At WIT's End

 I am writing this at LaBonte park in Corpus Christi. LaBonte is definitely our kind of park--tiny, pretty, and free! (If you are wondering, the yellow blooming tree is a sun-loving Texas native called retama)

We've had another wonderful week in Texas.  After LaGrange, we continued southward, eventually grabbing 77, which took us to Victoria.

We got up the next morning to find a visitor! A very large, and very laid back, armadillo was meandering across the grass, hunting for his breakfast. Crockett was intrigued, but also a bit confused. That weird thing waddling through the grass was definitely not a dog.

We pulled out a couple of hours later and headed for yet another Walmart - in Portland. This Walmart also had wildlife - a large and raucous flock of terns had taken over the parking lot.

Quick digression. We're not sure,  but we think these are Forrester's Terns, which are pretty common along the coast.

The flock kept us and the cats entertained most of Wednesday afternoon with their antics. We even saw a few squabbles - maybe someone wasn't willing to wait their tern?😄

Thursday, we hopped down the road again, this time to our destination - Southern Oaks, an RV park in Port Aransas.

It's our first Texas WIT (Winnebago Itasca Travelers) Club rally! 

Sorry, another digression. Random shot of some blanket flowers growing at Southern Oaks. Absolutely gorgeous.

 The rally ran all weekend and was excellent. The club arranged socials and games,

--including a rather intense game of beanbag baseball. We would've taken pictures, but somehow we got roped into being score keepers. Here - have a picture of Chinese Checkers instead! 

 Of course, this was a Texas rally, so the tables were groaning with food. The Bluebonnet chapter served a spaghetti dinner on Friday night, which was very, very good. The only downside was the rally was over much too quickly. We said our goodbyes this morning and headed out to Corpus Christi. We'll park for a couple of days at LaBonte, then start moseying up to a place we haven't been in months - Austin!

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Staying at Old Lock One Park (Free!)

We stayed at Old Lock One Park for 14 days. This is a Army Corps of Engineer park that allows free dispersed camping.  This is a beautiful, rustic little park that sits directly on the Tombigbee River.

GPS: N 31° 34.363’ / W 88° 01.913

3800 Old Lock One Rd. 

Jackson, AL 36545

Website: Army Corps of Engineers - Alabama

The park sits on the Tombigbee River. In the late 1800s, a lock system was built on this river, and for many years families lived on the property and operated the locks. We understand the pecan grove at this park was planted by the lock master.

A 1953 tornado destroyed many of the buildings, and the rest of the buildings were demolished in 1960s when a new system bypassed the old lock. Clarke County and the Army Corps of Engineers worked together to upgrade the park in 1999, adding bathrooms, hook ups for a host camper, and a pavilion.

Quick digression: The name of this river is the Anglicized 'itumbi ikbi', which was Choctaw for 'coffin maker'!

Dog Friendly: This is a small country park, with no amenities for dogs. Many locals use the boat launch and the fishing pier, even at night, so we would strongly recommend keeping your dog leashed, even after curfew. Also, the park does have alligators! 

Motorcycle Friendly: The road to the park, as well as the main parking area, is paved. The boat launch area was rutted and in need of repaving when we were there.

Cell Service/Wifi: Verizon is very patchy, with signal ranging for 0-4 bars depending on where you are in the park.

Amenities: The park has bathrooms, but no showers. There is a spigot for water behind the bathrooms. There is also a large pavilion,which has a couple of electric outlets. The primitive tent sites have tables and grills. The park has a boat launch and a fishing pier, but these may or may not be accessible depending on the water level.

Getting There: Turn onto Old Park One Road from Highway 69. The park sits at the very end of Old Lock 1 road, which is approximately 3.5 miles long.

Know Before You Go: As we mentioned earlier, there are alligators at this park. The park is well-used by the locals on the weekends, and also seems to be a very popular destination for people who just want to check the water level of the river. We lost track of the number of conversations that started with "The water's up." or "The water's down".😄

While the locals are very friendly, campers should be aware cell signal is very patchy and there is only a camp host in the winter, generally from September to March. The park is well-lit at night, but we didn't see much of a sheriff presence, and we understand the sheriff does not enforce speed limits at this park. We also suspect this park probably has a mosquito issue in the summer months when the water is lower.

Local Stuff: There is a Walmart about 10 minutes away Jackson, Alabama. We understand there is a Clarke County Historical Museum in Grove Hill.  A full list of local attractions can be found at the county's web page. 

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Czech'ing In!

Time for a Texas roadtrip! We leave Rainbow's End, the Escapee's park in Livingston, on Friday. We could turn south, grab I-10 and be in Port Aransas in about 6 hours - if traffic doesn't do what traffic generally does on I-10. Instead, we turn north and overnight at a Walmart on 110.

Our plan is to spend the week zigzagging across the smaller highways, hopping from one small town Walmart to the next. Not only does this give us a free place to camp for the night, but we only have to drive a leisurely hour or two to get to our next 'camp'.

 We're probably prejudiced, but we think April is the best time to drive through Texas. The bluebonnets, which only bloom once around Easter, are beginning to fade, and pinks of evening primrose and the reds of blanket flower and paintbrushes are in full bloom.  If you drive in late March, you will see plenty bluebonnets - but won't see as many blanket flowers or paintbrushes. And if you wait until May, you miss the bluebonnets - although you do get Maximilian sunflowers.

Texas Wildflower Guide

 We also need to take a moment and thank Lady Bird Johnson for the show. She was the one who encouraged Texas, and the highway department, to embrace and reseed wildflowers. She left all of us a beautiful legacy - while greatly reducing the state 's mowing budget! Oh, and if y'all are ever in Austin, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is well worth the drive.

On Sunday, we stop in Navasota. Our GPS helpfully suggests we can also stop at Navasto Municipal RV Park. While we prefer to 'camp' for free this time, we make a note that the city's RV park is only $10 a night!

Monday finds us on 237, cruising through the hill county. We circle around Brenham and then drive through Round Top. Brenham is home to both Blue Bell Ice Cream, and Antique Rose Emporium. Round Top is known for it's antique shops and antique fairs, as well as for Royer's. Royer's is pretty much the place to get pie in the hill country.

 We're headed for another hill country tradition - kolaches! There are several places to get good kolaches, and one of those is Weikel's in La Grange.

 We grab a half dozen of fruit and cream cheese kolaches, 

 and a turkey wrap and a Philadelphia cheese steak. Both the wrap and the sandwich was excellent, and kolaches were fresh and wonderful. Fed and full, we roll on to the Walmart in La Grange. Nope, we're not missing I-10 at all!!

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Necessary Stuff - Empanadas and Vehicle Inspections!

Drum roll, please - we're caught back up! We do have a back log of RV park reviews to post, thanks to our internet issues, but we promise to space those out!

If there is one thing we have learned this year, it's  that we are sloooow travelers, even for RVers. We left New Orleans on a Tuesday. If we'd grabbed 10, we could've been to the next park, Rainbow's End in Livingston, in about 5 to 6 hours. Instead we chose to turn north after we left Baton Rouge, taking 26 up to 110. We then took a leisurely three days to roll into Livingston, hopping from one Walmart to the next. 

This turned out to be an unexpected blessing, because we ran into another Escapeer at the Walmart at Woodville, Texas. He pointed to Tyler County Auto Parts, and told us that's where he gets his RV inspected.  We're supposed to get our vehicle inspections within 7 days of entering Texas, so this was perfect. We dropped the trailer in Walmart's parking lot, and drove over to Tyler's. Tyler's wasn't busy, so we were in and out, and hooked back up to the trailer, in about 30 minutes. Oh, and Texas inspections are still only $7.00. Yay!

Tyler Auto Parts

1114 South Magnolia Street

Woodville, Texas 75979

napaonline.com

We zipped over to Livingston on Friday in our newly inspected RV. We spent the next week being adults and doing boring stuff, like picking up the mail and having the motorcycle inspected at the Harley Davison, in The Woodlands, Texas. We also got Smart Weighed. We've added 4 AGM batteries and a solar system, so we were a little overweight. We did some paring down and re-arranging, and now we'll just have stop at truck stop after we leave Austin, and check to see where we're at. That's one of the few downsides to living in a Class C - we don't have the carrying capacity of those Class A's.

Most importantly, we made a much-needed trip to Bank of America (there seems to be a dearth of BOAs in Louisiana) and we found a panderia in Spring, Texas! On the way to the panaderia, we also found a Mexican cafe - Compadre's Texas Cafe

The cafe served migas (a Tex-Mex breakfast food of awesomeness) and they also sold a variety of hot sauces. We took home a bottle of the Compadre's Texas Cafe Howling Hickory Pepper sauce. Yum!

House of Bread - La Casa Del Pan

We know what you are asking - what the heck is a panderia? It's a Mexican bakery.  Mexican pastries are called pan dulce, and tend to be less sweet than American pastries. Mexican bakeries also typically use lard in most of their products. Most American pastries tend to lean toward the French tradition of putting butter into everything. Buttter is never, ever a bad thing - but Mexican pastries will keep longer.

Our favorites? The marranitos (gingerbread and molasses pigs) and sweet potato empanadas. We also love the bread pudding, but be aware it's served very differently at a Mexican bakery - it's chilled and then cut into slabs. It's also usually the first thing to sell out, so we were happy to see there was still a few pieces left! 

Gringos Guide to Pan Dulce

There is one more thing we love about panaderias - they're one of the last places you can still eat on the cheap. We spent $18 on two big bags of pastries. We popped most of the pastries in the freezer for breakfasts and snacks - after demolishing a couple of pigs, and some bread pudding, of course. Yup, we're definitely back in civilization!

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Hopping Good Time in New Orleans - Part II

We also had some free time to explore New Orleans. The park 'provides' a shuttle to the French Quarter. Actually, the cost is six dollars for a round trip, but this was included in our HOP package.

Wael and Anna  are wonderful! We fell in love with their unique style and bought one of their CDs.

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New Orleans has statues tucked into every corner.

New Orleanians definitely have their own style,

and enjoy an impromptu parade.

 We spent our last Friday along the river.

This is the haunting Holocaust memorial, which changes depending on where you stand..

Monument to the Immigrant, which has been repaired and restored.

On Friday, we also went on a cocktail tour and a ghost tour.

Since we don't drink, the cocktail tour was only mildly entertaining, but the ghost tour was great - although we kept passing other ghost tours!

Saturday, we took a break from the tourist stuff and went on a long motorcycle ride down the coast. Being bad bloggers, we didn't take any good photos - we were too busy enjoying the ride. Oh, and we saw porpoises!

 Sunday, we took one last stroll in New Orleans, this time down Canal Street.

Did we mention it was Easter Sunday? 

Of all the streets we explored, Canal was our favorite.

The architecture is beautiful,

and a bit whimsical!

The Molly Marine statue! This was the first statue of a woman in uniform erected in the United States.

Swamp Tour!

Canal Street also has palm trees

and more palm trees and

pitchforks!

Finally, we made a special trip out to Providence Memorial Park. This is a historical black cemetery and the resting place of one of my favorite singers, Johnny Adams. 

Johnny was one of the greatest soul singers who ever lived - but he preferred to stay in New Orleans. We want to thank the wonderful and kind grounds keeper who took time to direct us to Johnny's grave, even though there were several funerals going on.

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Just around the corner from Johnny is the grave site of Mahalia Jackson, the great gospel singer. 

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We spent our final day in New Orleans just chilling. We cooked out with a friend we'd met and enjoyed one last sunset.

The next morning, we packed up and headed to - Texas!

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