, and the flight deck is equal to more than two acres of land on which you could grow a crop of 100 bushels of corn, you could play three football games or 14 basketball games at the same time, and it can also hold 1,000 cars. It also carried enough gasoline to drive your car around the world 132 times and was the first carrier to establish a seagoing high school on Sept 21, 1967. No surprise that it also houses a chapel, hospital, dentist, and barber given the number of people on board and for the length of time they would be at sea. Of course there was also a fair sized mess hall.

But let’s start this tour with a tour of our own, getting to a place we could find parking. Barb had called ahead and we were assured that we could park our “40 foot” (really we are just under 30’) motorhome there. “Oh yes” she said. The aquarium was right next door and there was plenty of parking, she said. The directions to the parking were clear, she said. So off we went……….

The drive ended with a lot of construction, and detours which we didn’t take. We were driving down industrial back roads following Waze. We got to the aquarium and the parking lot was empty, excellent!! Hmm, not so, the entrance was VERY narrow and would have required a lot of maneuvering to really get into the lot, so we were “partially in” with Lori outside trying to figure out how the hell we were going to accomplish this. There were also, of course, other cars trying to get by, get in, get out…….a bit of a shit show really.

But ah-ha, along come two gentlemen in a golf cart. They worked for the aquarium and they turned out to be a blessing, after Lori batted her lashes and told our tale of woe. The gave instructions of how to get to the much larger parking lot, and again, batting her lashes and sounding very confused and somewhat sad at the state we were in, asked if they could escort us. Well OF COURSE they could!! Lovely! They got the crowd of cars behind us out of the way, Barb backed out of the ‘spot’ we were in, in a very smooth and professional move, and we were OFF following our knights in shining armour. They even pointed out to us when we had to take a corner WIDE. The other larger parking lot was totally empty and they said we could park there due to the fact the aquarium was closed. (Again, the lady on the phone with Barb ASSURED us that parking would not be an issue at all and people park there all the time….ya right.) So Barb chose a spot and we hopped out to start our tour.

At the front entrance we were met by our first volunteer who had tried to enlist 3 times. The first time, denied due to being married, the second time denied due to having a child, the third time due to having two children. Admittedly he said the recruiters did him a favour having seen all his buddies come home from the war. His role now was shining all the brass on the ship and driving the little train that took visitors up the ramp to the Lexington to start the tour. He was also kind enough to take our photo.

Once inside there are 5 tours. The lower decks, the flight deck, the hangar deck, the gallery deck, and the foc’sle tours. There was also a museum showing a great movie about the ship and Pearl Harbour. We started with the lower decks. Lori was very interested in the engineering rooms as that is where her sister Joy worked in the navy on the HMCS Provider. She was a marine engineer or what is more commonly known as a stoker. The name comes from having to stoke the fire with coal in the old days. HMCS Provider was a ship that ran on steam so they had a boiler, similar to what we saw on our tour. The Provider also made its own water, which the Lexington did as well. The story Lori liked best from Joy is during the mid watch (midnight to 4am), they would sometimes make dinner on the super heated steam valves. The favourite…….mac and cheese!! Another cool note, Joy was one of the first women on any Canadian ship and sailed from 1989 to 1992 being able to support the efforts of the Gulf War as well as seeing a lot of the world. Can you tell Lori is a proud sister!

There were a lot of other really cool places on the ship as mentioned in the first paragraph and here are some photos.

The flight deck is really impressive. It is large and looks as it does in movies like Top Gun. The movie we watched while on board the USS Lexington showed the technology of how these planes get off the carrier in such a short distance with an immense force of steam. Quite incredible!

Couple of other interesting places on the flight deck. The gunnery “room” (not sure what else to call it). It housed two large guns and in this small space 11 men ran the equipment. It was extremely dangerous and they all had to wear fireproof outfits just in case. Another point of interest was the bridge, again a small room that steered the ship. It also had a cool voice tube which was a device used to communicate between two critical spaces, such as the engine room and the bridge. These were usually made from brass and could be as long as 300 feet. They were installed with a signal device like a whistle, so the caller could get the attention of the recipient. Despite modern technology, voice tubes are still used today all over the world.

Some other sundry things. An escalator, not sure if it was on the ship when it was in service? It sure looked permanent though. What a good landing was, compared to a great landing. Apparently if you can walk away from the landing, it’s a good landing and if you can use the plane the following day, it’s an outstanding landing. The movie Pearl Harbor was filmed on the Lexington. There are license plates that showed if you were a survivor of Pearl Harbor. Another tidbit: we all know how important tying knots is in the Navy (or any boat for that matter). Well, the Incas’ only “written” language was a system of knots tied into necklaces – like “documents” called quipus, or “talking knots”. Some scholars think quipus recorded only numbers, but others believe that they also told stories and encoded historical events. Cool right?!

Well that was our tour. Getting out of the parking lot and on our merry way was WAY smoother than getting in. Thank God.

We spent 3 days at this beautiful RV park in Aransas Pass. It is a beautiful gated luxury RV park with many amenities. A large heated pool with hot tub, pickleball, fishing, dog park, and wonderful community meals where volunteers make the food and the guests show up and pay for dinner. We participated in taco night which was excellent.

Unfortunately Barb was not able to swim or hot tub (two of her favourite activities) due to her concern of infection for her burn sustained in Austin. We did play pickleball for about 45 minutes which was fun for both of us. We would both come back here.

We had no idea how much we would miss this RV park until we arrived at our next one in Corpus Christi.

A little side note about Barb’s burn sustained in Austin. The morning we were set to leave with plans for Barb to do the driving to Aransas Pass, Barb sat down with her morning coffee and accidentally pulled the freshly boiled kettle cord causing the kettle to fall onto her seat and burn her backside. Needless to say Lori did the driving and Barb stood most of the way with a cold compress attached to her behind. Once at Southern Oaks RV Park we were fortunate to meet a naturopath who had fresh aloe vera plants and gave Barb some leaves to use several times a day. Without this plant a trip to emergency or severe scars would have followed. Miraculously neither was needed.

OK to be fair, we did decide to go here knowing the cost……but still.

Chef Kareem El-Ghayesh is the owner and pit master of this BBQ joint in Austin Texas. El-Ghayesh grew up in Cairo and came to the U.S. for the first time in 2012 to visit his uncle, and made a stop in Austin to visit an Egyptian friend who’d moved there. El-Ghayesh was so taken by his first humble tray of BBQ that he returned to Egypt and began practising at home using a Weber grill, Franklin BBQs ‘A Meat-Smoking Manifesto’, and instructional YouTube videos. He also befriended Cairo butchers and practiced techniques with them while sourcing his meat. Growing up watching both his grandmother and mother make traditional Egyptian food, Texas BBQ was completely new territory. Coming from the Middle East where there is a centrepiece dish surrounded by beautiful colourful vibrant pickles, sauces, and condiments, El-Ghayesh wanted to blend this tradition with the art of BBQ smoking.

Leaving behind a corporate finance career in Cairo, much to the dismay of family and friends, Kareem went to Austin in 2015 for a month (using saved up vacation time) to follow his passion for BBQ and smoking meats. During his visit he met Aaron Franklin, who was speaking about his cookbook, and he travelled around Austin tasting as much BBQ as he could. He finally found someone to mentor under, Bill Kerlin from Kerlin BBQ, so he went back to Cairo, quit his job and moved to Austin!

Working at a Mexican Fusion BBQ, Valentina’s Tex-Mex BBQ, and going to culinary school set the foundation for his culinary career. While El-Ghayesh was working at various BBQ places to gain experience, he started a catering business and private cooking classes. One of his catering jobs was so well received that it evolved into a pop-up BBQ on Sundays, where the line up was around the block. This success then turned into the BBQ food truck it is today, with line ups no matter when you go! He was also nominated for a James Beard award for Best Chef Texas category. While he didn’t win, KG BBQ has big plans in store……which we can’t wait to hear about!

Here are a few pics of the US$150 food truck lunch.

The pictures don’t do the food justice. We are still eating leftovers two days later! We also had a delish Hibiscus mint iced tea which was really great as well to go with the meal. All in all, an expensive meal but well worth the cost.

We won’t start with the title explanation, but maybe we should as it was at the beginning of our tour………

It was a really nice day out in Austin Texas so we decided, while sitting in the RV having our morning coffee, to do a last minute walking tour. We had to mad dash out of our PJs and into an Uber to get to the meeting spot. The tour was downtown and our guide was Jim, who happened to be the owner of the company, and was not just entertaining, but knowledgeable of Austin in general and its vast history.

We met at a cafe, and started our tour. Well, actually we didn’t start. We were in a circle listening to the guide, when someone walking by bumped into Barb. When we turned to see who…….here’s what we saw. Jim (the guide) thought it prudent we wait and “give him some space”. Unfortunately the photo is a little blurry as it was taken in an hurry and definitely on the down low.

Okay, show’s over, now let’s get to the tour. We’ll start with Willie Nelson. The Austinites call him their patron saint. Austin has a very deep and rich music culture and hosts the largest music festival in the U.S., called City Limits, which is held in the fall. Willie also recorded the original pilot episode of Austin City Limits on October 17, 1974, two years after he moved to Austin. They still record Austin City Limits where we were standing by the statue and there is a street named after him, of course.

Okay, for those vodka lovers out there…….Tito’s Vodka was created here in 1995. Need we say more. Love, Tito’s is a retail store in downtown Austin and the owner Tito is often there. In the early days of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Tito donated product to local nonprofit events. Over time those small, localized gestures not only continued, but evolved into a nationwide movement to make the world a better place. A true entrepreneur at heart and well educated as a geophysicist, his tinkering with homemade flavoured gifts for friends soon named him the “Vodka Guy”. This led him to leave the corporate world and petition the Texas government to become the first distillery in the state. While it took Tito 8 years to perfect his vodka, it remains today one of the cleanest spirits available. To learn more about Tito’s, visit www.titosvodka.com.

Another great stop was the statue of Angelina Eberly. In 1842 Texas was an independent nation, and Austin was its capital. Sam Houston, the president of the republic of Texas, sent a detachment to Austin to remove the government archives so the city of Houston could be the capital. When an innkeeper named Angelina discovered the men loading their wagons, she rushed to the corner of what is now Sixth and Congress and fired the town cannon, blowing a hole in the land office building and waking up the city. The citizens chased down Houston’s men, recovered the archives, and gave them to Angelina for safekeeping. The statue honours Angelina, a bold woman with a short temper, who preserved Austin as the capital of Texas.

Next we wandered around the downtown core and took some great pics of the skyline and original buildings. One of the great buildings was the Driskill Hotel built in 1886 for $400,000 (equivalent of $92 million today) by Jesse Lincoln Driskill. In 1857 Driskill enters the cattle business in Tennessee. In 1869 he moves his family to Austin and at this time he had already made and lost a fortune during the Civil War selling cattle to the Confederacy, where he is given the honorary title of “Colonel”. In 1880 Driskill, now a wealthy cattle baron, decides to build a luxurious grand hotel in Austin, one that would rival the palaces of New York, Chicago, St Louis, and San Francisco, to serve as a showpiece. In 1884 he purchases the lot for $7,500 and opens in 1886. In 1887 the hotel closes due to staffing issues and then reopens again in 1888 by the brother-in-law (apparently the title was won over during a poker game). And, there is a ton more history! Something to note, the hotel is 97% original to this day. We think we should come back to Austin someday and stay at this historic hotel.

Another great landmark is the Frost Bank building. The bank was the first skyscraper built in the U.S. after 9/11. The architect built it to look like an owl in any direction, which was the emblem of her alma matter. The story seems to be that she didn’t get into the university of her choice and her brothers did. When she won the bid to be the architect for this building she thought why not “stick it” and show her talent to all. (This was the guide’s story, who knows what the real one is, but we like this one).

We saw a great mural on a building by the Congress Avenue Bridge, which is also famous for the 1.5 million bats that live underneath. Apparently it is a great sight to see at night when they take off to eat. Lori and her sister Joy went to Borneo to the largest bat cave in the world and watched 10 million bats leave the cave……now that was something and they would recommend any “bat flight” to witness.

Now of course we had to go for lunch!!! To be fair, we didn’t have breakfast as you may recall from the beginning of this blog we had to do a mad dash out of the RV to make this tour. SOOOOO, Jim (guide) pointed us in the direction of the Iron Works BBQ joint. Ironsmith Fortunat Weigl migrated to Austin in 1913 from Germany with his wife and sons. In 1922 Weigl forged his own ornamental iron works, which he moved to this site in 1935. He produced original works, entirely hand wrought, for many significant Austin homes, the State Capitol, and buildings of the University of Texas. It remained in operation until 1977. Many famous people have eaten here, including us of course, and the food was very good.

We are super excited to be in Austin and we are staying at the Oak Forest RV Park. This is a great little park with lots of walking/bike-riding areas, some overnight sites, and many full timers & tiny homes. If you are a seasonal renter or a tiny home owner you belong to the community and have access to their gardens with many types of plants and vegetables. Of course, prior to understanding this we had already picked and sampled many. For today, we are going to assume this also applies to overnight RV renters as well!

Both of us love tiny homes and we were thrilled to find out there were model tiny homes open to view. We toured a bunch and determined the smaller models have very steep and narrow staircases often leading to an upstairs bedroom. Once up there, you often have to bend over, and sometimes crawl, to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling. While we love the tiny home concept, these styles just don’t seem practical as we age. Fortunately, we did see some larger units that have all the rooms on one floor. Totally worth the extra price to get one with a bigger footprint.

The RV park also has a very nice heated pool with a very warm hot tub that overflows into the pool. We swim everyday despite the cooler temperatures. We usually have the pool to ourselves, given the cooler air, which is brilliant. There are several families with young children who like to sit in the hot tub so we usually wait for them to go for dinner and then enjoy the hot tub, once again by ourselves.

The most exciting aspect of this location, however, is how close we are to downtown Austin. Only about 8 miles or 13 kilometres. That makes taking an Uber really easy. Before we had left home our good friend Amy told us about a food truck/restaurant in Austin that she had seen featured on TV. So, of course, we have that on our agenda for the days ahead.

This post is a bit of a hodgepodge of places we’ve been and things we have done since back in the U.S. The first adventure below is an outing to the movie theatre at The Harbor in Rockwall Texas with lunch afterwards at Gloria’s, an excellent Mexican restaurant. We learned an interesting fact about Rockwall a few days ago at the JFK Museum in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife moved to Rockwall soon after JFK was shot and lives there to this day. No, we didn’t see her at Gloria’s restaurant, nor at the movies.

The second thing we would like to talk about are the gas prices and the stations. The gas prices since leaving Canada have continuously gone down in our travels. While we are not so naïve as to think this will continue, we will take what we can get. The lowest we have paid thus far was $2.49 a gallon, and this happened to be at a Buc-ee’s. Buc-ee’s, like Love’s, are huge gas stations that have restaurants, convenience stores, and propane (which is super convenient for us). The Buc-ee’s signage is also creative. We have one photo below, but here are some other signage quotes: Only 262 miles to Buc-ee’s; You can hold it; If it harms Beavers we’re against it; Top two reasons to stop at Buc-ee’s: #1 & #2: Ever had Beaver Nuggets?; Meat good, jerky better; Sausage Kolache with 50% more meat. (We’re gonna need a bigger beaver); Eat here, get gas; Restrooms so clean, we leave mints in the urinals; My overbite is sexy; OMG It’s a beaver! LOL!; Ice, Beer, Jerky – All 3 food groups!; Hey buses – 49 toilets!; Your throne awaits, fabulous restrooms; Epic flush – 21 miles; Coffee you can sink your teeth into; Ice made from scratch! 20 lbs for 99cents; The eyes of Buc-ee’s are upon you; It’s potty time; Restrooms you gotta pee in to believe; everything you ever needed, you just didn’t know it; I brake for Beavers.

Next is some exercise outdoors. We do a lot of walking, but when one comes upon an exercise park, one needs to partake.

Here we are in Missouri which was day 3, and even though we are now in week 3, this is worth the mention on this “catch-up post”.

Things we see on our walks and our drives.

Today we decided to go into town and do some sightseeing. First stop: the JFK museum which is on the 6th floor of the School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald was suspected of shooting the President. There are certainly a lot of conspiracy theories on Oswald, Ruby, and others that may or may not have been involved in the shooting, which we found fascinating.

Timeline and facts for the interested: 12:30 JFK is shot; 12:36 JFK arrives at hospital (4 miles away); 1:00 JFK pronounced dead; 2pm JFK removed from hospital in a casket from Oneal Funeral Home at a cost of $3,995 which weighed over 400 pounds (in fact the secret service took the body against local law enforcement direction and before a medical examination could be done, which was apparently illegal in Texas) and was driven to Air Force One. Interestingly the original casket was not what was used for the funeral and was kept by the funeral home that did the embalming for more than a year, as they didn’t know what to do with it. In the meantime the Oneal Funeral Home owner Vernon, was arguing with the U.S. Government over the price tag of the coffin. The government felt it was excessive, but even after Oneal lowered the price, the two sides remained at an impasse. What Oneal really wanted however, was the coffin returned. He was getting offers for more than $100,000 for it – the equivalent of nearly $1 million today. The federal government, to prevent the casket from falling into the hands of the “morbidly curious”, paid Oneal only $3,160, then turned it over to the U.S Air Force, who drilled holes in it, filled it with 80-pound sandbags, crated it, and dropped it into the Atlantic Ocean 100 miles east of Washington D.C., to avoid it becoming a morbid curiosity. President Kennedy, a Navy veteran of WWII, had once considered a burial at sea. While this did not happen, his first casket did make it there.

Here are some pics of the museum.

After the somber tour of the museum, we decided to go for a nice Mexican lunch! Included were a margarita and a sangria….of course.

Next stop: the Dallas World Aquarium!! Something happy and fun to end the day! Lori loves aquariums, with her favourite being the Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto.

The Dallas World Aquarium entrance, even BEFORE you get to the ticket booth, is amazing! There are all sorts of birds which is something we were surprised to see at an Aquarium, but very beautiful and a great way to occupy time if the wait is long.

We then started our tour of the facility. We discovered that there are many layers/levels of the Orinoco Rainforest which includes the Canopy, the Understory, and then the Aquatic. Then the Mundo Maya, lower level and upper level. While we FINALLY got to some aquariums, this really isn’t just an aquarium tour, it’s much much more. The tour through the canopy, the jungle, and the underwater world was outstanding.

One can’t leave the blog without paying tribute to the Sloth. The Sloth is a sluggish tree-dweller of Central and South America who spends its life in the tropical rain forest, moving through the canopy at a rate of about 40 yards per day, munching on leaves, twigs, and buds. Sloths have an exceptionally low metabolic rate and spend 15 to 20 hours per day sleeping. While we believe in the need to slow down in life………….this is too slow. We watched the sloth over the span of about 4 minutes taking a piece of bamboo (we think) from a handler. Patience is the KEY to working with these guys. We’re sad the pics are not clearer, but the lighting was not ideal in this area. Michelle and Joy, these are for you!!

We landed in Garland Texas, about 35 minutes outside of Dallas on November 14th. The night before we were in Benton Arkansas where a farmer had turned some of his acreage into a beautiful treed RV park called J.B’s, with about 50 sites.

Garland Lakeshore RV Park is only 2 years old and quite frankly pristine. The club house is outstanding, with a beautiful living space, kitchen, business centre, showers, laundry, game room, and exercise room. The outdoor space with pool, hot tub, and fire pits also really nice.

We haven’t done much yet in Dallas as we had a couple of days of consulting work that kept us stationary. This RV park has so many amenities that Barb was able to take the calls from the computer room with Lori in the RV to avoid any interference from one another’s tablets.

Tomorrow we will do the JFK Museum, which we are both looking very forward to, and possibly a city tour.

After a 5-hour drive, we pulled into Sikeston Missouri and the Lambert RV Park. It was right beside the famous Lambert Cafe.

The Lambert Cafe was established in 1942. In 1976 Norman Lambert, son of founders Earl and Agnes, threw the first roll. Norman would walk around and hand out the rolls. One day it was really busy and when Norman couldn’t get through the crowd, one of the customers yelled, “throw the D*** thing!”, and with that the only home of throwed rolls was born. So of course we had to go and find out what this was all about!

The cafe had an extensive menu with ‘pass arounds’. We chose Louisiana smoked ribs with mashed potato and gravy and beets, as well as pork jowl with corn and coleslaw. The portions were ‘normal’ for the ribs, but the pork jowl was a massive pile of thick bacon.

Then there were the ‘pass arounds’. There were servers with huge bowls of fried okra, fried potato, black-eyed peas, macaroni and tomato, apple butter, and sorghum molasses. We tried all but the black-eyed peas. Liked the okra, apple butter, and sorghum; LOVED the potato; and disliked the macaroni as it was sweet.

Then the ‘event’, the bun throwing. One would think that these folks would have to audition for this task as their aim seemed to be incredibly accurate. We asked one of the servers if this was indeed the case, and she said nope, anyone could do it and at the end of the night there are buns everywhere and she in fact had been hit in the head numerous times while waiting tables.

The buns were right out of the oven, super hot, and HUGE. They were also delish!!! As you can imagine our greatest accomplishment that evening was making it back to the RV, and it was a DRY restaurant, in case you were wondering.

Kunekune pigs are the smallest breed of pigs, originating from New Zealand; they are extremely smart and love being touched. They are classed as a rare breed with less than 2,000 purebred in the world. They are the only truly grazing pig, being able to survive on grasses alone.

We arrived at the MKONO Farm in Bloomington Indiana around 3:30 and met the owner. We set up and off to cuddle the pigs! Into the barn we went and were able to hold 1-week old babies. They were super cute and cuddly. A great way to end an 8-hour drive. We don’t normally drive so far in one day, however when leaving as late in the season as we did, it is our desire to get south quickly to avoid inclement weather and cold. So a big day it was.