May 7-15, 2014 – Falfurrias, TX




We are enjoying spending time with Jen but, unfortunately, Jeremy is working and will be gone until after we leave. He is an electrical engineer with an oil company and works at a site for 10 days straight and then has 3 days off.   The first couple of days we were busy getting a new tire for the 5th wheel and ordering a new air condition cover from Camping World.   On Mother’s Day we drove to Corpus Christi and did some more shopping and Jen took us out for a nice lunch.


 

Monday we drove back to Corpus Christi and spent over 4 hours touring the USS Lexington, a retired aircraft carrier that is now a museum.













The 120,000 sq ft flight deck had about 20 vintage aircraft displayed.   We were also able to go into one of the anti-aircraft gun stations.








 


We toured the super structure and Jen enjoyed the great view of the flight deck from one of the officer’s chairs.










We next toured the lower decks – what a maze, if it wasn’t for the tour directional signs we would have gotten totally lost in this massive ship.  We toured the officers’ quarters, crew quarters, galley, sick bay, dental clinic, engine room, combat information center, ready rooms, captain’s cabin and chapel.  The crew bunks did not look too comfortable or roomy!







There were also rooms with scale model ships and airplanes, rooms honoring WWII battles and sunken ships.  We watched a short movie in the 3D movie theatre.  This was the first big ship we have been able to tour and we really enjoyed it.  We have a much greater respect for the men and women who serve on aircraft carriers.

After a great dinner at Five Guys Burgers, we called it a day and headed back to Falfurrias.






 
Monday night we had a big thunderstorm with lots of lightning and thunder.  It rained most of the night and till about noon Tuesday.  It was a good day to get laundry done.  Jen got off work in the early afternoon and Rex took her kite flying on the golf course behind the park.  It was a short session as it started thundering again and threatening rain.






The rain certainly cooled it off and the sun finally came out so Wednesday was a beautiful day.  We drove to Kingsville and met Jen at her office - she is a Manager in Financial Planning for the University Engineering and Campus Planning Department at Texas A & M University, Kingsville.   The campus in Kingsville is small (about 8,000 students) but very nice.

All too soon, it is time for us to head north to Colorado for Mariah’s high school graduation.  We enjoyed our visit with Jen but are disappointed that we did not get to see Jeremy on this visit.  Hopefully, the next time we visit we can schedule our time to coincide with his days off


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 4-6, 2009

Image
June 4, 2009 We drove Northwest of Jasper along the Yellowhead Highway to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We saw a moose along the river in the distance but wasn’t close enough to get a picture. We saw Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, and had a picnic lunch at the Mt. Robson Visitors Center. The scenery is spectacular – a picture of Mt. Robson. Our site at Whistler campground. June 5 We left Jasper in the sunshine and warm but the further North we got, the colder, rainier and more grey it got. As we turned north on route 40 to Grand Paririe, we started to hit a little snow. Didn’t last long but really woke us up. It stayed rainy and grey until we got to Grand Cache then it started to clear. We also got our first real windshield chip today, but a trip to WalMart and a windshield repair kit later we were fixed. The land here is somewhat hilly, swampy and covered with trees. There are some really big oil and gas complexes and some large lumber mills such as the one we saw in Grand Paririe.
Read more

August 24-26, 2009

Image
We headed towards Flathead Lake Monday morning and stopped in Kalispell to get our air conditioner repaired. It had stopped working a couple of weeks ago and August is not the time to be without an air conditioner. The RV dealer we stopped at gave us the name of the guy who does their air conditioning work. He was able to fix the air conditioner (a switch had burned out) in a couple of hours and we were on our way. We drove to Polson, MT at the south end of Flathead Lake and are going to stay here for a few days. We are staying at Eagle Nest RV, which has a cherry orchard on one side, a golf course on one side and a horse pasture on another side. It is a really nice park with lots of grass and trees. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the cherry season and we might not be able to find any fresh cherries. Tuesday morning we decided to take a drive around Flathead Lake. This is a very scenic area with lots of fruit orchards. We found a fruit stand and bought cherries, peaches, tomatoes
Read more

July 28, 2009

Image
We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R
Read more