Category: USTravel

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A Visit to the Capitol of Arizona

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Just over a week before Christmas, we moved to Goodyear, on the west side of Phoenix. Two days later, we were on a plane to spend the holidays with our family in Denver. We were back in our RV for the New Year, ready to go and find out just what’s on this side of the city.

Except…we came back to Goodyear with long lingering colds, and Arizona was having its winter. It was chilly, and we spent a lot of time in the RV. One day, I was ready to get out, but we needed to go somewhere indoors. We hadn’t yet visited Arizona’s capitol building, so we headed back east to downtown Phoenix.

This may seem like an odd choice, but we have visited many capitol buildings, and they are usually pretty interesting. There is something different about each one. 


Right away, I spotted the difference in Arizona’s capitol building. It’s a museum. The state grew out of its building pretty quickly, and in 1960 constructed both a house and a senate building. 

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From where I was standing to take the Capitol building picture, the House of Representatives and the Senate buildings were on my right and left.

A Capitol docent was on hand as we stepped into the building. He made sure we knew that there is no fancy architecture here or impressive sculptures as in other state capitols. During the time of its construction in 1900, money was tight and the entire cost of the construction was a mere $135,000.00. Arizona was only a territory until statehood came in 1912. Even the copper dome on top was just painted on for its first 75 years, until the Arizona Mining Association donated the material for the real deal. This was a low budget build.

We walked through the original senate room, where the statue of a man presided over an empty room. Empty, that is, except for Cal over there on the right. Together, they look like they’re studying something up on the balcony.

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I thought this was a little strange, but a small plaque on his desk told me who he was: none other than George W.P. Hunt, first governor of Arizona. He also served in both houses of the Arizona Territorial Legislature. Interesting piece of trivia – his burial spot is in a gleaming pyramid on a hill in Papago Park overlooking the Phoenix Airport. Jets are flying right over him in perpetuity.

Other than the legislature, the rooms on all four floors are for exhibits now. The first one we came to was a room dedicated to the USS Arizona, a battleship that was sunk during the attack at Pearl Harbor. Although it is now at the bottom of the sea and part of the memorial there, a piece of it is right here in the capitol building.

Across the hall is an exhibit dedicated to Buffalo Soldiers. They were the first African American soldiers to serve at Fort Huachuca back in the late 1800’s. Having spent time at that military post both when Cal was in the Army and at the RV park there two years ago, it was like greeting old friends. 

We looked at the exhibit, and then went into a room where they detailed the lives of some of the soldiers. I was interested in one in particular: Private Cathay Williams. It turns out that Cathay was a woman, although her picture is a fictionalized version of what she was thought to look like.

Born into slavery, Cathay experienced great discrimination and oppression in her life. Only being able to cook and clean after emancipation, she joined the military to be able to make her own way. Being 5’9″ tall, she was able to conceal her identity for a full two years, until a smallpox outbreak put her in the hospital. She was then discharged. The military denied her a pension even though she suffered ill health for the rest of her life as a result of her service. If she didn’t receive the honor she deserved in life, I’m glad her story is here in the Capitol for all to learn about.

A model railroad is set up in another room. The train runs the length of the state of Arizona in the exhibit. One of the engineers was on hand to point out the points of interest in various “towns” and natural features – including the Grand Canyon – that the train passes.

The life of Sandra Day O’Connor is also highlighted in the capitol building. She was the first female Supreme Court justice, and she grew up on a family cattle ranch near Duncan, Arizona.

When we visited, there was also an art exhibit of paintings solely by Arizona women artists. I liked this painting, called “Laughter in Creases”, by Christina Carmel.

The results of the 1912 election are written on the wall on the first floor. It was the first election after statehood, and in this election, women were given the right to vote. Nationally, this did not happen until 1920.

When we reached the top floor, we could look all the way down to the first floor and the mosaic of the state seal.

There were many other items of interest here which I haven’t covered. We found this to be a great way to pass a dreary and cool winter morning.

Next time – wrapping up our Phoenix-area stay

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Saguaro Lake and the Wild Horses of the Salt River, Arizona

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The distance from our abode at Lost Dutchman State Park to our next stay at Gold Canyon RV Park was a grand total of eight miles away. For all that, our forty-day stay there might have been a world away in comparison. We enjoyed happy-hour music on the bistro patio while watching the Superstition mountains turn red, a golf-cart Christmas parade and a choir concert, and watching folks playing (or trying to play) glow-in-the-dark golf one evening as we took in our evening walk. It is a fun and welcoming place, which is why we returned. We’d stayed here two years ago.

We are already gone from there, though. Joe Friday from Dragnet comes to mind with the quote: “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” In this case, “just the highlights”. When I think of the highlights from our Gold Canyon stay, it is the the wild horses of the Salt River that I think of first.

During our last stay at Gold Canyon, I’d heard about the horses and wanted to see them, but didn’t know where to find them. This time, I received information on two possibilities. 

We headed east a little bit before driving north of Mesa into the Tonto National Forest, leaving the Superstitions behind us and going into the Four Peaks mountain area. This was new territory to us and we enjoyed the drive. 

Our first stop this day was Coon Bluff Rec Area. It is a pretty spot with mesquite trees lining the high banks of the Salt River. Many bird watchers were out on this sunny day. I don’t know if they were successful in their bird sightings, but we didn’t have luck seeing the horses here. Still, it was pretty enough for a picture, horses or no.

Our second lead for possible horse sightings was Blue Point Rec area. We continued down the road, and just as we were on the bridge before the turnoff I saw them: several beautiful horses in the river! We turned into the Pebble Beach area across the road from Blue Point.

Except for one thirsty horse, they came up from the river soon after our arrival. We discovered there was a group of about eight, although they didn’t stay together.

They seemed aware of us but not afraid, moving not too far away as they munched their way up into the desert.

The horses are descendants of those brought here by the Spanish missionaries in the 1600’s when they were establishing their new churches. They are wild, but of course not indigenous. As such, they have had a long and fraught history. Their numbers multiplied more than local ranchers and the government would have liked, so they have been hunted and their numbers culled. Because of the dense vegetation along the river where horses could hide, however, many survived.

Several of them came up from the riverbank and I sat down on a rock to watch the show. They were unafraid of us but I did not want to come too close.

Today, the horses of the Salt River are protected and managed. It is thought that there are around three hundred of them, maybe more. There is an effort, through birth control, to reduce the herd down to one hundred. The horses do have predators: I was briefly a member of their Facebook group, and one of the new colts had just fallen prey to a mountain lion.

As we walked back to the car, the horses seemed to follow us.

We weren’t ready to head home yet after all that excitement, so we moved up the road a short way to Saguaro Lake. We turned into the marina and drove around to a fishing dock where a blue heron was perched.

I usually can never, ever get a shot of a heron from this distance. They are aware of me long before I can focus my phone. I soon discovered the reason why this one was sticking around. A fisherman was throwing his small unwanted catch over to the heron.

We watched as he did this. A hopeful crow fluttered down next to the fish, but waited for the heron first. Snap! That fish was gone quick as a flash!

We returned to Saguaro Lake a few weeks later to ride its tour boat, the Desert Belle. For an hour and a half, we were treated to pretty mountain and desert views as we circled the lake.

A forest of saguaros grows on a hillside on one corner of the lake, where the sun and moisture are most favorable.

As the boat rounded the back of the lake, we found one of those most elusive of saguaros: the crested saguaro. For every 200,000 saguaros that there are, there is only one that is crested. We saw two or three during our last winter in Arizona, so now we can add this one to our list.

At the beginning of this blog, I noted that we were in the Four Peaks region of the Tonto National Forest. From the lake, we could see those peaks off in the distance.

The captain told us that there is an amethyst mine nestled below the peaks.

Bighorn sheep live here, but there were none to be seen today. We did, however, see eagles, and I switched my phone out for my camera to get this shot of one high on the rocks.

He also told us that there are actually four lakes created by damming the Salt River. From where we were, at Saguaro Lake, they go off to the east. If you think of the dams as a “scar” on the land, you can remember the names of the lakes that way: Saguaro, Canyon (in the Superstition Mountains), Apache, and Roosevelt.

One last shot of the lake for you – if you can see it, there is a rock formation that looks like an elephant. Appropriately, it is called Elephant Rock.

There were other adventures during our Gold Canyon stay, but I’ll save them for another time, perhaps. We’re on the move!

Next time – visiting Arizona’s Capitol Museum

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A Desert Stay at Lost Dutchman State Park, Arizona

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The Twosna Travelers hope you had a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a happy New Year, where ever it was you celebrated!

I have been a little quiet this past month on this blog. It was partly due to the holidays, partly due to relief at having finally finished my Europe blogs, and definitely due to Internet issues at the park we were at. This was not an inexpensive park; why was it so difficult to connect? Or, was it because my computer is now seven years old? Adding to this, the cable for our new phones will not fit my computer. This is how I transfer pictures. I can upload from Google Photos for now, but I’m probably going to have to address this sooner than later. If anyone has good ideas for me, I’m all ears.

For the third year in a row, we beat it out of Denver on November 1. There were several nightly stops in New Mexico but we did not stick around long; it was too cold there last year. This desert spot at Lost Dutchman, outside of Apache Junction, was our first destination. The warm sun was balm to our bones after the cooling temperatures in Denver.

It may not look like heaven, but perhaps a different perspective will change your opinion. We were situated in direct view of the the gorgeous Superstition Mountain range.

Every time I went for a walk around the campground loops, I would catch sight of several Gambel’s quail or at least one roadrunner, and I loved being back in the saguaro cactus forest. You can see a roadrunner on the rocks at the bottom of the picture below.

We came to Lost Dutchman to retreat, unwind, and hike. Our best hike was up in the shadows of the mountain on the Treasure Loop trail. We passed stands of other-worldly cholla on the way up.

Now, we could see close up the rock formations we had wondered about from our lawn chairs the night before.

The trail is also enjoyed by horseback riders.

Up at the part of the trail with highest elevation, we could see Phoenix in the distance and more mountains beyond. The city lies inside a ring of small mountain ranges, and the entire Phoenix area is known as “The Valley”.

Also at the top were weird rock formations–

and behind us, tucked into the mountain’s wall, a natural arch. It is on the right side of this picture.

If I ever make a list of the “Ten Favorite Things I’ve Learned While RV’ing”, one of those things would be this: that the setting sun on one horizon bathes mountainsides on the opposite horizon in a red glow before sunset. We first witnessed this at Big Bend National Park in Texas, and we have seen it in several places throughout the Southwest since then. It is a sight that thrills us every time, and the Superstitions were no exception. We pull up our lawn chairs for the brief show.

Compare this picture of the Superstition sunset glow to the daytime Superstition picture I posted above.

We never tire of this sight. We moved from here to an RV park where we could still see the Superstitions, and it has become one of my favorite mountain ranges.

Next time: horsing around by the Salt River

Life in General · USTravel

“Home” Again in St. Peters, Missouri

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We left this place two years and two months ago to begin our full-time RV life, and haven’t returned. It was exactly a year after the Covid pandemic began. Cal was happy to finally be leaving the Midwest. I was happy to be off on our new adventure. Life has taken us elsewhere, but a special wedding brought us back.

The RV park in which we stayed in for the week, 370 Lakeside Park, is one that we visited many times when we first purchased our RV. It was close to our apartment. As soon as we received a wedding date, I was on the phone and booking my coveted spot.

This is in the back row of the park closest to the lake and the bike path. Score for me! I had never been so lucky as to be able to book this when we had previously stayed.

As always, the geese are here in plentiful numbers.

The wedding was for our godson, Chip, and his bride Jessica. It was held at our former church in Florissant, and the reception was in downtown St. Louis. We had a great time and wish them well in their new life.

Chip and his siblings, Shannon and Megan, grew up with our daughters.

Chip’s parent’s, Kris and Rusty, are our good friends and we were happy to see them again.

As it got dark, the lights in the reception room reflected outside the window, together with the full moon, for a surreal picture.

After the wedding events were over, we spent time with my sister Diana, my brother-in-law John, and their daughter Melissa and her family. We met Diana, John and their granddaughter at Blanchette Park, where there are some pretty gardens.

From Austin to St. Peters, we experienced spring over and over!

Clarissa, Diana and John in the gardens. It was a hot afternoon and we didn’t stay long.

And then…my blogging world met my real world. We had a lunch date with Betty and Dan Chambers. Betty has been one of my best followers on this blog, usually leaving thoughtful comments on what she has read. She also writes her own engaging blog, Chambers on the Road. I enjoy reading that, and in the past few months she has gone a step further and written an an e-book: RVing with Bikes.

We met at a little lunch restaurant, Lady Di’s, and were still visiting when the place closed for the afternoon! There was so much to talk about. We were on the patio, so we were able to stay long past their closing time. Although we had just met in person, it felt as if we had been friends for a good long while. They have kept their home in the area, but they like traveling with their RV and enjoy their e-bikes.

The week was a whirlwind of many family and friends to visit. One day I ate all three meals in restaurants or had carryout with three different groups of people. We saw many old friends from our church, and I also had a lunch with my former colleagues.

We decided to take one day out on our own to visit the aquarium and wheel at Union Station in downtown St. Louis. Both opened back when Covid was just beginning, so we were not able to go there before we left.

An immense tank around and above us in “Shark Canyon” included sandbar sharks, sting rays, and many varieties of fish

When our kids were young, we would often visit Union Station downtown. In the early 1900’s and in war time, it was a busy rail station. Fast forward to the late 1900’s when we were often visiting, it was a shopping mall with interesting one-of-a-kind stores, train memorabilia and a fun fudge shop where the workers had a whole “makin’ the fudge” show. The historic adjoining hotel had some pretty cool architectural features that even the kids found fun. They could stand in one part of an archway, whisper into the wall, and someone on the other side of the archway could hear them.

An encounter with an octopus
See its little eye peering at me?

It’s exciting that St. Louis has an aquarium finally, and it’s not large, but I think they did a good job. The old mall went defunct and this is an excellent alternative. I just think it’s a little overpriced, and there is no price bundling with all the other attractions outside.

We did pony up to ride the wheel, though. It was a beautiful morning and we enjoyed seeing a different kind of view over St. Louis.

This is St. Louis’s brand new soccer stadium, which wasn’t finished yet when we left.

On our last evening, Diana, John, Cal and I brought Chinese dinner over to Darlene, who is a mutual friend of all of us. She lives just two doors down from our old house. We looked around our old neighborhood and it felt strange that we no longer call it home. Our house now has play toys in the front yard, and I’m happy to hear that there is a child growing up there.

Darlene was excited. She had the Corvette refurbished that she and her husband had dated in long ago. He passed away before he could begin his retirement dream to work on it. After a year in repair, she had just received it back and was proud to show it off. It’s a beaut!

It all happened so fast, and then we were gone. I have much to blog about regarding the rest of our journey to Denver. We’ve had busy lives since we arrived, and family obligations are now calling me.

I’m going to finish my Europe blogs, mostly without interruptions, till they are finished. Already it has been over a year since we arrived in Ireland so, while I’m writing, I figure that I can relive those memories at the same time of year as they happened. What is the next country we visited? Hmmm….

Next time – back to Europe

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An (almost) Perfect Roadtrip North

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An idyllic stay at Coulter Farmstead

We had four days and three nights to move our RV from Austin, Texas to St. Peters, Missouri. When looking for our evening stops, I usually search the state and COE parks first, and then see if there are any Harvest Host establishments on our route. This, in addition to making sure that the drive time for Cal is in manageable time chunks. I’m not always lucky on this score, but I hit the ball out of the park on this trip.

Tyler State Park marked our last night in Texas. We had been in the state for almost six months.

Our drive from Waco to this pretty spot near Tyler, Texas was on a curving state route with green woods, rolling hills and fields that were carpeted with blooming flowers in shades of yellow, pink and blue. The park itself is also hilly, in a piney woods next to a small lake. It was relaxing place to stop and unwind from the day, and take in a hike or two.

A resident raccoon ambled through now and again, scavenging for a bite to eat. Sadly for this raccoon, signs around the campground admonished us sternly not to feed the wildlife.

All is not as perfect as it would seem, however. Google directed us to the wrong side of the park, necessitating a drive the long way around on the country roads. That beautiful road in from Waco was bumpy, so many things in the trailer got jostled around. When I opened up the cupboard housing my spices, the turmeric fell out, the lid smashed, and…. well, we had a bit of a yellow floor for a little while. The shelf in my closet which has a clothing rod under it also fell sometime during the day. Hmmm…could it be I had too many books sitting on it?

As I was strolling around the campground, I noticed a stand of firewood for sale. Next to it, a Little Free Library! I had never seen one in a state park campground before. I took this as a direct message from God, the universe, whatever, and hoofed it back to our site. I filled up that Little Free Library with an overflow of unread books that I’d picked up from other free libraries and swap shelves. I was a little sorry to see some of them go, but I will always pick up more.

The rest of our trip was thankfully uneventful and Cal has since repaired my little shelf securely with several screws.

We spent the next evening at Coulter Farms and Historic Wolff Mercantile, a Harvest Host stop near Washington, Arkansas which is pictured at the top of this blog. Justice and Katie, the owners of this paradise, have moved several historic buildings, including old cabins, to their bed and breakfast establishment. The Mercantile is a little gift shop and they also sell frozen meals.

They own the cutest little Highland cow, and several goats. Justice gave us a little bag of feed to give to them.

Their dog, Abel, helpfully carried the feed bag for us, even when it was empty.

There were also curly-haired pigs to see, as well as their cat. Altogether, it is a very beautiful and peaceful setting.

The town of Washington, Arkansas is itself a state park. In the 1800’s, it was a stop on the Southwest Trail and for a couple of years served as the Confederate capital of Arkansas. Goodlett Cotton Gin, dating back to 1883, is in the front of the property we were staying on.

The post office in Washington has the honor of being the oldest facility in Arkansas, dating back to 1820. The Bowie knife also originated here.

Walking into town after dinner provided some evening’s entertainment, but all the buildings that have been restored or converted into museums were closed. In the morning, of course, we were on our way before they opened.

On our way, that is, after we had a delicious breakfast of hot and tasty egg souffle, muffins, yogurt parfait and orange juice delivered to our RV. That was a treat!

We were in northern Arkansas for the next evening’s stop at Davidsonville Historic State Park. This is another small park, easy to get to, with the full hookups that Cal likes. It is right on the edge of the Ozark hills.

This time our site came with a cat. He was very friendly and affectionate, and seemed well fed. I’m hoping that the park rangers in the visitors center across the street are feeding him and keeping an eye on him.

This park takes the visitor even further back in time than Washington, Arkansas. The old streets are here but the buildings are gone. Archaeological digs have been done here to determine where they were and to search for artifacts. Davidsonville was one of Arkansas Territory’s first settlements in 1815. There is evidence that French colonists were here even earlier, and Native Americans used the site as early as 4,000 B.C.

Ghost structures show the outline of a few buildings. Washington may have had the first postal facility, but Davidsonville had the first postal stop. It was in Adam Richey’s house in 1817. His former house is one of the ghost structures.

Unlike the way we send mail today, a letter in those days was sent without postage. When a person went to pick their mail up at Adam’s house, they paid for it at that time. Mail only ran once a month.

Davidsonville also has a pretty little lake.

A good place to stay for the night certainly makes the trip shorter and a whole lot more fun.

Next time – we arrive at “home base”

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Visiting our 36th President in Johnsonville, West of Austin

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Do you recognize this person? The guy on the right is who I mean. By now, you probably recognize my husband Cal, on the left. Lyndon Baines Johnson (often called LBJ) was our 36th president from 1963 to 1969. We spent a day in and around the Hill Country town of Johnson City, Texas. When you look at the whole of it, to go back into LBJ’s life in Texas is to go back in time to the earliest days of Texas settlement. That includes both ranching and cotton farming, and a whole way of life that is gone now.

Despite doing a little research, I wasn’t sure where we should start. We ended up visiting the National Historical Park in town first. Johnson City was settled in 1879 by a person named James Polk Johnson, for whom the town is named. Another early settler was Sam E. Johnson, Sr., who was Lyndon’s grandfather and James’s uncle. From what we heard, practically everyone in town is related to some branch of the Johnson family somehow. The National Historical Park has a little museum, and when we stepped in, a docent was ready to take us right back out and down the street for a tour of LBJ’s boyhood home.

Young Lyndon lived here from the age of five until he left home for college. He had three sisters and a brother, all of whom were younger than he. The inside of the house is shown as it would have been during his teen years. His sisters all had the front bedroom with windows that you can see behind the bush. He and his brother had a bedroom right behind their parents’ room, so there was no sneaking out after bedtime!

It was from this front porch that LBJ announced his first foray into politics: his candidacy for the House of Representatives, which he won in 1937.

After visiting the museum, it was a pleasant little walk to the Johnson Settlement. There are historic buildings here to give the story of Texas frontier ranching life. I was a little disappointed to see that all of the buildings in this area were either closed or under reconstruction. LBJ’s grandparents’ cabin is shown below on the right. They moved in in 1867 and lived out their lives here.

LBJ’s grandfather and uncle had a cattle droving business. As a nod to Texas ranching history, a couple of iconic Texas longhorn steers were out in the little pasture. This one stopped to pose nicely for me:

From Johnson City, it is fourteen miles out to the LBJ Ranch District area of the National Historical Park. It was time for lunch, so we had a little picnic in the cab of the truck. It was a cool day, and rain threatened. The picturesque Pedernales River was in view.

Most of my reason for wanting to visit the LBJ Ranch was that I had visited here already many years ago and remembered how fun it was. I think I was here twice: once on a tour from Ft. Hood, where I was stationed, and once when my parents came down to visit. It’s all very fuzzy, but I remember riding all around the ranch in something like a golf cart. A ranger at the office told me that it was a 10-person tram. The tour did not start until every seat was full! I wouldn’t want to be the person who arrived just after the tram had left.

It is all different today, and to me it’s a little confusing until you are there. When you follow the sign in to the ranch, you are in the LBJ State Park and Historic Site. You buy your tickets for the national park in the visitors center of the state park unless you already have a pass. In the state park is also the Sauer-Beckmann Living History Museum. You can see it or skip it. Then you drive down the road, cross the Pedernales River which separates the two parks, and you are on the ranch. It is a neatly mapped out park road now; no more trams.

The state park offers a little detour from the Johnson history. There was this little display in the visitor center which showed what various cultures on the land would have had to eat, going back in time. I thought all of them sounded good.

The living history farm in the state park takes the visitor back in time to 1918.

The Sauers moved here from Germany in 1869, built their log cabin, and later a frame house next to it. They farmed and raised cattle and sheep. They lived their lives here, adding to the land, and then sold the farm to the Beckmann family in 1900. The Beckmanns raised cotton.

This is a “living history” farm in that the rangers are dressed as they would have been in 1918. They care for the animals. They gather eggs, cook, clean, work in the garden, make lye soap and do seasonal chores such as canning and slaughtering. Here’s the thing: what they eat for lunch has to be whatever they have produced on the farm. The rangers admitted that sometimes it gets a little challenging to put it together.

The last Beckmann descendent died in the 1960’s. When the state park took it over, they put the farm into a time machine. They took out the shag carpeting, the appliances, and all the hookups to electric, water and sewer. The farm transformed into what it had been.

In 1918, Lyndon Johnson was a boy. The family had land here and sometimes retreated to the old farm when times were hard. The Beckmanns were his neighbors.

What was fascinating to me was that in 1918 my own mother was almost five years old and living on a farm in Michigan. As I walked through the house I took myself back in time, imagining that maybe her house looked a little like this, too.

Would her family have used these medicines?

The day was already getting on and we needed to get ourselves over to the ranch.

We passed the school where 4-year-old Lyndon started his education. We stopped to look at his birthplace, but the house that is there now is reconstructed; LBJ as President turned it into a guesthouse. Instead of that house, I decided to show you a view of the ranch from out back. The beautiful yellow flowers were in bloom in fields all over Texas.

LBJ’s grandparents moved out here from the cabin near town. They lived the rest of their lives in a house near this spot.

Across the road from both houses is the Johnson family cemetery. This is where both LBJ and his wife are buried. It’s a peaceful place overlooking the river.

The ranch maintains a herd of longhorn cattle which roam freely. We had to be sure to watch out for them, and not run over any young calves, as we drove the ranch roads. The Sauer-Beckmann farm has cattle, too, and I don’t think they needed any more beef.

The cattle are cared for in a “show barn” area but we did not stop there.

Our last stop was the highlight: the “Texas White House”. This was the original rock farmhouse on the property and LBJ’s refuge. It was enlarged over the years and added on to so many times that now there are structural issues. There is massive reconstruction going on so for that reason the house is currently closed. I was able to walk around part of it. Imagine all the barbeques on this lawn, with the famous politicians of the day in attendance!

A small airfield was constructed on the ranch for LBJ’s arrival. His plane was called “Airforce One-Half” because Airforce One was too large to land here. He would fly into Randolph Airforce Base near San Antonio, and then embark on this plane for the ride home.

LBJ was vice-president under John F. Kennedy, and was sworn into office upon his death. At the end of his term he successfully ran for president again. He could have run for a second term but the Vietnam War was becoming a major problem and he declined, choosing instead to retire to his central Texas ranch. He only had four years of retirement when he passed suddenly of a heart attack.

We have come to the end of our Austin time, and indeed, as I’m writing this, it is almost two months later and we are far away from there. There is much to tell you about our travels as we have continued down the road. However, I’m going to pick up my blogs again from our trip to Europe last year first for a few weeks.

At our RV park, we were in exactly the same site as we had been in two years ago and had made friends with the cat that the permanent RV dwellers next door owned. When we arrived for this stay, Pumpkin appeared shyly from under the trees. As soon as I called her name, she ran to me. We bonded again for the month we were here and she could often be found snoozing on one of our lawn chairs. It was bittersweet because we will never have this site again. The park is making it a site for permanent dwellers only. I’ll leave you for now with a picture of me and my special friend.

Next time – back to England with a tour of Stonehenge and the Cotswolds

USTravel

Longhorn Cavern West of Austin

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Not far from the bluebonnet fields of Muleshoe Bend lies a Texas state park called Longhorn Cavern. The entire purpose of this small park is for its cave tours. We drove right past this park a couple of years ago on the way to another state park, Inks Lake, which is only six miles down the road from Longhorn Cavern and is itself another great park to visit. It’s a beautiful drive through rolling hills with spring wildflowers and longhorn cattle in view.

Natives used this cave as a Comanche Indian Council room. An outlaw by the name of Sam Bass used it as a hideout. Just before the cave was purchased by the state in the mid-1930’s, it was used as a speakeasy nightclub complete with dance floor and a kitchen. Once the state purchased it, the cave was completely readied for tours by the CCC boys. This was prime CCC time. Our tour group gathered in this pavilion below, which they built solely for that purpose from local limestone. The craftsmanship is admirable.

From this building, it was a short walk over and down to the cave. I captured these views as we were going in.

Every cave I’ve visited is different from every other one. I like to see what new thing each cave is going to show me. For starters, I’ve never been in a cave that was totally developed by the CCC. They removed 2.5 tons of silt, debris and bat guano, and they built stairs and walkways. Their entire long days were spent working down underground with candlelight. For that, they were paid a dollar a day.

Longhorn was formed long ago by underground flowing rivers, which makes it unique. Most caves are formed by water sinking down through the earth. The flowing water sculpted beautiful works of rock art.

The CCC workers found this “dog” further back in the canyon and moved it up to where it could be seen better. They were working back in the day when it wasn’t common knowledge that caves should be left in their natural state. Mother Nature carved this sculpture out of magnesium-rich dolomite rock.

Because of flowing rather than dripping water, this cave is not resplendent with stalactites and stalagmites. It did fold some of them in with its sculpted rock art, though.

There is a colony of 80 to 100 tricolored bats here. Of course, they were snoozing away, so we were admonished not to disturb them and not to use flash on our cameras if we wanted to take a picture. Our daughter, Katie, was particularly good at spotting them.

The thing that made this cave a standout for me, though, was an area lined with calcite crystals. There were so many in one place in the cave that our tour could divide as we wished through two tunnels left or right, circle around back to the main tunnel, and go see the other side. They glittered in the dim light. Wow!

I learned a new word in the cave – “pareidolia”. It is the human ability to see shapes or pictures out of something random. For example, “cave bacon” is simply flowstone which looks very much like real bacon. Our guide showed us many formations that looked like something familiar and, for fun, urged us to find our own pereidolia. She showed us this face made from light and rock:

Can you see a man’s face?

The tour was a full hour and a half and it was well worth the ticket price. Coming back up, my daughter and I stopped for a picture under the CCC’s beautiful stone archway:

Above ground, there are a few trails in this small day-use park, and the CCC built a tower here also. Climbing it gives a view of the Hill Country all around. But I can’t tell you more than that, because it was lunchtime. We were all hungry, so we skipped it.

The best stop here that we’ve found for lunch is in nearby Marble Falls, at Blue Bonnet Cafe. Cal and I had stopped here for their renowned pie once, and this time we discovered they do a great lunch too. It was a Saturday, and there was a line, but it moved quickly.

There was one more destination I wanted to see in the Hills area, and I will save that for my next and last posting of “West of Austin”.

Next time – we visit a past President of the United States

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Bluebonnet Bonanza West of Austin

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West of Austin–a bounty of beautiful hills, rivers, parks, historic towns, wineries, and destinations for a day or more. Instead of jamming everything together in my usual fashion, I decided to write a series of three shorter blogs about three destinations in this area. Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area will be the first.

We started to see them when we were in Corpus Christi. And then, driving into central Texas, they carpeted the roads and the fields. Beautiful swaths of color: blue, orange, pink, white. Sometimes just one color, sometimes two or more mixed in. Texas’s highways and byways in the spring are not to be missed. What am I talking about? The wildflowers, of course! If you have not been to Texas in late March or early April, it should really be on your calendar for next year. And now, I can tell you where the Shangri La of Texas wildflowers is: Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area.

Muleshoe Bend is an LCRA park, the same as South Shore Lake Bastrop where we had stayed earlier. LCRA stands for Lower Colorado River Authority, a non-profit public utility that provides water stewardship and electric energy. While at South Shore, I picked up a little magazine that listed all of the LCRA parks. Next to the write-up for Muleshoe Bend was a glossy picture of fields of bluebonnets. Wildflower heaven! This was to be our first weekday trip for our Austin stay; the flowers along the roadways seemed to be at their height of blooming and I did not want to miss them.

I didn’t know if the magazine had overhyped the flowers. Arriving in the park, we stopped to look at a map and found a trail to hike. While looking at the map, I noticed a small handmade sign close to the ground that said just: “Flowers”, with an arrow. We decided to follow that first. The road was dirt, dry and dusty. There were more signs so we kept going. And then, this:

The picture above was my first look, and it was only in one direction. There was more! Here I am, as happy as can be, in those beautiful bluebonnets:

All was quiet here, except for the seed pods on these bushes clacking in the wind:

We hiked, we took in the flowers and the views, listened to the wind and the pods and the birds, watched tiny butterflies flit about, and I took the time just to be still with the camera put away. A place like this is good for the soul.

The whole huge area is bounded on one side by the Colorado River. The river here was very low when we visited. There are a few houses on the bluff high above. It looked like the steps behind their houses were supposed to go down to boat docks in the river below, but the docks are sitting on weeds. It’s been a long time since the river has been at capacity. You can see one or two houses in the background of this photo:

The river is still there, although you can’t see it in the above picture. Here is a better view below. In light of all the beautiful flowers, I wasn’t focused on taking pictures of it.

We abandoned the trail we were going to hike. There is another, going through the flowers and around the hillside, that we ended up on while flower gazing. Or maybe it’s a park road, I don’t know.

There was an eye-catching area filled with white prickly poppies, too.

I thought that seeing the massive splendor of all of the flowers here was almost as good as visiting the monarch butterflies in their migrating place in Mexico this past early March. And that is saying a lot.

I wouldn’t come here on a Saturday or Sunday, though! I’m sure that on the weekend, with flowers in bloom, that this place is packed.

Next time – we go underground

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Exploring Austin’s Creative Side

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Sometimes one thing just leads to another. It all started with the Bullock Museum in Austin.

I’m the lucky recipient of occasional e-mails from Texas State Parks. One of those e-mails caught my attention: a curated collection of paintings of various Texas state parks was being held at the Bullock Museum in Austin. It was to celebrate the centennial of the Texas park system. Well, that sounded interesting. But the Bullock Museum is in downtown Austin, somewhere we don’t typically venture with our Ford F350 truck. The parking garage ceiling is too low for us to park in. I talked about it with our daughter Katie and she offered to take us.

At her suggestion, we started the day out at the Kerby Lane restaurant’s original downtown location for a delicious breakfast. Afterward, there was time before the Bullock opened to stroll along the new walkway to the state capitol building. It is lined with sculptures of animals indigenous to Texas, which is where I saw the armadillo that you see at the top.

The Bullock Museum is the history museum for the state of Texas. The exhibit was on the top floor, so I was diverted by all the displays that we saw before we ever got up there. First up was a room of traditional handmade dresses from every state in Mexico. Cal gave it a quick walk-through, but I was fascinated. Look at the hand embroidery on this dress!

There were many other things that he found more interesting, such as the reconstructed hull of the French ship La Belle that went down in the late 1600’s and was found in the sands of Matagorda Bay in 1995. The ruins as they were found were in 600 pieces. Many artifacts are on display that had been on the ship, including things that new settlers might need for a new colony.

And here is this fiftieth anniversary model Ford F100, built in their Dallas plant in 1953:

We finally arrived at the “Art of Texas State Parks” exhibition. To celebrate the state park system’s 100th birthday, the parks and wildlife department commissioned thirty Texan artists to paint scenes from their parks. There is a lot of diversity in ecosystems as well as history in the parks, as we have found. The Texas state parks that we have been to are some of the best that we have seen anywhere. Some of the art was too contemporary for my taste, but I enjoyed seeing many others both from parks that we had been to, and ones we hadn’t. Some parks have been added to my “must see” list based on their picture. For example, this one:

It is of Caprock Canyons State Park up near the panhandle of Texas, south of Amarillo. The artwork is entitled “Caprock Morning Ritual” and the artist is Jeri Salter. There really is a herd of bison in the park.

In the museum is a statue of Sam Houston, one of the founders of the state of Texas. The sculptor was Elisabet Ney, who lived from 1833 to 1907. Being a rare female sculptor, she caught Katie’s attention. Katie discovered that her studio is an Austin museum and they were having an “Elisabet Ney Day” three weeks hence. She wanted to go, and I agreed, so we made a very fun girls’ day out of it.

Elisabet Ney was born in Germany and spent half of her career there. She sculpted German luminaries such as Jakob Grimm, the author of fairy tales, and politicians such as Otto von Bismarck. She was a feminist before her time and a very independent thinker. Despite her parents’ wishes she went to the Sculptor School in Berlin. Later she fell in love with Edmund Montgomery, a philosopher, and they married in secret. Eventually they immigrated and bought a plantation in Texas called Liendo. The quiet farm life was great for her husband’s work but when her monuments and busts of prominent politicians became popular she built a studio in Austin.

I didn’t know any of this when we came to the studio. When we drove up to it I thought it was all grown up in weeds!

It is a villa built after the style of castles in her beloved Germany, complete with tower. The “weeds” are actually beautiful wildflowers flourishing alongside little pathways through the property. The whole place is perfect for an artist who needs to create. You can just imagine what the residents of this brand-new fashionable Hyde park neighborhood thought about this at the time, though. Elizabet sometimes wore pants, wore her curly hair short, and had kept her maiden name, so I’m sure that added to the chatter.

Walking in, my jaw dropped. Here was a bust of someone I recognized immediately. What….? I turned around, and there was a full size statue of the man I recognized. I didn’t know about Elisabet’s German connection yet but I was about to find out from the docent that you can just barely see on the left of Ludwig.

This is none other than King Ludwig II of Bavaria, whom she sculpted in 1870. I’ve learned his story well during the times I have lived and traveled in Germany. Elisabet wrote a letter to him requesting to sculpt him, and he agreed. He put her up in a villa and had a hall set up as a studio for her. She is the only person he ever allowed to make a statue and bust of him. She got tired of the publicity and court gossip that ensued, though, and immigrated shortly thereafter.

Much of her work is displayed in the studio, including busts of important Texans in the day. And there is this:

Elisabet had sculpted the Greek Titan Prometheus while in Germany and had it shipped to her studio. The arm was damaged in transport. It was while she was repairing it here in the studio that she suffered a fatal heart attack and died at the age of 74.

We decided it would be fun to have a tower in one’s studio, or even having a studio to create in. Here’s a picture of Katie climbing the tower steps.

I could not find much about Elisabet Ney on the Internet. Her story is fascinating, and I decided that someone needs to do a historical fiction novel based on her life. It won’t be me, though!

And the “Elisabet Ney Day” that brought us here? It was an Earth Day celebration on the back portion of her property, with mostly activities for children under several picnic canopies.

Our next stop after the Ney museum was the Austin Creative Reuse Center, a non-profit shop that accepts donations of craft supplies for resale. Katie had taken me here several years ago. They shut down during Covid and now have reopened in a larger space. If you have any sort of craft hobby you could probably find items for your projects here at a very low cost. It is a place that is entertaining to poke around in.

A purplish unicorn greeted us when we walked in the door. There was a list of things that had gone into its creation which I can’t remember now, but I’m sure it included toilet paper and paper towel rolls, and Mardi Gras beads.

Also in the photo is a chair made from old tires. Some people are blessed with a creative talent that I don’t have.

You probably don’t come here with a list of things you want since you don’t know what you will find. I purchased four manila envelopes, a mini stapler, a thick wad of scrapbooking paper, some postcards, and a counted cross stitch pattern of a picture of bluebonnets, all for the paltry sum of $5.34.

It was while we were out that Katie mentioned that the “Greater Austin Clay Studio Tour” was happening the next day. We decided to do that, too. Fifteen pottery studios around Austin opened their doors for the weekend. Of course, we did not go to all of them, but Katie was driving all over town just for the few that we did visit.

Some studios were in people’s homes. Sarah German of Sarah German Ceramics had her garage open for sales and she was also demonstrating a technique to make the mugs that you see on this shelf. Other clay creators were here too, and I’m sure they found it interesting to see what their colleagues are doing. I really like her work but there is no place for anything like this in an RV.

Her studio is a separate little building in the back yard and it was open for visitors. It is a contemporary, airy studio perfect for creating. I may not work with clay, but I would love having a space like this.

How does this studio compare to Elizabet Ney’s? Well, both are for creating, but that’s where the similarities stop! This one is probably far better suited to today’s artist.

Many of the studios were in commercial buildings. They offer classes for amateurs like us, which might be fun another time when I’m in town.

I used to buy a lot of pottery – functional stuff for the kitchen, mostly. I had to get rid of a lot of it when we cleared out the house. I bought nothing on this day, but enjoyed looking at everything for sale and at the various studios.

Visiting all of these places got my creative juices flowing. But I don’t think I’ll be painting a picture, sculpting a bust, or throwing clay on a wheel anytime soon!

Next time – Going west – west of Austin, that is

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A Patchwork of Small Towns in Central Texas

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The state of Texas is dotted with plenty of small towns which were settled in the 1800’s and had their heyday in the early 1900’s. Many of the best are county seats with picturesque courthouse squares. Some fight the march of time and decay very well by keeping themselves updated with restaurants and stores, and their buildings occupied and up to code. They look very much like something plucked out of the Midwest. Three of these towns, located southeast of Austin, are Bastrop, LaGrange, and Burton.

Our RV was settled in just outside of Bastrop at South Shore Lake Bastrop in one of the most perfect sites we’ve ever had. We waited in vain for an armadillo to come waddling up the little trail in front of us. We’ve just discovered this little string of parks that are run by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA).

Our daughter Katie and her boyfriend Larnell came down from Austin to see us one Saturday while we were here. Katie is both a kid at heart and also loves dinosaurs, so we went along with her suggestion to visit The Dinosaur Park near Bastrop. It’s definitely kid-oriented, but the dinosaurs on the woodsy nature trail are very interesting. There are plenty of them in a realistic setting among the trees. They are painted with different skin textures and color variations and the descriptions contained the most up-to-date information. I wasn’t ready to be impressed, but I was.

This is a Stegoceras, which lived right here in Texas and the Southwest. It was a 4 foot high, 8 foot long herbivore which lived during the late Cretaceous period – 70 million years ago.

Katie and Larnell obviously enjoyed their walk here although the day was hot. Having them around certainly makes for some different entertainment. There was a stop at Buc-ees, Texas’s mega convenience store. I can’t blame them for this stop, though. We hadn’t yet made our Texas Buc-ees stop, so there was shopping to do. Buc-ee himself was wandering around.

We headed from there to the Bastrop Beer Company in downtown Bastrop. Cal and I had a delicious “Outcast Blackberry” mead from Saint Michael’s Mead. We were not able to find it anywhere when we tried to purchase it later, though. We even went to one of their breweries in Hye, Texas with no luck.

Bastrop has an interesting history. Its namesake, Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron of Bastrop, was actually a Dutch commoner wanted for embezzlement in his native country. He assisted in obtaining land grants and served as Austin’s land commissioner. Thanks to his work, Stephen Austin located about 100 families here and Bastrop’s name has stood the test of time.

Cal and I walked the streets of Bastrop another day and found a fireplace made of books in the bookstore. I really hope that they don’t ever light that fireplace.

I window-shopped down the sides of the one main street. In case you’re interested, there are no antique stores in Bastrop. The woman in the history museum wasn’t sure why.

On another day, we headed for the town of La Grange. Nearby are the Kreisch Brewery and Monument Hill State Historic Sites, one a part of the other.

Monument Hill is both a burial place and a memorial to men who died in two events: the Dawson Massacre of 1842 and the Meir Expedition of the same year. These events were part of the Texas fight for independence from Mexico.

The crypt for the Dawson Massacre soldiers is in the bottom right corner of this picture.

The site sits at the top of a bluff above the Colorado River. The view from here is beautiful.

A German immigrant named Heinrich Kreische settled on the land that the monument is on back in 1849. Being a stonemason, he decided to build a lovely home for his family.

My own heritage is German, so I was delighted to see a springerle cookie mold and “cookies” on the table in the kitchen.

The family smoke house still stands and the aroma in there was heavenly. The park rangers smoke meat about every two months in it. They have German heritage festivals here and everyone gets to sample the smoked sausages.

I guess a guy from Germany needs some decent beer. Being a stonemason, Kreische probably also needed a new project after the house was built. He utilized spring water on his property to build one of the first commercial breweries in Texas. People could come and have a pint, eat delicious food that the Kreische women served and look out over the countryside.

Sadly, today the brewery is but a ruin. Kreische had a work-related accident and died, and the brewery fell into disrepair.

There was an upper floor to the brewery that was made of wood which has not survived. I was very impressed with Heinrich’s stone craftsmanship. Check out the archway below!

We moved on to a quick lunch in LaGrange and then we separated for awhile. Visiting the Texas Quilt Museum certainly wasn’t on Cal’s agenda. I am not a quilter but I greatly admire the work of those who do.

Although this building is now a quilt museum, it was a furniture store in its day. Funeral caskets were sold on the top floor. The view below was from a postcard; I couldn’t get this excellent view any other way than purchasing one, since there was no entry to the upper level. The quilts in this view are different from the ones I actually saw.

The museum has changing exhibits and I was pleasantly surprised to see red work embroidered quilts on display. It was more interesting to me than the more commonly seen pieced quilts because I do embroidery work. I spent a great deal of time here just admiring them.

Red embroidery floss was the first commercially available colorfast dye color sold in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. Embroidery purely in red waned after additional colors became available. Some of these quilts were antique and some were more recently made from antique patterns. I almost talked myself into purchasing some of these embroidery patterns on sale in their shop, but I really already have too many other projects in my stash.

LaGrange is one of those cute little courthouse towns and for the most part the stores lining the square were occupied. That is always good to see. They had a row of antique stores and I texted with Cal before losing myself in them; he was happily occupied checking out the old courthouse building. He enjoyed sitting in their little indoor courtyard. Prior to this he had purchased three varieties of cookies in the bakery across the street.

Inside the courthouse in LaGrange, Texas

We visited Burton, Texas on our way back from visiting my brother in Dickinson. Burton was the tiniest town in this collection of towns. It was a small German farming community in its day. We stopped here to see the Texas Cotton Gin Museum, which has the oldest cotton gin in America still in operation. The gin here has stood since 1914. We trailed behind a high school group on their tour already underway.

A gin is simply a machine that separates cotton seeds from fibers. This gin has a 16-ton Bessemer Type IV diesel oil internal combustion engine (got all that?? ), fondly known as “Lady B”. It can still gin and bale cotton. Once a year they have a Cotton Gin Festival, and that is when they fire it up.

The engine powers the gin, which then separates the fiber from the seeds. This is shown below.

Cal is showing you the size of a bale of ginned cotton. One bale can produce 300 pairs of jeans, or 200 bed sheets. It weighs approximately 500 pounds.

This gin was the lifeblood of the community in its day, mostly the first half of the 1900’s. Eventually cotton was no longer profitable here, and the local farmers stopped growing it.

Between the gin and the museum building, they grow a little field of cotton. It was too soon for planting time. There was an interesting video to watch in the building, and a few artifacts to see. The folks at this place are proud of their gin and love visitors.

After seeing the gin, we stepped into one store since we’d heard they had lunch. It wasn’t much, so we didn’t stay. We were told that if it hadn’t been for the cotton gin, the town would have folded up and died. In my opinion, their other gem is an excellent Mexican restaurant just around and behind the gin. It is called Los Patrones. It seemed like maybe it had been rehabbed from an old garage, or maybe not. Both the food and the atmosphere were great.

Our next stop in our RV travels from South Shore Lake Bastrop was Austin. I’ve posted about Austin when we were there two years ago, but there are always new things to see and do. Like the last stay, we were there for the entire month of April and it is my favorite month to visit!

Next time – exploring Austin’s creative side