Gulf Shores Alabama

One week in the Gulf Shores area and we did very little, we had some nice sunny days but they were on the chilly side. We did take a day to drive over to Pensacola to pick up our mail and to go to the Pensacola Naval Air Museum. We've been to the museum three other times and always enjoyed it, but this time they made some changes to it, it seems like they had about three times as many planes on display and it just made everything to crowded as you can see from the pictures. It was hard to just pick out one plane and see it without having having it blend in with others. It's still a great museum just not as good as it was.


On the way home we took the road along the coast to see how much building they have done it the last two years, and it was a lot. We decided to make a quick stop at the outlet mall (not) and see what bargains we could find. Went in the Crocs store and Cathy and really didn't see anything that looked that cheap until Cathy asked the clerk if they had any specials. See pointed out two big racks of Crocs and said that the sandal type were $4.95 and the regular Crocs were $9.95, plus some up front were $1.99. Very limited in size and color but we ended up with seven pair (for us and the kids) for less then $50.00, Cathy was very happy.






Now that's what I call,
"A pile of CROC(s)"















Slowly heading north so our next stop will be Montgomery Alabama for a few days.

Great Food & New Orleans

We ate at the best restaurant in the world, then we went to New Orleans

We got a late start today on purpose since our first stop is only an hour away and doesn’t open until 11:00 AM. We have been dreaming about this stop ever since the last time we left Baton Rouge with tears in our eyes. Of course everybody knows that we’re talking about Mike Anderson’s Seafood Restaurant, the world famous Mike Anderson’s Seafood Restaurant. The last time we were in Baton Rouge we ate here on our third day, and then again every day until we left, all seafood places are now rated against Mike Anderson's and none come close. Mike Anderson was a two time All-American when he played for the LSU tigers in the early 70’s, but if you Google his name all you’ll find is his restaurant. We parked at a Wal-Mart’s just off the freeway unhooked the car and drove cross-town to the restaurant, hoping to be the first ones there but about 15 people had beat us there (can you tell how much we love this place). We have always gotten the daily special and never been disappointed, sometimes it’s shrimp, sometimes crab but always good, today we had “The Jason” it’s a fillet of fresh fish wrapped around crab meat , fried and topped with crawfish tails cooked in a cream sauce on a bed of rice, with your choice of potato, salad and a piece of garlic bread.

It was our little hour of heaven on earth, and now we probably have to wait another 3 to 4 years before we can return to Baton Rouge, tomorrow we’re heading to New Orleans and will probably get stuck eating at some junkie place in the French Quarter.

Today we did something that I have wanted to do for a long time, we went to New Orleans by driving across the Lake Pontchartrain Cause Way. This is about 25 miles of bridge that cuts right across the middle of lake Pontchartrain, there are seven cross overs between the two bridges and each one had a Cause Way cop sitting there. If you ever drive this and get stopped by the cops be sure to do exactly what they tell you to, if you should ask them why, they will tell you “Cause Way told you to” I crack myself up sometimes. Any how, we drove through the city on the side streets and could still see a lot of damage from Katrina, we went to the Chalmette Battlefield, remember the song:

Well, in eighteen and fourteen we took a little trip
along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans,
And we caught the bloody British near the town of New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

To bad, but you're going to be singing this the rest of the day.

The brick visitors center was gone and had been replaced with a trailer and a ranger that was about as useful as a bucket of sand, he did manage to push the button to start the video for us, so I guess that was something.

We were planning on stopping at Jackson Barracks but it is still closed, they are doing a few million dollor restaration which is going to take a few more years.

Went up to the garden at City Park, this is a freebee for us and thank God it was, took us about 20 minutes to go through the gardens, it looks like they have done very little work trying to clean this place up. The only thing worth while was a bunch of birdhouses dislayed around the gardens.

OK, enough of this city, time for use to find a place to eat then get out of here, we decided to take the surface streets rather then the freeway, big mistake, took us over an hour to figure out how to get out of town, and we really didn't figure it out we more or less lucked out and finally made a wrong turn that got us out of there and we didn't stop till we found a CiCi's Pizza Inn.

Lafayette we are here

Pulled into Lafayette LA, actually we're in Broussard which is about 7 miles south, the weather channel said that we should have rain most of the time that we are here so we'll see what we get in.

The sun is shining but the wind is gusting up to 25 mph so that means that we have to put off the Swamp tour that we wanted to do today, so instead will go into town and visit Vermilionville.

Vermilionville, which was the original name for the city because the Vermilion River runs through it, is a living history museum of what life was like in this area between 1765 and 1890, it contains 18 buildings of which 6 are originals that were moved here and restored. About half had interpreters to demonstrate the crafts or music of the period, others just explained what it was like to live back then.

The Acadian Cultural Center, which is part of the National Park system, is right across from the village. They have two films that take about 45 minutes to view, the first is about how the Cajuns or Arcadians came to settle in this area, and the second explains what live was like living in the Atchafalaya Swamp, both well worth the time to see.

OK! A quick a quick history lesson on the Ragin Cajuns, they were expelled from France by Napoleon for refusing to fight in the his army, they were loaded on boats a shipped to the Acadia (now Nova Scotia), here they lived peaceably with the local Indians until a treaty was signed between France and Great Britain which gave this territory to Great Britain. There were two different exiles of the Arcadians during the 1750's, one sending them down the coast of America where they were sold into servitude and the second where they were shipped back to France.

In the end there were two colonies of Arcadians, one in New Brunswick (known as Arcadians)and one in Louisiana (known as Cajuns). It's a very interesting history to read about, everything they went through and the influence they had on the areas they settled in.

One of the great things about being in this area is talking with the people and trying to follow what they're saying, since they have an English all their own, remember the Cajun cooking show with Justin Wilson the Cajun Cook, well just image everybody talking like him. The other great thing is the music, a lot of the restaurants in the area have a stage, and during the day if no band is playing you can just go up on stage and start playing and then someone else might join you and then all of a sudden people stop eating and start dancing, when the music stops they go back to eating.

The second film is about the Atchafalaya Swamp, which is the largest in the USA; if you ever drove across I-10 then you will know how big it is. It basically tells about the town they settled in the swamp and how they lived there for over a hundred years until floods destroyed everything and forced them to move out.

We did find a little hamburger joint, The Judice Inn, it was built by the Judice brothers in 1947 and is still in the same location and is now run by the son's and grand kids. Voted the best burger in Lafayette for something like the last 3000 years, it was very good and also very spicy but still no fries.

Five days of rain, wind and a cold front and we're ready to move on.

It's coming so get ready...............................

Houston

We left Aransas Pass after spending a month there and we still don't known how to pronounce it. Did a long drive through the flat cattle country to Houston, we went through around 1:00pm so traffic wasn't to bad but I would compare it with Atlanta type traffic, until you get to an interchange with the freeways. I've never seen anything like this, I think there blueprint was a big bowl of spaghetti turn upside down, they have stuff that is four levels high. Glad that we're camping about 20 miles east of Houston, so we don't have to do it again.

Anybody remember the old Spaghetti Western Named "China 9, Liberty 37" , well where we're camped we could call it Liberty 19, China 30,. If you don't remember this movie then none of this will make any sense to you. Just noticed that I've never used the word spaghetti in a blog and here I've already used it twice.

According to our map there is a Penzey's Spice store in Houston, so that will have to be our first stop, if you've never heard of Penzey's you can check out their web site at WWW.Penzeys.com , the best spices ever. This involved driving back into the heart of Houston and fighting the traffic but with just the car it wasn't that bad. After Cathy filled the basket and I filled their register we were ready for the second stop of the day. After about 25 minutes of navigating the side streets we found our objective without any problems, The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum. For once we had pretty good timing because in about two weeks they're boxing everything up and moving to there new location. If you're a history nut this is a fantastic little museum (soon to be much larger) if not then keep right on moving.

Never wanted always needed.
The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum (BSNM)is a result of a 30 year hobby of a Viet Nam Veteran and African-American (Buffalo Soldier) military historian, Mr. Paul J. Matthews. He was in the museum today and we got to talk with him, he said that 30 years ago he read an article that had two paragraphs about the Buffalo soldier, he decided that he wanted to learn more about them and after 30 years of research, reading and collecting artifacts he opened the museum in 2000. During the Indian Wars out west the 10th Calvary,was made up of all Black Soldiers and assigned to fight the Cheyenne warriors, it was the Cheyenne that gave them the nickname Buffalo Soldier, it stuck and soon became a symbol of pride for the Black Calvary men. The museum and a film they show documents the history of the black soldier through American history, from the Revolutionary War to our troops today in the Mid-East. Through donations of articles they have been able to put together a great collection on items, many of them one of a kind, had we read everything we wanted to we might still be there.
www.buffalosoldiermuseum.com

I made The Last Buffalo Soldier as a large photo so you can click on it and read the article.





Our next stop for the day was only a mile or so away, the Houston Zoo. The Zoo is located in Hermman Park which covers over 500 acres the city's center and has enough stuff to keep you busy for a long day. The Zoo's front is undergoing a major facelift, but once you get through the gate you don't notice it until you get around to the far back corner where they are adding about another 10 acres of exhibits to the zoo. The exhibits are set up very nice and the animals were pretty active for late afternoon, our favorite thing her was probably the Tropical Bird House. We were there for about two hours and only covers half of the zoo, we had to get going to avoid the rush hour scramble on the freeways.










Other then the animals we were about the only ones in the zoo today, as you can see from the Picture





This one became my new desktop photo






Did a little drive south of camp along the Trinity River today to a park that was the location of Fort Anahuac, this was a Mexican fort that was manned to control the Texan colonist in the area. This is where the Texas Rebellion that lead to the Republic of Texas started, in 1832 Col. Bradburn who was in charge of the Mexican troops arrested William B. Travis and imprisoned him in the fort. About 200 colonist formed up and shot it out with the Mexicans winning the release of the future Alamo hero.
About 80% of the buildings in this area were destroyed by hurricane Ike.


San Jacinto Battlefield.
The battle that won Texas its independence from Mexico. General Santa Anna marched 6000 troops into the Texas territory to destroy the rebels, they were to be treated as pirates and shown no mercy. The Alamo fell with close to 200 troops killed, then the Massacre at Goliad were more then 400 troops were executed and Sam Houston and the Texas troops were retreating in front of his army.
Santa Anna feeling confident divided his army into three and set off chasing Houston and the Texas government which were fleeing, once Houston heard that he had split is army he stopped the retreat and picked this location, where the Buffalo Bayou met the San Jacinto river, for his attack. Santa Anna was expecting the attack April 22, instead Houston attacked on the 21st at 3:30pm, catching the Mexican troops off guard the battle last just 20 minutes, with the victorious Texans having killed over 700 while only nine of theirs died. Santa Anna was captured the next day and was forced to sign a treaty giving Texas its independence.

Today this 1100 acre site memorializes the battle with markers placed around the battlefield and the San Jacinto Monument which rises 570 feet above the battlefield as a memorial to the men who fought for Texas independence. There is an elevator that will take you to the observation deck at the top, also the base of the monument houses a museum with a great many artifacts from the battle.

On the west side of the battlefield along the Buffalo Bayou you'll find a stone that marks the spot where Santa Anna was brought to a wounded Houston to hear the terms of his surrender. A little farther down the shoreline is the Battleship Texas, she is the only surviving battleship that fought in both the 1st and 2nd World Wars.

WWW.tpwd.state.tx.us/sanjacintobattlegroud/

Think we should paint our motorhome like this one.







Since we are leaving Texas tomorrow after almost four month here (heading for Lafayette LA)this will probably be your last Texas History lesson.

Hookem Horns and Don't Mess with Texas.

Aransas Pass

South Texas Botanical Gardens
The weather said that it was going to be in the high 70's and sunny today so we decided to drive across Corpus Christi to the south side and tour the gardens. This gardens is more of what grows in this part of Texas, it's been very dry and the water levels were way down so it was mostly cactus and desert type plants, they also had a greenhouse with some orchids. After about two hours on the trails we called it a day.















Today Cathy decided that we should get up early and drive about an hour and a half over to a little town named Goliad so that's what we did and boy are we glad that we did.
We stopped at the Presidio (fort) La Bahia (on the bay, an unusual name for a place that is about 50 miles from the water), it was originally built in 1721 near Lavaca Bay, in 1726 it was moved inland and then moved again in 1749 to its present location.
The Presidio has a small museum which had so much information that we ended up spending about three and a half hours there, one of the things that the Presidio is famous for is the Goliad Massacre.

The massacre took place just a few weeks after the Battle of the Alamo, Texas troops under the command of Colonel Fannin were captured by Mexican troops after the Battle of Coleto and taken to the Presidio at Goliad. When Santa Anna heard that they were taken prisoner instead of being shot on site he issued an order that they all be executed immediately.

At sunrise on March 27, 1836,Palm Sunday,the unwounded Texans were formed into three groups and led out of the different side of the Presidio, they had been told that they were to gather fire wood. About a half mile from the Presidio the guards stopped the march and executed the prisoners, they then returned to the Presidio and executed about 40 of the wounded. After the execution of the wounded Colonel Fannin was taken to the center of the court yard and shot in the head. A total of 342 men had been killed this day, the bodies were burned and left were they fell, it wasn't until June that the bodies were gathered and buried in a common grave. The grave remained unmarked until 1858, when a Goliad merchant, placed a pile of rocks on what was believed to be the site, on June 4, 1938 a massive pink granite monument, was dedicated to the men killed that day and is located about 100 yards from the Presidio.



Between the Fannin Memorial and the Presidio is a statue of The Angel of Goliad, Senora Alavez, she was the traveling companion of Col. Telesforo Alavez and was responsible with saving the lives about 25 of the prisoners.








Just outside the Presidio is the house that General Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza was born in, it was his victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5th 1862 that inspired the people to overthrow the foreign rule of Emperor Maximilian and brought about the National holiday of Cinco De Mayo.

I told you there was a ton of history in this place.




Also located in the Presidio is Our Lady of Loreto Chapel, that has held continuous service since 1779, today mass is held every Sunday at 5 PM. It is one of the oldest churches in America, it also is one of the only buildings in existence that has its original "groin vaulted ceiling"(hard to explain) in place. The Stature of Our Lady of Loreto which is above the front door was sculpted by Lincoln Borglum, of Mount Rushmore fame.


Presidio La Bahia is owned and operated by the Catholic Diocese of Victoria in Texas.


Time for lunch, lets see a small Texas town with the Courthouse located in the city square and right across the street from the courthouse is the Hanging Tree Restaurant, wonder where the name came from. After lunch we walked across the street and there was a monster oak tree and right in front of it is a plaque proclaiming it to be the Hanging Tree, it explained that back in the mid 1800's when they held court and found someone guilty and sentenced to hang, they just took them straight out to the tree and hung them.

And that was our day at the Presidio.


Texas State Aquarium
We were going to go to the aquarium yesterday but I was checking their hours on the Internet and noticed that it was dollar day, we figured that it might be a little crowded so we put it off till today. There was probably 100 to 150 people today which wasn't bad, I asked one of the guides how many they had on dollar day and it was 6400, glad we missed that mess.

The Aquarium is located right on the bay, it isn't to big but they have shows throughout the day that are very good. The first one we went to was the Dolphin show, three trainers each with their own dolphin, they show you how they train them to do the tricks. The first show they had them jumping, doing flips, racing around the pool and posing for pictures, it's about a 20 minute show and well worth going to. I know it's an aquarium but the next show was the Birds of Flight Show, they had a Mexican Eagle, a few owls, turkey vulture and even a type of bob cat from South America that could from a standing start leap about 6 feet straight up and catch a bird in flight. Other shows included the otters, sea turtles and gators we decided to go see the dolphin again and it turned out to be a different show. There were only a few inside exhibits of fish and the rest were snakes, frogs and such, the big fish tank had a diver inside feeding the fish and stingrays which was kind of neat to watch. They have to feed them restaurant quality fish to make sure they don't get an type of bacteria introduced into the aquarium.





Since this is suppose to be one of the best birding areas in the country and the only birds that we have seen so far are the pelicans down at the marina's fish cleaning station we figured we would drive up to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. This is where the Whooping Cranes come down from Canada to spend the winter, this bird is on the endanger list and a lot of people come down here to see then. The refuge has a 35 miles loop that runs along the bay and then through the woods and prairie. About three hours of driving and hiking around the refuge and we did not see one single bird, not one, we saw a heard of wild pigs from about a hundred yards and that was it. The biggest excitement of the day was on the way home an old couple in a pickup were driving about a half mile ahead of us when all of a sudden they went left of center and nailed a girl in her SUV coming the other way. Fortunately he hit her in the drives side front wheel and not head on, so as we're slowing down she's in our lane and spun three full 360's before coming to a stop on the shoulder of the road about a hundred yards in front of us. We stopped and she was out of the car and shaking like a leaf, but basically uninjured. She didn't really know where she was because she was only in town for her grandmothers funeral yesterday. It took about 30 minutes for the cops to figure out where we were and when they showed up it was a detective in an unmarked car, the cop told us that the reason they sent him was that all the uniform cops were helping the fire department put out a monster fire, he pointed of in the distance and the ski was blacked out by smoke about 20 miles away, we thought that it was a controlled burn at one of the ranches that got out of control, but he told us nope, it was a residential neighborhood. We stuck around for another 30 minutes or so until her folks showed up then hit the road again, avoiding old winter Texans.


OK, one last try to see some birds, have you ever heard of the Welder Wildlife Foundation, of course, this is a research and educational foundation that works in wildlife conservation and management. It's located on the Welder Ranch which covers close to 8000 acres, they take about 12 students a year who are working on their PHD in this field, they house them on site, give them a small pay and medical while they are studying here. They give tours of the ranch and one of the students loads you into the van and drives you around the ranch for about two hours showing you the various wildlife and telling you about the different studies that they are doing. It's free but there is one catch to taking the tour, the front gate is only open to the public on Thursdays and only between the hours of 2:55PM and 3:00PM, yep 5 minutes a week, we got there about 45 minutes early and were the third car in line, only one more car showed up. We had nine people and the guide was very excited to have such a large group, she said normally they only have 2 to 4 people per tour. During the two hour tour we saw 600 trillion dear and one red tailed hawk sitting on a fence post like a statue. So much for the birding capitol of the south.

LADY LEX
Cathy stayed home today and I went to the visit the Lexington Aircraft Carrier which is now a museum and anchored at Corpus Christi. I put 4 hours worth of quarters in the parking meter and made it back with 5 minutes to spare.
There are five different tours and I took them all and still only covered about 20 percent of the ship.


Got to go from the conning tower to the engine room, plus walk the deck, the wind was gusting up to about 25 MPH so a lot of guest were chasing their hats as soon as they stepped out on the flight deck.





The rising sun marks the spot where a Kamikaze's plane hit the ship during a battle in the Pacific, there are two open decks there that were filled with sailors, 50 were killed and 150 were injured.
There were two Lexington's during WWII, the first was sunk, when the workers in the ship yard that were almost done with another carrier heard about it they petitioned the the Secretary of the Navy to rename the ship they were finishing the Lexington.


This is where the sailors got to sleep, those bunks are stacked three high and very little head room.








This is the Captain's Sleeping quarters.

Your Mission should you decide to accept it, is to survive a month in Mission Texas.

We accepted the mission, first was the drive to the border, once you leave San Antonio there is nothing for a couple of hundred miles until you reach the RGV (Rio Grande Valley), once you get there expect nothing but traffic and more traffic, I really think that it was more crowded the southern Florida. All the stores are grouped together in malls so that there is no little mom n pop grocery, if you needed milk and eggs you had to fight mall type traffic and spend 20 minutes finding a parking spot before you could run in and get anything.

Mission was named for the La Lomita Mission which was built on the Rio Grande in the mid 1800's and still stands today. It is open everyday and one of the bigger attractions in this area.




We took the 60 mile drive down the Valley to Brownsville to visit the Zoo. This is a really nice Zoo but nobody was there, I don't think there were more then 50 people in the entire Zoo while we were there. Jim got a new camera for Christmas so here are some Pictures. Cathy also got a new camera for Christmas (Jim's old one).

















































On the way home we stopped at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, this is a college-prep for boys from 8-12th grade.



It is located on Iwo Jima Blvd, and what would you expect to find on a street with this name, why the Iwo Jima Memorial of course. No not the one that you see in Washington DC, this one is the original. It is the original model prepared by Dr. de Weldon and was used to cast the bronze that is in Washington DC. there are a few different reasons that it is located here. One the weather, the plaster needs to be in a weather zone with certain temperatures and humidity, Two to inspire the Cadets of the Academy and three one of the flag raisers was from this area and is buried at the base of the monument.

There is a small museum here with mementos from the battle of Iwo Jima, a lot of one of a kind things are here that have been donated by soldiers who have stopped by here. There is also a great 30 minutes film on the history of the battle and during this you find out that this statue which was taken from the famous photo taken by Joe Rosenthal is really the second flag raising on Iwo Jima. The first flag raising on Mount Surbachi was at about 10:30 AM, it was a smaller flag that one of the soldiers had carried up there inside his shirt, it was visible by all the soldier fighting on the island but could not be seen from the ships. This was al done during the battle, later in the afternoon a larger flag was brought from the ship and the raising of this one is the one that became famous.
Privates Louis Charlo & James R Michels , Corporal Charles Lindberg, Sergeants Henry Hanson & Ernest Thomas JR and Lieutenant Harold Schrier, names that have been lost in history, these were the men that raised the first flag on Mount Surbachi at Iwo Jima.



The weather here is either 50 degrees and raining or 90 degrees and humid or a very pleasant 75 degrees with 50 MPH winds blowing you down, what this boils down to is Jim getting Bronchitis and a trip to the clinic, Cathy managed to fight it off until I didn't know what to get her for Christmas, so I gave it to here along with another trip to the clinic. This led to us just lying around and watching all the TV marathon that were on during the holidays.


Well about two days before our mission in Mission was up we finally made it to Mexico, drove down to Progresso Texas, and parked the car on the US side, paid the 25 cent toll to walk across the bridge to Mexico. Its funny nobody sez a word to you when you go into Mexico you just cross the bridge and enter the biggest flea market in the world. Progresso Mexico is designed to cater to the American tourist, and they do a very good job of it, anything you can thing of or would want can be had here and for a very cheap price. Medicines, leather products, silver items, dental work, (cleanings for only 10 dollars, extractions for 20), need new glasses no problem, haircut 4 dollars and no waiting 20 chairs, you name it they got it. We spent about 3 hours wandering around spending money and had a ball. I take a generic of Prilosec which cost about 18 dollars for a month supply, I got a three year supply for 50 dollars here, Cathy found a liter bottle of pure vanilla for $1.90, then she found 4 bracelets and three necklaces all of the silver for $50.00, she did a little bargaining here.

Now we have to cross the border back into the USA. as we approached the bridge there was a Mexican soldier behind a wall of sandbags with a 50 cal machine gun pointing down the sidewalk, in the road there was an armored personnel carrier with two more soldiers one behind another machine gun and the other behind a canon. Once we got to the American side is took all of 30 seconds to go through customs and be on our way back to the car. I really wish that we hadn't been sick because we could have spent another few days over here.

As we were driving north on US 77 heading to Corpus Christi we were 85 miles north of the Mexican border, there is a Border patrol post and they stop every northbound car, after a half hour in line it was our turn, "are you American citizens?" Yes, "enjoy your day" and you're on your way, right after the narcotic dogs does his sniffing thing all around your vehicle.

It was fun but I don't think that we will be going back there for quite awhile, maybe for a week to do the Mexican thing again, when I run out of Meds or Cathy runs out of Vanilla, which ever come first.