Sept. 7 & 8

Saturday - I went out for my walk and discovered water gushing out of the water heater compartment.   Called my personal mechanic out and he discovered the plug had blown.  He fixed it with a new plug, but we had to dry out the compartment and the things we had stored in it.  Lucky for us, it is still hot here for drying!  What a great thing!

After all that and breakfast, Gary went out and washed the motorhome and I vaccumed and cleaned inside.  We facetimed with Katie and the boys, they were showing us the pictures I had sent to them. Then we went to Cranky Frank's, a BBQ place here to get brisket to eat while we watched the Michigan/Notre Dame game that night.  A fun place, they are open from 11-3 each day and when they run out, you are out of luck.  The brisket was good, but not as good as Lois's in Santa Fe.  We put the SDSU and Michigan flags up, first on the awning rail (it got too windy to have the awning down) and then in the front window.  While the game was on, I got the sewing machine out and downsized a tablecloth for our table.  I wanted to get that done to protect the wood surface.  Go Blue - Michigan won!  Gary had also listened to the SDSU game on the computer with live stream radio.  In the evening it actually clouded up and blew enough that we had to put the awning up again.  Only a few sprinkles of rain.

Sunday - breakfast & then 9:00 Mass at St. Mary's Church in Fredericksburg.  A big parish, good cantor, Father had a peace theme for the hymns and homily.  We stopped for groceries on the way home, then packed up to move on.  Left about 12:30, got gas and hooked the car up.  We went across on Hwy 290 to Austin, then # 71, back to # 290, turned onto Hwy 21, back to # 290 to Carmine, TX.   Pulled in to the Dixieland RV Park & Repair.   The park was back off the road in a field, with mostly long term campers there.  Very nice and quiet.  We settled in, went for a walk, then had supper and watched I Love Lucy videos.  (Exciting reading, isn't it?)

Sept. 5 & 6

Thursday - went for a hike in the park.  They have a nature trail but we didn't get very far because the path was very overgrown.  We are a little wary of snakes & critters.  Headed into town to see the Pacific War Museum.  It was very interesting.  We were there for 3+ hours and did not see it all. The tickets are good for two days, so will continue tomorrow.  We walked through the memorial park where they have plaques that families or organizations have donated to honor those who have served in Pacific wars.  We looked and found plaques for the Oklahoma and the battleship, St. Paul, one of the ships my Dad served on.  www.pacificwarmuseum.org.
Stopped for refreshments afterward and then picked up groceries on the way home.  We changed in to our jeans and boots and headed to Luckenbach, TX.  Turns out the "town" of Luckenbach consists of a small touristy general store with a bar in the back, outside seating on picnic tables and a dance hall they open on weekend nights.  Oh, and a separate little bathrooms building.  Nothing air-conditioned. The first lady we saw there asked if we were from South Dakota (Gary had his t-shirt on) her son had gone to Mt. Marty and then Creighton.  Small world.  Gary did find a nice cowboy hat in the store, it looks good. There was a small group of musicians playing outside, just jamming together and singing a few songs.  We stayed for a couple sets, then headed home.  A lot of deer in this area, we saw them during the day too.  It appears they feed & raise them, it is a well known deer hunting region.

Captain at the wheel 

Plaque in Memorial Park

Cowgirl in Luckenbach

Audience seating area

Friday - up and got my one hour walk done.  Trying to get in shape for Amazon, less than a month away.  Gary went in to Fredericksburg to finish the Pacific War Museum tour.  He went to the Admiral Nimitz museum &th Pacific Combat Zone display.  I researched campgrounds, worked on the blogsite and laundry.  In the afternoon, we drove east through Stonewall to the Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch.  After stopping at the visitor center, you drive through the ranch grounds, past the cemetery where he & Lady Bird are buried, then around the air strip, past the stock barns and end at the airplane hangar by the house.  In the hangar they have displays, including LBJ's cars.  We bought tickets for the tour of their summer White House.  A park ranger gave us the tour, she was very good.  Two ladies from Austin were with us on the tour, it was very entertaining to listen to their comments & the ranger's comments, since they were all from Texas.  Very proud and adoring of the Johnson's, they oohed & awed about everything we saw.  It was fun to see the phones, furnishings, decor, and clothing from the 60's.  Next we drove to Johnson City and saw his boyhood home.  We headed south to Blanco, TX, hoping to find wineries not on the main strip.  Nothing! When we saw a sign to head back to Stonewall, we took it.  A back road through farms/ranch land, curvy and hot.  We were both getting disappointed when we came upon the town, Albert, TX.
A small bar, the Albert Ice House along the highway, with a large shaded deck under a large Texas oak tree, outside fire ring and a dance hall.  Outside bathroom house again, but much nicer than Luckenbach.  There was a BBQ concession trailer, The Pig Pen, that served hot food.
Great bartender and we visited with a gentleman that had retired there from Houston.  One sign says there are four people in Albert, one sign said three and two gals sitting there said they had met the one lady that lives there.  The bar was going to have a singer coming in after 6:00, we should have stayed there to hear that.  Again, not air conditioned, but they had ceiling fans everywhere.
This was definitely a Kathy and Gretchen kind of stop!
We left there to visit a winery before they closed, found one that had a Tuscany look.  Went in and found out they wanted $12 to taste - not interested!  We went back to Fredericksburg for supper and ate at Cultures, then walked through a few shops that were still open before going home.

Lyndon B & Lady Bird Johnson

Albert Icehouse, Albert TX

Outdoor seating & huge oak tree

Sept. 3 & 4

Tuesday - up and ready to travel.   Heading for Texas!  Filled up on gas in Carlsbad, then headed southeast on Hwy 285.   Desert terrain all the way, with the addition of hundreds of oil derricks pumping, oil storage tanks, semis hauling oil or water and big white pickups.  Doesn't make sense, white pickups driving on dirt most of the time, but Gary says white color is the cheapest.  Went through Pecos, TX and then on to Fort Stockton.  Arrived at the Parkview RV Park (a desert park view I guess) about 1:00.  Set up, started laundry and napped.  (Not much to do in Ft. Stockton on a hot day). We did go to get pictures of a giant Roadrunner.   We have been trying to find roadrunners for the twins, this was a good one!  Had a quiet evening at home.

Our Parkview site

Giant roadrunner

Wednesday - Up early for travel days to beat the heat, we headed east on I-10.  The scenery changed right away, more gentle hills and some mesas, not just desert.  A pretty drive, took us about 5 hours to reach Fredericksburg.  We found the Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park and checked in.  They gave us a full hookup site, with Shade!  They had a very strong wi-fi signal and cable TV hookup.  The Captain was very happy - Cable = college football later in the week!
After setting up, we went to see downtown Fredericksburg, a historic German town.  Had supper at the Fredericksburg Brewery. We walked through shops and finished the night with a glass of wine at the Texas Wine Cellars and there we watched the "American Pickers" show with a couple visiting from the UK.

Lady Bird Johnson Park

Sept. 1 & 2

Sunday - hard to believe it is September here, it is still hot like summer.  Went to 9:00 Mass at St. Edwards in Carlsbad, NM.   Very nice parish, they had added on to their church at some point, so the altar was in the middle between the two additions and faced sideways.  The sending song was America the Beautiful, it was great to be able to sing the descant (softly).
After mass, we went to the city park.  The Pecos River runs through Carlsbad and they have a lovely lake waterfront area for swimming, boating and picnics.  An oasis in the desert, green grass, shade and water!  We changed into boating clothes and finally got our kayak on the water.  What an enjoyable day!  We boated for awhile, than swam a little, had a little lunch at the concession stand and boated some more.
We picked up groceries on the way home.  It was 101 degrees on the way back.  Settled in and then went for a walk after supper.

#11 our shaded campsite

Carlsbad City Park on Pecos River

The Captain and his ship

The last sunset in New Mexico

Monday, Labor Day - up early for a walk and then a few morning chores.  At noon we headed to the Carlsbad Caverns.  There are a number of tours available, we did the Natural Entrance tour.  This 1¼-mile tour follows the traditional explorer’s route, entering the cavern through the large historic natural entrance.  The Natural Entrance route descends more than 750 feet into the earth following steep and narrow trails through a tall and spacious trunk passage called the Main Corridor.
At the bottom, we continued on to the Big Room route, a one-mile, self-guided underground walk around the perimeter of the largest room in the cave.
The hike down was steep and many times we and the trail were being dripped on from the stalactites. The path was lit well enough for walking, a flashlight would have been helpful at times. A lot of amazing sights and formations.  Gary was happy there were no earthquakes that occurred then.  
At the bottom, we toured the Big Room, wow, it was like an underground cathedral!  75 stories underground and there were still bottomless pits going further down.  Gary said some parts reminded him of the catacombs in Rome.  Hard to believe it was this huge, the trail there at the bottom was at least the mile+ long they said it was.    http://www.nps.gov/cave/index.html
When we came back to the surface there were rain clouds moving in.  We went back to 
Carlsbad for supper, but not much was open.  We ended up eating at Lotaburger.
It must have rained good at the campground, our mat was soaked and there were water puddles. Much cooler, thank goodness.  The tent campers were all gone, but 4-5 little motorhomes came in that evening.

Cave formations

In the Big Room

Forest Ranger wannabe

View from the parking lot of the Caverns

Aug. 30 & 31

Friday - slept in.  Out for a walk, then breakfast.  Decided to just stay put for the day, it was heating up fast.  We had hoped to go boating here, but the lake is very low, the locals told us it has gone down over the last 4 years.  We had a site with no shade and this was a hot day in the desert.  The motorhome tried to stay cool, but barely kept up.  We went out and sat in the shade and breeze in the afternoon at an empty site near ours.  95+ with 37% humidity, but we saw it was worse at home with those temps and a dew point in the 70's.  Yuck!  Luckily here, when the sun started setting, it cools down noticeably.

Our hot campsite - but great sunset view

Saturday - up early to move the motorhome.  Our original reservation was for only two nights, there was no availability for rest of the weekend.  But, we watched the website all day Friday and two sites opened up, one with shade.  We grabbed it for rest of the weekend.  We had considered moving to a RV park closer to the Carlsbad Caverns, but found they were considerably more expensive and none of them had very good reviews.  We got moved and set up, then had breakfast.  Decided to stay put again.  Worked on a few organizing things and watched football.  Go Blue, Go Jacks!  And, we did the restringing of our big window blind that had broke just before we left Sioux Falls!
We watched more campers and TENTS arrive and set up.  How they stay in tents in this heat we just can't imagine. Many of them were hanging tarps on their picnic shelters to block the sun.  We enjoyed more of Lois's Texas brisket for supper (it's like heaven) and then went for a walk and another sunset.  We visited with one of the campers that works for an oil company and is headed up to Williston, ND this week.  His company rents rooms in one of the hotels there, keeping the rooms even when they don't have someone there, because housing is so hard to find.

Aug. 29, Thursday

Moving on day.  :(  We checked out from the RV park and dropped the motorhome at Winston & Ginger's to allow us to do a little more sightseeing in Lincoln, NM - home of Billy the Kid.  We met Winston for lunch at the historic Wortley Hotel in Lincoln.  Great food, we bought some of their fresh Pico de Gallo salsa.  We explored the history of the town, they have kept very authentic to the time of Billy the Kid & the Lincoln County wars.  www.nmmonuments.org/lincoln

Our ranch campsite

Our view from the motorhome at the ranch

The Wortley Hotel & Restaurant

Goodbye Capitan Mountains

Back in the motorhome we headed out for our next home, Brantley Lake State Park, just north of Carlsbad, NM.  Easy to find by the signs, but 4.5 miles back in from the highway.  A large reservoir, but very low.  The locals say this is the 4th dry year.  It is at least 20 degrees warmer here than where we have come from.  Set up by 6:00, supper, a short hike and guess what?  Another beautiful sunset!

Sunset on Brantley Lake

The desert we are now camping in

Aug. 27 & 28

Tuesday - up early, Ginger was leaving to go to a cousin reunion in Nebraska & Winston had things to do.  We packed up & moved back to the motorhome at the ranch.  Watched Winston working his horse and 2 buffalo he has there.  We went through our mail, Katie had mailed us the first package of things that had accumulated since we left.  Then off for a hike.  Winston directed us to go up the forest road and then hike further up.  We parked the car at a wide part of the road (it was mostly one lane otherwise) and hiked up the road.  The trees in that area had burned last year in the forest fires, but the new undergrowth was a beautiful green.  We watched carefully for snakes, elk, wild pigs and bear - but did not see any.  I guess that is a good thing.  Toward the top we stopped and watched logging trucks taking out some of the burned trees.  Hard to believe those semis were going to take their loads of logs down the narrow, rough road we had come up.  It was a good workout for us and beautiful to see.  Back home we sat outside and enjoyed the day.  Gary washed off the motorhome, it got pretty dirty driving in on the rainy day.  Winston came & we drove in to Ruidoso for supper.


Wednesday - the weather report when we woke up talked about rain and a flash flood warning for the area for today and the next.  We decided it would be best to move to firmer ground & roads, so packed up and moved in to the Mama Bear RV park in Capitan.  This area was the birthplace of Smokey the Bear, the museum was across the street.  We drove back to Ruidoso for shopping, I ended up finding a dress for the October wedding at Bealls there.  Why is it you find the best things when you really aren't looking for them?  So that's done.  Then we found the Dancing Waters Winery & Cheese Store.  Yum!  Asadero Cheese, used best with Mexican dishes, but good by itself.  The Breckenridge men would like it.  Ended with a treat & munchies at Grace O'Malley's Pub.  Returned to the motorhome, Gary had a RV Inspector webinar to listen to and I did laundry.  Turned out it did not rain all day or night.