Still Heading East

We had an uneventful trip to San Antonio where we spent about week visiting with John & Erica, taking care of Doctor appointments, catching up on laundry and waiting on mail delivery.

John & Erica spent Easter weekend at Fort Clark Springs with her Dad, his girlfriend and her family.  We were invited to come out and stay at the RV Park there but we couldn’t get a refund where we were staying so we just went out and visited for the day on Saturday before Easter.

Fort Clark Springs is a privately owned community in Brackettville, Texas but Julio (Erica’s Dad) is allowed to have guests stay there.  They all stayed at the hotel there.  There is a giant spring fed pool with lots of picnic areas so they brought several barbecue grills to cook up LOTS of food.

Hope manning the bbq as John looks on

Erica got plantar fasciitis and ended up with this cute little boot

It was so hot and humid that day that it didn’t take long for the giant squirt guns to come out.

And then the piñata came out

Cascarones (confetti eggs) are believed to date back to the Renaissance days when Italian men filled emptied eggshells with perfume or cologne and tossed them to women as a sign of affection. Nowadays, children (and adults) crack the eggs on the heads of others and make a wish. If the eggshell breaks and showers you with confetti, it is said the wish will come true.  Now it’s a Mexican custom at Easter to have these eggs and they had a TON of them.  Nobody was spared either.

No matter how many times Julio brushed himself off the kids kept coming back

It could have been because Erica kept passing them out!

There is also a museum there to visit

From there we headed to Beaumont, Texas for a few days.

We headed out to Sea Rim State Park to have a look but it ended up being a really ugly beach with LOTS of broken glass on it.

There is A LOT of oil and natural gas production in this area

There was Big Thicket National Preserve where I was able to get a stamp for my National Parks passport.  The main trails were closed due to a wildfire so we could only visit the displays at the Visitor Center.

I saw on a map we had that there was a Windmill Museum in Nederland which was in the area.  That sounded really interesting so that’s where we headed next.  It ended up not really being anything about windmills.  It was about the Dutch that came from Holland to live in Texas.

Right next door there was a small Cajun Museum

Since we were close to Baton Rouge and we knew we were going to stop and see some friends I knew I had to call our friends, Rollie & Gina, who live in Denham Springs, right outside of Baton Rouge.  Imagine my surprise when I got a phone call a few days later from Rollie who was sitting outside on our picnic bench.

Rollie’s been working in Houston during the week and going home on the weekends so he thought he’d just stop by and have a quick visit.  What a nice guy!  He did have to tell us, though, that Gina is in Grenada with their daughters recuperating from surgery so we wouldn’t be seeing her on this visit.  Get well, Gina!!

We mentioned how we were looking forward to getting into Louisiana and having some good crawfish étouffée.  Well, Rollie being Rollie decided he would just make us some.  Doesn’t get any better than that!  Not only did he make it but he also delivered it on the day we arrived in Baton Rouge.  He also brought me some fresh crawdad tails so I can freeze them and make my own another day.

We also got in a quick visit with my very good friend Marvina’s daughter, Rikki, her husband, Jared and their kids, Jonathan & Finley.  It was really good to see them since we hadn’t seen them in quite some time.

Rikki & Jared

Jonathan (not really wanting a picture taken)

Finley is so darned lovable!

Rikki, Finley & Me

We left Baton Rouge this morning with no idea where we were going.  All we knew was that we were heading east.  LOL

We saw a sign on the freeway just as we entered Mississippi for Buccaneer State Park.  We didn’t know anything about it so we stopped at the Welcome Center.  The lady inside was very helpful and told us the park had just reopened last year.  It was heavily damaged by hurricane Katrina and was under 20 feet of water back in 2005.  There are only two loops open but there’s hardly anybody here.  There are three other campers besides us.  The cost is $24 a night for full hookups (water, electric and sewer).  There are some really nice spots right on the beach but they’re $35 a night and no sewer hookup.  It’s really cold here right now so we took a site in one of the inside loops and may just move to the beach if the weather gets warmer.

We are pretty close to the casinos in Biloxi and Gulfport so I’m thinking we are going to be taking some day trips.