Texas Trails

Pearsall TX, on the Frio River, is surrounded by peanut fields, and a sign in town says it is the peanut capitol of the world. There are lots of hopper feed trucks in sheds waiting for this harvest and through an open door in a shed, I see a wall of peanuts. Another crop I know very little about. There are crop duster planes waiting under sheds too, and miles of green fields.

We spend the night at Choke Canyon State park, where the Nueces.River was dammed up into a huge reservoir. Fishing, mostly for catfish, is a big deal. Every campsite has a boat except ours. Down by the boat ramp area a man has maybe 30 catfish on a blue tarp, and is advertising his bait. The fish cleaning stations have electrical outlets so folks can use electric carving knives to filet the fish. Pepe and I walk along the shore, where the waves spook Pepe and the ducks ignore us. We came upon the corpse of what I think was an alligator gar, 4’ long with the head of a gator, not pretty alive and really nasty dead. All the water of the reservoir has made this area very green and wet, and the trees are big enough to be called woods. It’s odd to hear the waves lapping and to hear the sound of leaves.

We hit the Walmart in Del Rio. The road goes close to the Mexican Border here, and we have been through two immigration check points. We stop, the officer asks us if we are US citizens, and I guess looks at us (racial profiling?) and also listens to our English. I can’t imagine someone trying to get into the US illegally through this landscape. It also occurs to me that the process of going to a US Consulate, applying for and (unlikely) getting a green card is out of the question for a poverty stricken Mexican. Coming in illegally is the only way. I read that there are increasing labor shortages where these workers were used in the past.

West of Uvalde, there are fields of cabbage, and trucks full of picked cabbages, and gargantuan irrigation pivots. In some fields, there is viridian green grass with fat cows. Then we are out of the river valley and into white layered rock road cuts, and low brush. There are two kinds of acacia trees, one with bright orange flowers and one with pale yellow flowers. Both have nasty thorns and go by the local name of cat’s claw. White, magenta and yellow prickly poppies, purple verbenas, yellow mustards, and quaker ladies that are bright lilac. A yellow flower called a puccoon. And the bluebonnets, of course. I’ve heard that the flowers in the desert are amazing, and while this isn’t quite the desert yet (I realize after typing this that I don’t know if it IS desert or not), it is so dry and inhospitable that it is hard to believe the number and variety of flowers.

We are at Seminole Canyon State Park for the night. The Canyon itself has two areas where a river has scoured overhangs in the rock, and ancient peoples lived there, as at Mesa Verde, hiding in the canyon from the wind and sun. No buildings but there are apparently large and impressive paintings on the walls. We got here to late to take the tour down, and it was probably too much climbing for us anyway. Alas. It is billed as the Lascaux of the US. I find some pictures on line. Most of them are figures of shaman, often standing with arms out stretched and rows of wavey lines and dots. Maybe next time.

We are camped on a slight rise with nothing around us in any direction except distant blue hills and very thin short brush. Acacias, cactus both the familiar Prickly Pear, some lower tubular ones and a big one that is pretty much buried in the ground. Other prickly cactus like shrubs, and thorns make walking through this land perilous. Pepe and I go off for a walk, down through this thorny stuff at first, where I have to stop every 3 feet to photograph another wildflower that I have never seen before. Then we take a trail that in 3 miles would lead to where the Pecos hits the Rio Grande, but I know that is too far, so we bushwhack again to the lip of the canyon and follow it along on a shelf of rock. I can look back and see the trailer up on a hill, very far away.

It is warm and windy and wild and empty out here, and I love it. It makes me feel as though something inside me is constricted by trees and buildings and too many people. I know it would be brutal in the summer time.

NASA

We have been on the south side of Houston for a week now. We left the tidy CG in League City for one closer to this weekend’s geocaching event. It is kind of seedy, but has wifi and we have not spent much time here.

NASA was excellent. They have built a snazzy museum, sort of like your standard child oriented science museum so there are scads of kids of all ages there. Even more because it is Spring Break. Here in TX, colleges and schools all get out at the same time. Whoopee.

We got to go inside a mock up of the Space Shuttle’s command deck, enough switches to make you dizzy. Who could possibly remember what they were all for? We could see a scale model of the enormous cargo bay through a window. The Space Shuttle is really a truck, complete with a loading crane. The carrying capacity looks like it would be close to that of an 18 wheeler.

We also stood next to actual rockets, the first, small Atlas, then a bigger one, and finally the great sky engine, the Saturn. This lives, on its side in a building, all 4 stages pulled a bit apart and the sections that cover the engines left off so you can see them in all their metallic might. Each engine has a cone where the fire comes out and above that a mass of curving tubes, balls and wires that looks very organic, like metal guts. Think of a motorcycle engine on steroids. The whole rocket is huge, hundreds of feet long but for all that, it has a sort giant sleeping under a spell quality, as thought it might awake, stand up while the building shatters around it and begin the count down.

Next to all this propulsion muscle, the capsule that carried the astronauts is a tiny thing shaped like an outdoor flood light that sits on the top of all the might. It reminds me of the stunts of Evil Keneavel who propelled himself up in the air over things, usually on a motorcycle. Although the machinery and the engineering and the training of the astronauts carry a lot of gravitas, the act of actually sitting on top of a rocket and letting someone fire it up has a “hey, watch this, guys “ quality to it. I think that is why we have such an affection for all this space stuff, it really is the ultimate stunt.

We trollied into the actual space center, after having our pictures taken. This is billed as a security measure, but as they are selling prints for $20 I am suspicious. Our first stop was the old Mission Control where the Apollo flights were run. It looks kind of like a classroom, but has big screens on the front. The computer stations are a soft muddy green, and have no keyboards. You had to ask the mainframe for stuff by rolling some thumbwheels. There were only 26 screens of stuff to see each with 26 lines. There was a nice retiree who gave a good spiel about it all, and was most impressed to learn that Don had worked on Apollo, although not here in this room. There was a red phone, which during flights near earth was manned by a sufficiently senior military type to keep all aircraft, and boats out of the way of the project. This part of it all made it seem less like a stunt. There were hundreds of engineering types monitoring these flights, almost enough expertise to keep the rockets up on sheer force of brains. I remember seeing the grainy footage of Goddard’s early rocket launches in Worcester, skinny spindly things. Who would have imagined that they would evolve into the huge Saturn.

Next stop the big training area which has mock ups of the Shuttle and also all the pieces of the Space Station, including the Russian parts. Here the Astronauts practice doing everything imaginable, sometimes in their suits. Sometimes, we are told, when the ones in space are doing something tricky, someone on the ground is doing it here, to advise. There is no actually weightless training room here, only some vast tanks of water (which we didn’t see) or a trip in the “Vomit Comet”. This is a jet that goes up 20,000-30,000 feet fast, to produce 20 seconds of zero gravity at the top of what is basically a roller coaster ride. It will do this 30-40 times in one flight.

Next day, we did a geocaching attack on the city of Alvin. For some reason, there is a big concentration of people hiding here. Most of these caches are pretty public, so you have to be kind of casual about searching the area, and very subtle about retrieving it. Usually these are tiny ones with just a piece of paper to sign.

We went down to Galveston to do some more cacheing too. Galveston was a very important port back in the 1860’s-1880’s. It still has a lot of shipping, a container port, and a whole fleet of shrimp boats. There were three oil rig platforms crouching in the harbor like giant crabs, one retired and two being worked on by enormous cranes. The down town area has some really fantastic Victorian houses and churches, as well as simple houses that all have shutters that stay in place to keep the sun out. An attractive, tropical town. Down by the gulf side, like anywhere there is a beach, it is wall to wall stores and people driving up and down, and seafood places and T shirts and tattoo places and miles of hotels, condos. We drove west along the seawall until it ended, still some fancy developments out there, on stilts.

In 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston dead on and killed 8,000 people and pretty well destroyed most of the town. No way to get warning it was coming, and a great tidal surge came ashore turning the frame houses into smashed piles of lumber. One wonders why anyone would come back here to live after that.

Friday, Sat and Sunday we attended the Texas Challenge, a competitive geocaching event at a State park on the Brazos River. We were adopted by the Central Texas group, since we had spent the winter there. There were about 25 caches hidden just for this, each with points, plus some puzzles and three stage finds. We also had a picture of a tree that we had to find in the park. Instead of signing the paper, we had paper punches in different letters and a score card to collect them. Some of the more obsessed had dirt bikes and runners and plans. We were the slow team of our group, we had 4 kids and some older and larger folks, so we drove around in the back of our truck whooping and finding some caches, and feeling pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Others were paying attention and at the end, a fast runner took all 12 cards to run them to a distant cache for that punch. The runner cut it pretty close to the time deadline, so we had to do a lot of shouting. And, WE WON! No prize, but yet another excuse to whoop it up. There was a lot of food, and much chatting about the technology and the numbers people had amassed, and a class on the Geocacher Swiss Army Knife. This is a database that has been designed for cacheing and it is very complex and powerful.

This area was once full of sugar cane fields, the SW side of Houston is called Sugar Land, for the big plant run there by Imperial Sugar. I didn’t see any cane fields, I must have read about cane on the Brazos, in some western story. That has happened to me a number of times: I will hear the name of some Texas River and have a sort of frisson of emotion, as though I was near a place where something exciting happened. Alas, I don’t remember the story, but Texas is kind of like that, romantic notions around every corner.

The Brazos valley, and many of the other valleys west of here are fertile farming land, enormous wide flat fields for miles and miles. Away from the rivers, it is a great flat dried brush pasture. The height of the brush varies with the amount of topsoil and the amount of water, from knee high to 20’. We sometimes see cattle in the brush and cactus, mostly vary colored and brindled. The big metal gates and surrounding flanking gates of these ranches are usually painted one, earthtone color, with a metal cut out sign on the crosspiece. At the corners of the ranch property, there is another painted metal section to tell us the boundary.

I finally bought a Texas wildflower book ( the flowers are everywhere, a riot of colors ) and it says that this area of TX was once a grassy savanna, but over grazing let in the brushy junk. I think it is called chaparall, hence chaps that a cowboy would have to wear riding through it. A wild, inhospitable land.

Farewell Spring Branch

Tomorrow we pull up the mat and head out. I am actually feeling a tinge sad to leave here.

To be honest, I have not written about how quiet it is here off in the low woods of the Hill Country. And I have only told you the most outrageous stories of life here in the campground. In fact, everyone here is very nice, if a little off in some siding. We have enjoyed our stay. The additions to the two cabins are kind of nice, with peeled rustic cedar posts on the porches and cedar siding. The clearing of the cedars down below has let views of the hills show. The Owner will probably not make much money, and the campground will never be 4 star material, but it is a lot better than some places I’ve been.

I will miss the view out the west side window, where my birdfeeder was hanging. As the days get longer, more and more grass is coming up, tiny yellow mustards and purple prairie verbenas are blooming here. There are a lot of peach colored butterflies darting around. The deer, who stayed close for handouts, are now scarce around here, the grass is up everywhere. On a geocaching trip on the west side of San Antonio, I saw a tiny white kind of anemone , and a blue flower sort of like a cranes bill (baby blue eyes ?) and what might be a local spring beauty busy under the trees. I can’t find the names of any of them. I would need way too many wildflower books to cover the places I go.

The strange cactus has grown a green beard along the top of each big flat plate of a leaf. I don’t know if this will be new leaves or flowers. The trees are not showing any signs of leaves yet. We will miss the much ballyhooed bluebonnets, which are lupines. I guess they cover everything with a sheet of blue in April. Most of the art stores have lots of earnest paintings s of scenes with the bluebonnets in bloom. Since we will be touring around in TX for the next month, I may get to see them, and also to see if this dry country ever really does get green. There seem to be a great number of creeks that I have never seen a drop of water in. They do look scoured, and in some of our forays we have seen the rubbish left by a flash flood in low areas. But there really is no topsoil in most of this area, only in the river bottoms, so I’m guessing the rain goes right down through the porous limestone into the aquifer.

We have spent the last few days getting the trailer ready. Since this will be our first real trip in it, and we tend to just live in it as if it was a house when we are parked for so long, a lot of stuff needs to be stowed away, tied down or padded so it doesn’t break while we go down the road. After 300 miles we will know for sure what is going to fall down, but right now we are just guessing and hoping. Having a rear kitchen is allegedly hard on the dishes, we have been told, some folks put padding in between each plate and glass. We also have to make a great list of stuff that needs to be done, partly because it is a new trailer, but partly because we just forget the routine of being on the road.

Last night, the Owner took us out for a farewell dinner in a town called Gruene TX. That’s pronounced Green, settled by a German family of that name. Its chief claim to fame is Gruene Hall, an old wooden Dance Hall that has seen the best of country and western performers, and indeed gave a lot of them an early start. The oak floor is nearly worn through and has been thoroughly stomped by millions of dancing cowboy boots, so it has waves in it and I guess when people are dancing the whole thing moves around like river rapids. It has a stage at one end and wooden tables, and a bar out on the street side, and the inside has been left to age more or less gracefully. The rest of the little town has kept itself old, and in a fairly genuine way, although there are an inordinate number of B & B’s and the stores are selling tourist stuff. The Gristmill restaurant is half ruined, and much of it is open to the sky, in an inner roofless room a redbud tree was blooming its head off and there were cactus perched on the top of some of the old stone walls. The outside eating area is a series of stairs and platforms in wood and pipe that spill over the edge of a bluff with the Guadeloupe River rushing below. The food was good and the ambience very magical. We had a good time with the Owner too. He is an interesting, nice guy, even if he is very frustrating to work for.

Next morning, we folded our “tent” up and took off. This is always a moment that makes both of us a bit anxious, even thought we have done it hundreds of times. There are a lot of things to do wrong that will break something, or even worse be a problem while on the road. Plus, everyone sort of watches what you are doing, so if you do mess up, it is pretty public. When we stopped for lunch, only a few things had fallen off the desk, and the trailer pulled well, even with a stiff headwind.

Our destination is an RV resort on Lake Whitney TX, north of Waco. The chain is called A Thousand Trails, and they have camping resorts around the country. Like Hart Ranch, they are a membership only campground, so we came in on a sales deal. We got 3 days and 2 nights free for listening to the sales pitch. They have a really nice place here, 400 acres and only a few areas that are developed. The people who started it made a commitment to be a preserve, and leave a lot of space untouched. Most campgrounds and resorts see unused space as an opportunity to jam even more sites and buildings in, but this place has acres to wander through. We listened to the pitch, and although we don’t need to rent cabins, or take part in their time-share condo system, we probably would have joined just because the resorts are so lovely. But we don’t have $5,000 to spend, so we said no thanks.

We are still in the Hill Country here, and the cedars have choked everything else out. They are nearly the only tree that thrives on pure rock and no rain. They make a dense woods, nothing will grow under them and their low branches make any bushwacking impossible. It is also kind of like walking in a maze, since you never get any views. We drove through several areas that did have top soil and there were flat fields of green grass or stubble, but most of this land has had no chance to add a layer of soil on the rocks.

Last night, we went for what we figured would be a short walk. Since a lot of campgrounds have a hiking trail that is ¼ mile at the most, we were not prepared for it to be over 2 miles long. It felt good after sitting all day, but it was a lot longer than intended. Today Don went to play golf, so the dog and I took off for a serious ramble.

From the satellite view of this place (Google earth) it appears that it was once a much bigger campground. To the north of the main road a whole web of lines in the cedar can be seen. The guy that did our sales talk didn’t know the history of this place, so I decided to walk up there with Pepe and see. From the ground, the access roads were nearly invisible, sometimes one path would look promising only to end. The further north I got, the more ATV tracks there were, looping everywhere and not caring if they met a dead end. We got above the old campsite area and began to skirt the edges of the houses and yards. I often had to backtrack, but since exercise was the point and the weather was perfect we didn’t mind. We crossed and re-crossed a creek, finding one place deep enough for Pepe to have a swim. We finally came out way to the west of the campground, I would have had to swim a sizeable creek to go as the crow flies, so we backtracked. It’s odd that I don’t think to go on rambles like this often, because I really enjoy them. On the otherhand we are not often in a place where I can just go do it.

On the ground, the leaves of the blue bonnets are everywhere, small silver haired five fingered clusters, a much smaller plant than the lupines of New England. Some say that it has been too dry for a really good show, but the plants are everywhere.

Next day, we headed for the Mt Pleasant area to visit with Don’s daughter, kids, grandkids, and great grand kids. We are at a State Park, Lake Bob Sandlin, in Pittsburg TX. Nice piney wooded sites on a lake. The mapping program aimed us at the back maintenance gate and we had an exciting time getting turned around on a dead end road. Technology is not always our friend….

The family, all 7 of them, came over for a hastily prepared dinner, and a nice visit. I was a little nervous before, but they are all great people and very happy to see Don and happy to meet me.

The next day was filled with visiting and catching up for the family. We did a geocaching hike, and I extended it with Pepe to work off a big truck stop breakfast. Just as well, dinner was at an excellent Italian restaurant, and there will be more piles of good food to come.

The park is in the piney woods, and they look like woods almost anywhere in what we called in Social Studies the Woodlands. Out by the road there are some palmettos, and the funny wings on the twigs of the gum tree and the winged elm trees are a bit odd. I know that these are not the oaks, pines and maples of New England, but it feels very familiar and homey. There are no leaves yet, but the grass is coming up everywhere and more little flowers that I don’t know.. In the fields are masses of cattle all looking very postcardish on the electric green expanses of pasturage.

The cattle seem to be a wider range of breeds around here. In MT and WY and SD the white-faced Hereford and Black Angus are still pretty much the breeds of choice although crossing the two is popular too. Here the temperature and the humidity in summer probably requires more of those breeds that are used to stand heat like the Brahma, the red Santa Gertrudis, and the glamorous Long Horns. We stopped by one upscale breeding operation that is raising Kobe beef. Japan came late to beef for religious reasons, but after the soldiers came home from the war in Korea, they began to breed smallish black cattle, feed them very carefully, keep them in small pens, and give them massages to keep the meat tender. We were given 4 steaks which we cooked outside and they were not quite as melt in the mouth as the $50 a lb. Kobe beef, they were pretty incredible and very tasty with a lot of marbling. They sell only by mail order or to way up scale restaurants like the one in NYC that has a $50 hamburger.

The town, Pittsburg TX, is a one company town: Pilgrim Pride. This is a huge chicken operation. The Company provides the chicks, the feed and supervises every aspect of the growing , slaughtering and trucking. The huge feed towers dominate the sky, there is a Pilgrim Bank, a sort of bell tower in the center put up by the big boss. The Boss actually lives in Dallas, but has a large ostentatious chateau outside of town with the pilgrim logo on all the gates. Several areas of the town have largish homes, but mostly it seems people are at the mercy of the low wages that the chicken king pays. Even the thought of what goes in the chicken killing sheds makes me shudder. There are even more Pilgrim Pride factories in the next town north, Mount Pleasant, including a 20’ full color plastic bust of the main founder, Bo Pilgrim, in a pilgrim hat. Apparently this is the second largest chicken producer, second to Tyson.

We moved on south, into more and taller pines and oaks, some serious lumbering going on, and acres and acres of open fields with cattle. 2 nights on Lake Conroe, at a campground with water access and the usual tight filing system. We came here to go see some lots on Lake Livingston that Don has owned for 40 years. We did a little geocaching and now have moved further south.

Spanish moss has reappeared on the big live oaks, there are more palmettos in the brushy areas, and lots of lakes and creeks with water. We are now south of Houston, and I can feel the affect of the Gulf. The air is fitfully windy, and soft with moisture. I know it would be unbearable in the summer, but I like it just fine. This campground is very tidy, lawns and concrete pads, all lined up in one line . My kitchen window looks over the golf course. Nice to have a level site, we had to build a tower in Lake Conroe to get level. We are here to meet an old friend of Don’s and visit for a few days. I will get a tour of NASA, and go to the beach!

Medic Graduation-political rant-RAYOR

One of our reasons for being in this area was to visit with Don’s grandson who has been doing his Army Medic training at Fort Sam Houston here in San Antonio. We have had many happy times with him and fed him a lot of food, always first on his list of things to do.

Yesterday was his graduation day, and we got up early to drive to San Antonio. The ceremony was held in the NCO’s hall, and had well considered remarks by various dignitaries, including words of praise for the family support that we had all provided. We are very proud of him, he graduated with honors.

I should back up here and say that I am no big fan of the military. In my lifetime, the wars fought seem to have been a mistake to begin with and badly done, and I see the current business in Iraq and Afghanistan to be more of the same. As a high school teacher, it was often hard to support my students who entered the military, but for many it was the only way to get free education, or to get out of town. I honor those who serve. The folks who are in charge are another matter, and my low opinion of the military hierarchy gained no altitude yesterday.

It has been a tedious matter to find out when there is a release time for him, often he didn’t know until the last minute if he would have any time at all. I guess keeping them on their obedient toes is part of the training process, but it is irritating.

Yesterday, the powers at Fort Sam Houston achieved a new level of what looked to me like purposeful sadism. The kids were told that after they cleaned out the barracks, they would be given release time in the afternoon to visit with their families. The graduation was over by 10:30, and we hung around all day, hearing that at such a time there was a formation and then they would be released, no maybe at 4:00, no maybe…... Since he is part of a special group who have been selected for Airborne training, and their departure time was up in the air, ranging from 3-4 weeks to 5 days, that group kind of fell through the cracks. By the time all the others had left at 5:00, we still did not have a release time. We gave up, drove off, only to get a call they would be released in 15 minutes. So we turned around, went back and waited another hour. Several parents had flown in for this and we all were getting very angry, as were the graduates. The kids all got put on grounds clean-up then. One lady from CA lost her temper when we were told loudly that we had to leave the area by one of the Drill Sgts. She got all over them for leaving us waiting all this time. The grandson was very upset and frustrated by this time, and having waited all day, we got to take him over to the on-base Burger King for 45 minutes.

It felt as though the way high ups were making an effort to have this ceremony more like a school graduation, a kinder, gentler army. Those in charge on the ground were not OK with this, and, as far as I could tell, did everything they could to torture both the kids and the parents. I understand that this is not summer camp, nor college, but having invited us here, why behave this way? And as an unspoken under current to all this was my feeling that they were sending these kids off to possibly be killed and couldn’t even summon up enough manners to be polite to their families for an afternoon.

I wish I had had the nerve to make a scene, but it would probably have backfired onto the kids. I may write a letter, but after Don gave the company commander a piece of his mind and heard that even he was getting in trouble for being lenient with the graduates, I realize that the culture of the military has no interest in what civilians might think. It seems that we are sub human, rather weak, and have no understanding of the serious business of war.

It’s serious business all right. I am horrified by the amount of money spent on this war. Horrified by the amount of money that certain well-connected US companies are making on this war. Horrified by the number of young Americans killed and wounded, and by the number of non-combatants killed and wounded. How is this protecting our freedom? The gumment is tapping our phones, instituting a national ID card, and who knows what other “freedoms” are being chewed away at, while public education fails our children and millions are denied health care.

While I am sputtering away here, full of righteous indignation and slightly pinkish peacenik thoughts, the grandson is getting his marching orders for Ft. Benning in GA where he will learn how to jump out of an airplane to aid the fallen wherever they lie. Although he doesn’t enjoy the obedience training, he is enthusiastic about the army and about jumping out of airplanes, and helping the wounded. His nickname at boot camp was X-box, a type of computer game box, and he is a serious devotee of gaming, including the shoot-em-up types. In those games, monsters, mutants, robots, and bad humans are blown away in sheets of gunfire and explosives, with blood and shouting. Back in some nervous, suspicious corner of my brain, I wonder if the realities of the battlefield will come as a terrifying and heartbreaking awakening. The move from the protected fantasy world of childhood toward the less rosy grown up world is never easy, and he has already demonstrated courage and strength, so he will undoubtedly do just fine.