A catch up, lots of stuff post (long)

We've been having quite a time.  A lot has been happening for us.  First and foremost, I have talked about my retirement as if it was done.  Well, not exactly, I have been on a schedule for April and May in which I don't have any responsibilities (or pay), kind of a leave of absence.  That's over now, my retirement letter has been submitted and accepted so my last day of work will be June 3rd.  Then I am officially retired!  It hasn't struck us that we are fancy free yet, although we are beginning to lean that way.

As I said we had a wonderful time in Round Rock with Larry and Mary Ellen.  My friendship with Larry goes way back to college so it was fantastic to pick up right where we left off!  We share a love of food with L&ME so we certainly tried out several restaurants in the area and had a gourmet meal at the motorhome one night.  They are in a small apartment til their fabulous new house is built, so have been sampling the restaurants in the area.
We started out with the Salt Lick barbecue, not the original one in Dripping Springs, but a clone near the ballpark in Round Rock.  We have been trying to get to the Salt Lick for years, but always ended up at Cooper's in Llano instead. So first critique, Salt Lick was great, we sampled pork ribs, excellent, brisket, tender and juicy, and it was great to see the huge open fire grill in the middle of the restaurant.
Lunch at the Monument Diner in downtown was fun, an eclectic, local place specializing in local food, a lot of it grown right outside in their garden.  Fresh, tasty, and reasonable, what else would you want?
We then had a superb dinner of filet mignon from the Central Market in Austin, quite a top shelf store, cooked expertly by our own gourmet chef, Larry!  Oh yeah, much wine was also consumed.
A super breakfast followed at a little hole in the wall, Tio Dan's Puffy Taco.  Authentic, delicious Mexican with their specialty being a "puffy" taco.  It seemed they took a corn tortilla and fried it until it puffs, then fill it with delectable fillings.  Yum yum!
We, of course, wanted to explore all cultures so for dinner we went to Ho Ho Chinese BBQ.  This was the most authentic chinese restaurant Jan and I have ever been to.  Filled with asians speaking many different dialects of Chinese it was quite an experience, oh yeah, and absolutely delicious!  Best Hot and Sour Soup we've ever had.  Even had Peking ducks hanging near the entrance, one of their specialties.
We had to counter and offer a place we had been to in the past, Maria's Taco Express down in Austin.  Jan and I are Food Network fans and we had seen this place featured on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives and visited it several years ago.  We wanted to see if it was still going strong.  We showed up to a huge crowd and line Sunday morning, and had a great brunch.  Busy, busy, interesting little dive with great Mexican.
Our farewell dinner was at Fish Daddy's Seafood Grill.  We had killer clam chowder, yeah in Texas!  And excellent fried catfish, cod, and shrimp.  We believe it is a small chain in the area, but highly recommend it.  Ok, enough of the food reviews, lets move on.

After our repair we headed northwest to San Angelo, TX to the state park by the same name.  It was a great choice, huge sites with 50 amps and water.  Very private, quiet, tons of room between sites and a bit of a view of the lake that is quite low right now.

We had a great sunset.

And a fabulous sunrise.

We also had a very interesting visitor, a Flycatcher.

It was neat to watch his awesome maneuverability as he hunted down his dinner of insects.  We would definitely go back to the San Angelo State Park for some R&R.

Then we went a "grueling" 88 miles all the way to Big Spring, TX.  It is getting hot now, in the high 90's and bumping 100, but as they say, "It's a dry heat".  We just stopped for the night but felt we had an obligation to see the Big Spring.  Seems when the pioneers were in the area, their indian guides took them to this area as there was a huge spring gushing over 100,000 gallons a minute out of the ground that could be counted on anytime in the year.  Well, after the mining and farming hit the area they depleted the spring to the point that without rain there is very little water even in the spring itself.  As you can see in the picture it is pretty low and didn't appear to be flowing at all.

We have discussed our internet issues a few times and as you know we have been weighing different options for internet access on the road.  There was none in San Angelo State Park and the provided WiFi in Big Spring was terrible so we decided to turn on the tethering on one of our iPhones and see how that goes.  It only adds $20 to our present data plan and gives us 5GB.  It works well, so with acceptable WiFi juggled with tethering we think this will answer our issues, of course, that's until we don't have cell coverage or weak coverage and then we will have to revisit this issue and see if we want to get a cellular amplifier.

We are now in Lakewood, NM just north of Carlsbad at The Ranch, an Escapee's park.  Escapees is a club that was started some time ago that caters primarily to full-timers.  They offer all kinds of services, mail forwarding, continuing care facilities, and have numerous campground or parks across the US.  Their headquarters is in Livingston, TX.  We have visited only a few of their exclusive parks, one in Tennessee and one in Alabama.  They are friendly people and very welcoming.  Well, let me tell you here it is really true.  When someone enters the park a big bell is rung and folks come out and greet you with hugs and hellos.  We got invited immediately to their Root Beer Float gathering at 4pm, and had a welcome packet delivered and several more people drop by to say hello.  We went to the Float get-together, $.50 a float, can you beat that?  There were perhaps 25 people there and after visiting a bit a lady went to the front of the room with a mike and told a couple stories, did some announcements, then called the newcomers, JAN AND I to come up to the mike and say hello and let everyone know what we were up to.  Thankfully I've gotten over some of my public speaking terror while I was an instructor, so hopefully it wasn't too bad.  Nice, nice folks.
On the way up here, the wind really kicked up, we were glad we were only coming 200 miles.  Right on our nose 20-30 mph with gusts over 40!  It supposed to be with us for several days, at least it keeps the 100 degree heat at bay.  As we drove I kept noticing something moving on the road.  I mentioned it to Jan and she started to watch as well.  We thought we were seeing fairly big insects of some kind on the road.  What the heck????  I found a spot to pull over where there were quite a few of them to figure out what they were.  Turns out they were huge grasshoppers!  About 3 inches long!  As near as we could tell they were Horse Lubber Grasshoppers.  Here's a couple pictures:

One last thing before I close.  Windmills for electricity generation are popping up all over the West.  They are everywhere, and obviously wherever it is windy.  I'm not going to discuss their merits or disadvantages here, but it's good to see us tapping into alternatives.  We know that people that live near them consider them to be an eyesore and we have heard they make quite a bit of noise as they whirl around.  We have tried in years past to get near to one to see what they sound like, but had never been able to get close enough.  Well, we had an opportunity in Big Spring an area with tons and tons of them.  We were able to drive to about 200 feet of one.  Well, we can tell you they do make noise, a whishing, howling, rumbling kind of sound, and I imagine if you lived close it might be annoying, but if you owned the land it was mounted on, I imagine the rent might offset the sound:)

Finally done for awhile.  Thanks so much for sticking with it.  More to come later as we explore our freedom.