Waxahachie, TX

 We arrived in Waxahachie, TX, after leaving the Frisco area of the DFW Metroplex. Our destination? The Flying Dutchman RV Resort in Waxahachie, Texas. This is a new park, with concrete roads and rv pads, and site 75 suited our needs very well, and has a pure Texas view.

On the way south to The Hatch, we passed through the High Five, one of the first of the highway confluences that abound hereabouts. Five levels! Kinda concerning to be on the lowest level!

As usual this time of year in Texas, the wind was blowing a bunch. 20 to 35 mph kept us indoors the afternoon we arrived.

The next day we contented ourselves with a drive into downtown Hatch, a trip to the local HEB grocery store, and a cup of coffee at the world’s most well known coffee chain. The wind was still blowing….

We located the Ellis County Museum and explored the local historical home tour, courtesy of a map they provided. The homes include a variety of architectural styles and features, dependent on what was popular at the time of construction or remodeling. Many of the larger homes have incorporated the original carriage portico into either sunrooms, patios, or kept them as a path to the carriage house in the back of the  main house. Verandas were popular to take advantage of the evening breezes, and for the most part, they have been kept intact. But first, we needed to walk around the Ellis County Courthouse. Still in use, this 19th century structure is a great example of the over-the-top architecture of the day. The wind was still blowing.

Cotton was king at the turn of the 19th to 20th century and had been a hugely profitable enterprise for decades, resulting in a huge residential and commercial building boom. Cotton lost it’s importance rather suddenly, resulting in many of the downtown commercial buildings remaining in frozen animation as businesses moved to the Dallas area. While we did not investigate each and every building in the downtown neighborhood, most have dates of construction in the 19th century and remain as they were built.

The home tour begins at the courthouse and heads both east and west of downtown.

Rounding a bend, we looped back toward downtown and checked out other examples of gingerbread houses.

Here’s a wonderful example of a carriage portico having been turned into a sunroom. 

There are quite a few Craftsman homes in tow. Thank you, Frank Lloyd Wright.

This perfect Craftsman style home is being restored.

Of course, some homes need a bit of work to bring them back to their former glory!

The wind is still blowing, but the temp is near 85…

Ellis County has a reputation for having the best spring displays of Texas Bluebonnets, in particular, the town of Ennis, just 30 miles southeast. Ennis is also famous for a polka band called The Moravians, a group of young Czech musicians from Texas Tech keeping traditions alive. Unfortunately, the weren’t playing, so we contented ourselves with a drive through fields of flowers. US 287 took us directly to Ennis and the Visitors Center, where we picked up a map showing us where the best Bluebonnets were located, and the routes to find them.

The map got us started on what turned out to be a most enjoyable afternoon drive through the rural Texas countryside. The Bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas, and blooms in April, giving rise to Bluebonnet festivities from one end of the state to the other. Ennis is no different, but we missed their festival by a few days. Just our luck.

It’s not often that a nice, green plant grows well on the top of a metal fence post! It certainly deserves praise for the most unusual place to set up a home!

Did you check out the way it got to the top?

We thought we should make a memory or two.

Our favorite photo of the day!

Well, everything’s bigger in Texas, right? As we drove through the countryside, we saw gated entrances to large ranches. Sugar Ridge Ranch, and Win Ranch among them. There wasn’t room to stop for a photo of those two, but this entry caught our fancy!

Back in Ennis, we had to stop at Buc-ee’s for fuel and a snack! This photo shows one of three fueling areas. These places are huge!  

The wind continues….

Back at camp, we watched the storm clouds roll by.

Rustled up some fajitas on the Blackstone for dinner. What a great day in Texas!

And at least the wind was warm…

We’re approaching the end of our stay in Waxahachie, TX, so we ventured a bit farther afield and headed toward Corsicana, TX. Highway 287 got us to Ennis, where we picked up I 45 south. Passing through Rice, we noticed a sign advertising Casita trailers. Our son owns one, so we decided to stop in and have a look. These compact, fiberglass jewels are a cult classic, and are much in demand. Two families took delivery as we were watching in the parking lot. These people had ordered five months ago, and arrived from Montana to pick up their “Baby”.

I thought that this location was simply a dealer for Casita, but this is the manufacturing location!

These miniature Airstreams are awesome!

Guess what? The wind is still with us.

Another ten miles south brought us to Corsicana, TX. Named by an Italian immigrant in honor of his fathers home on the island of Corsica, the town of 25,000 was the first place west of the Mississippi where oil was discovered in 1894 and the location of the first commercial oil field in Texas. Today Corsicana is beautifully positioned between Dallas and Houston on a major Interstate, and is a major commercial hub.

However, we have another reason to visit Corsicana. 

Last Christmas, we were gifted a selection of goodies from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana by good friends Debbie, Larry, and Max. The food was so delicious that we had to visit the bakery in person! 

Founded in 1896 by a German baker, August Weiderman, the bakery was an instant success and soon outgrew its building. In 1914, Ringling Brothers Circus came to town and ordered dozens of fruitcakes to be sent worldwide. And instantly, Collin Street was in the mail order business! Today, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Hilton Hotels, and Vanna White are among their longtime customers. The bakery refused only one order in its history, a request for a fruitcake to be sent to Irans Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Collin Street Bakery ships to every country except Iran and Cuba.

We didn’t take any photos of the inside of the bakery because posting such mouthwatering photos would have provoked a rush on the bakery not seen since Ringling Brothers traveled through.

Content yourself, dear reader, with visions of brownies, pies, cakes and bread, fruitcakes and hot coffee! And be mindful of the online presence of the Collin Street Bakery…..

Our last day in Waxahachie introduced us to the full power of a midwest thunderstorm. For more than 18 hours, “…the thunder rolls and the lightening strikes…”, local weather reports note rainfall of 1 to 2 inches per hour and wind 10 to 30 mph. Oh yeah, that wind…

We’ve enjoyed a nice week in Hachie, but look forward to more adventures. 

Till next time,

Frisco, Texas, Post Eclipse

 A few more photos have surfaced from the Great American Eclipse event. One of them shows two old friends getting reacquainted.

Donna and Mary have known each other and worked together for years. Personal visits are few, but enjoyable!

Mr Mary, aka Roger, is a former peace officer and has a thousand stories to tell. He’s also a great Texas baseball fan!

The eclipse safety gear is a requirement, but sure looks awful afterward!

We have spent the rest of our week in Frisco doing what tourists do when they have personal guides: eat, talk, eat, see stuff, eat…you get the idea.

A trip to the local Cabelas Outfitters store was enjoyable, and, of course we found a few things we couldn’t live without!

Must have been something awfully funny in that cup!

Lunch at the Deli News included this fantastic Rueben sandwich.

To say that Frisco is a growing city is to say something ridiculous. Corporate high rises are jumping out of the ground at every corner. Frito Lay, Hewlitt Packard, Fed Ex, Toyota, Ericsson, Bank of America, Pizza Hut, all have a corporate presence here, along with condos, apartments, and support infrastructure: dry cleaners, restaurants, gas stations, and more. It’s incredible! On the outskirts, housing developments are selling out in days in the $500,000 to $1,000,000 plus range. Roads and intersections are being enlarged and extended. Traffic is diverted, detoured, restricted, and stopped at every opportunity. A 1/2 mile excursion to the gas station needed 30 minutes to complete…one way.

On Thursday, Sasha jumped off a chair and injured a muscle in her neck, and couldn’t put weight on her right front paw. A trip to the North Dallas Veterinary Emergency and Specialty Hospital got us an appointment with Dr Lee, who examined the pup and prescribed some meds and advised bed rest for two weeks. Good luck with that! A Boston Terrier ball dog? Nah….

We’ve come to the end of our week in Frisco, and need to leave site 1000 at Shady Creek RV Resort.

We’ve seen a solar eclipse, eaten at some fantastic restaurants, met wonderful people, and had great conversations with our friends Roger and Mary. We’ve also experienced some of the worst weather of this trip, with rain and high winds on several days.

It’s been a special week!

Once in a Lifetime!

 The Great American Eclipse occurred over Dallas, Texas, between about noon and three pm, CDT, on April 8, 2024.  Donna and I were invited to join a watch party, so we packed up some snacks and chairs and jumped into a group of 50 or so of our new Texas best friends.

It’s true, by the way, that if you act decently and are friendly, Texans will go out of their way to make you welcome. But don’t cross them or you’ll be instant history!

The path of totality centered just a few miles to the east of our location, but we were able to see an awesome display. Enough said. Here’s our version:

The sky was perfect most of the morning:

But then the clouds began to appear and we got worried. On with the solar glasses anyway:

Things began to get a little dim. The dogs quit barking and the birds got quiet.

The clouds came and went, making for some curious photos.

And then….

The show begins!

The group was silent, in awe, for about two minutes. Then a universal cry went up:

The Diamond Ring!

While some license must be granted to a lowly iPhone camera, it was, indeed, a spectacular event. At one point, my camera asked me to move away from the subject….what, 90 million miles isn’t enough? Friend Mary provided unique “glasses” for our phones, which helped immensely. 

The next solar event in the US is noted for 2044 in Alaska. A better event will occur in 2045. We’ve made plans! After all, Donna will only be 97!

A great experience, and thanks to all our new Texas friends for the welcome!

Vroom, Vroom, and points east!

 Easter Sunday was a quiet, reflective day for us, and an opportunity to rejoice in the wonderful, blessed, life that we have. Our family and friends, both those scattered across the country and those at home, are truly a great joy and comfort to us. Irrespective of ones moral philosophy, its important to be thankful for the blessings that have been given to us. This rainbow was an afternoon blessing.

Sunday was also a rainy day in Tucson, and we were able to do a bit of cleaning and maintenance after a week of traveling. Monday was a bit nicer, so we spent some quality time at the CoinLess Laundry on 6th Street. This is one of those places where the washers and dryers only accept proprietary cards that must be purchased from a vending machine. The idea here is to convince you to put a large value on the card, and then return to the laundry if you don’t use it all. No refunds are allowed. We finished our laundry and left a card on the counter with $0.17 remaining value. That’s cutting it pretty close!

Tuesday morning we left the Tucson KOA and arrived at Bob Moses Ceramic Coating on 44th Street. The guys there had applied a ceramic coating to our trailer last year, and we were due for an inspection and tune-up. They washed the trailer and touched up a few questionable areas, cleaned the windows and wheels, all at no charge. Beside the fact that the coating works like a champ, the after sale service is phenomenal as well. Highly recommend them.

Late in the afternoon, we drove a bit north to the town of Marana and set up dry camp in the parking lot of Vroom Slides, Inc.

Vroom is a machine shop that is owned by Brian Vroom (yeah, it’s true!). Years ago, he owned an rv with slide out rooms, as most have these days. In a vast majority of these slideouts, the mechanism that operates the slide is marginal at best, and Vroom developed an upgrade to solve operational problems and make the slideout more reliable, quiet, and safe. Now he has made his patented system available to the public and does three upgrades a day. An adjacent service bay in his building is where the crew fabricates the parts.

The crew starts work at 5am and puts in a 12 hour day. We picked up our trailer at 5:30 pm, set up in the parking lot again, and prepared to leave the next morning. Two hundred and ninety six miles later that day we pulled into Hacienda RV Resort in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A great meal at the Double Eagle in old town Messilla, New Mexico capped our first day of eastward travel. The Double Eagle is in a hundred plus year old building on one side of the old town square. It’s name comes from having two restaurants in one building: a steakhouse and a mexican restaurant. We felt like mexican and ate in the courtyard of the old house.

The next day, an identical two hundred ninety six miles found us in Monahans, Texas, at the Out West RV Resort. This is a minimal but clean and newer park that primarily caters to transient workers in the local oil fields. That was not a problem in any way.

The wind was blowing at 20 to 30 mph all day, making for a white knuckle drive at times. Gusts at a recorded 40 mph through the night didn’t allow for a good nights sleep.

The wind continued all the next day, and as we pulled into Eastland, Texas, we really needed to relax, and found Wandering Oaks RV Park, which fit perfectly! The drive east on I 20 was one of the easiest we have had in years. The weather reports continued to forecast high wind, but we didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary as we were driving. Of course, Texas highways are beautiful in their own way, but after a few hours we began to make a game of “what’s over the next hill?” Seemed to be much the same each time.

Wandering Oaks is a large park, but with dusty gravel roads, it is home to mostly people who work in the oil patch hereabouts, called the Permian Basin. We were able to score one of the few open sites in the park.

We took Sasha for her evening walk about 8 and caught a beautiful sunset.

A great end to a nice travel day!

We’re getting a little tired of driving every day, but the next day brought us to Shady Creek RV Resort in Aubrey, Texas. 

The highlight of the days drive was the areas of Bluebonnets and other wildflowers.

Aubrey is just north of Savannah, which is a little bit above Little Elm, and not far from Frisco. Got it? 

We’re in the area to visit old friends Roger and Mary. R and M were among the first wave to escape California years ago, and have established a great life in Texas. There is, however, one other important factor in our visit……