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Welcome to Our Photo Gallery & Travelblog
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April 2005: Drives to the Gulf Coast, Photos of Wildflowers, Tex-Mex, 30 April 2005: The Main Street of Fredericksburg is very touristy. We did enjoy a meal at Der Lindenbaum German restaurant. Tom had a sausage plate with three kinds of sausage, sauerkraut, and red cabbage. I had ham and hot potato salad. Their cakes looked delicious, but we'll have to try them another day. Tom was disappointed in their limited selection of beer. Although they list many on their menu, they have few. We were tired today from our long driving day yesterday, so our re-con didn't go much beyond Main Street. More exploring tomorrow... 30 April 2005: It was very hot yesterday, mid-90's! Thunderstorms came through this morning giving the grass and wildflowers a much needed drink and cooling the temperatures off down into the 70's. We're heading out to do a re-con of the area and to find a German restaurant and bakery. 28 April 2005: We enjoyed a tasty dinner prepared by Cloyd and Bellann in their home last night. We have enjoyed our visit with them and do plan to pass their way again. We both slept late after our late night out. Too bad Cloyd and Bellann had to work today because they could have probably used some extra snooze time, too. Now we're preparing to move on to Fredericksburg, TX in the "hill country." We will be staying at the Fredericksburg RV Park only a few blocks south of their famous Main Street. Tom is looking forward to a fine German meal and I hope to find a good German bakery! 25 April 2005: Everything in Texas is bigger, including the size of hail that fell for a few minutes today which was the size of chunky ice cubes, but not as big as golf balls! There was a tornado warning in Dallas, too. I have been thinking that the purple martins around here are quite different with their "rooster-like tails" and numerous sounds. I have learned that these are "grackles," not purple martins at all! They can number in the thousands when migrating and roosting. Sometimes, they squeal. 24 April 2005: Our local tour guides, Cloyd and Bellann, chauffered us to Ft. Worth, a real western cowboy town "Where the West Begins." Tom even bought a cowboy hat! We had dinner in an outdoor restaurant, Joe T. Garcia's, the "best Tex-Mex food" around. The menu consists of enchiladas or fajitas. Simple and tasty. We walked around the old part of town with shops, saloons, and a stockyard. We even stepped into Billy Bob's, the largest honkey-tonk in Texas. Of course, I had to buy that purple leather Indian Princess dress and moccasins for my favorite princesses, TJ and Rosie! I took my camera, but April showers dampened any opportunities for photos today. 23 April 2005: We're visiting the Dallas-Denton-Ft. Worth areas in Northern Texas with Tom's grad school pal Cloyd and his wife Bellann. Cloyd is an associate professor in Behavior Analysis at the University of North Texas. We visited the UNT college campus briefly on Saturday afternoon. 21-22 April 2005: We drove from Victoria to Denton, Texas. Patches of primroses, paintbrush, bluebonnets, vervain, winecups, blanketflowers, and coneflowers lined the highways as we traveled north. 20 April 2005: We're preparing to head north to Denton, Texas, near Dallas, to visit a grad school pal of Tom's. We'll be there for a week then head to hill country, Fredericksburg, TX. 17 April 2005: Twenty-three new photos of spring wildflowers were added to our online galleries. The Spring Flowers in Texas Gallery was growing so large that I divided it into two galleries. The most recent photos are in Gallery 2. My search to find a Mexican hat flower was successful yesterday. I also found a yellow cactus flower and a tiny, tiny pink flower that looks like a pompom or koosh ball. I'm still researching their names and will add captions as I identify them. To view these photos, visit Spring Flowers in Texas Gallery 2. 15 April 2005: Nine photos taken a week or so ago in Goliad, TX, at the Presidio La Bahia, were uploaded to our Touring USA Gallery. I went in search of different wildflowers to photograph, but I didn't see any today, maybe this weekend. 15 April 2005: TAXES DUE TODAY! We filed a few weeks ago, thanks to our great tax preparer, Barbara Martin, in Brookings, Oregon. 14 April 2005: Tom cleaned the dead bugs off of the front of the RV, by hand with Windex! That was a huge job and his muscles ache. I did five loads of laundry and edited and uploaded 20 new photos. These photos were taken in Yorktown, Texas, in an old cemetery. It seems that wildflowers love the old cemeteries that are not maintained regularly and folks are directed to visit them by the ladies at the wildflower exhibit display. I felt like I was trespassing, but visitors are encouraged to visit the old souls. There's a story on CNN website today about Actor Matthew McConaughey's travels across country in his Airstream. He is quoted as saying: "My favorite thing to do between working is go drive around the roads and highways of America camping out. So this time I'm still camping out, but I also have my house -- my canoe -- wrapped in a 'Sahara' billboard. So [I'm] combining the two -- a road trip, plus I'm selling. It's nice," said McConaughey, decked out from head to toe in "Sahara" gear, leaning casually in a director's chair and gnawing on a toothpick at Georgia's Stone Mountain Park. STONE MOUNTAIN PARK: We were camped there for several weeks. Tom saw Matthew, his "Rig", and the CNN crew. I just saw the "Rig." I was in VA at the time. Came back in time just to see his truck and trailer in the dark and he was gone the next morning. 13 April 2005: We enjoyed a warm, sunny day with temperatures in the 90's. We drove to Cuero again to look at the photography exhibit in the library. I expected all of the photos to be of wildflowers, but "flowers" was only one category. I think the photography exhibit should only be of wildflowers to support Cuero's claim of being the "Wildflower Capital of Texas" and their designated wildflower month during April. I went back to the Wildflower Specimen Exhibit to identify a purple flower in some of my photos, a vervain, a member of the verbena family. Then, we drove to Yorktown to take photos of wildflowers in the Holy Cross Catholic Church Cemetery. I will edit and upload some of these photos tomorrow to our Spring Flowers in Texas Gallery. 09 April 2005: We took a long drive to Corpus Christi to see the ocean. We saw many bays filled with dirty, muddy water, and got a peek at the ocean. The land is flat and the ocean is rather boring, just sand and sea, no rocks and no cliffs. As we drove along the street that goes by the ocean, our tires were sinking and spinning in the mounds of sand. Ruby was treated to a short ferry ride back across the bay. We did not venture into the heart of the "sparkling city by the sea." We did eat at Virginia's Restaurant on the Bay where Tom ordered the grilled grouper and I ordered the grilled chicken. Both were served on a bed of colorful white rice which had diced tomatoes, oninions, green peppers, and carrots in it. We shared a "Gooey Louie" for dessert. This is a kind of brownie with chocolate, coconut, and caramel with a graham cracker crust. It's served warm topped with whipped cream. I think that I got a mild case of food poisoning from the chicken. When I took an emergency potty break in the woods, I found myself squatting close to a real, live armadillo. Yikes! 07 April 2005: We ventured back to Cuero to visit the Wildflower Museum and Wildflower Gift Mart. Drove along several suggested routes taking photos of wildflowers that will be uploaded to our Spring Flowers in Texas Gallery tomorrow. We didn't make it as far as Brenham, so we'll get there another day. The weather continues to be sunny and warm with temperatures in the mid-80's. It looks and feels like summer here! 06 April 2005: Last night's thunderstorm cleared the air and there was much less humidity today with temperatures nearing 85, but comfortable. Tom had the flat tire repaired and washed Ruby. I ordered new, more durable glasses and went shopping for a shower caddy, but returned with more summer clothes. How does that happen?! Sadie ventured out on her own today in the comfortable air and Harry took himself for about a two hour walk this evening. He is getting very comfortable in this park and wants to claim all of it for his yard. Time for bed for all of us. Tom and I will be going on a day trip to Brenham, TX, tomorrow in search of "hills of wildflowers." Brenham has a large population of German immigrants, so perhaps we will find a German restaurant. Brenham is also home to Blue Bell ice cream. Perhaps Tom will sample it. I doubt that they will have any lactose-free ice cream for me. :-( 05 April 2005: Uploaded the missing travelogues and checked and re-checked the links so that there should be some continuation in time. That was lots of work! The weather was staying very humid, then a short-lived but strong thunder-boomer came last night complete with hail. 05 April 2005: As I was writing the fill-in-the-missing-time-periods travelogues, I decided to combine all of the photos that we took while we were in Gulf Shores, AL, into that gallery and move photos of birds and flowers and beach scenes to more appropriate galleries. 04-06 April 2005: Days spent getting chores done, working on websites, napping, reading, and letting Harry take us for walks. Sadie had another medication bath. I will order new glasses with sturdier frames because I am tough on glasses and mine keep coming apart. Tom super-glued one ear piece to the frame! We NEED to wash the RV and Ruby and get the flat tire repaired! Laundry chute is also full of dirty clothes that SMELL in hot weather. I am writing travelogues using past holiday letters to fill-in for the missing winters. These will be uploaded to the Travelogue Archives soon. Gotta get busy! How did we ever work a full-time jobs? 03 April 2005: We took a drive in search of the "funky white flower" that I have been seeing infrequently along the roads, and we found it! It's a spring spider lily that grows in marshy areas in Eastern Texas. I have been seeing it near bridges over creeks. Several photos of it and a few other wildflowers have been uploaded to our Spring Flowers in Texas Gallery. I'm still working on identifying the other flowers. 03 April 2005: Happy Anniversary! Tom and I were married seven years ago on this date. We have seen much and hope to see much more as we travel together. 02 April 2005: The computer sucked me in and I stayed inside most of this beautiful sunny, warm day. The "lost" travelogues from 2003 and 2004 were found, with Tom's help, reformatted, and archived in our travelogue section. These include the poems that I wrote on our way to and from fetching Ruby and our RV and Sadie's Saga. 01 April 2005: It was a very windy day with mostly sunshine and temperatures in the mid-70's F. We drove to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. I enjoyed seeing the wildflowers blowing in the wind along the way. In the refuge, we saw the routine wading birds--egrets, pelicans, seagulls, sandpipers, and a few osprey. Our new Canon binoculars with an image stabilization feature work great! We also saw a few deer. Folks in front of us on this driving tour stopped to take photos of a snake slithering across the road, not us. We saw a crocodile sunning with its mouth gaping open, perhaps it stays cool this way, and two alligators. Tom took the best shot of the day of an alligator's head. It has been uploaded to our Critters Gallery. |
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