Still in Kerrville, Texas

Okay, okay I know it's time for an update. We've been in Kerrville for almost two weeks and I've only updated once. We've just been so busy with all the people who are here. Some of our friends have already left and we sure do miss them but I know they're having a good time wherever they are. In fact, next week we're going to invade Bob & Molly's campground for a visit. They left us on Monday to join their group of friends down the road in Boerne. Keith & Donna left us last week as did Jim & Ellie and Glenn & Sylvia. If you click on any of those names you can read their versions of the time we've been having. Some people update every single day but not me. I need to be in the mood to write and it doesn't come easy for me. In fact, as I'm writing this I need to go and fix breakfast. I thought it would be nice to have a hot breakfast today since it's only 38 degrees outside right now. Pancakes, eggs & bacon are on the menu this morning.

Okay, back to the update. Last Wednesday we went to a German restaurant in Fredricksburg called Altdorf. The owner of the restaurant looked at the name and came up with a new one when he scrambled the letters. This is what he came up with. That's Bob, Keith, Chuck, Kevin, Mac & Rod. I think the name fits.


Here's the whole gang that went to lunch


After that we headed to Opa's Smokehouse where we purchased some German sausages. Rod can NEVER say no to something once he gets to sample it so we came home with four packages of a variety of sausages.



The next pictures are of the various potlucks and Happy Hours that we've had every single day since we've been here.




Mac on the "barbie"


Turnabout is fair play, Bob


Tuesday was Brenda's birthday and she had mentioned she has NEVER had a birthday party before. Well, we certainly didn't need a reason to go out and party but it was really great to be able to help her celebrate. We all met at Mamacita's Mexican Restaurant. Apparently Brenda "celebrated" a little too much the day before and wasn't in the mood for anymore alcohol. That's okay, a good time was had by the rest of us.


Well, except for Dortha & Mark who didn't get their food. Don't they look sad?


Since Brenda wasn't drinking she wasn't real excited about wearing the obligatory Birthday Hat


But she did love her cake


And Joe (Speedy) was very happy to wear it


Brenda is Canadian and has had issues with Canadian Customs about the amount of butter she brings back so we gave her all the butter on the table to take home


John & Brenda

Yesterday Mac & Netters were going to Camping World in New Braunfels so we tagged along to see if we could find a fan for the bathroom. Not only did we find a fan but we found a much better fan. Now we'll just have to wait and see how long it takes Rod to install it. Actually, I think he and Mac are going to tackle it on Friday if it doesn't rain. (Boy did we get the rain yesterday.) Since Mac & Netters had never been to San Antonio we stopped there on the way back home for a stroll down the Riverwalk, some barbecue and a side trip to the Alamo. We didn't do the river cruise as it was only in the 40's. We had a great time and couldn't believe it when we got back to the truck and found out it was after 6:00!! We got back to the campground at about 7:30 last night.

Today is another day out to dinner. This time we're doing Italian at Mr Gatti's. It's supposed to be cold here for the rest of the week so I guess we won't be going out doing a whole lot. Maybe we'll take this time to go visiting our friends who are here and also stuck inside because of the cold.

Kerrville, TX

We spent a week in San Antonio not doing much site seeing at all but that's not what we were there for. We had a nice visit with John & Erica. John was even able to fix my old laptop and it's running like new again. We found a new burger place there also. Well, it's not new to San Antonio, just new to us. Really, really good burgers! They also sell frozen custard but we were WAY to full to try any of that.

John working on my laptop

Freddy's Frozen Custard


So we left San Antonio on the 1st of March (Happy B-day Michele!!) and headed for Kerrville to get together with a group of people from a RV Chatroom that I've been "talking" to for the last year and a half or so. There were 10 RV's showing up on the 1st and others were going to be straggling in on various dates for the whole month of March. Howard & Linda Payne of RV-Dreams started this chatroom and we've all gotten to be really good cyber friends and now we were finally meeting in person.

Mark & Dortha and Ellie & Jim passed us on the freeway about 5 miles before we exited off the freeway. They were coming from Rockport and we were coming from San Antonio. They had a four hour drive and we had a one hour drive. LOL We didn't get out until almost 11:00 and were in no hurry. This is a picture Dortha took as they passed us.


And here they are getting off the freeway


We've already had a Happy Hour,a potluck and a dinner with more to come. Monday was Texas Indepence Day so we pooled our food and had pinto beans, rice, cornbread, taco salad, jalapeno poppers and various cakes for dessert. I can tell it's going to be a bad, bad month for portion control.

Our Independence Day Potluck


On Tuesday we decided (Dortha's idea) to climb Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg which was about 30 or so miles from us. It's a huge rock that for some reason people feel the need to climb. :-) There really are no marked trails once you get ON the rock but there is one going TO the rock. It's basically a giant pink granite dome shaped rock that stands 425 feet above ground and 1825 feet above sea level. There are a bunch of rocks piled on top of each other at the top also. It kinda looks like caves and we just had to climb through those too. The only way to get to the summit is straight up! It was quite a challenge but a lot of fun, especially because we had a nice group of people with us. I'm not sore at all today which is really quite surprising.


Those little dots are people climbing up


The trail


WE MADE IT!!!


The "caves"



The girls coming down


We left there and headed to Subway for some lunch and then back to the RV Park


Dinner was being served in the big barn here at the park. We paid $9.50 per person for pork loin, baby carrots, mashed potatoes, a roll and cake for dessert. Since we have twenty people in our group we had two tables of ten each. There was entertainment afterwards by a blind singer named Sara Gotto. She had a very nice voice but we didn't stay as she is a country western singer and we're definitely not into that.

One table


The other table


I thought this was a really nice picture of Mac and Netters so I had to include it


Today we're going into Fredericksburg to a German restaurant for lunch with the gang. I'll definitely be thinking of you Christel. No dinner tonight, we're having a campfire at sundown at Kevin & Arlene's site with more goodies. Stay tuned.....

We Moved!

Yes, we left Rockport on Friday morning. We really enjoyed our stay there. Not so much the park we were in but all the people we got to meet up with. We got up early (for us) by 9:00 and were on the road by 11:00. We would have been on the road a lot earlier than that but people kept stopping by and asking, "Are y'all leavin"? No, we just wanted to see what it looked like all hooked up. ;-) The people in the RV Park were extremely friendly as was the staff in the office. The sites were just WAY too close for us and way too much concrete. We paid our final electric bill of $195 for seven weeks and we were off.

Here we are pulling out


On the highway outside of town we came upon a truck on the side of the road and there was a man putting out signs for produce. YAY!! I just LOVE fresh produce and really haven't been able to find all that much of it. I bought a pineapple, watermelon, tomatoes, avocados, oranges, zucchini, yellow squash, onions and red potatoes. Here's a picture of my bounty.


We were supposed to go back to Braunig Lake RV Park but there were no openings so we called Stone Creek RV Park in Schertz where we stayed in April of last year. We liked the park and they had openings. When we arrived at the park we found out the nice sites were either all taken or reserved. Bummer. They have nice covered cement patios with a picnic table. The site we're in has no cover over the table and the table looks like it would fit a couple of little kids. Oh well, we're only here for a week until we move to Kerrville for a month for our gathering of "chatters". We'll pack in a lot of visits with John & Erica while we're here too.

The Office


The Gazebo


Our Campsite



John and Erica were here today for dinner of grilled chicken breasts, zucchini, squash, potatoes and pineapple for dessert. LOL where did all that that come from?? YUMMY!

Touristy Things

Where does the time go? It seems like I just updated and it's been almost a week already. We had some visitors on Sunday so I guess I can use that as an excuse for not updating. Terry and Randy came to stay in the same park we're in for a few days. Even though we had never met them before Terry and I had been writing back and forth through our blogs for over a year. I already felt like I knew her. It was great to finally meet. They are on their way out west so they were only here for a few days. What a jam packed few days it was though. Everybody hit it off right off the bat so we ended up spending a lot of time together. Since they had met Mark, Dortha, Ellie & Jim before they wanted to see them also so we all decided to meet up for dinner at The Big Fisherman (where else?). We spent a great evening together with everybody and then came back here to our park where we sat with Terry and Randy getting to know them better.

Here we all are at dinner. That's Randy and Terry in the front

Monday was laundry day but it wasn't until late in the afternoon that the washers became available. The laundry room here is nice and it's pretty big with about ten washers and dryers but it seems they're always in use.

Tuesday we went to the Fulton Mansion with Terry and Randy. It's a restored mansion built by George and Harriet Fulton between 1874 and 1877 and for which the town is named after. It was quite modern for it's time compared what else was here. Most of the furnishings after the restoration weren't original though. The lady who was conducting our tour kept saying, "this is what they would have had". Cracked me up.

The Mansion


Randy and Terry


The Parlor


The Dining Room


After we got home we decided to pool our food together for dinner so Terry brought over mac and cheese that she had made and I made pork fried rice with leftover pork chops and some green beans and we were good to go. After visiting for awhile they left to go to bed and prepare for our big trip to Mexico on Wednesday.

We had planned on driving down to the border town of Progresso but when we discussed this with the others they decided they would take their cars because of the better gas mileage. Dortha, Mark, Ellie & Jim both have motorhomes and they tow a small car behind so all eight of us travelled down to Mexico in their two cars. It was a three hour drive and we were cracking up because some days we don't even go that far to a different campground. We had to set the alarm for 7:00 am (I KNOW!!!) in order to meet at their campground at 8:30.

We parked on the U.S. side for $2.00 and crossed over the Rio Grande River bridge on foot after paying our 25 cents (it's 30 cents to get back) and were in Mexico in time for lunch at Arturo's and it was excellent. No waiting for a table. We've been to Mexico many times before but Terry had only been there once and that was 24 years ago. I don't think it's changed at all. Her eyes were as big as saucers as we were strolling along between all the vendors. They still have the jewelry, leather goods, drugs you can buy without a prescription, various sweet treats and little kids begging for money. All I bought was vanilla and peanuts and Rod bought a bottle of Black Bush whiskey. The liquor prices were not really that good plus you had to pay another $1.25 at Customs after you cross the border. I really wanted to buy some avocados but Dortha told me they cut them in half and take out the pit because you're not allowed to take the pit back into the U.S. Interesting.

Rio Grande River


Halfway across the bridge


The "Mall"


Inside one of the shops


One of the street vendors


He was watching the goings on down below


Almost back in the U.S.


We saw this brush fire on our way back to Rockport


After leaving the border town we drove to Donna to visit the big flea market. It was pretty much just a whole lot of more junk. It was 4:00 by time we got there and they were closing up so we went across the street to the produce market. Now you're talking!! This place was great and I could have shopped there all day. I bought oranges, tomatoes, zucchini, onions and green beans. Sure wish we had something like this close to where we're staying. Terry didn't want to buy anything because she said if she bought something she might actually have to cook something with it. LOL

It was a GREAT trip and we enjoyed every minute of it. Terry and Randy left on Thursday and we're really going to miss them. Sometimes you meet people on the road and it's just so sad when they leave especially when you really connect with each other and they were staying only a few rigs away. I can't wait till we see them again somewhere. Don't know where or when but it will happen.

Catching Up

Okay, here I am catching up again and YES, it's about food! Sunday was the Super Bowl (seems so long ago, doesn't it??) and we spent it with friends here in Rockport at their RV Park. Mark & Dortha and Ellie & Jim are staying at the Last Resort and Sandra & Gordon are staying at Goose Island State Park. We all got together for a shrimp boil at the Last Resort. Seems there was an issue with the size of the pots so Jim cooked the potatoes, corn, sausage and onions and Dortha cooked the shrimp. What a great time we had. I've been "talking" to Sandra in our RV chatroom for over a year now and we finally got to meet. I really didn't even care about the game but I do love football and some of the commercials were good. I AGAIN forgot my camera so I shamelessly stole this one from Dortha's blog.


Thursday was errand day. We always start off Thursday with lunch at the Big Fisherman to fortify ourselves. LOL


These are the "Winter Texan Specials" We don't ever go on Tuesdays anymore


I'm getting tired of fried fish so I had the chicken fried steak (another Texas staple)


After that it was off to Camper Clinic for some much needed RV supplies. Rod's going to be busy with some little projects. A new anode for the water heater, some hinges for the overhead cabinet doors but unfortunately they were out of the little fans for the bathroom vent. Another project for another day......


One more stop and then back home


Friday was a girls day out. Dortha, Ellie, Sandra and I all went out geocaching. First we met up for lunch. We had planned on going to this little deli but when we got there it was closed. We ended up having our lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Works for me. For those of you who don't know, geocaching is sorta like a treasure hunt. You go online to the website and you can find out where the "treasures" are hidden in your area. You download them into your gps and off you go. The gps gets you close to the hidden treasure and with clues from the website you have to search a little bit. Some people have been very clever where they hide them. They can be as big as an ammo box or as small as your thumbnail. This was my first time trying this but Ellie is an ole pro. We were only going out to find six of them but Ellie had some more so we ended up finding nine. I had so much fun and plan on looking for some more.

First stop failed


The first treasure was in this parking lot


Here's Ellie's find


You don't always find a "treasure". Sometimes you just sign the log to prove that you've been there. This one is called a nano. It's one of the smallest. Can you see the log curled up in it?


Dortha found one!


Ellie & Sandra look really excited with this find. LOL


Thanks you guys for a really GREAT day.