Bastrop, Texas...flowers and fire

Texas paintbrush

In Bastrop County, about 30 miles east of Austin, a fire started on September 4, 2011. In 9 days, over 34,000 acres were scorched with only 70% of the fire contained. More than 1,600 homes were also burned, as well as a big portion of the Bastrop State Park. The fire started at two different points, both from sparks igniting dry grass after trees fell on power lines during high winds. Referred to as the Bastrop County Complex fire and considered the single most destructive wildfire in Texas history, the affected areas are only just beginning to rejuvenate.

Map of the burned areas near Bastrop

As we drove along Hwy 71 and then turned down a street that was heavily hit, we saw lots of burned trees and barren forest floor. The houses that once stood in the neighborhood are now just a cement pad, driveway and mailbox. Some residents have started to rebuild, others are living in temporary trailers near where their houses once stood. The damage is startling.

Indian blanket

Bastrop State Park contains over 5,800 acres of loblolly pine covered hills, known as the Lost Pines. These pine trees are the westernmost stand of loblolly pines in the U.S. and are in stark contrast to the scrubby vegetation in the surrounding area. Sadly, some of these acres burned in September. Fortunately, tiny new pine trees have begun to sprout, according to the ranger we spoke with. Much of the park will re-open on April 13th this year, though the heavily burned areas will remain closed indefinitely.

Yellow flower that
stubbornly eludes identification

Winecups

Texas paintbrush and bluebonnets

We continued on to Bastrop, an adorable little town of small shops and very friendly people. We stopped in a few of the stores and several folks chatted with us about the town, inquired where we were from and gave us some ideas for things to see nearby. We really appreciated the hospitality. So friendly!

Ken surfing the web in our RV
littered with tourist brochures

We drove back to Austin to meet Don for lunch at the 888 Pan Asian restaurant, still not wanting to return to Mexican or barbeque just yet. We had a nice meal and lovely chat again with Don, said our goodbyes and headed toward the RV.

Ken was sweet and stopped the car for me at least three times so I could take some more pictures...this time of the wildflowers we've been admiring on every trip out of the RV park.

We spent a relaxing afternoon in the RV, not driving or sightseeing. Ken made us a great home cooked dinner, we caught up with family, and plotted our next move. Fun, low-key day!

Lyndon B. Johnson tour of the Hill Country region

Cows in the road! They didn't even move!

On Wednesday, we drove west to Johnson City, Texas to visit the boyhood home of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. While he was actually born in Stonewall near the ranch he would later own, he was raised in this home in order to attend school.

His mother, Rebekah Baines Johnson, born in 1881, was one of only two college-educated women in the entire county and moved the family to Johnson City so that 4 year old Lyndon (and the next 4 children) could eventually attend high school and then go on to college. In this small cottage, Mrs. Johnson taught elocution and debate. She would encourage her children to listen to the radio and then take a position on something they heard. She had them debate each other and then switch sides and debate the opposite

Lyndon B. Johnson's boyhood home

position. LBJ's father, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr., married Rebekah in 1907 and provided for his family as a rancher and state legislator. He served in the legislature for 6 terms and authored several important bills including the purchase of the Alamo property. Mr. Johnson's political career and Mrs. Johnson's focus on education and debate all rubbed off on LBJ.

Despite his rising political star, no one realized LBJ would one day be elected president and so his boyhood home is decorated with furniture appropriate to the time he lived there, but not original pieces. The house had no electricity, but unusually, did have running water, fed by a large gravity cistern. Since LBJ's father was a politician, they also had a telephone, one of the very few in the city at the time. Like most families, the outhouse was located some 200 feet from the house. Yikes.

The kitchen, Mrs. Johnson's least favorite room (especially with all her education), had 2 stoves - a large wood stove used for winter cooking and a small gas stove for the summer cooking. Smart!

The Johnsons' Ranch in Stonewall, Texas

We next headed out to the ranch (aka The Texas White House), some 15 miles away, to catch the last tour of the day. Wow! What a spread! We were treated to a room-by-room tour of the main house, presented by several different National Park rangers with over 100 of our closest friends. With so many tourists in the house at once, we lagged behind a little to hear more of the story in each room. Evidently, LBJ's insistence on watching the news on TV led to the installation of quite a few TVs throughout the house. As he would have them ALL on at the same time and she didn't care for the constant noise, Lady Bird had a separate bedroom without one.

LBJ's Amphicar for road and stream

LBJ also had telephones installed all over the house and grounds and needed a directory to keep track of the 72 phone lines. There was even a telephone built underneath LBJ's end of the dining room table. In addition to all the telephones and televisions, LBJ also had an affinity for cars. We saw at least 7 cars on the property and an airplane. The most unique car was his German made Amphicar, in Lagoon Blue. The car was designed to drive on roads, but would also move in the water with the help of two propellers underneath. Apparently, LBJ liked to scare unsuspecting visitors with a trip in the Amphicar yelling that the brakes had gone out and they were going under (in the water)! Quite the kidder.

Buffalo!

The compound is still a working ranch and we found cows lazily sitting by the edge of the road. They didn't even bother to get up when we rolled by. There are also large enclosures for longhorn cattle and white-tailed deer, and another for American bison (buffaloes!).

Buffalo!! He's looking at me!

Naturally, I begged Ken to stop, and though they pretended not to notice or care, I'm convinced they were flattered that some silly lady was taking their picture and shouting 'HI BUFFALOES!' to them.

We proceeded to head back toward the RV, but stopped for dinner at the Catfish Parlour, with an obvious selection of food that was, thankfully, neither barbeque nor Mexican. The fish was good, the service great and the jalapeno tartar sauce outstanding. We enjoyed our meal and arrived at the RV just in time for the soaking rain that lasted through the night. What a fun day!

San Antonio...300 years of Texas history

On Tuesday, we drove south to San Antonio. We began with a tour of three of the original five Spanish missions, all built between 1718 and 1731 so that Spain could expand into more of the new world and simultaneously spread Catholicism to the native peoples.

The Alamo, built in 1724 and originally named Mission San Antonio de Valero, was our first. Nestled in the heart of San Antonio and crowded with tourists hither and yon, we struggled to see many of the exhibits available, but managed to enjoy the sights within the compound in spite of that.

The Alamo

Much of the Alamo's history centers on the role it played in the Texas Revolution at the end of February 1836. The small band of Texas revolutionaries, who also protected the town of San Antonio and who vowed never to leave their post despite being overwhelmingly outmanned, died after holding the Mexican army at bay for 13 days. The final siege took place on March 6, 1836 when Santa Anna's troops stormed the compound at 5 am. Within an hour and a half, the Alamo fell.

Mission Concepcion de Acuna

Next we headed to Mission Concepcion de Acuna and then to Mission San Jose, considered the "queen of the missions". At each of these missions, the Franciscan friars worked to convert the Coahuiltecans to Catholicism and teach them to how to farm the land.

Mission San Jose

The Coahuiltecans, a hunter-gatherer tribe with a rich culture of their own, struggled to survive against European diseases and warfare with other tribes. The missions offered protection, housing and food in return for giving up their language, diet, clothing, religion, culture and even their names. Over 70% of them eventually died anyway from diseases brought by the missionaries themselves. Within 70 years those that remained were sufficiently assimilated into the Spanish culture and religion, and the missions were no longer necessary. In 1824 the Spanish secularized the missions and then redistributed the lands to the people still living in them.

Mission San Jose

The missions still have active parishes attending mass in their chapels. We even saw a young lady in her wedding gown with a photographer and several assistants taking her picture at Mission Concepcion...what a great place for that! Ken and I enjoyed our interesting trip through all that Texan history.

Heron looking for twigs

Famished, we drove back to San Antonio and headed for the restaurants in the River Walk. We were pleasantly surprised that the Lone Star Cafe offered a great porch from which to see the San Antonio River flow by, but also a tasty meal. Ken had the chicken fried steak, which he described as the best he's ever had, with a side of roasted corn and mashed potatoes. I had a burger and sweet potato fries. The fries were perfect, and just like Ken's entree, fried perfectly. Nice. The herons building nests in the trees above the river were amusing to watch snapping off twigs from the cedar trees and carrying them dutifully back to the little wifey.

After lunch we walked around more of San Antonio to the typical tourist spots. We tried to see more of the Alamo and despite the crowd managed to see the beautiful gardens behind the front chapel building. The gardens are full of gorgeous flowers and towering trees, but with all the people and the overcast day, we didn't get any pictures.

We next headed to La Villita, a small enclave of little homes built around 1819 that now house art galleries, specialty shops, and a cafe. Interestingly, La Villita is also the site of General Santa Anna's cannon line during the Battle of the Alamo.

The River Walk is an eight mile walkway one story below the street level that stretches along both sides of the San Antonio River through the city. Portions of it in downtown are full of restaurants and shops, but the rest of it meanders through the large buildings with benches and small waterfalls in among the little flower beds. We walked our legs off and headed to dinner.

Picture of Michelle I took in 1990(?)

For all the fun of our day, the absolute highlight of our brief trip to San Antonio was dinner with a friend I haven't seen in 20 years, Michelle. We met her for dinner at Chuy's Mexican Restaurant on our way out of the city and proceeded to gab non-stop for 3 hours, catching up on all those years in one sitting. We had a fantastic time and it was really great getting to see her! Of course, as I was so excited to see and talk with her, I completely forgot to get a picture of her. Boo. We had a wonderful time.

Wildflowers and more great barbeque...

Theme gardens at Wildflower Center

On Monday, we set out for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower
Center. The center, founded in 1982 by Lady Bird Johnson and actress Helen Hayes, is located on a couple hundred acres, with thousands of native Texas flowers and trees on display. Every aspect of good stewardship of the land is at play on the campus. To conserve resources, a central irrigation system collects roughly 10,200 gallons of water per inch of rainfall from the roofs of all the sandstone structures. Nice.

Quote from Lady Bird Johnson

We walked to the top of the Observation Tower, which doubles as a cistern, where we could see the meadows on one side and the courtyard and several gardens on the other. The center was designed to protect and preserve America's native plants as well as explore ways to conserve natural landscapes.

We also hiked around some of the trails taking in the diversity of the scrubby plant life that grows in this region so well, including several kinds of prickly pear cactus (some with 2 inch spines all over!). Ouch.

The chief flowers we've seen along the highways are bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes (both in the middle of the picture above) and a yellow-green flower we have so far not been able to identify, but that I heavily suspect is probably a weed. The bluebonnets are, of course, blue and are blooming everywhere this year. Apparently last year none bloomed due to the drought, but with this year's spring rains, they coat the hills and sides of the roads with their colorful petals.

Bluebonnets and prickly pear

Ken and the Huisache tree

The Indian paintbrush, a soft red-orange color, is found frequently interspersed with the bluebonnets. We've also seen the huisache trees' rust orange color on our travels around the Hill Country region of Texas. But at the Wildflower Center, all the wildflowers of Texas are in bloom, with splashes of color in among all the cacti and cedar trees.

We had a delicious lunch at the Wildflower Cafe, including some bright red hibiscus mint iced tea. So tasty. We really enjoyed our visit, especially with the delightful temperatures and low humidity.

Don, Sandy and Ken at the County Line BBQ

We met Don again for dinner, this time with another former co-worker, Sandy. The four of us dined at the County Line BBQ on the Hill, a regular barbeque haunt of this group during the 80's. Just like the Salt Lick on Sunday, we found the crowd on Monday at the County Line mercifully thin. Perfect.

We proceeded to eat way too much while watching the sun set from the ringside view this restaurant has atop the hill on which it's perched. The food was great...sausage, brisket, beef ribs, pulled pork and lots of sides. Very yummy. We topped the evening off with a bit of the County Line's homemade vanilla ice cream. What a great day!

Austin, Texas...city of a thousand restaurants

On Friday, we drove to Austin, Texas, home of the South by Southwest Music Festival every year, which we intentionally missed by a week to avoid all the traffic. We set up camp in Cedar Creek east of Austin at The Oaks RV Park, a lovely campground close to the highway but far enough so that we can't hear the road noise. Perrrrfect!

We met Laura and Andy at their beautiful house on the west side of Austin and then headed to dinner at one of the city's many food trailers...a cross between a food truck and restaurant. The G'Raj Mahal is a little Indian food trailer with a folding table serving as the hostess stand and a couple dozen patio tables for seating. The place was swarmed with people but the place has BYOB, so we were fine for the time being. We must have waited over an hour, but the food was totally worth it. Great mix of yummy Indian dishes delivered in paper bowls, eaten with plasticware, served by a guy with a red mohawk named Dave. Awesome.

Part of the photoengraved magnesium
mural by Naomi Savage

On Saturday, we took in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, a huge travertine building on the campus of the University of Texas. The LBJ Museum is, unfortunately, undergoing some renovations and the entirety of the museum's exhibits won't be available until January. Nonetheless, they have managed to keep some of the exhibits open and we thoroughly enjoyed those.

A video of LBJ's life began our tour and we learned about his humble upbringing in rural Texas, his pursuit of Lady Bird and his whirlwind political career. He campaigned against Kennedy and lost, but, of course, became Vice President. When Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963, Johnson inherited the presidency along with the Vietnam conflict. He won the presidential election in 1964. Despite the stain on his administration of the extremely unpopular Vietnam War, Johnson managed to help pass an overwhelming number of social and educational bills during his tenure, including the Civil Rights Bill, Head Start and many, many others.

Notice the little Texas longhorn! HA!

We also found exhibits of world famous iconic photographs, ten original drawings from Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, portraits of all the First Ladies and former Presidents, and gifts sent from citizens to President Johnson during his administration. One really interesting aspect of the museum was an audio recording of Johnson spinning funny stories about country folks to make a political point and needle his opponents with humor.

Lady Bird Johnson portrait
by Norman Rockwell

Another portion of the museum was dedicated to Lady Bird. This remarkable woman made an indelible impression on the city of Austin with her Town Lake Park, a hike and bike trail surrounding what is now called Lady Bird Lake, as well as the National Wildflower Center (now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center). She advocated the preservation of native wildflowers across the country in order to beautify the natural landscape with sustainable plants. She was also a tireless champion of children's education, particularly of the poor. What a fascinating couple!

UT Tower

From there we proceeded to walk around the UT campus, finding a little turtle pond near the UT Tower full of turtles of many sizes, entertaining a small horde of humans. We stopped to watch them climbing all over each other for a while (the turtles, I mean). We took in a bit more of the campus around the tower and saw literally hundreds of students covered head to toe in different colors of fluorescent powder. They looked a bit like colorful zombies in search of brains. We tried not to engage them.

On Saturday evening, we met Ken's friend Don, whom he has known since the early 80's when they worked together on software security research at University of Texas. We spent a nice evening chatting with Don at a lovely Mexican restaurant called Manuel's.

The Salt Lick, Driftwood, Texas

On Sunday, we again met Laura and Andy, this time to visit the Salt Lick in Driftwood, Texas, a barbeque restaurant made famous by the Travel Channel's award as The #1 Barbecue in the Country. We agreed to go early so as to avoid the crush of usual dinner patrons, and we were pleasantly surprised to be seated immediately. The service is quick and friendly, the accommodations akin to a picnic table in a wood shed, dining on 60's green melamine camp plates. The family style meal is the way to go...bowls of filler...er, I mean, side dishes, and a big platter of tasty meats. The cole slaw and potato salad, though very good, are certainly not reasons 1 and 2 why we chose this place for lunch. The tender brisket and scrumptious pork ribs are. We ate our weight in meat and rolled ourselves out of there.

At the Salt Lick

So as not to slip into a food coma, we all strolled around the Zilker Botanical Garden for a while. The Botanical Gardens are loaded with native plants and trees, many of which were flowering. We even found a banana magnolia whose little blooms indeed smell like bananas. A turtle pond provided some amusement as we watched a couple of silver dollar pancake sized turtles swimming around.

Kite Eating Tree at Zilker Park

From there, Ken and I decided to go for a hike to work off some of lunch. We chose Zilker Park next to Lady Bird Lake and set off for a long walk. We were joined by hikers and bikers and strollers and dogs of all sizes and kinds, as it was such a beautiful and warm day. The lake was full of kayakers, canoers, paddle-boarders and such. Everybody was outside getting exercise. Ken even found a tree that had eaten at least a couple dozen kites in its day. Austin is a very active city with miles and miles of biking lanes and walking paths, and a particular affinity for running. (We didn't run. No one was chasing.)

In the late afternoon, we retreated to the RV for a relaxing happy hour that lasted several. Great weekend!

Creole Nature Trail tour through the wetlands!

Smiling alligator

On Thursday, we went back to the visitor center to make use of their new free GPS video tour of the Creole Nature Trail, a 180-mile trip through southwestern Louisiana's wetlands.

We began the trip in Sulfur, a city whose sulfur mines were discovered in 1867 while a geologist was surveying for oil in the area. The sulfur, although extremely lucrative, proved deadly with the crude methods several miners used to extract it from deep underground. In 1890, German chemist Dr. Herman Frasch patented a method to mine the sulfur that ultimately proved successful in December 1894, which resulted in tremendous growth to the town over the next few decades.

Pensive alligator

The trail next took us south towards a tiny little town named Hackberry, and the Calcasieu Lake (pronounced KAL-ca-shoo). We stopped for lunch at Brown's grocery store and had Boudin balls and Andouille sausage po-boys. Yum!

Posing turtle

As we drove farther south through the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, we saw hundreds of different types of birds, like cormorants, egrets, ducks, and lots of others. We also caught sight of many little crabs scurrying across the road in front of us, claws raised, challenging us to a duel. So silly.

The wetlands are a vast expanse of treeless land with native grasses and pools of water supporting the wildlife that live here. The grasses are so varied that they lend the landscape a patchwork quilt effect of greens and blacks and tans, with pools of water here and there and streams running throughout.

Ken at Holly Beach

We continued south all the way to Holly Beach on the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. Holly Beach is a little community, among several nearby, that was virtually wiped off the map first in 1957 during Hurricane Audrey and then again during Hurricane Rita in 2005. The townspeople have begun to rebuild some of the houses, but much of the devastation is still evident with only the footers of a building remaining or a portion of a sign. The beach itself is a wide, white sandy beach with a spectacular view of the Gulf. We stopped to pick up some shells and dip our toes in the water before continuing our journey.

Much of the industry in this area is focused on oil or natural gas, and we could see several oil rigs out in the Gulf. Next we crossed the Calcasieu Ship Channel on a small ferry and headed farther east toward Oak Grove. As we turned north to head back to Lake Charles, the alligators we saw were, sadly, ones that had been hit by cars. We managed to see only one live alligator lurking in a shallow bit of water along the roadside. We drove on and on looking for more live alligators so we could take a picture, but they all hid from us.

Lake Charles

Once we returned the GPS unit to the visitor center in Lake Charles, we stopped by the Cypress Pond, an impressively named little man-made spot next to the visitor center to show off alligators and turtles. The four resident alligators, now completely accustomed to human visitors, did NOT dart off when we approached, and even posed for pictures! We walked along the boardwalk to the beach where folks and their dogs were enjoying the sun. Beautiful day!

Lake Charles

Afterwards, we returned to our favorite (thus far) restaurant, Steamboat Bill's, to stock up on more tasty Creole food.  This time we were determined to try the crawfish pistolettes, shrimp gumbo, and crawfish etouffee. The etouffee was spectacular. The crawfish pistolettes were just as good as their shrimp counterparts of the previous night, though our tastebuds preferred the shrimp version. We also tasted the shrimp gumbo, but found that we enjoyed the other stuff quite a bit more, although Ken believes this to be the best variation of gumbo we have so far sampled. We topped off the meal with a delicious piece of cheesecake (and, of course, another pecan praline), both of which we ate the next day, since we were stuffed from dinner. Extra yum!

Crawfish season in Lake Charles, Louisiana!

On Wednesday, after a noisy thunderstorm overnight, we packed up the coach in the rain and headed south. And when it rains here, whole counties flood. None of this little bit of sprinkling stuff. We drove over bridges whose streams or rivers were so swollen that the water level was pushing up the low branches of the trees. Never mind a shoreline or river banks...those were gone and the flooding, far inland. When we arrived at our new campground, Sam Houston Jones State Park, the campsite just across from ours was buried in 3 inches of water over the entire site...like a very shallow Olympic swimming pool. Well, maybe not quite that big.

I could see there would, again, be no marshmallow roasting.

As we are visiting Lake Charles at the height of crawfish season, we endeavored to find a good place to eat them. We requested a restaurant recommendation for boiled crawfish from the cashier at the Park's office (not wanting to repeat any of the infamous choices we had made recently) and then proceeded to check out her recommendation on Yelp.com, just to be safe. It looked promising.

Cackle? Raven? No idea...but it's loud.
(Turns out it's a Grackle!)

We then drove to the Visitor Center for sight-seeing ideas for Thursday, and found the center just next to Lake Charles, the lake. We walked along the lake's edge on the Lakefront Promenade where literally hundreds of birds have taken up residence. One kind of bird that looks to our untrained eyes like a raven (but a local said may be called a cackle), was gathered by the dozens in various treetops screaming to each other. It sounded liked a recording of crazy bird noises, it was very amusing.

Next we drove around the Charpentier Historic District, a 40-block neighborhood of historic homes built by different carpenters and craftsmen over the years, resulting in an extremely eclectic mix of beautiful houses. We didn't get any pictures of the homes, though, with the traffic behind us and the heavy clouds above us.

Boiled Crawfish....EAT ME!

From there, we were bound to put the restaurant recommendation and Yelp reviews to the test at Steamboat Bill's On the Lakefront. Wowsa. Now, I've never had boiled crawfish or any other truly Louisianian dishes, so we were anxious to try it. Steamboat Bill's did not disappoint, in fact, the food made up for all of the other less than stellar meals we've had in months...maybe years. The boiled crawfish comes by the pound, seasoned generously with Creole seasoning. Crawfish look, and taste, a bit like a cross between crabs and peel-and-eat shrimp. They look more like shrimp (heads on, antennae standing at attention, tails curled underneath themselves), but taste closer to crab. They were fantastic! The modus operandi of eating these 'mudbugs' is to snap off the tail, then eat the meat from the tail. The remaining body cavity on up is called the 'head', which you are supposed to suck by wrapping your lips around the abdomen and sucking the drop or two of highly spiced water and other crawfish "material". This second procedure left my lips swollen and stinging within a few minutes, so I relegated the remaining head-sucking of my crawfish to Ken.

We totally enjoyed the crawfish, but this was only the beginning of Steamboat Bill's impression on us. Next we had Boudin, described in a visitor magazine as a melding "of the best from Cajun, German and Creole culinary traditions that traces its history back to Canada by way of France." In any case, its a sausage made with bits of pork, rice, green onions, and parsley, along with a bunch of seasonings, and Steamboat Bill's rolls them into big balls and cooks 'em. The Boudin balls arrived with what tasted like a side of spicy ranch for dipping and we were hooked. These things are awesome. But, even better, were a pair of Shrimp Pistolettes, an odd name for what looks like a savory beignet with shrimp etouffee in it. A beignet is a deep-fried bun and shrimp etouffee is saucy, spicy (though not hot) amalgamation of yumminess with shrimp in it....at least that's how it tasted to me at this restaurant.

Boiled Crawfish

We topped off the meal with pecan pralines, recommended by a Yelp reviewer who clearly knows good food. The pralines were huge, loaded with pecans suspended in the praline goo, and most of both of them remain as of this writing. They are super tasty, but very sweet as pralines normally are, so we are extending their enjoyment over the next several days. Fabulous food at an extremely casual restaurant (think crab house, but without the brown paper tablecloths) with very quick and friendly service, and good prices. We will definitely be back.

We ended the evening with a luckless trip to a local casino. Louisiana's major cash crops, other than casinos, are rice and pine trees, along with, of course, crawfish, though we found more casinos than anything else. What a day!