South Texas

Our trip to South Texas was great, but short. Our plan was to drive to Austin on Thursday afternoon and spend the night with my brother and Catherine. Other than that, we made few plans hoping to have great adventures as we went. On the way, we stopped for a fun photo op in Mineral Wells at the old Baker Hotel. What a lovely old building! What a waste that it is abandoned! We took lots of silly photos of each other. Jesse had her camera and I had mine. These photos are all from my camera - at least until I can get a hold of hers. We did have to climb through a security fence to get some of these shots, but no one seemed to care. The pool area was great with this wonderful bridge from the hotel to the pool. The Baker must have been something in its day. Around the back of the hotel, we saw this old vacuum cleaner in the window - perfect for a silly photo. The cactus growing out of the building was interesting. The stop in MW took us about an hour, but it was well worth it to see the Baker and have some laughs. You can google Baker Hotel to get more info and some interesting ghost stories.

We were a little later getting into Austin due to our stop in MW and still hit a traffic jam on I-35. Catherine and Craig had a wonderful supper ready for us and lots of good visiting time. My niece, Nina, was there making pesto with Catherine. Nina is in college at UT. She has a spot on a radio station whose motto is "None of the hits all of the time." She told some fun stories in her quiet, easy going way. We did not get to see my nephew, Adam, but we heard he is doing well, working, and going to school. Hopefully, we will get to see him at Thanksgiving. I have always said that if you want some fun, look my brother up when you get to Austin. Now he has Catherine to make things even more fun. They make a great team.

We left Austin after a wonderful breakfast of migas and some sort of special coffee at a nearby cafe. Catherine will have to comment and tell us what the coffee was and where we were, because I am not sure how to spell Curra's. We got to CC in the heat of the day, changed into our "hoochiefied" clothes and hit the beach. We walked the beach and then out onto a narrow jetty. I made friends with several homeless folks - Jesse had her camera so you will have to wait for those pics. As for the story, well, lets just say I must have the sort of face that says, "You can talk to me - I'm easy." We found another vacuum cleaner (photo later) in the sand of the bay for another photo op. When Toby got off work about 3 PM, and he joined us on the beach. We found this replica of the Nina docked at the bay in CC. Then we went to find the 99 cent margaritas that Jesse had read about in some brochure. The margarita place was on the beach overlooking the Lexington (more photo ops). We had some boiled shrimp and a few margaritas. We probably should have stayed there for supper since the food being served looked pretty good, but we decided to head to Blackbeard's for supper and more adventure. There had been a Blackbeard's in South Padre that we used to frequent when we lived in McAllen. It was a great place to eat. The Blackbeard's in CC turned out to be not so good. The food was just bad. It was such a disappointment. After dinner, we headed back to the beach - North Padre this time - for a stroll while the sun set and the moon came up - wonderful evening.

I will post the rest of the story later. I need to be moving around this morning to get ready to babysit GBN1 today. But know that we had a great time and got home safely last night. We hit a strong headwind as we came in to WF. The north wind was pretty rough as if to say we should turn around and head back to South Texas.