Texas Sampler

[85_Ranger4x4]

Last year we got started on the National Park Passport thing. You got National Parks/areas and you get a stamp in your passport, we got one at the mammoth thing earlier in the trip. So we stopped to snag another stamp at the Lyndon B Johnson National Park on the way down to San Antonio.

Dad has never had anything good to say about the guy but a stamp is a stamp...





Stamp was in his former schoolhouse where he went to school.











Looks pretty dang bleak for this midwest farmboy...



Kinda freaky, apparently they ran A-C farm equipment, if that is a WD or a WD-45 (it is one or the other) I have one. Also weird, I toured the Valley factory in Nebraska in college.



And also my favorite breed of cattle. They are short, fluffy and laid back. We raised one when I was a kid, he was a hoot, too bad he wasn't a heifer.











From Oliver's camera



Well I can't say I was figuring on running into a Jetstar out here...

 

[97RangerXLT]

Looks like you had a good time. So were you able to wheel your Bronco, or just the red o e?

I like that red one..

AJ

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Looks like you had a good time. So were you able to wheel your Bronco, or just the red o e?

I like that red one..

AJ

At the Off-Roadeo we played with Ford's toys. Stay tuned...

Anyway, continued our way south. Saw some antelope, mule deer and white tail deer which was a neat checklist for a single day.

Landed in the squirrel nest known as San Antonio. What a flipping mess to drive in. Found a place to stash the car that seemed like would have good chances of the car still being there when we got back and hit the riverwalk. Absolutely gorgeous, very neat/fun enviorment.



I had fussed for a full day there but Johnson's ate into it and something got lost in translation with the tour planning department.





Kind of a stressful place to take a 4yo. He did really good but the water right there like that was kinda scary.



Had lunch on the edge of the river, make sure to keep track of your phone for sure.



Beggers came right up to your table, never seen the like.



They had tour boats going down the river too which Oliver loved to watch for.









From there it was a short walk to the Alamo.





They had demonstrators there going over weapons used in the battle and such which were very interesting.



Very neat and sombering, I had it pictured being much bigger.

They had many models and diagrams in the park... but it was a lego display across the street which really showed everything the best which was kind of funny.























Then we had to make tracks to get to my wife's aunt and uncle near Montgomery Texas... like 3hrs away. So we paid $27 for parking and hit the highway again.

 

[Jim Oaks]

Texas is interesting. If you go east you'll find woodlands. Tons of tall pines. West you'll find desert. Mid Texas you'll find small mountains. Texas has more lakes than I expected. If you go to the southern edge you have a coast.

 

[rusty ol ranger]

I shoulda brought the jeep and showed yall whats up.....




Just playin...i had too.

Looks like a helluva time!

 

[superj]

Two more hours south of san antonio and you could have been at the sparkling city on the sea, corpus christi. And that is where i am.


Did you guys see the texas bushman? He is on youtube and is very popular... dresses as a bush and sits in a pot along the sidewalk for the riverwalk (at the steps going down from the alamo to the riverwalk) and scares unsuspecting passerbys? He is hilarious to watch and some people get so scared when he moves that i am surprised they dont fall in the river walk

 

[Josh B]

My father took us to the worlds fair in San Antonio in 68, he also bought a new Plymouth wagon that year, it was also when they built the river walk. He liked going places, he was also stationed there a bit during WW2. He had lived in Menard very early, he even showed us a tree that still had a scar where he had taken off in a Model T and ran into it, at 5 years old. We also came back that way from New Mexico a couple of times and visited Pecos and other towns well known from the old movies, but seldom as they had been portrayed. One town there he was in a gas station a long long time, the town looked like a dump. He eventually came out with a hail stone hear as big as a softball, the man who ran the station had put a bunch of them in his freezer. He had said a week earlier the town looked like any other normal town

 

[Angry Possum]

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. That looks really awesome. Very cool stuff indeed.

 

[dvdswan]

AWEsome pictures. Thank you for sharing. Looks like everyone had a great time.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Did you guys see the texas bushman? He is on youtube and is very popular... dresses as a bush and sits in a pot along the sidewalk for the riverwalk (at the steps going down from the alamo to the riverwalk) and scares unsuspecting passerbys? He is hilarious to watch and some people get so scared when he moves that i am surprised they dont fall in the river walk

My inlaws had a little stroller with their dogs so we actually took the elevator up from the river walk.

My father took us to the worlds fair in San Antonio in 68, he also bought a new Plymouth wagon that year, it was also when they built the river walk. He liked going places, he was also stationed there a bit during WW2. He had lived in Menard very early, he even showed us a tree that still had a scar where he had taken off in a Model T and ran into it, at 5 years old. We also came back that way from New Mexico a couple of times and visited Pecos and other towns well known from the old movies, but seldom as they had been portrayed. One town there he was in a gas station a long long time, the town looked like a dump. He eventually came out with a hail stone hear as big as a softball, the man who ran the station had put a bunch of them in his freezer. He had said a week earlier the town looked like any other normal town

I did notice a lot of the new car dealers had canopies above their inventory...

Her uncle is an aviation nut like me and suggested checking out The Lone Star Flight Museum in Huston.

So into the lions den we go...



The vomit comet!

Reduced-gravity aircraft - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Now we are talkin...









Courtesy of Oliver

Traning cockpit for the space shuttle.













Its amazing that one pin is all the holds the wing when the wing is locked down.











I don't think they had wookies in mind when they designed her...



I think one of these would look nice in the TRS livery (hint hint @Jim Oaks)



A-7 cockpit trainer, super cool.





Holy cow, it even has the TRS scheme!

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

I remember when these things were all new and fancy...

















Really neat museum, my local museum has a lot of cold war bombers on static display. This one had a bunch of fighters and smaller planes. Quite a few had awards from Oshkosh and if you notice a lot of the radials have drip pans under them... they have oil in them and are not sitting there dry.

Went by the NASA building, our tour guide said he wasn't super impressed with it so we didn't stop.



And splut... back into this crap.



Tied into these things at the Off-Roadeo, they had a bunch for use to take out on the trail. Very fun snack, after we knew they existed we found them at gas stations and grocery stores along the way.



And the sun sets on another day.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Their house was near the Sam Houston National Forest... after being newly aquainted the concept of forest service roads, lets explore!

So I got Garmin installed with maps of the park downloaded and we are off. I was running Gaia on my phone... kept losing cell reception.





















Poor tree probably has a story to tell.



We were by ourselves and really didn't know where we were going. Most were just dead ends Ended up on a more gravel road than wasn't very exciting although we did bump into forest service folks doing a controlled burn which I don't see every day.



The little miniature palm trees are neat, they are all over in some areas.











On our way back home we could see the smoke.



This was on the side of their house.



Then we went to Old Town Spring.







They had a couple real neat real toy stores.











Anyway the offroading was very tame but we were by ourselves so I was ok with it. Very neat seeing all the trees and whatnot too. The Old Town Spring was kinda touristy but was pretty neat in its own right, every store was very different.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Alrighty, time to head home.

And for some strange reason... we find ourselves back in Waco...

Neat burger place for lunch.





I ate my lunch out of a GMC poverty cap...



I think sometimes the algorithm my navigation system operates with has ulterior motives...



Me wonders why these places keep snagging cool old 4wd's to sit around.



I guess they just bought the silos or something.



A. they are not silos, they are grain bins.
B. No idea what they are going to do with old empty rain bins until a storm flattens them.

Huge lines for everything, it was pretty warm too. They have all these little shops which probably sounds cutesy. No room so everybody had to stand outside and wait their turn to go in.

And we are on the road again!



And right into rush hour in Fort Worth!



And we just got into Oklahoma for the night.

I dunno, I kinda feel like Oklahoma is an under rated state, same with eastern Kansas.



And there is a real life cotton field.



Cotton just blowing around in the road ditch.





Ended up on the of the last stretches of the old Route 66, now called 166.









Well... don't see that every day along the highway.



Ended up in Olathe Kansas for a nice supper for our anniversary, waiter was kinda short and only had nanas and applesauce but he did ok otherwise.





Rolled into our driveway at around 9:30 and the final tally is:



Oofta...

 

[Josh B]

Awesome yall, liked the cotton picking, I picked cotton when I was 5 years old. Made 35 cents, that was 1960, used the money to buy a movie ticket and a pop. The movie was Pinocchio.

I was likely well over paid for my share of the cotton
There was an old man who worked there all his life, picking cotton. He was the father of one of my cousins mother.
Then the cotton picker machines came along, that field with the cotton blowing everywhere is testimony to how wasteful it became, some even tried to pick cotton behind those combines but it was really no use.

The old man mentioned told my neighbor, who still runs a farm nearby to dig his grave with a shovel, cause he didn't want one of those machines that put him out of work to dig his grave.

When the old man died we took shovels and picks and dug his grave, then covered him up in it, his wife was already laid right beside him there

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Awesome yall, liked the cotton picking, I picked cotton when I was 5 years old. Made 35 cents, that was 1960, used the money to buy a movie ticket and a pop. The movie was Pinocchio.

I was likely well over paid for my share of the cotton
There was an old man who worked there all his life, picking cotton. He was the father of one of my cousins mother.
Then the cotton picker machines came along, that field with the cotton blowing everywhere is testimony to how wasteful it became, some even tried to pick cotton behind those combines but it was really no use.

The old man mentioned told my neighbor, who still runs a farm nearby to dig his grave with a shovel, cause he didn't want one of those machines that put him out of work to dig his grave.

When the old man died we took shovels and picks and dug his grave, then covered him up in it, his wife was already laid right beside him there

Kinda reminds me of walking beans and throwing hay when my parents were kids.

Except I don't know if anybody really missed those getting replaced.

My mom, her sister and two brothers tried to make it walking beans as miserable as possible for my grandfather lol.