'Nawlins!

My brother Bill made a special request when we got to New Orleans. Therefore this post will be rather short in words but long on pictures for his benefit.

Now that's some spicy sauce

Today found us headed to Avery Island, Louisiana where we got to visit the Tabasco production facility. 

If you saw the 60 Minutes feature, what they didn't tell you is how cute and pretty the island itself is.  From the guard at the bridge who hands your driving pass out on a long pole with a clothespin on the end to the rolling hills up to the 168 foot center of the island, it is all very quaint and picturesque.  Avery Island is also home to egret colonies, many other birds, and even has a Japanese garden along with camellias and azaleas and rare species of bamboo.  As for Tabasco products, we tasted Tabasco Ice Cream, Tabasco cola, Tabasco worcestershire, Tabasco teriyaki, Tabasco soy sauce, Tabasco jam, Tabasco red hots and that didn't even begin to cover the meat marinades, dip mixes, mayonnaise and what not.

And now for your quiz:

1.  What are the ingredients in Tabasco?

2.  How many varieties of Tabasco pepper sauce are there?

3.  Which corporation owns Tabasco?

Answers at the end.  In the 'Gee, I didn't know that' category we learned that Avery Island is atop one of the nation's largest salt domes, measuring 2.5 by 3 miles and believed to be as deep as Mount Everest.  And they mine the salt as well as use it in Tabasco production

And now for your answers:

1. Tabasco peppers, vinegar and salt.  That's it.  Of course it marinates and ferments for about three years before it is deemed worthy of being bottled in case you were thinking of making your own.

2. Seven-original red, green, garlic, chipotle, sweet and spicy, buffalo and habanero.  There is technically an eighth, the Family Reserve blend sold only at the factory, but they don't count that as a flavor since it is not commercially available.

3. None.  It has always been privately owned by the Avery-Marsh-McIllhenny family.

Greetings from Beaumont, Texas

We have officially crossed the Lotion Line.  That is the line between the dry air of New Mexico or West Texas where one must drink three extra glasses of water a day just to keep from shriveling up and the moist, humid coastal air where nothing ever dries out completely.  The line itself moves around a bit depending on the seasons, but we have put away the large economy size pump bottle of Extra Dry Skin Relief until our return loop gets west of Oklahoma City.

Yesterday we continued our visit to the Pacific War Museum in Fredericksburg, tootled down the road to Luckenbach and then wandered over to visit the LBJ Ranch National Park alongside the Pedernales River.  The bluebonnets and wildflowers were blooming, the grasses were green and the view of the hill country from the ranch was inspiring.  One really could imagine what it must have been like when LBJ hauled those city slickers from Washington D.C. out to the ranch for some down time and discussion.

We ended the night in Driftwood, TX and spent the evening with friends from Cheryl's college days. ( We figured out over dinner and a couple of bottles of wine that it has been 40+ years since those days!)   This morning found us on the road early, but by midday we decided we would rather take a leisurely pace and stop early, so here we are, still in Texas, but the border is just over yonder.  We took advantage of the extra time to catch up on chores and email and will hit the road tomorrow and head to Louisiana.

Laundry drying 

Tom 'watching' the news while checking his email.  Hercules is swathed in his blanket, having survived his shower.

Irish Day in a German Town

Our full day here in Fredericksburg was spent doing a little shopping and a lot of museum visiting.  The WWII Pacific War Museum here in the birthplace of Adm. Chester Nimitz is world class, and takes several hours to see just the highlights, but is truly a wonderful museum with a tremendous amount of artifacts and displays. 

In between we celebrated St. Paddy's Day in this German town by eating German food instead of corned beef.  But yes, we had the cabbage (or in our case sauerkraut.). Followed, of course by a stroll through several art galleries and shops where we almost managed to not buy anything, but ultimately failed in that regard. 

Wrestling an Octopus

Greetings from Fredericksburg, Texas.  We had a lovely night at camp in Big Bend National Park with some beautiful tropical colored small birds and cottonwoods all leafed out already.  Our trip down was better than the last time we traipsed through Fort Davis (five inches of half-inch hailstones) although the wind we battled on the way down finally caught up with us and stayed all night.  This is the picture of the clouds as the sun rose on our way out of the park this morning.

Despite our best intentions, we seem to be dashing up and down and across Texas just in time to let the cold front winds catch up every night.  This is now the third day of this back and forth race and it is getting a little tiresome.  Each day has been just a little bit windier and driving today was about a 35  mph crosswind with gusts up to 45 and we agreed it felt a lot like we were arm wrestling an octopus.  Lane management was a big challenge, but as our brother Jim said at the outset, "Keep the greasy side down".  We got here fine, although Cheryl is now drinking a few glasses of wine to get rid of the tension in her shoulders and brain from all the white-knuckle driving.  Tom, OTOH, has no problem with "ground turbulence"  because he has "experienced worse flying in thunderstorms and lenticular clouds and this only moves in two dimensions".  Well, OK.

Fortunately, we have two nights planned here in Fredericksburg, so we are gonna let the storm move right along without us.  Tomorrow we will relax a bit, sightsee in town, do some retail therapy and head to Driftwood,TX  on Tuesday.

Day one is Complete

Greetings from Van Horn, Texas. We had a relatively uneventful day driving down, a little wind, seven hours, a lot of traffic through El Paso (ugh!) but we got here safe and sound in plenty of time.  Van Horn is not much more than a wide spot in the road with motels and gas stations and four RV parks.  We are at one called Mountain View.

We have free cable, free Wi-Fi, full hookups and a very nice couple at the front desk running the place under new management. We're off to take the dog out for a walk, cook up a little chicken for dinner, and check the weather for the winds tomorrow. We're heading to Big Bend National Park, and we likely will not have much in the way of either cell or Wi-Fi service for the next 48 hours or so, we'll catch you on the other side.

Packing it in

Just after we bought our land in Corrales, which was 21 years ago this month, an early summer thunderstorm dumped so much water in just a few minutes that the arroyos nearby filled, re-carved their spaces and filled the local streets to within inches of flooding the few homes just east of the arroyo.  At the time everyone said it was a 'storm of the century' and unlikely to be repeated for fifty to a hundred years.  The politicians did eventually build a storm runoff pipe to divert the arroyo water to a concrete lined flood channel to the north.  And they did put up signs on the local streets which advised 'roads may be impassible in times of heavy rains or inclement weather'.

Thirteen years later Corrales had another major flood during a summer thunderstorm.  The runoff pipe did its job and diverted most of the water to the concrete lined channel.  But added to this water was mud and debris from the mesa and growing streets to the west.  So much mud and debris came down the concrete flood channel arroyo that the main road was closed because the bridge was weakened and the asphalt road had washed away.  When everything finally dried out and the mud was removed from the streets we were told it was one of those very odd 100 year flood events.  Nobody seemed to pay much attention to the fact that the prior '100 year storm' had been just 13 years earlier, about a tenth of the predicted timespan, but then again it was a different batch of politicians and a different batch of homes impacted.

Fast forward seven years to last summer, when many more homes had been built and now filled the 1992 storm arroyo and flood plain runoff area.  One big summer thunderstorm and mud filled basements, mucky water ran 6-8 inches deep through courtyards and kitchens, asphalt sinkholes captured firetruck wheels and pallets of firewood travelled half a mile from their arroyo starting position.  This time, people sort of remembered the 2006 storm, so they called this storm a 500 year event. And the village is trying to do some additional flood control channeling and hardscaping in the arroyo flood plain.  The six or seven homes built in the middle of this same arroyo flood plain are demanding the village do something, while some of us are left wondering why they were allowed to build homes in the middle of the 50-100-500 year water flow at all.  

It will be verrrry interesting to see how it all turns out.

If you have read this far, you may wonder what this has to do with our traveling adventures.  Well, it goes like this:

1. People have short memories, and selectively short in many cases.

2. Statistics can be manipulated to fit the situation.

3. Mother Nature and history both tend to repeat themselves; because of #1 and in spite of #2

4. We are beginning to pack for our upcoming trip.  Due to #3 it's like starting all over again, as if we have never done this before and not just two months ago.

5. In the middle of December, March and 65 degrees sounded like springtime and lovely weather, not the rainstorms back east and cold wind we have been told to expect on portions of our trip. 65 degrees as a high can be be calm and sunny (lovely!) or gray and rainy (miserable).  This also makes choosing clothing more of a 'take everything' proposition.

6. The Packing Corallary says if you 'take everything' in clothing you will also 'take everything' in supplies and provisions.

7. We do not need or want to 'take everything', but that requires that we know what will be needed.  

8. See #1-7 again.

<Sigh>  It will be verrrry interesting to see how it all turns out.