Gavlestone and New Orleans....Then HOME!!!

Today we headed into Galveston, Texas.  We had a nice time.  Again it was hot but not near as hot as it was in the West.  We took a tour of the city and saw some beautiful home that survived the Great Storm of 1900.  We went to the river front and looked at the beach. It was no where near as nice as our beaches.  There was lots of sea weed on the beach.  You could see boats out in the ocean.  We ate at a nice restaurant called Fish Tails.  We had stuffed peppers, shrimp creole, home chips and clam chowder.  We left Galveston and headed back to the RV for a relaxing evening.

We left for New Orleans early Wednesday morning.  We arrived at our last campground and felt real safe.  It was secured with a coded entry and wires all over the brick walls around us.  Other than that it was actually a very nice campground.  Thursday we went for a tour of New Orleans. The girls learned lots on this tour.  Their favorite thing was how people are buried there.  They are em bombed with a special chemical that allows them to decompose except for the bones with in a year.  Then the casket is opened and the bones are put in a bag and they are placed in the bottom of the crypt.  As the other family members die they are em bombed and placed in the bottom of the crypt as well. Generation after Generation are buried in the "family" crypt.  If there is not enough room for a loved one to decompose you can rent a crypt for the cemetery or borrow one from a friend..  Tell me that is not weird....  They also saw the lower 9 ward where the destruction from Katrina is still evident and devastating.  There are places that are abandoned.  New Orleans is still as sad city that is in need of reconstruction.  While in New Orleans we saw wild flamingo white and pink.  We also crossed Lake Pontutraine.  We crossed the bridge where people we during Katrina trying to get to the highest ground.  We passed the Super Dome and saw many old homes that with stood the storm.

Friday we left about 5 AM..  We are now headed home...We are all so ready to be home.  Somewhere between New Orleans we stopped for gas and the started went out on Prissy.  Thankfully Bett and David had Road side assistance.  We were towed to a shop and we were on the road again with in an hour.  We drove on and all was going well.  After we crossed into Georgia we stopped to get gas again and the generator went out....NO AIR..At least we were almost in Atlanta and did not have much more to travel.  We opened the windows and to our amazement it was really not that bad.  We finally arrived home about 9PM on Friday night.  All was well for the Constant Henderson Cross Country Trip.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.  Thanks for following.

San Antonio and Houston Space Center

We woke up Sunday morning and washed some clothes.  We decided to go into San Antonio late morning so we could eat lunch there and tour some and be home for dinner.  We took the city bus into town and began our walk on the River Front. It was so peaceful. They have a huge river walk.  They have restaurants on both sides and a riverboat tour that takes you up and down the river.  We stopped at a restaurant called The County Line BBQ.  It was fantaboulous.  David and Bett got the sampler and had ribs, sausage, beef brisket, pork and chicken..  They were stuffed.  I had the half rack of ribs and all was delicious.  Of course the girls only ate fries and bread, but they enjoyed it.. We left there and walk some more and headed to the Alamo.   We walked through the park on the side of the Alamo.  It was beautiful.. The lush trees and ferns were so pleasant.  After that we walked through the Alamo itself.  It is a lot smaller than we were expecting.  We could not believe that it was such an important battle but yet it was so small.  After the Alamo, the girls and I went through the Guinness's Record Exhibit.  It was real neat we saw lots of interesting things.  We found out the most transplants to be done is 12 so for those of you who are worried I have 9 more to go to tie the record.  Don’t worry I pray I am not going to have anymore.  After we finished there the girls and I road the 3D Ride that is beside the Record exhibit.  It was fun as well and the girls got laser guns to shoot at different things in the ride.  When we finished there we went to the famous LULU’s Bakery and Cafe.  It was featured on Man V/S Food.  They have a 3 lb cinnamon roll.  We were all so excited. Lauren Elizabeth wanted one to herself but we talked her into sharing and if we ate all of the first one we could order another one.  Well we did not even put a dent into the one we ordered.  IT was huge.  It was almost as tall as a Ketchup bottle.  And as big around as a dinner plate.  We only ate a small amount of it. You could hardly tell we had touched it.  Man was it good.  After we left there we sent David and the girls back to the camper because they were hot and tired.  Mama and I went to the Farmers Market,  (we had asked directions and information about this place several times)  When we arrived it was closed....NOBODY told us this!!!! So we took the yellow line to the blue line to the 42....to get back to the campground..And WE MADE IT!!!!  We were so glad to get back to the campground. 

We woke up this morning and got on the road about 10.  We have about a 5-6 hour drive today to Houston. While on the was we decided to change our plan and go ahead and take a tour of the Johnson Space Center on Monday afternoon.  We checked in and headed on to the space center.  We had a wonderful time,  We took a trolley tour of the space center. We saw many aircraft and read about lots of people who had helped mold the space program.  It is a great program.  While we were there we saw some Texas Longhorn Cattle.  One was worth 500,000 dollars.   I tried to get its picture but it would not cooperate.  We got back to the camper about 6 PM and ate dinner.  We had Chicken Stew and the girls had nuggets from none other than CHick Fil A.  They went for a quick swim and we are now settling down for the night.  The girls are playing chess, Bett and David have gone to bed and I am finishing up the blog.  We will will be home soon and this trip will be nothing but a memory.  If you ever get the chance to do this please take you kids, grand kids or just you got across country.  I has been a wonderful experience for us all. We have learned to work together to get ready to pull out of campgrounds and when to retreat into our own world but all in all we have had a fantastic time.  

We are planning on heading to Galveston tomorrow.  We are not sure what we are going to do there or what else we will be doing so I will let you know in tomorrows blog.

We miss you all and hope you are enjoying our blog.

Love,

Bett, David, Lauren Elizabeth, Ann Wells and Mary Kathrine

Carlsbad Caverns

Well Friday night was amazing...We visited Carlsbad Caverns to watch the Bat Flight program they have there.  This is when you go sit out side and watch for the bats to leave the cave.  Usually they have about 200,000 bats leave every night but due to the hot weather and no rain the numbers are down quit a bit.  Now they have a couple thousand.  This was fine for us because we had hiked the cavern earlier that day and new where they were coming from.  It was so neat to watch the bats begin to leave and more and more come out.  It looks like a small black tornado, so I can only imagine what 200,000 bats would look like.  After we finished watching the bats we came on back to the rv.  We knew we needed to get to bed early because we were leaving early this morning.

We woke up this morning and were on the road at 5 AM.. We have learned to travel early because of the heat.  We had a 9 hour drive in front of us so we needed to get started.  We took turns driving between Bett, David and I we all drove about 2 hours.  We made it to San Antonio.  On the way we saw some new things,  first we began to see clouds again.  It has been so hot there have been none.  While driving down the road we saw things like slow animals that had been hit by cars, buffalo, a road runner(bird), flames from gas wells, coyote and lots of dead deer that were only skin and bones...They had dried up.  

We arrived in San Antonio mid afternoon. We went straight to Cavendar's  a Texas boot store.  Lauren Elizabeth got her a pair of turquoise ones, Ann Wells got her some chocolate ones with colors embroidered on them and I got a brown pair.  We love them.  Ann Wells has already worn hers.  LE and I are waiting to wear ours when we get home.  

We checked into the Campground.  We all fell in love with it imediatly.  We are right beside the pool and the playground so we can watch the girls out of the camper windows.  Most of all there are trees and grass.  The grass is still alive I might add. The girls went swimming right off the bat while Bett, David and I straightened up.  Then they came in and we all ate supper. We had hamburgers tonight and LE had a PP&J.  After we finished the girls and I went to the pool.  It felt wonderful.  

We are all now setteling in for the night.  We are going to go into San Antonio tomorrow and find LULU's home of the 3lb cinnamon roll.  Lauren Elizabeth heard about this on Man v/s Food.  We will be going to the River front and Alamo as well.  I will check in with you guys tomorrow.  Have a great day and stay cool..

-- 

Carlsbad Caverns

Well so far today has been much better.  We all woke up early 7 o’clockish and got ready to head to the caverns about 15 miles away.  It was already hot.  We arrived and checked in with our Ranger and waited for our instructions.  After telling is the safety rules she handed us our lanterns and we were headed down the elevator shaft into the canyon.  This was 754 feet down and it only took us about a minute to get to the bottom.  We gathered around a round desk and lit our candles and were headed into the left hand tunnel.  While in the tunnel we learned that this tunnel was made from sulfuric acid not water.  The construction of the tunnel happened when water from an old ocean area came in contact with petroleum and created sulfuric acid.  This took place about 200 million years ago.  The structures that were formed are beautiful.  You see stalactites, stalagmites, columns, things called drapes and some even look like bacon.  There are water pools that are completely clear and almost don’t look like their is water in them at all.  We walked in about a half a mile and turned around.  We did what was called a black out, this is when we sat in a circle and blew out the candles and sat in the dark.  We then had one candle lit and experienced what it was like when the cavern was first discovered.  After leaving the cavern we shopped in the gift shop and then spoke to the ranger about coming back to see the Bat Flight tonight.  Because of the recent forest fires the bat population has been down but hopefully by the end of the summer the numbers will be back up.  The forest fires at Carlsbad cannon consumed 35,000 acres.  It is truly a sad sight.  We will be going back tonight to see the bats take flight so I will check back in and tell you about that later.  Have a great afternoon.  

Two day trip from LA to Carlsbad, New Mexico

Well I have one word to say and that is HOT!!!!!!  We left LA about 8:30 and headed to Tucson for the night.  Well the temperature quickly hit 113 degrees.  Prissy the RV did not like the hot weather.  We did our best to give her little breaks but she was just toooo hot.  When she would get real hot the generator world turn off and we would have no air.  We opened the windows but the breeze and I use that term loosely was not very refreshing.  After about 6 hours into our 9 hour drive we started to wet towels and wrap them around our heads.  We looked hysterical.  David was driving with a green towel wrapped around his head.  Bett had a cold water bottle as a neck brace.  Ann Wells and Lauren Elizabeth had towels dipped in ice water on their stomachs and I had ice on my legs and a ice pack on my head.  


We finally made it to Tucson and spent the night.  We unpacked and the girls and I went for a walk on a path in the desert.  While walking we got some beautiful pictures of the sun setting. Ann Wells came up and said she had a cactus sticker in her shoe.  I went to pull it out and it got stuck on one of my fingers.  The more I tried to get it off the worse it got.  It was like the tar baby.  Finally I gave up and came back to the rv to get help.  I got all of them out but one and David had to pull it out with the needle nose pliers.  It was in there good.  So needless to say Ann Wells and I don’t want to see another cactus ever.  


After the HOT ride yesterday we decided to get up very early and leave at 5 AM.  That was the best decision we could have made.  Prissy was so happy she drove us to Carlsbad with no trouble at all.  She was so happy, she just hummed us right along.  Today on our way to Carlsbad we saw a beautiful sunrise.  It is true what they say there is noting like the sun set or sun rise in the desert.  While on the road we also saw some beautiful new mountains.  The dirt was a different consistency that we had seen. Closer to New Mexico we saw the Salt Flats.  This is a flat area made of sand and a high amount of salt.  It was white as snow.  We also saw the after math of some forest fires and even caught a glimpse of one on the side of the mountain.  It is truly sad how much devastation the fires have done.  Right now there is a concern about rain because if it rains it could cause land slides because there is nothing holding the dirt in place.  They are unsure how the ecosystems will be effected at this time but are planning on letting Mother Nature take her course and rebuild.


I am trying to learn how to add some pictures on here but no luck so far. Hope you are all doing well. Be home in 8 days.

Disneyland and LA

Ok, It has been another busy few days, We left Vegas on Monday morning and headed towards LA. On the way Jeff decided we would surprise the girls and take them to Disneyland. When we arrived in the area of Ontario, California, the place Jeff was flying out of, we went on to the airport and rented a car. It was a Yellow, VW Bug.  Lauren Elizabeth was excited but Ann Wells was not happy at all. After leaving the airport we started heading to Disney when we found out that there was a Chick-Fil-A right there so of course we had to stop so LE could get some chicken.  She was so excited.  It was the first Chick-fil-a she had had since we left Greenwood. Jeff and I took the girls to Disney while Bett and David went to the campground and set everything up.  

Disney was so much fun. We are all glad we can say we have been there. It is smaller than the one in Florida but just as much fun. We only had about 5 hours there so we did not get to ride everything we wanted but we did get to ride a few things. Fortunately, they have most of the same rides as in Florida. The girls had a great time. It was so nice spending time with Jeff and the girls and doing something with just us. We have missed Jeff so much.  After we left Disney, Jeff took us back to the campground and he was off to the airport to head back to the wood.  Someone has to work. The girls were so tired but Tuesday is a busy day so we all had to hit the sheets and get a good night sleep.

Tuesday morning we were all up and ready to leave by 9:15 PT. The tour consisted of 11 of us. We were the only ones from the US, the others were from Holland and Germany. The people from Holland were so nice and sweet. They were 2 young couples in their early 30 touring the West coast. We had a fun time getting to know them and they had fun talking with Bett. She told them all about our little town of Greenwood and about her farm. It was fun.  While on our tour, which was to be only 6 ½ hours, we visited tons of places in LA.  We started out at 2 beaches.  The first was Venice Beach (Muscle Beach.) We took off our shoes and put our feet in the Pacific Ocean.  It smelled just like the Atlantic to me.  We were all a little shocked at the language that was painted on the walls and  said in that area.  After we left Venice Beach, we headed to Santa Monica Pier. This is where Route 66 ends.   While there Lauren Elizabeth and I road a roller-coaster and were late back to the tour. They almost left us.  Thank goodness David, Bett and Ann Wells were there to make them wait.  The pier was a neat site to see.  Then we headed towards UCLA. We only saw a portion of the Campus but it was a beautiful place.  Rodeo Drive was fun to ride down.  We did not stop to shop since we had already bought our trinkets.  While riding around we passed many famous homes.  Some include Al Pa chino, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Ron Howard, Playboy mansion, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christina Agularia, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra’s house, Lucile Ball, Ronald Reagan's home, Bing Crosby’s, Michael Jackson’s home where he died, and the LA home of Elvis. We also saw 2 houses that Nicholas Cage had lost last year in a Bankruptcy case. We stopped at the Hollywood walk of fame on Hollywood Blvd and LE saw some of her favorite people’s stars.  We ate lunch at the famous Farmers Market on West 3^rd street. While traveling around we stopped and took pictures of the Hollywood Sign and the Griffith Observatory.  While here, we got caught up in a swarm of bees that were swarming.  Fortunately no one got stung. The Disney Concert hall, there David asked a question about the stainless steel outer covering and the tour guide got so excited because someone knew about that.  Walt Disney’s wife gave money for this Concert Hall to be built but died 2 years before it’s completion.  CBS studios and the old RKO studies were seen as well.  We saw the Kodak Theatre where the Academy Awards and American Idol are held.  We visited the Paramount Studio Arches (entrance way).  We saw where the red carpet area is for awards shows.  The Tar pit was neat.  I did not know anything about it.  It is a pit of tar from millions of years ago, where they have found many, many fossils.  I found that to truly be amazing that it was still there after all these years.  We saw where Bobby Kennedy was shot and where Janis Joplin died.  We saw the Hollywood Bowl summer home of the LA Philharmonic.  We road by the Staples Center where Michael Jackson’s funeral was held.    We saw the restaurant where Sharon Tate and her friends ate the night they were murdered by Charles Manson and his followers.

Last but not least, we were getting back on the tour van and David realized he did not have his wallet.  He traced his steps back to a CVS at the Farmers Market.  We called and YES he had left his wallet there.  The nice people on the tour bus agreed to us driving back (20 Minutes) to the CVS and allowing David to retrieve his wallet.  This made our 6 1/2 hour tour, that had already run over, turn into a 9 hour tour.  We all had a wonderful time.  It was a long day but we all learned a lot about LA.  We know it is definitely a town we would all like to visit again one day.  

Hoover Dam AND Las Vegas

Ok it has been a few days since I have written.  I have had a migraine so the last time I wrote was before we went to the Hoover Dam.  The Hoover Dam is truly a architectural wonder.  We drove to the Dam from the campground.  This campground was like Cane Creek in Cross Hill.  The sites were paved and very little grass in sight.  The bath house and laundry room were accessible by key only.  We could not believe how nobody came out until dark and that was when they all went to Vegas.  

At the Hoover Dam we took a tour inside.  To be inside such a large structure was truly amazing.  We learned about how it was built.  We learned that the Dam is not attached to the mountain….it is wedged in and there for will move as the earth moves.  The view from inside the Dam was beautiful.  You could look up and see the curvature of the Dam…

While at the Dam we ate at the Dam Cafe.  We had great hamburgers and chicken tenders.   On Sunday Jeff and the girls went to Lake Mead.  That was the first day of my migraine.  They said the water was cold and the bottom was rocky but they looked like they had fun.

On Sunday night Bett, David, Jeff, Lauren Elizabeth and Ann Wells went into Vegas. They had a blast.  I did not go again because of a migraine….Lauren Elizabeth is going to tell you about Vegas….. 

HOLA! Daddy planned out what we were going to do in Vegas Sunday afternoon. After we ate supper, we went into Vegas. It was so cool because you could see the skyline from MILES away. We didn’t realize how close we were.

We got into Vegas and saw the Roller-coaster New York. It was HUGE! I really wanted to ride it but we couldn’t find parking. We actually parked at the Bellagio hotel. We went inside and found BEAUTIFUL hand-blown glass flowers and insane water works. Then, we went through the casino. I felt so weird in there because I technically wasn’t allowed in there. Daddy played one round of roulette and won $40 dollars! After that, we went outside to watch the BIG water show. Next, walked down the strip to Caesar's Palace. It was so big. We did not go inside here but we ate a little snack outside of it. Afterwards, we walked down to the Mirage. This place had a VOLCANO! It erupts every hour with fire and water. I thought it was awesome. I said that it was like the dragon at the beach times like 50,000. There were mini flamethrowers in the water. We then went to Treasure Island. I won’t go into detail about that. It was NOT a kid-friendly place. But Vegas was so pretty. Here’s a picture of the Eiffel Tower they had and then I’m done.

They arrived back at the camper about 1:00 Pacific Time.  Jeff got in the bad and said my parents were pooped….Ann Wells hollered “Good Night Vegas”.  

This morning we awoke and started our trip to L. A.  after this stop we are headed home...Right now we are driving through the Mojave dessert..  As far as you can see is dessert and cacti.  I will hopefully be able to blog tomorrow about LA.  

The girls are still getting along rather well.  They have had a few more spats since Jeff arrived but over all they are doing well.  Mama and I are still getting along thanks to me increasing my Celexa...lol. 

Mary Kathrine