Friday
We entered Texas via a bridge into Port Arthur - a huge oil refinery town. We passed miles of refinery pipes and buildings and venting gas belonging to Valero - ugly and a bit smelly, but must be providing a lots of jobs. We continued on to Beaumont - another oil town for our campground south of town.
A neat, clean campground with a good laundry so I could catch up with our dirty clothes. Laundry rooms in campgrounds often serve as the office water cooler in corporate America - and I had a great conversation with a lady who said she was local. I wondered why she was local and here in a campground and when I asked, she said her home had flooded twice in the last few years - 6' of water that stayed for 7 days, so nothing was salvageable. The last time, she had enough and she and her husband decided to get a big trailer (5th wheel), stay local until she retired in 6 months, and then they would travel the country and decide later where to retire permanently. Duh! We were wondering why we saw so many campgrounds with obviously full-time residents in motor homes and trailers and why along the back roads we saw what we thought were poor people using camping trailers as homes on residential lots - these were folks who had lost their homes and were struggling to survive. Sure hope Mother Nature spares them from hurricanes this year.
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| Robot telling the story of early oil exploration in East Texas |
Saturday
Well, it turns out we left hot and humid southern Louisiana for hot and humid eastern Texas. Woke to 74 degrees with all the windows covered in condensation, so today will be yet again an "indoor" tourist day. After some shopping, we drove into downtown Beaumont to visit their Texas Energy Museum. Note that Texas Energy = oil, and no other type of energy. The museum concentrated on the process of refining crude oil and we did learn a few things, but the emphasis on chemistry and reliance on panel boards with a lot of reading meant we skipped quite a bit. The second floor concentrated on the discovery of the first oil gusher in Texas - Spindletop. A great story that resulted in 10,000 people coming to a rural area to "sightsee" the spectacle, along with folks hoping to get rich on an oilwell gusher. Similar to the gold mine strike stories we heard about in northwest Canada and Alaska.
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| A small exhibit about off-shore drilling |
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| They had a section on Gas Station Marketing and importance of Logos |
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| Robots telling the story of the first Oil Well Gusher in Texas |
After the museum we drove to Rau's Bakery and Cafe, opened in 1941. The pastries were beautiful, and a large assortment of flavorful ices and gelatos made it difficult to concentrate on lunch. Decor was 1940's with Frank Sinatra serenading us. Jack had a cup of chicken and sausage gumbo soup and a half ham sandwhich on a fresh, buttery croissant while I had a muffaletta panini. All were outstanding!
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| Gelato |
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| Ices - love the presentation with the fruit! |
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These birds' colors have no indication of the sex and do not follow
the norm that the brighter colors are male. Here we find the male a Pale
Pink and the Female a dark pink |
We headed south to the Anahuac Refuge where I was hoping to see a few Snow Geese that might be hanging around after their winter nesting season. We drove a short 3 mile loop and although there were no snow geese, we did get to see lots of wading birds, ducks and especially a pair of roseate spoonbills. It looked to us like they were doing a bit of a mating ritual with one repeatedly chasing the other and spreading his wings. She finally had enough and flew off, leaving him looking a bit dejected.
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| He is displaying what a fine catch he is |
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| Chasing and displaying |
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| She is ignoring and shortly afterwards, flies away |
From here, we drove a little further south to the Gulf and then across Bolivar Peninsula to our campground and spent another night with the AC on. Even though there was a nice breeze, 90 degrees at 9pm is way too hot to open the windows.
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