We made a road trip to Houston, and we enjoyed walking around downtown. But our real focus for this trip was watching the band that was performing at the downtown Hard Rock Cafe in the evening. We arrived early, to take proper pictures at this popular restaurant.
We are here to hear our favorite band--the Won Hit Wonders.
We have been big fans of this "internationally acclaimed" band since our trip to South Korea two years ago. Our nephew, Brian, charades as an engineer for ExxonMobil by day. But in the evening, the guitar comes out and we so enjoyed the private concerts we danced to many nights. He was working on an engineering project in South Korea when we visited his family, and he put together a band of other ex-pats.
The South Korean currency is the won, so they named the band "Won Hit Wonders." They played at a Hard Rock Cafe in South Korea shortly before their jobs moved them back to the United States. Now this group is back together for their "farewell tour" before they ship off to other locations.
The restaurant was filled with adoring fans, and we had great seats thanks to the reservation skills of Brian's wife Alexia. She also rearranged the tables so we had a tiny dance floor. We got to do a little Texas two-stepping at the Hard Rock.
Sometimes that dance floor was filled to capacity. When the band tried to quit, the crowd yelled for more. It was a truly fun evening, and that twelve-hour drive was certainly worth it.
But after the concert, we also got to spend bonus time with Brian and Alexia and their children at their home in The Woodlands. We had some nice weather, but it wasn't quite warm enough to go swimming even though that water certainly looks inviting.
Mark figured out that the children were purposefully throwing balls on the roof to get them caught in the gutter. That's because it was so fun to have Uncle Mark lift them up over his head to retrieve the balls.
Besides the concert, the weekend was special because their son Camden was turning ten on Sunday. We got to celebrate with him several times, as he got a special birthday dessert at Hard Rock Cafe on Saturday night.
After church on Sunday, he got an ooey-gooey cookie and ice cream dessert.
And then there was the flaming cupcake dessert on the evening of his birthday. Camden definitely got his share of sugar, as did his visiting great aunt and uncle.
Besides birthday desserts and presents, we also enjoyed a special birthday treat. We had heard of "Escape Rooms," but had never experienced one. Participants have to figure out clues and puzzles to unlock their way out of the room within an hour. We were in great hands, as this family has been to over twenty different escape rooms all over the world. We were warned that this one was tough, but we escaped in 50 minutes--a new record for this room for 2018.
Besides escaping from the escape room, and enjoying the Won Hit Wonders concert, we had a great weekend hanging out with this precious family. It was a great weekend in the Houston area!
We decided to take a road trip from our south Texas location in Mission. A six-hour drive northeast took us by a Texas icon that we have never experienced. For all the miles we have driven in Texas, we had never stopped at Buc-ees.
Targeting car-loads of travelers along busy highways, every one of the gas lanes were busy.
The billboards along the highway brag on their clean restrooms. We also found their food was outstanding. Our pulled pork/hatch green chili burrito with pepper jack cheese and guacamole was very tasty! For dessert, we also had to purchase the store's famous "Beaver Nuggets."
Carmelized corn nuggets can sound a little like a healthy vegetable dish, until you notice that the first ingredient listed on the package is brown sugar. When Denisa was taking pictures of the beaver nuggets, Mark was trying to sneak them out of her hand. They are addicting.
Back on the road, our destination this day is Houston. We found that it takes around an hour to drive all the way through this metropolitan area, and we had plenty of company on our drive as the highways stacked high above us.
Last August we watched the national news, filled with pictures of the flooding in this area. Much of the flooding happened along the bayous in Houston. This is Buffalo Bayou that meanders through this section of downtown. We enjoyed the popular walking/biking trail that follows the water along each bank.
Even though things are largely back to normal now, there are still signs of the flooding. The banks of the bayou have deep crevices caused from the water erosion.
But the most obvious indication of the depth of the water is the debris still clinging to the underpasses that are now 50 feet above the water.
When we stopped to take pictures, the resident ducks assumed we were stopping to feed them. These curiously-masked birds were friendly, but disappointed when we didn't have any food.
So our wildlife picture of the day is a close-up of these interesting ducks hanging out at Buffalo Bayou.
After being in the car for six hours, we were happy to get some exercise. So we walked some of the downtown streets. Over and over, we saw orange fencing and temporary chain-link fences that kept us away from construction zones. The bottom floors of many of these buildings had been flooded, and they are undergoing rehabilitation.
We walked into the historic downtown section with its charming store fronts. It was a time warp moment to see the ultra-modern train coming into the picture on the right among these old store fronts.
On this Saturday afternoon, we saw a wedding party taking pictures on the balcony over the street level. The bridal party was enjoying a beautiful winter afternoon for their wedding day.
A few blocks away, we walked to the Houston Aquarium. We didn't buy the ticket to see the fish, but we did walk the grounds open to the public on this 70-degree January day.
Denisa is a fan of carousels, so we had to take this picture of the dolphins and sharks merrily going around with their downtown back drop.
Even though this walk was interesting, the real reason for our Texas road trip was to get to another downtown Houston icon. We can see the outline of a guitar among the sky scrapers.
That's because we are on our way to Hard Rock Cafe, nestled among the skyscrapers of downtown. We must be big fans of the band playing at the Hard Rock tonight to drive this far for a concert! But that's the subject of another blog.
While Denisa was already playing pickle ball just hours after we arrived, Mark was the responsible camper. He was de-winterizing the motor home after its 50+ days in the frigid north. It's harder to protect all of our pipes and water connections than some RVs. We have a washing machine in the back, with all its water lines. We also have our kitchen sink in a slide, so all the water pipes there have to be flexible enough to shift three feet when the slide is out. Shortly after we got set up, Mark noticed a puddle forming under the motor home, with water dripping from the frame. The cold weather had obviously damaged some of our water pipes.
It's a good thing that Mark is such a handy man, because diagnosing and getting this fixed could have cost us hundreds of dollars. It could have also left us homeless while our motor home waited in line at some RV dealer for repair. Denisa is so glad to have a husband that could recognize the problem, and more importantly found a way to fix it. It took unscrewing panels that led to the bowels of the plumbing, and then contorting into spaces to make the plumbing repairs. The cold weather caused the connection between the flexible pipe and the rigid pipe to fail. After buying plumber glue and working his magic, Mark squeezed a camera into the tight space to take a picture of the finished project. Denisa is glad to have him along for this adventure!
But the worst appliance to winterize is our residential refrigerator with its ice-maker water lines. Those water lines are right against an uninsulated wall. Two winters ago, Mark added a splice that allows him to drain this water line to make winterizing the ice-maker easier.
But the solenoid further down the line is almost impossible to get to, and the terrible cold caused it to break.
It was quite a job taking out all the screws and pulling out the refrigerator to get to the solenoid. After pricing the new part, Denisa was content to live without an ice-maker. But Mark found a better deal on-line and got it ordered. One good thing about staying in one campground for a while is that we have an address where we can get packages like an ice-maker solenoid.
Mark bent the metal on the back of the refrigerator in such a way that the solenoid would now be visible and more readily available. The next time we have to winterize, it can be removed to avoid breaking this plastic valve.
The saga continues, as the new solenoid isn't working correctly with our ice-maker. Another one is on the way, as Mark is still fighting the battle to get everything back in working order. During our long stay in Oklahoma, we were excited that we didn't get mice in the motor home like last time. But the cold weather pipe damage was more costly than the rodent damage. Just like us, our motor home definitely prefers warm weather!
After three long days of driving (by our normal standards) we were glad to start seeing signs of our arrival into the sub-tropical zone of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Denisa loves the game of looking for the first palm trees, which show up next to houses, and then in the median of the highway.
The game gets really fun as we drive further south and there are too many palms to count as they are everywhere!
We pulled into our destination at Bentsen Grove Resort in Mission, Texas, in the afternoon. As we climbed out of the motor home, we already were greeted by friends we met in previous years that were welcoming us back for another month. Denisa's Mother has wintered here for more than 30 years, and she met us when we arrived. It felt good to return.
It was truly a warm welcome as we were glad to soak in temperatures in the 70s with sunny skies. 70 degrees certainly sounds much better than the -7 degrees we had on New Year's in Oklahoma!
Many of the winter residents here told us about the cool November and December in the RGV, with too much rain and too little sunshine. So they are hoping that 2018 is starting a new resolution with these sun-shiny days. We thought it was funny to see this very chilly temperature reading along the expressway, especially since we were wearing shorts at the time.
Mark backed the motor home into the same site we camped in last year. We pick our site based on the number of fruit trees around it, and this one has several good trees.
We have learned from experience that not all oranges that look good will actually taste good. This beautiful tree on our passenger side looks delicious, but we have found that it tastes more like battery acid than orange juice.
Besides six fruit trees, we have one other tree at our camping site--a very tall palm. Not much shade from this guy, but we know that Denisa likes her palm trees!
While the diesel engine was still running and before we had the jacks down, Denisa was already out of the motor home and picking her first orange of the season. We have a collection of fresh-picked oranges, grape fruit and tangerines in our kitchen. That big bowl should stay full for the next month while we enjoy our time here at Bentsen Grove Resort.
After our cold December, we're certainly enjoying the sunshine here. Welcome to the Rio Grand Valley!
After parking the motor home 52 days ago, we were excited (and relieved) that it started back up without a sputter. We have had temperatures below zero, so Mark plugged in the engine block heater to get everything warmed up for our trip south. Everything we left inside was frozen solid, including our liquid soap.
We also found out that the refrigerator is good at keeping things cool, but not so good at keeping things warm. The gallon of milk we purchased the day before was also frozen solid inside the refrigerator.
Just a few miles down the road, we crossed the state line into Texas. We traveled from this very northern point of the panhandle all the way to the very southern tip of this very big state.
Texas is now our address, and where we have our vehicles registered. Every year before we buy our tags, our two vehicles must be safety inspected. We have found that it can be a challenge to find a place that will inspect motor homes and also has a big enough parking lot for us to pull into. We got this hard-to-find combination in Wheeler, Texas at H&H Tire. We'll remember this stop for next time, as we checked another item off our annual to-do list.
Mark winterized the plumbing shortly after we parked the motor home 52 days ago. We haven't seen temperatures above freezing for many days, so we had to make this trip without any water on board. Instead of traveling slowly and stopping to camp after an hour's travel down the road, we're making a bee-line straight south for warmer weather. Our first stop was at Pioneer Park, just north of Wellington, Texas.
A great little county-owned park along an icy river, it is a bargain with 30-amp electric and water for just $10. There were lots of empty sites this cold January day, and we would definitely stop here again.
We had heard about the icy road conditions around Childress, Texas, and we had waited an extra day to allow the traffic to thaw the roads. With high temperatures in the 20's, it certainly wasn't the warm temperatures thawing the ice. We still ran into icy bridges, but we were glad that the worst of the icing was over.
The second day was an unusually long drive for us. Seven hours on the road brought us south through Texas Hill Country, and miles of cactus and mesquite. As we drove through Fredericksburg, we found that the streets are still busy with holiday shoppers in this cute little tourist town. From our perspective, the narrow streets of downtown are not conducive for easy motor home driving, but Mark got us safely through.
Our destination for this second day on the road was Mark's brother and sister-in-law's house between Boerne and Bulverde, Texas. We parked the motor home for a quick over-night stop, and enjoyed spending time with them in their beautiful home.
These trips south in Texas bring back fond memories. We have made this trip many times in the car, and we realized this is the fourth time we have driven the motor home toward an extended stay in the tip of Texas. It's good to be on the road again!
