What a Ride!

Short Trip to Brady Lake, Texas

We left Tye RV Park Friday for a short trip to Brady, Texas and the Brady Lake Reservoir. There, we are meeting our friends Jim and Betty from San Marcos, Texas. They had just purchased a used 2008 Tiffin Phaeton and wanted to pick our brains about their motorhome since we own a 2009 Tiffin Phaeton.

We both arrived at Brady Lake within about 5 minutes of each other. What great timing!

After setting up, we hopped in Jim and Betty’s Jeep and drove into downtown Brady. They have a very nice courthouse.

They have a pretty downtown, but it seems like most of the businesses are out of business except Everidges. Everidges downtown store seems to have about everything you could ever need and many more items that you don’t need. :)

Here is a cool streetlight out in front of Everidges.

How about a little yard art?

They have a 1950’s era kitchen on display.

They have tons of furniture, bedroom sets, dining rooms, etc. I really liked this rustic bedroom.

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Nice sofa!

They have a huge spiral staircase leading upstairs.

A huge stained glass dome above the spiral staircase.

How about some armor?

A cool end table for my buddies Manuel and Ralph.

How about a close-up? She sure can balance the tabletop!!! :)

A mural on the side of the building.

Bronze dog on a piece of granite.

Sue, Betty and Wooden Indian saluting their boss, ME!!! Ha! Ha!

I saw this building downtown and took this picture, I then had to look up info on its meaning. Curtis Field.

We returned back to the campground at Brady Lake and I got a photo of our rigs.

They have a boat ramp and a floating boat dock, unfortunately the lake is down so far in water level that the floating boat dock is sitting on dry ground!

They have this fishing dock on the lake that is run by the City of Brady, for a small fee you can fish from it.

The inside of the fishing dock.

A propane heating system for the fishing dock.

One successful fisherman.

A couple views of the lake from the end of the fishing dock.

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A couple deer on the land across from the fishing dock.

A large goose.

A little marina next to the fishing dock.

A nesting duck in a small structure built just for it.

A beautiful sunset over Brady Lake.

We returned back to Tye, Texas on Sunday.

Until next time!

Road trip!

Tuesday we made a road trip to Dublin, Texas to visit the oldest continuous running bottling Dr. Pepper plant. What is also unique about the plant is that they are the only one that uses cane sugar in their Dr. Pepper in the United States. Dublin Dr. Pepper offers tours 7 days week and 9 times per day, check the above website for exceptions if you plan to visit.

Sue checking out the signs.

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A statue in memory of the founder, Sam Houston Prim.

Texas Historical Marker

The bottling equipment is of 1940-50’s vintage, but they still use it in their operations. The bottle washer.

The bottle filler and capper.

The inside of the gift shop with Dr. Pepper memorabilia everywhere!

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Cases of Dr. Pepper cans and bottles!

This is for our son and daughter-in-law who love to bike ride!

A couple murals on the building and across the street.

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We bought a case of the small 7 oz. Dr. Peppers before we left and drove on back to Tye, Texas.

I have been taking photos and videos of the Air Force planes passing over our motorhome the last few days. I will be posting them on a separate blog when I have a few more.

Until next time!

Rattlesnake Roundup

Since we don’t work on Fridays, we decided to take in the 51st Annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, TX. We drove the 30 miles from the Tye RV park where we are staying to Sweetwater, TX which is straight down I-20. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center and got some information on the roundup and inquired about a local place to eat. We decided on Allen’s Family Style Fried Chicken. Boy! What an experience! We walked in and the waitress asked us how many people and what we wanted to drink. She then showed us to a table with 8 place settings. We were joined by 4 other men at the table and the waitress started bringing the food. There was fried chicken (of course), brisket and sausage. I don’t know how many sides the waitress brought ( I lost count), but they included rolls, green beans, squash, peeled potatoes in butter, pea salad, potato salad, corn and many more. For dessert they had a peach cobbler. All served family style! All of that for $8 plus tax. What a deal!! I would definitely go there again! :)

After lunch we drove down to the Sweetwater Coliseum where the rattlesnake roundup is being held. They have a lot of food vendors, swap meet vendors and carnival rides. But in the actual coliseum they have the different information stations about the rattlesnakes.

I found a t-shirt for my buddy Richard.

The have a station where a gentleman was showing you how they milk the rattlesnakes.

Milking a rattlesnake.

How about a few hundred rattlesnakes!

For $20 you can clean a rattlesnake and keep the skin. This young fellow decided that’s what he wanted to do.

We even tried some fried rattlesnake. It was ok, but not much meat on the pieces we got.

Some stuffed rattlesnakes on display.

A couple close-ups.

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A long one!

Look at the rattles on this one!

A real close-up… but kind of blurry. Sorry!

I don’t think I would handle a rattlesnake like this guy!

Now this photo is for my buddies Manuel and Ralph.

We are off all next week for spring break, but we aren’t sure where we will be sightseeing.

Until next time!

Frontier, Texas, Art Walk and The Grace Museum

Thursday we were lucky enough to get the attraction Frontier, Texas as our workplace survey location. They got 3 buses full of school children that took the tour of the attraction during the day. Since we were there all day counting people and during the traffic flow surveys the manager said that we could go through the attraction for free. They stay open to 6:00 PM, so around 3:00 Sue took the tour and then around 4:15 I took the tour. The historic information is very well presented and we would recommend it to everybody!

Here are a few pictures of the attraction starting with the exterior.

They have these projectors throughout the displays that have the characters come to life.

Some buffalo.

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This stagecoach was used in several old westerns before the attraction purchased it.

After we finished our workplace survey at Frontier, Texas we stayed downtown to participate in Abilene’s monthly ArtWalk  in downtown Abiliene.

Abilene is home to the National Center for Children’s Illustrative Literature (NCCIL). It is a beautiful facility, but of course we can’t take pictures of the art, but I got a picture of the room where they read books to the children. I really like this table.

This was on top one of the buildings, but I don’t know the significance of it.

Sue posing with some Star Wars characters.

They had a lot of outside entertainment, besides all of the art galleries hosting open houses.

During the monthly Art Walk, The Grace Museum is open free to the public. Downstairs they are usually showing a featured artist’s work. The second floor is the Children’s Museum with the third floor being the actual Grace Museum.

A quick photo of the Children’s Museum.

The third floor museum part consist of several displays of period pieces and technology displays.

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Sue admiring the old cameras with this photo taken with my iPhone!

Old adding machines.

Telephones and old switchboard.

They also have an entire section on boot making displaying all of the tools used to create custom boots.

We plan on going to Sweetwater, Texas tomorrow for the 51st Annual Rattlesnake Roundup.

Until next time!

Visit from friends

One of the places we worked at this week was Disability Resources. It is facility to assist developmentally disabled individuals. The have a beautiful facility as the following pictures show.

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The people who live and work at the facility make a variety of relishes, pickled jalapenos, and salsa that is made for a company in Abilene that sells them to H.E.B, Brookshire Bros, United Supermarkets, etc. We bought a jar of the bread and butter flavored pickled Jalapenos at the little store at the facility. We haven’t tried them yet, but they sure look good! They also make a jalapeno stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon for a restaurant in Buffalo Gap, Texas.

At one of the other sights we worked at this week, we saw this man lift going down the road like he was a regular truck.

When we got back to our RV site Thursday afternoon, we have a very pleasant surprise waiting for us. Our friends, Bob and Linda, (of the Because-We-Can.net fame) had stopped by for one night in the same park as us. We read their blog every day and we knew that they had been close to us a week or so ago, but they had headed over to McKinney, Texas. They had gone to get their shades changed out to the MCD shades that are in all the newer motorhomes. So we were very surprised to find them in our park.

We had a great time visiting for the evening. Thanks Bob and Linda for stopping by!!!!

Friday, our friends, Joe and Loretta, stopped by for a couple days to visit. They were one of the couples that travelled with us to Alaska back in the summer of 2009. They were heading to Monahans, Texas to visit relatives. Friday was cool outside, so Sue had some good hot gumbo ready for them when they arrived. It rained Friday night and it was still cool and windy on Saturday morning. So we all decided to go to the movies and we saw Rango at the 1:15 PM matinee. It was an animated movie that was really good!

We had heard about a really good steakhouse south of Abilene in the town of Buffalo Gap from the folks at Disability Resources. So I had made reservations for 6:15 PM for all of us at Perini Ranch Steakhouse. They have this giant armadillo at the entrance of the ranch.

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The steaks were fantastic and this picture is for our friend Bob (that had just visited us).

We got the waitress to take a picture of us with Joe and Loretta (on right).

Joe and Loretta left this morning and we had a great time with them. Thanks Joe and Loretta for stopping by!!

Until next time!