The nights here at Tonkawa Springs RV Park are very quiet. They do have a herd of peahens that can get us up early but there are no road sounds or railroad whistles here. It is very pleasant. It is so nice that we did some minor household chores and watched free HBO weekend movies while malingering around our trailer. The weather was kinda crummy.
There are some deer around here and they look like they get an ample supply of food. Some of them look like they are imported from places I have never been before because I have never seen antlers like those on some of the big bucks hanging around our Barbarian Invader. We have a small supply of deer corn to keep them interested.
See pix by clicking here

We awoke to the gentle screeches and panicked squawks of the resident flock of peahens this morning. We might have become angry at the early hour but watching the goofy girls is hysterically funny. They all browse in a big group but as soon as one of them detects anything moving or making a sound, they all bolt in all directions for a moment before realizing they are now separated. Then the real high speed action begins as they attempt to regroup. They run faster than they fly.
After watching the birds and the deer for a while, we hopped in the truck and took a drive into Nacogdoches. We initially wanted to follow a driving loop through town where an abundance of azaleas were to be seen but we are a bit early for the bloom. We saw a few early bloomers but mostly we saw sticks. We also found that our map of the flowery streets was totally inaccurate and my navigation suffered. I directed Peggy into many dead ends.
We then took a more informal, random course and checked out some of the gorgeous Nacogdoches houses and there are a bunch of them. Steven F. Austin college is also here in town and they have a very nice campus with some historical buildings and adjacent gardens.
After a bit, we got bored and decided to see if we could find our way to a very smoky fire burning in the forest northwest of town. Although we did have to resort to dirt roads, we found the fire. Some enormous ranch’s staff was burning the undergrowth out from beneath their trees. It wasn’t too exciting.
We continued our rural drive by closing a loop back to town where we pulled out at a restaurant called the Cotton Patch. Peggy was delighted with her grilled pork chops, fried okra and cinnamon apples and I thought their chicken fried steak was almost as good as Dean’s or Jake’s in Oregon. A strange thing happened halfway through the meal. My big, ornate gold crown came off the expensive remnants of tooth #19 and that started a series of events nobody cares to hear about. Wonderfully, we found a nearby dentist who had me back with a full set of chompers before dark.
The sunrises and sunsets here are spectacular.
There are a few Nacogdoches pix to see by clicking here

We were on the road again today. We pulled out of the TT Lake Conroe facility and headed northeast. We did have to start north on I-45 but after 20 miles we turned east and spent the rest of the drive on Texas back roads which are our preferred routes. We drove through the Davy Crockett National Forest and a variety of tiny towns before getting to the western side of Nacogdoches which is pronounced like something.
We skirted Nacogdoches on a beltway road and exited going north, then east, for about half an hour before arriving at Lake Tonkawa Springs Resort. It isn’t really a resort but it does have full hookups, large spaces, a laundry and wifi. Here we found there is a big flock of peahens who charge around the campground like fast bowling balls with little tiny heads. They are quite fast although they don’t seem to be skilled at navigation because sometimes they run in a big circle before charging off in another direction. There are a couple of very showy peacocks, too. They don’t seem to run around like the hens. Maybe it is because they are toting their magnificent tails about.
There is a herd of deer here. They do not look like the deer we normally see in the west. Some of the deer have very dark, almost black hides, about half are the color of a golden lab and a few have spots although I do not think they are fawns unless they were dosed with deer growth hormone when they were small. All of their tails are black. They are very shy.
Peggy was a real trooper today; she did our laundry while I watched the peahens and deer.
We snapped a picture of Steven Austin and some wildlife that you can see if you click here

Last evening the wind started to blow enough to make our normally stable trailer quiver. The wind speed increased this morning and by dawn the breeze was stiff enough to knock down my patriotic neighbors spiffy flagpole. It missed our trailer.
By the time the sun started making it a bit lighter, some rain started to fall. By 0830, it was raining so hard that we could not see through the windows so we lit up Weather Underground which told us we were in a tornado watch area and we should consider finding shelter more substantial than a fiberglass box. Surprisingly, our satellite antenna was still functioning so we turned on local news who confirmed that the weather was going to get worse before it got better. Much lightning, thunder, water and deepening darkness ensued. Then, without damaging any of our stuff, the thunderstorm passed and light came back into the world. During the height of the nastiness, our satellite dish lost all signals but quickly came back on once the scary stuff passed over. By noon it was breaking up and Peggy decided it was a good time for a trip to a store called Soft Surroundings which sells nifty lady stuff.
We drove about 20 miles down the road and started slowly circling an enormous shopping mall in an attempt to find parking within two miles of the target. Soon we were in the store and Peggy was happily browsing among the racks while I oozed outside to sit on a bench and watch Texans strut their stuff. Without losing too much money, Peg found what she wanted and was merciful by allowing us to leave without going in any other stores. I was proud of her.

There was no exploring today. We spent a good part of the day making reservations for an RV space at our next few destinations. It is tedious, frustrating work. RV park offices rarely answer their phones because, invariably, we choose to call during their frequent but erratic closures. It is random – every office is different. It’s a challenge.

Today we got to travel back into Houston to visit one of our favorite museums – The Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. We started by driving down a remarkably congestion-free I-45 into the city which is about an hour south of where we are staying at Lake Conroe. Texas freeways are very circuitous with big parallel frontage roads such that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the freeway from the frontage. We were fortunate and got on the freeway on the first try.
We finally arrived in the neighborhood where the Museum is located and drove around the block a bit before noticing there was a parking structure for Museum patrons that cost $5 to park for the day. It was only when we got closer to the parking structure entrance that we noted the sign stated the $5 parking was only for Museum members and mere peons have to cough up $20. We went in anyway. The clearance was barely adequate for us to drive our F-250 inside and we brushed the antenna on many of the concrete support beams inside but, fortunately, no roof scraping was encountered.
We took the elevator down 5 floors and entered the Museum at a cost of $25 a head. The Museum is magnificent. They have a giant section with dinosaur skeletons, a spectacular mineral and gem hall, a big section of Egyptian antiquities, a section about Texas mapmaking, a great exhibit with operating model trains, a big display of seashells, another section with ammonites (big colorful prehistoric sea snails) and trilobites, a Foucault pendulum, extensive displays of dead, stuffed Texas wildlife, another section with stuffed African wildlife, a large display of Early American History, an entire hall donated to Amazon rain forest and a nifty museum store. My feet crapped out before we could see it all but we did a pretty good job.
On the way home, I-45 was not the tranquil highway we traveled down on the way into the city. To make things worse, I blooped the navigation and we explored a bit of I-10 that we did not intend to see. Ultimately we made it back to Lake Conroe and I made some curry for Peggy to make up for my lousy navigation.
We had another one of the gorgeous Texas sunsets today.
We took a few pix at the museum and you can see some of them if you click here

We were obliged to take care of some stuff today so there was no exploring. We were productive, however, knocking out a trip to Trader Joe’s, Costco, a liquor store and a fuel stop. We hauled all our loot home and stowed as much as possible in cupboards but some ended up on the trailer floor under the table. We are well-stocked.
We purchased internet access for the time we are staying, took showers and drank some tequila. An all-around successful day. Boring, though.

Today was a travel day so we picked up our stuff and left the Sandpiper RV Resort in Galveston headed north away from the Gulf of Mexico. We were soon on I-45 headed for Willis, Texas, which is about an hour north of Houston. Traffic was frightening in Houston, at least for old codgers like me. Almost everyone was driving faster than us. I was foolish and drove the speed limit.
Houston drivers seem to fall into two categories. The first category are those that drive sinuous, serpentine paths while being preoccupied with texting and talking on the phone. This category of folks do not use their turn signals. The second category drives too fast while texting and chatting on the phone and they leave one turn signal on continuously. There is a lot of highway construction or destruction in the Houston area so the result is a free-for-all with many near misses and close calls.
We eventually exited the nightmarish metropolitan area and continued north on I-45 until we pulled off in Willis and drove to the Thousand Trails Lake Conroe facility. We had a reservation which was fortunate because, despite this place being enormous, it was also nearly full and we may have snagged the last available back-in space. Lake Conroe TT has full hookups, large spaces, pay-as-you-go wifi and the big lake adjacent to the campground. This is our first time in this TT facility.

Across a causeway from Galveston lies Pelican Island, home to a branch of Texas A & M, Seawolf Park and many oil production support facilities.
The Texas A & M facilities are very tidy. There are docks at the edge of the campus where research and oil support vessels are moored. We spotted many ROTC or naval personnel strolling between classes. They look very young.
Most of the remainder of the inhabited part of the island is dedicated to oil production facilities. There are numerous oil platforms that are not currently drilling tied up along Galveston Bay. They are huge. There are some massive rigs which appear to be secured in place when drilling solely by an array of anchors. Other rigs have elaborate spud arrangements so they can be floated into place where they lower the the spuds through the rig superstructure all the way to the seafloor and then jack the rig up into the air for drilling operations. The rigs must be enormously expensive because millions of dollars worth of cranes and other equipment is secured to the rigs and that’s only the stuff visible from the outside.
On the way home, we found two adjacent fresh seafood markets in an obscure portion of the waterfront. On the left was Samson’s and on the right was Katie’s. They are so close together that the only thing that seems to separate the two markets is some corrugated sheet metal. We did not want to favor one market over the other so Peggy went into Samson’s and bought a bunch of corpulent shrimp (is that an oxymoron?) while I was next door purchasing wahoo steaks and scallops. About $50 later, we jumped back into the truck but we could easily have spent about four times as much in these markets purchasing a whole bunch of their tasty-looking seafood. The RV freezer got filled up today. Neither store had a plastic de-veiner for shrimp so Peggy generously processed the chubby little guys with a sharp knife and fingers. Shrimp Scampi for dinner tonight.
We curtailed our exploring early today so we could go home and relax before our travel day tomorrow. We did take a stroll down to the beach behind our RV park so Peggy could get her shoes wet in the Gulf of Mexico. Peggy also forged on and went to a nearby Schlotsky’s where they had Cinnabon rolls but no bagels. If there was ever a proper name for a place that sells bagels, it seems Schlotsky’s would fit the bill.
We shot a few pix. You can see some of them if you click here

I started the day by dumping our waste tanks. After all the bad stuff had gone down the sewer hookup, I did my usual pipe washing routine when I spotted some alarming defects in our 3 year old sewer hose. After that, the first item on today’s agenda was to find an RV parts store and replace the soon-to-be-embarrassing-if-not-replaced defective parts. We headed to a place called Ron Hoover RV & Marine here on Galveston Island where we soon found the name should be Ron Hoover Marine because they had no RV supplies. A nice guy at the desk told me that Ron Hoover has two locations and only 10 miles away was Ron Hoover RV & no boats. $50 later, we were out the door with a new 20′ system just like the one I am replacing.
A couple years ago we passed through this area and stopped at a Galveston landmark, the Moody Mansion. The folks operating the place at that time only offered accompanied tours a couple times a day and it did not work out with our schedule. Now we are back in Galveston with ample fooling around time so we drove over and walked up to the admission stand which is located in the adjacent garage. Now the Mansion has self-guided tours with little electronic doodads that explain what you are looking at when appropriate.
The Moody family seemed to own a good bit of Galveston with interests in cotton, shipping, insurance and banking along with most of the other really profitable businesses in town. They accumulated considerable wealth and bought the Mansion from a lady named Willis who started building in 1895. In 1900, the Moody family moved in for an eighty year stay.
The Mansion is pretty impressive from the outside. Exterior walls are built from limestone block and clay brick. Interior walls are mostly beautiful woodwork with a considerable amount of casing and molding around everything. The walls in a couple downstairs rooms are padded fabrics with ornate designs. The main bathrooms even have bidets in addition to toilets, massive cast iron tubs and showers and marble sinks. There are whistle tubes to communicate with the butler’s pantry, an elevator, a dumbwaiter and both gas and electric lighting. The bedrooms are spacious. One bedroom even has a big tub across from the bed. The dining room is particularly opulent with amazing woodwork on floors, walls, doors, windows and the ceiling. These folks had a nice house.
There are about 30 rooms you can wander through on the first and second floors. The basement and third floor are not open to the public. I understand the third floor was never really completed on the interior and was not really used by the residents. There was ample living space for a big family using just the first and second floors. The basement must have housed the kitchen at one time because there is a dumbwaiter in the butler’s pantry that only goes down. The house must have had a great architect because the systems were state-of-the-art for 1900. Two furnaces in the basement (coal and wood), central ventilation, central heating, electrical and gas distribution and full water and sewer plumbing are installed in addition to the whistle tube system. The occupants must have been comfy.
The Moody Mansion is on Broadway/J Street/IH-45 at 27th right in the middle of town. Entry fee is $12 a head.
A few pix of the house can be seen if you click here