A Week at SPI

The last week of October, Virginia's sister, Cathy, and her husband, Jim, came for a visit from Michigan. We spent the week at a condo on South Padre Island. The weather was perfect for their first visit to the Rio Grande Valley.

The view from our sixth floor two bedroom unit.



Mid-week our daughter and grandchildren dropped by for
a couple of days.

Watching a handicapped Green Sea Turtle at
Sea Turtle Rescue Inc.

The Grandkids got a field trip to learn about sea turtles.

Our time together is always great and always too short.

Rio Reforestation at La Casita West

On Saturday, October 18, the Refuge sponsored the 23rd Annual Rio Reforestation event. This is one of the largest public outreach events sponsored by the South Texas Refuge Complex. The purpose of this event is to educate the public about the Refuge and habitat restoration, and give a positive view of the refuge and the work done. This years reforestation was on the La Casita West tract, near Rio Grande City, about 1 1/2 hours west of Santa Ana NWR.

Kurt and Virginia were section leaders. We were each responsible for ten 450 yard long rows to plant. A total of 565 high school, college aged youth along with families helped put almost 16,000 plants into the fertile ground. Over 95% of Lower Rio Grande Valley habitats have been lost due to agriculture.

We arrived in the fog at 7am.

By 8am the fog cleared and the volunteer planters arrived.

Section leaders taught proper planting technique.

After introduction, they continued on their own.

Each crate contained a mix of 21 species of seedlings of trees, brushes, cactus and flowering plants that will one day grow up and become a forest for wildlife habitat. 

A hotdog lunch cooked by the fire crew was provided.

This was a very successful event. Everyone was happy knowing they had helped create a new block of thornscrub habitat that will help many wildlife species including ocelots, hawks, Texas indigo snakes, butterflies and songbirds.

Reclaiming The Marinoff Campground From The Jungle

We arrived at Santa Ana/Marinoff on Wednesday, October 8th. We were the first volunteers to arrive. The Jungle that welcomed us was a big surprise. We spent the next four days clearing brush and cutting and trimming trees. This stirred up many rodents. One friendly field rat was persistent on making our truck his home. But in the end, he lost the battle.


Our campsite before any work.

The road which was almost impassible with a big trailer.

Order Restored

Just in time for the Tram Volunteers arrival.

The staff helped us by hauling away the brush.

Ice Cream, Gin, Beer & Churches

Making our way south, we stopped at Lake Granger/Austin for 10 days and are now outside of Columbus at a Thousand Trails Campground. The weather has been nice so we waxed the trailer and took some excursions.

The Blue Bell Creamery in Brehnam is always
a fun place to stop. The tour is good but the
tasting room is a great place to eat lunch (ice cream).

Texas Cotton Gin Museum in Burton
This Cotton Gin was built exactly 100 years ago and still
is in working order today.
The guided tour was very good and worth the
time. We learned about cotton, picking and how
 Eli Whitney's invention, the Cotton Gin, works.

Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner Texas
We always stop in Shiner whenever we are in the
neighborhood for samples of Shiner Beer.

The Painted Churches of Texas is a well known circle tour in the Czech and German Settlements around Schulenburg, Texas. We spent a half day visiting some more of these interesting and historic buildings.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church was built in 1876 in Dubina ("Oak Grove" in Czech). After the hurricane of 1909, a new church was built on the site in 1912.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church

St. Mary's Catholic Church in High Hill
This is known as the "Queen of the Painted Churches"

Inside of St. Mary's

Working at East Fork ACE Park

Since we are staying in the Dallas area for about six weeks, we decided to volunteer at Lake Lavon again. We have been trimming trees in the campground along with the main road into the lake headquarters. It has been a cool August so far, for Texas. We are getting used to the temperatures in the upper 90's and accordingly finish our work by lunchtime each day.

Making it Ours

Like any home there are things you want to add and change to conform to your personal taste. We anticipated the more involved modifications and incorporated them as customizations to our factory order. Since we moved in we have been busy finding a place to put all our stuff. This process includes things like hanging hooks, closet light, backsplash on bathroom sink, and so the list goes. We have also made many trips to the store for things such as bathmat, towels, shelving paper, dish drainer, and so on.

One area that needed some carpentry work was the steel generator box that we had the factory install in the front of the trailer basement. We don't use a generator, but this looked like a great way to section off the basement and provide some really usable storage.





 



We attached the shelf to the back wall of the generator box with a piano hinge and folding legs so that the hardware
for the landing jacks and disc brakes could be easily
 accessed for any service. 

It felt good to have everything in it's place.

Moving From The Hitchhiker Into Our New Excel

After owning our Hitchhiker for almost seven years it was time to make a change. After a year of researching fifth wheels, in April, we placed an order with Bennett's Camping Center in Granbury, Texas, for a D37IKE Excel Winslow. The factory, Peterson Industries, in Smith Center, Kansas, is a high quality, low volume manufacturer of full time units. As such, there is a three month turn around time from order date to delivery. We took possession on July 19th. We are very pleased with the trailer and all of the many customizations we had requested.

Bennett's runs a full hookup campground behind their facility, called Bennett's RV Ranch. They provided two sites for four nights. We parked our Hitchhiker backward so the door faced our new Excel. This way we had AC in both units, since the temperature was in the upper 90's everyday. We worked from early morning to after dark for three days moving, organizing and disposing of all of our "stuff". As our first move as "full-timers", this turned out to be very much like moving from one stick house to another. It was a lot of work and we fell into bed each night, exhausted.  

A Final Farewell to a Faithful Old Friend
The Final Disconnect

After leaving Bennett's we traveled to East Fork Army Corp of Engineer Park on Lake Lavon near Dallas, Texas. We have signed up to volunteer here for the next six weeks or so in exchange for a beautiful lake front campsite. We plan to work half days to avoid the afternoon heat. Steve, our supervisor, has a long list of jobs to choose from. Our time here will also allow us to get settled in our new rig.

Amsterdam our Last Port

 Our cruise ended when we arrived in Amsterdam on Saturday, May 31. We arranged to stay at a hotel for three nights so we could do some sight seeing before we flew back across the pond. 

The cruise port is near the Central Train Station and about a half mile from our hotel. It was a beautiful morning, so we decided to walk to Central Station to purchase our transportation tickets and then on to our hotel. We were amazed at the number of bicycles in Amsterdam. We read there are over 600,000 bicycles in the inner canal zone.

The Singel Hotel, a 17th century canal house, with only 32 guest rooms,
was in a good proximity to the Central Station and sites around the city.

The hotel was simple and clean and included a European Continental
breakfast (meat, cheese, yogurt, pastry and coffee or tea) each morning.

Amsterdam has 165 canals and 1,300 bridges earning it
the name "Venice of the North"

Singel Floating Flower Market

Pictured on the left are the permanent floating flower stalls

Dam Square with 14th century Nieuwe Kerk (New Church)
and Town Hall

The always busy 1889 Central Station was the starting and
ending point of all trams and buses. 
This is also where we caught the train to the airport.

Westerkerk (West Church) is the final resting
 place of Rembrandt although no one knows exactly where.

Singel Canal

Rijksmuseum, a top Amsterdam museum, and one of the best
we have ever visited, is home to works of art by Rembrandt and
the Dutch masters as well as many other historical objects.
We spent an entire day exploring this vast museum containing 80 galleries.

Milkmaid, 1657
Johannes Vermeer

The Night Watch, 1642
Rembrandt

David Leeuw with his Family, 1671
Abraham van den Tempel

Portrait of Haesje Jacobsdr van Cleyburg, 1634
Brewer's Wife
Rembrandt

Elaborate Finely Detailed Doll House

 

We toured the Anne Frank House.
This was the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family
during Germany's occupation of Holland in WWII.

Rembrandt House
Where he worked, taught and lived 1639 to 1656.

 

Rembrandt was an art dealer as well as a painter.
This is the studio where clients could view and purchase
 paintings of Rembrandt's and his students.

Kitchen in the Rembrandt House

Commemorating Rembrandt's 400th birthday in 2006, a bronze-cast
representation of his most famous painting, The Night Watch

No visit to Amsterdam would be complete without
a canal boat tour.

Het Scheepvaartmuseum (Maritime Museum)
One of 60 museums in the city.