Cruising West Texas

Fort Davis, Texas

We've been cruising the highways of the plains and mountains of West Texas. The picture below is a lobby of a hotel in Marfa, Texas. The cast of "Giant" stayed here while the movie was being filmed (James Dean, Rock Hudson). I saw Giant with my parents in the old Tampa Theatre before it became a historical relic.

We visited the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine, Texas. It's at a very nice Texas State University. I could live in Alpine. Maybe I could resume my teaching career? This is a picture of the Rio Grande that was n one of the HDTV exhibits in the museum.

The roads here are my favorite kind: two-lane, well-maintained and light traffic. They have an elaborate rest stop on US 90 between Alpine and Marfa where you can see "mystery lights" every evening. I saw some of those myself back at Seminole Canyon during the thunderstorm. It appeared to be a phosphorescent bird of some sort flitting about between lightning strikes.

I had to laugh at this sign in the museum. It was certainly true for me. Viet Nam? Is that a real place? Laos? Cambodia? How about Cebu City in the Philippines? Johnston Island? Guam?

We enjoyed our visit to the McDonald Observatory, run by the University of Texas. They only do spectral analysis. One telescope has a 372 inch mirror and a very clever money-saving design. They've come up with a theory to explain the somewhat empty, fuzzy center of a number of brighter, larger galaxies. They think that in many cases, revolving binary black holes act like an egg-beater and fling stars away from the galaxy center with gravity waves. They're setting up for an experiment tonight to try to learn more about "dark matter".


We run across some strange plants on the desert roadside. There are two mechanical problems. We have a flat tire on the Toyota. The local gas station doesn't have my size in a new tire , but they sell me a used radial with lots of tread for $15. I love small towns they are so honest and basic.. My camera finally died. It was damaged in a fall I took at Gibraltar last month. I buy a new one in the Alpine Radio Shack. The clerk says I am the second person in three years to give her both ID and a credit card at the time of purchase. I ask her if Alpine has as much credit card fraud as Miami and she laughs and says she knows almost all her customers by name.


Here are a few cactus flowers.


We see a lot of open road as we cruise the Davis Mountains. My favorite place was Alpine, a small town with good food and a modern state university. Fort Davis is nice too. High, cool with Uncle Buck's liquor store and a public library that sells used books to gypsies like us.


We're leaving Texas in the morning. However we will stop in El Paso on the way out to get my new Z-coil spring shoes.

A Sense of Perspective

Fort Davis, Texas

It was cool this morning at 3AM. The Milky Way is out and bright, running from the horizon through the triangle formed by Deneb, Vega and Altair. Fortunately, we are usually spared the sight of the outer edge of our own galaxy. Otherwise we might always feel depressingly small and insignificant.


The Davis Mountains were called the Apache Mountains before Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, established the Fort to protect against raids by the indigenous hostiles. The fort was abandoned during the Civil War. In 1866 the Ninth Cavalry, consisting of black "buffalo soldiers" reopened the fort.


It's high here and cool this morning. Today we plan to see the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, drive a long wildlife loop and go to the Chihuahuan Desert nature center. Maybe we will get lucky and see a black, hairy Javelina?


We drove to the West of the Pecos museum yesterday. It's located in Pecos. The bar has real bullet holes in the wall where two men were killed in a shoot-out. The bartender, Jesse, tells the story when you trip a motion detector entering the bar.


The drive to Pecos winds about 30 miles though the Davis Mountains and then another 40 over tabletop desert. I amuse myself trying to photograph mirages in the desert. This is a shrub desert without much diversity. Yuccas and agaves, growing with grasses and creosote bushes, give this desert its shrubby appearance.


They filmed "Lonesome Dove" here, so I guess that we've accidentally found it.

The Law West of the Pecos

Langtry, Texas

President Obama just sent me another E-mail. This one is linked to a video about the new Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The President invites me to "Digg", "Tweet", or "Facebook" his video. How cool is that?

Meanwhile we cross the Pecos and I walk over some bridge construction from the West side to snap a picture of the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers. Unfortunately, I've left my shutter speed at about a full second and the first few morning pictures are bright white.

Langtry is a few miles West of the Pecos, where another Judge, Roy Bean, held court. It's a very small, dusty town on the Rio Grande. My GPS doesn't know it exists. The Judge moved to Langtry with a tent and ten 55 gallon barrels of whiskey. The Texas Rangers asked him to serve as Justice of the Peace in this lawless area.

Many of his customers were Irishmen and Chinamen working on the railroad though Texas. He was trying an Irishman for the shooting death of a Chinaman, when his courthouse was surrounded by Irish threatening to lynch him if he found the defendant guilty. After consulting his one lawbook, he stated that it said that while it was against the law to kill a human being, the law was silent on the subject of Chinamen. The defendant was acquited.

In another famous legal decision, he ruled on a corpse found with 41 dollars and a Smith & Wesson revolver. He said that it was against the law to carry a concealed weapon, especially so for a dead man. Therefore, he confiscated the revolver and fined the corpse 41 dollars.

The Judge was infatuated with the singer "Jersey Lilly" Langtry, to whom he wrote many letters. He called his home above an "Opera House" in the hope of luring her to Langtry. Eventually Lilly did visit Langtry, in 1904, a year after Bean's death.

Once. financier Jay Gould was scheduled to pass though Langtry on the railroad. The Judge stopped the train with an emergency flare and Gould spent several hours drinking with Bean. This caused a brief financial panic when rumors circulated that Gould had been killed in a tain wreck.

We put some miles on yesterday. We're in Fort Davis, the highest point in Texas. We'll stay a few days. There's a lot to see here.

Seminole Canyon State Park, Texas

On the Border Northwest of Del Rio, Texas

It will be dawn shortly. The clouds offer the possibility of some good sunrise photos. This place is on the Mexican border a short distance from the Rio Grande river. You can hike down into the canyon about two hours to see some impressive Indian ruins on a guided tour. They cancel the hike when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees, which seems very probable today.


We were treated to a fine display of nature’s fireworks last evening when a flock of heavy thunderstorms rolled over the desert. The rainfall approached four inches an hour in spots, triggering flash floods in the dry desert creek beds. Underground Weather has warnings of 60 MPH winds, flash floods and baseball-size hail. We were spared the worst of that. The storm did kill the Park electricity, so we are ran on batteries last night.


Before the storm, we were running both air conditioners, but couldn’t get the temperature below 87 degrees. We keep tripping the 30 amp Park breaker so I switched the refrigerator and water heater to propane and gave up on the ham hocks and beans in the crock pot.


We met Guy and Redding after we parked. They are a father and son who are bicycling from Georgia to San Diego in support of prostate cancer awareness. Guy is the 58 year old dad. The next 500 miles are steeply up and down in brutal desert heat. He seems a little surprised by the 60 to 80 mile distances between tiny Texas towns, many of which have no services. Redding is 18. I get the feeeling that this trip was a last minute father and son adventure before college, put together with minimal planning and research. They seem lightly laden with tents and a few other essentials. Out here, if they run out of water, they will die quickly.

After reading their blog , I realized they needed a computer. I took the laptop down to their campsite so they could do an update without having to find a library on this desolate stretch of Texas road.


I told them about a tent-friendly campsite 100 miles ahead in Marathon. Guy is a Urologist. I hope he is checked out on heat stroke prevention. We rode our motorcycle here a couple of years ago. It feels like riding into a giant hair-dryer.


The picture above was taken in darkened conditions with a long shutter speed. You can see Mrs. Phred's feet as she stares out at the lightning strikes. Mrs. Phred worries about Guy and Redding during the storm. The Camp Host told them to shelter in the Park’s bathroom.

Schlittenbahn

New Brunfels, Texas

Here is an idea I'm sure won't occur to anyone else. It's a hot Memorial Day weekend so let's go to the number one rated water park in the world. It's called Schlittenbahn, which means toboggan run.


Because of our advanced age, we get in at the same rate as children under 12, which seems oddly appropriate when you stop to think about it. It's definitely a place for young people with tattoos and children. We see thousands of people waiting in short and long lines with us, but no one else is close to our age. They may have only sold two senior tickets all day.


We go on a bunch of fun tube rides and down a variety of spiraling tubes and slides. At first we can't figure out how we can both ride, so one of us ends up holding the camera. Eventually we get smart and stuff everything we don't want wet in a rental locker.


The rides have names like Master Blaster, Soda Straws, Congo River, Wolf Pack and Black Night. They have a pool that generates big waves for body surfing. They have dueling water cannons and a five story waterfall. You can bring your own picnic in, but not if it includes and glass or alcohol.


This was one of my better ideas. We stop at a Sonic on the way home for a Sonic Blast for me and a hot fudge sundae for Mrs. Phred. A perfect summer day.


A short river runs though the park. The river originates in a spring and we see thousands of tubers taking the two mile float. They're almost wall to wall on the river. It's a warm summer Texas holiday weekend. Why not?

Step Away From the Computer!

San Antonio, Texas

I went though basic training here in the summer of 1963 and then Officer's Training School in the winter of 1965-66. Mrs. Phred flew out to join me and we bought a little green Triumph TR4-A and loaded all our possessions into it and drove to San Francisco for the Summer of Love and Navigator training school in Sacramento..


Today we take Bus 24 to downtown and then wander the River walk for a time. We go to see the new Terminator movie at the huge mall on the River walk. John Conner has his hands full and Arnold makes a short virtual appearance. As we exit the mall, the skies threaten a downpour so we duck into a Mexican Restaurant on the River walk for margaritas and lunch. There are a number of Airman Basics wandering the River walk. These kids haven't earned their first stripe, but they have two or three medals already. Apparently this is a policy change. We buy yet another umbrella and make our way to the bus stop for the return trip.


There is a water park 40 miles north called the Schlitterbahn. It's rated as the number one water park in the world. I want to go tomorrow. Pictures to follow.


Meanwhile, Mrs. Phred has taken over the laptop while I step outside for a smoke. "STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER, MA'AM", I tell her...I have things to share with my public.

Forever Autumn

Aunt Aura sent me a real letter about 16 years ago and I slipped it in a desk drawer intending to answer. I was busy. It never happened. We lost touch.



I Google her and find that she is 87 and still teaching Shakespeare at the University of Texas in Austin. We have a very enjoyable visit. Aura gives us a copy of her memoir. A publisher is very interested in the part where she taught Shakespeare to Mississippi black children in the 1960s.

I scan that and the part where she is teaching the "Crips" and the "Bloods" in South Los Angeles. It's well written, easily as good as the stuff we buy.

Aunt Aura has had some health problems recently. She tells me that she goes to sleep by reciting the names of the nine Supreme Court justices. I'm way overdue to write her a return letter.

Aura is living with her daughter Jo and her husband John. They seem to be living a dream life with a lovely home, four talented children and a a beach house. John explains that his company makes designer analog and digital chips for cell phones and other applications. They treat us to dinner. The hospitality is impeccable.


Aura's memoir is called "Forever Autumn". We also get a CD from the youngest son, Sammy and his group, the "Loose Cannons"... It's good.

A Vist With Our Niece's Family

We went to see Becki and Andrew, and their two young daughters, Clarissa and Ellie.


Andrew came home unharmed from the first Gulf War and gave me a 250 dinar note with a picture of Saddam Hussein.


Andrew fixes us bourbon and branch water and tells me about a local chicken franchise guy who is buying a million dinars in Iraq currency every week on speculation. The bank charges him $40 as a fee. so for $1040 he gets a million dinars .


I ask Andrew how many Iraqi dinars it takes to buy a Big Mac. He does a quick calculation and tells me 4,000. The dinar may rise again. I'm surprised that Saddam's dinars and picture are still the local currency.


Andrew blows up a portable water slide and grills Texas steaks. A very enjoyable visit. Nice to see young relatives doing well in a difficult time.

Ranch Apocalypse

Waco, Texas

We drove to Waco yesterday to see what's left of the Branch Davidian compound and also to see the Texas Ranger Museum. The compound is about ten miles outside Waco just off Farm Road 2491.

As we drive though this bucolic and sparsely populated area, I can't help visualizing carloads full of FBI Agents in black Suburban SUVs and an occasional flatbed truck hauling out an Abrams M1A1 tank or some other exotic piece of equipment.

The original Government raid on Mt. Carmel in 1993 went badly wrong, leaving four dead ATF agents and six dead Branch Davidians. The FBI took over at that point because of the death of Federal agents and a 51-day standoff began.

The siege ended even more badly than it began with the death of 82 Branch Davidians. Autopsies revealed that 20 had been shot to death and the rest died in a flaming building, including 20 children and two pregnant women. If you read Wiki about David Koresh, you find that Mt. Carmel had a somewhat turbulent history even before this disaster.

"By late 1987, George Roden's support had withered. To regain it, he challenged Koresh to a contest to raise the dead, even digging up one corpse to practice on it. Koresh went to authorities to file charges of corpse abuse against Roden, but was told he would have to show proof (such as a photograph of the corpse). Koresh returned to Mount Carmel in camouflage, with seven armed followers. All but one - who managed to escape - were arrested by the local police, who had been alerted by the sound of gunfire.^[1] When deputy sheriffs arrived, they found Koresh and six followers firing their rifles at Roden, who was also armed. Roden had already suffered a minor gunshot wound and was pinned down behind a tree at the Compound. The sheriff called into the chapel by telephone and talked Koresh into surrender.^[6] As a result of the incident, Koresh and his followers were charged with attempted murder. At the trial, Koresh testified that he went to Mount Carmel to uncover evidence of corpse abuse by George Roden. Koresh's followers were acquitted, and in Koresh's case a mistrial was declared."

It was always a strange place. Now the compound has a sign warning off trespassers. We drive in and take some snapshots of a granite stone and a small new church. A man comes out of the church to stare at us, so we wave "hello". Today we are the only visitors.

Koresh took over Mt. Carmel in 1989.

In 1989 Roden murdered Wayman Dale Adair with an axe blow to the skull after Adair stated his belief that he (Adair) was the true Messiah.^[7] Roden was convicted of murder and imprisoned in a mental hospital at Vernon, Texas. Because Roden owed thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes, Mount Carmel was placed for sale. Koresh and his followers raised the money and purchased the property, which he subsequently renamed "Ranch Apocalypse."^[1] Roden continued to harass the Koresh faction by filing legal papers while imprisoned. When Koresh and his followers reclaimed Mt. Carmel, they discovered that tenants who had rented from Roden had left behind a methamphetamine laboratory, which Koresh reported to the local police department and asked to have removed.^[8]

A UPS driver reported that a package broken open on delivery contained grenade casings and black powder. That and the frequent sound of automatic weapons fire led to the ill-fated ATF raid on the compound.

The Texas Ranger Musuem is interesting. They have a 45 minute video about the 185 year history of the Rangers and lots of very pretty firearms elaborately engraved. The many portraits of the rangers seem less steely-eyed than I had imagined.

After that we visit relatives in Killeen and are treated to a Texas steak dinner.

Bill Bailey Won't You Please Call Home?

Austin, Texas

We've lost touch with Mrs. Phred's Aunt Aura, but remember that she lived in Austin 30 years ago when I put her last letter in a drawer and stopped writing. Though the magic of the Internet, I find her phone number and address and we make a date to see her Thursday.

Aunt Aura scores 27 million as least common name in America so she is easy to find. She is the only one with her first and last name...she is tied for last place with all the other unique names.

We discover that Aunt Aura, at age 87. is teaching Shakespeare at the University of Texas. Maybe there's still hope for all of us.

I have renewed hope of finding my old friend Bill Bailey. Problem is that there are 181 "William H. Bailey" names. Some of them are about the right age. Some live in about the right places. I try "William Holden Bailey" and "William Holden Bailey, III", but no luck with those.

If you read this and are the right Bill Bailey, please write and tell me the name of your favorite inventor and what my father did to the "Bill Bailey" corpse in Horseheads...or explain "Blue Flame"...

I did find some cool shoes on the internet...these are a gottahave item. They're made by Z-Coil. $189.95 plus tax...I want the hiking boots, too...

No Wonder I’m Confused!

Austin, Texas



I try to understand why we keep running into the Colorado River wherever we go in the West. It flows though Texas to the sea and also though the Grand Canyon and out to the Sea of Cortez by California. The deal is that there are two Colorado Rivers in the U.S. One is confined to Texas and the other famous one has formed geologic wonders and huge man-made lake recreation areas. Here they call the Texas Colorado River, "Lake Austin".


As we enter East Texas, we see by the mile markers that it’s 1,000 miles to the western border and El Paso. We’ve covered about 300 of that.


We stop just outside Austin at the Griffin Falls State Park. We’re out of bayou country and into gentle rolling farmland, lakes and lots of oak trees mixed with just a few prickly pear cactus and roadrunner birds.



My first act in Austin is to go for a swim in the pool formed by the upper falls. As I float, I see swallows swooping low over my head to catch insects. They’re a lot like bats with no sonar.


The swimming area is empty except for some turtles. An unfamiliar species of cypress trees line the banks. The falls are formed by a limestone outcropping.


We decide to go to the Alamo Ritz Drafthouse in the evening to see the new Star Trek. It’s a good movie and I see by the previews that a new Terminator movie is coming out this summer, presumably with no Arnold. We order white wine and potato skins to go with the movie.


As we walk, we pass a lot of live music venues. Austin claims to be the live music capital of the world. I have my eye on Antone’s for tonight. They’re doing a Blues group at seven. I'm approached by a person who mumbles something that sounds like it ends with "apple juice". "Apple Juice?", I repeat, somewhat mystified. Yes, she says, she's from Chicago, she's dehydrated and needs money for apple juice. "That's better for you than Crystal Meth", I think to myself and give her a dollar.

Down on the Bayou

Sam Houston Jones State Park, Louisiana

The good news about this Louisiana park is that Louisiana cuts your camping fee in half if you have a federal Golden Age card so we only pay $8 a night instead of $16. The bad news is that they are not currently renting boats, as advertised, to cruise the bayous and swamps, which is one reason we came.

We cooked the de-boned chicken stuffed with crawfish and rice on the grill last night. The leftovers went into a crock pot of gumbo today and I added brown rice, vegetables, a jar of spaghetti sauce and a liberal dollop of Chipotle Tabasco sauce.

I finished reading “The Devil in the White City” which was about the 1892 Chicago Worlds Fair architects and a psychopath named Mudgett who may have efficiently murdered as many as 200 visitors to the fair. Great read,… to me it explains a lot about the fantastic architecture of modern day Chicago.

Last night we drove to Lake Charles and listened to a free concert by Boom-A-Rang, a great group. Lake. Charles reminds me a little of Tampa back in 1954. They have one tall glass building built by Capital One. I think of it as the house that credit cards built. It reminds me of how offended I was when a bank built the first tall building in Tampa in the early 1970s. “They’re just finance“, I thought. “They don’t really do anything useful or produce anything. Why should they have so much money?”

As we wander the small downtown, we see sidewalk paintings, perhaps done by children.



Today we drove a small Louisiana town called Starks. They were having their annual Mayhaw jelly festival. We’ve never heard of Mayhaw berries before. We bought some Mayhaw berry jelly from a man whose wife makes it in the kitchen. You can also buy frog legs, gator-on-a-stick, red rice and beans, crawfish and other delicacies there. It’s a very modest fair with artificial bull rides and some other attractions.




During the hour and a half we were there, they we having sack races. They slowly work up from kindergarten to adults. I’m waiting for the senior, over 65, sack race, but it doesn’t happen. I ask about it and they say that the hospital is too far away for that.

Let's Roll

Where am I going? I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow -
Anywhere, anywhere. I don't know.

After a day of planning yesterday, we have hopes to visit a few places in Texas over the next few weeks. Sometimes our plans work, but they are mostly cast in jello. My ultimate destination is a secret for right now, but in time all will be revealed to the Captain.


Louisiana:
- Sam Houston Jones State Park...boating and hiking
- A 105 mile scenic drive along the Louisiana coastal marshes

East Texas:
- Sea Rim State Park near Port Arthur
- A few days in Austin to take in some roadhouse music and see the bats
- The Riverwalk in San Antonio

West of the Pecos:
- The Judge Roy Bean place in Langtry
- Seminole Canyon State Park
- Mcdonald Observatory
- The Permian Basin Petroleum Museum
- Monahan Sandhills State Park- a strange flatland of sand dunes from the Permian period 280 million years ago that extends for several hundred miles
- Big Bend National Park
- Museum of the Big Bend
- Lonesome Dove?

New Mexico
- Las Cruces (Billy the Kid hair salon) & Organ Mountains hiking

It's that awkward time in the morning when Mrs. Phred is still sleeping. A lot of this stuff will be new for us...only a few repeats.

I have a deboned chicken stuffed with crawfish ready to go for dinner tonight.

We said goodbye to Betty and the other Cajuns during happy hour last night...
When Mrs. Phred awakens, I can say, "Let's roll".

Hot! Hot! Hot!

Avery Island, Louisiana

We set the GPS controls for the heart of the Sun...No, Really...for Avery Island, one of the strangest and most unlikely places in the US.


They make real Tabasco Sauce there. Accept no substitutes. As you approach the Island at the end of a deserted two lane highway, it rises in an unlikely manner from the surrounding terrain.


The island is a natural salt dome that begins 16 feet below ground and goes down about the depth of Mt. Everest. The MacClenny family began experimenting with pepper sauce in 1862 and sold the first 650 bottles in used perfume bottles in 1866.


Today, as we tour the factory, they are pumping out 700,000 bottles a day. The peppers are selected when ripe and ground into a paste. The paste is stored in used Jack Daniels oak whiskey barrels where it ferments for three years. When ready, the fermented paste is mixed with vinegar and stirred for 28 days, until properly liquefied.


The family (there are now 100 heirs) has established a lovely garden of oaks, bamboo, cypress, lagoons and gators on a large part of their 2,000 acre island. A highlight of the gardens is "Bird Island" which they established to encourage breeding of endangered waterfowl.

If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Most Louisiana hot sauces simply grind up peppers and add vinegar. Tabasco is the real deal. Go to their website for great recipes. Can't wait to try their new Chipotle sauce, made from smoked jalapenos.


We'll be hitting a 184-mile scenic drive along the coastal marshes of Louisiana on the way to Judge Roy Bean's out in West Texas. I'll be looking for freshly squashed giant Nutria along the highway. When you cook giant rat gumbo, you don't want to tell folks what you're cooking and you want to use plenty of Tabasco sauce to cover the taste.

By the way, in case you were wondering, a bayou always has flowing water, but a swamp occasionally drys up so tree seeds can germinate. If it has trees in it, it's a swamp.

Louisiana Swamp Tour

St. Martinsville, Louisiana

We had some really good food today. For lunch I had a shrimp ettoufee and then, for dinner, fried eggplant with a crab topping. Yesterday we split a “Po-Boy” sandwich with fried oysters, tomatoes, cheese and sautéed onions. The Cajun Creole cooking here is a real culinary experience.


We went on a swamp tour today with Brian. As we pull out from the dock he does a 360 and says. “That was the tour You’ all. Did you enjoy it?”


We see a lot of alligators. One was trying to digest a big garfish. Brian suggests that the gator may need to hide the fish under a log until it becomes more digestible.


Brian’s boat holds 15 people and draws about ten inches of water. It’s very quiet and bumps over many sunken logs.
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The cypress trees can live 1500 years. The oldest one in this swamp is about 600 years old. They logged these trees in the late 1800s, but the new growth cypress is lovely. Some of the old logs were “sinkers” that went to the bottom. Cypress never rots in water and the big old “sinkers” now sell for as much as $10,000 a tree, when recovered.
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Brian is very knowledgeable about the local birds, turtles, vegetation and gators. He has a Cajun recipe for almost everything we see on the tour.


Henry Ford used Spanish moss to stuff his automobile seats in the 1920s. The moss harbors biting insects and led to one of the first automobile recalls.



We see some unusual nesting birds, gators and turtles. They pulled out a 14 foot gator last year that had been wandering inland and eating dogs. The food supply for gators is good with fish, turtles, ducks and the occasional dog.

Why Betty’s RV Park is America’s Best

Abbeville, Louisiana

Betty’s is sometimes rated as the number one RV Park in America. Others say it is one of the top 25. There are only 14 spots laid out around Betty’s home in Abbeville. There is no pool, no hot tub, no tennis court.

What makes it a top park is Betty Bernard. Every night Betty has a happy hour from 4:30 to 6:30. While, I’m quite an introvert, but in the last two evenings I’ve had very interesting conversations with at least six different people. Mrs. Phred is in her element here, interacting with the other residents.


Many of the visitors to Betty’s are Cajuns. I’ve met three so far, including Marvin, a militant Cajun. Marvin is very focused on the English deportation of the Acadian Nova Scotia French Settlers 200 years ago. He tells me about Queen Elizabeth’s apology to the Cajun/Acadians. I think that the Queen has a way to go with her apologies if you include the Irish, the Scots, the South Africans, the Indians and Pakistanis and all the Arabs.


Tonight Betty put on a potluck dinner that included Cajun red beans and sausage. Tomorrow Betty is taking us all to a Cajun restaurant.

Betty keeps a book of interesting things to see, including:
- Zydeco Music Joints
- Crawfish Farms
- Local Cajun restaurants
- Hot Sauce Factories
- Oil Rig Tours
- Casinos and Horse Races
- Swamp Tours



We signed up for three days and added two more today. I like it here. Marvin says the Cajun culture has assimilated all the other people who have moved in. It’s a good time happy place where you can revel in sucking crawfish heads and dancing to upbeat Zydeco music.

The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans

Pontchartrain RV Park, New Orleans

I find the Voodoo queen of New Orleans online. She sells a love candle for $575, but clearly states that the money is only for the candle and that the spell is complimentary. I’m uncomfortable with online “gris-gris” so I decide to make a real gambler’s gris-gris for my gambler friend Chris . It’s made of chamois, a piece of red flannel, a shark's tooth, pine-tree sap, and dove's blood. I mixed blood and sap together, and used this mixture to write the (undisclosed) amount that I want Chris to win on the chamois. Then I wrapped the chamois in the red flannel with the shark's tooth between the two layers and sewed it all with dead cat's hair. This charm needs to be worn in the left shoe to bring good but uncomfortable luck.


On Bourbon Street a desperate man asks me for $5 to buy crystal meth. We walk the street at night and I eye the girls dressed in scanty outfits. Mrs. Phred points out that most of the girls, while attractive, are actually men with strong legs and relatively flat muscular chests. I regard it as impolite to take pictures.


We do the Katrina tour and get a little more insight about the lingering disaster. The City is, of course, in a huge swampy bowl that sits about six feet below sea level. Lake Pontchartrain on the North and the Mississippi (which flows though the City) is twelve feet above sea level. There are canals cut though the City, one of which connects the Mississippi to the Inland waterway at sea level.


There are levees and walls everywhere which are intended to keep high water out of the city. A barge broke though a wall in the lower ninth ward and flooded a third of the city at varying depths. Most of the damage was due to wind blowing South on Lake Pontchartrain in Katrina’s NE quadrant. Fats Domino, age 78, spent two nights on his roof and was picked up the third day. A lot of the dead fled to their attics and drowned or died of heat exhaustion.


The houses sat in a lake of putrid water laced with motor oil, sewage and dead bodies for over a month while the Corp of Engineers pumped it out. The heat produced thick layers of dangerous mold within the homes as well as a later of mud and filth. The contents of refrigerators were unimaginably foul. Each house has to be gutted and dried out, rewired and re-plumbed before it is habitable.


Brad Pitt is helping to construct a number of new homes in the Lower Ninth Ward. I know where he lives, but I’m not telling. Here's one of the Pitt homes in the lower ninth ward.


To put this in context, the bodies here are buried above ground because of the water table. To build a house, you drive in 80 telephone poles and pour a concrete slab on top of the poles. Even so, houses sink, sidewalks sink, roads sink, walls crack and you have to redo everything again about once every ten years (including shoring up the house).

We hit the casinos, took a steamboat dinner cruise on the Mississippi, went to the aquarium and IMAX and the WWII museum. We also saw some fine antebellum mansions, a few cemeteries and wandered the French Quarter.


Our RV Park is Pontchartrain Landing. It’s very nice, with a pool, cable, book exchange and runs a 10 minute shuttle to the French Quarter three times a day. It’s Passport America, so you can get a nice spot for about $30 a night. We could spend another week here, but we have reservations in Abbeville tomorrow.


If you get a chance, come to New Orleans. It’s still a lot of fun and they could use your tourism dollars to help the recovery.

How to Police a Butt

Biloxi, Mississippi

We were policing used cigarette butts here at Keesler AFB when the news about JFK came in. We watched all day on TV. That was back before filter tips and the process just involved stripping the butt along the seam, disbursing the tobacco, rolling the paper into a tiny ball and throwing it back on the ground. With a filter-tip, that wouldn't work. I don't know how they do it now. You were expected to smoke. Those were the days.

I wanted the Air Force to pick me for a program to go back to a University full time for a couple of years on their dime and then on to Officer Training School. There were 100 slots for the program and they were processing 500,000 new enlisted men a year. I think I improved my odds by spit-shining the soles of my boots. My commanding officer took several visiting Congressmen to see my boots. There were lots of tests and interview boards. I made a 99 percentile on the Air Force Officers Emotional Stability Test. I pretended I was Captain Jack Armstrong in crafting my responses to the eight hour test.


I made the program and got an automatic promotion to staff sergeant after nine months of service. I met Mrs. Phred at FSU because of the program. Otherwise she would have probably married a Jewish orthodontist from Miami. Camille came though here in 1968. That was the one featured in the Forrest Gump movie.

Katrina hit here directly in 2005. The recovery is slow. The beach road is still about 90 percent concrete slabs with maybe 10 percent rebuilt. The old oaks that were stripped bare and denuded have begun to grow leaves again.


We went to see the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. His home was badly damaged by the storm and most of his papers were lost or badly destroyed. We went to see several other museums, but every time the GPS would lead us to a bare cement slab. Apparently the 2009 Microsoft Streets and Trips program doesn’t deal well with hurricane losses.


Davis’ house was used for a confederate veterans home from about 1903 to 1956 when they ran out of confederate veterans. 900 of them are buried in the back yard. By 2065, the Vietnam Veterans will all be gone as well, except for maybe the one who is 108.


The best deal in town is the low cost buffets at the casinos. The food was excellent and the cost about $7.


Off to New Orleans in the morning. Several of the locals warn that it has become a much more dangerous place at night since Katrina. We were warned not to go beyond the 600 block of Bourbon Street. I’m betting that my usual steely glare and command voice with deter evil-doers. If that doesn’t work, the Glock in Mrs. Phred ankle holster will do the trick.

Bad Hair Days and Under Toads

Navarre Beach, Florida

On the way here, we pass the little fishing town of Panacea. We remember going to visit Mrs. Phred’s older hippie friend in 1965. He has a little cabin with things on the wall that say “Peace” “Love” and other hippie ideas. He is my first contact with the hippie culture. We drive back to the FSU campus 25 miles in the night on Mrs. Phred’s motor scooter. She yells that the moist air makes her hair all “frizzy”. That’s the first time she tells me that, but not the last.


The beach here extends for 30 miles. There is a stretch of 10 miles that is a national seashore. The beach is littered with seaweed, plastic trash, coconuts and jellyfish carcasses. We see maybe four other people on the long stretch of white sand beach and dunes. It’s Monday and cloudy. We stretch out our beach towel and lay back to listen to the pounding surf.


I think that laying on the beach is what retired people should do. As Timothy Leary would have said, “This is really it”…or is it? A young couple walking on the beach waves at us and Mrs. Phred says, “they are thinking, ‘that is us in 40 years.’ ”…I tell her, “If they’re lucky”.


Mrs. Phred at first refuses me permission to swim based on the the rip currents and later relents. “Aye, Captain”, I say, “the crew is grateful.” We endure this paradise for maybe 45 minutes and then Mrs. Phred goes back to the Toyota to read her book out of the wind. I go out into the ocean up to my knees and let the waves crash over me. I think about the ocean “Under Toad” that my parents always talked about.


I see a flock of pelicans coming my way from about a mile down the beach and try to take pictures. By two we get heavy rain and thunderstorms. We’ve made reservations for a three day weekend in New Orleans and then three days in Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana.


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The Stingray Shuffle

Port St. Joe, Florida

Saint George State Park was full when we pulled up to the gate Friday afternoon. We should have anticipated that development. Spring and Fall are the prime beach camping seasons in Florida. In the summer, heat, sand fleas and no seeums can make camping very unpleasant. Right now is the time to do it.


We settled for Pressnell’s Marina and RV Park, just outside Port St. Joe. We kind of like these little marinas that also do camping. The residents tend to stay for a week, a month or season to fish and live in tents, old trailers and RVs. They rent boats here and offer fishing guides. Some people come here every year to catch and eat the scallops which abound in the big bay formed by the barrier island.


I bought a big flounder at a nearby fish market. It was very fresh, but it still had the fins and skin on. We peeled it as best we could, expecting a culinary disaster, but it was light and flaky (with lots of bones).


Today we played tennis. I was up 4-2 at one stage, but lost the first set 6-4. After that we drove out to the Port St. Joe Peninsula State Park. It has nine miles of unspoiled sand beaches. In 2002, it was named the best beach in the world (no idea who decides these things). I went swimming.



The water was very nice (about 80 F.) and I spent about an hour letting the big waves crash over me. I do the Stingray Shuffle, sliding my feet along the bottom to let the rays know I’m coming until I tire of that and float off the bottom. The yellow flag is up for winds and rip currents. Mrs. Phred worries and nags but I explain to her that Navy Seals and Old divemasters like me are immune from these concerns.


Outside the park, we see an environmental and economic disaster that stretches 40 miles. Thousands of lovely, new, large and unoccupied beach homes that almost all have a “For Sale” sign in front. These were built and purchased on “spec” and for vacation homes during the bubble. A trillion dollars is not going to come even close to solving the problems of the banking system.


We went to Apalachicola to pick up some books to read and to lunch on their famous seafood. I loved the fried oysters, crab cakes and seafood chowder. Mrs. Phred had no complaints this time. I name Apalachicola for the award Best Seafood in the World for 2009.

We need to move on in the morning. This time I make no prediction about where we end up, but I do like the Gulf swimming this time of year. There are a whole series of lovely State Park beach campgrounds along this long stretch of Panhandle beaches. Maybe we’ll get lucky.

Skyping Down the Road

Perry, Florida

I encouraged Mrs. Phred to drive the new RV so I could play with the computer.

Her sister called on Skype from Venice, Italy, so I held the laptop up so thay Mrs. Phred could see her sister and talk while rolling down US 19.



I turn the laptop around and show my SIL the open road ahead, lined with pink and purple clover.

Amazing....Skyping down the road...trying to lighten my load...

Off to a Slow Start

Manatee Springs State Park, Florida

We finally get our RV back from the dealer about noon. We spend one night in the RV sleeping in one of the dozens of hanger-like service bays. We had a list of five things to repair, including adding a little air to the tires. The only thing they managed to accomplish was the air fill, I think, but I haven’t checked that work yet.


They wanted to charge $100 for the tire pressure check and $240 for diagnosing the satellite dish problem. The satellite dish was originally broken on delivery and they didn’t have the parts to fix what they claimed was the problem. I gave them the fish-eye on both issues and they wrote it all off to customer goodwill.


The problem with this dealer is too many moving parts. We dealt with a service advisor, a cashier, a gate security guard, the IT department, the cabinet shop, the parts department, a satellite specialist and numerous others. We had top wait an extra two hours to get a zero balance bill because the service advisors computer was frozen. I prefer one guy with a truck who fixes the problem and writes out a paper bill.


We made it to the Manatee Springs State park about 150 miles north of Tampa. The manatees left about a month ago when the water in the Gulf warmed up. The big spring empties into the Suwannee River. Right now the water level is high so they are not permitting swimming, diving, kayaking or canoeing. As a result, the park is pretty much empty except for us and numerous very tame deer and armadillos.


It seems very quiet and peaceful, so we decide to stay another day to read, play scrabble and take a drive down to Cedar Key. Cedar Key is a little bump-out on the West Coast of Florida. This 100 mile stretch of coast is about the only place in Florida that lacks good beaches, due to low swampy conditions. The nice thing about that is this part of the State also lacks people.


The deer seem to have been fed frequently by campers. I give one a banana and it comes to the table to sniff around for more treats. Florida deer are small and graceful.


We have lunch in Cedar Key: stone crab, crab bisque, smoked mahi-mahi spread and sauvignon blanc. We don't care for the wine or stone crab, but I don’t expect much in a tourist place. I promise Mrs. Phred better seafood along Florida’s panhandle coast.


Next stop is the white sand beaches of St. George Island State Park on the North Gulf coast of Florida.