Today was a hot one - 95 degrees. It's a DRY HEAT, so they say.
Remember the song, "Abiline, Abilene, prettiest town I've ever seen?" Found out that it is NOT this Abiline. We drove downtown and kept saying, "This isn't so pretty." A woman finally told us the song is about Abiline, KANSAS. Mystery solved.
Don loves cowboy stuff, so we had to go to Frontier Texas! It's a type of interactive museum, that features how the frontier developed in central Texas. The museum talked about how the cattle drives originated; described the conflicts with the Indians in the area; depicted the hard lives of the settlers, esp. the women; portrayed how the cavalry established forts to help protect the settlers, etc. The highlight was a multimedia presentation summarizing the what was shown in the museum and what it was like to get caught in the middle of a buffalo stampede. I liked the saga of a woman and her daughter who were captured by the Indians and later rescued. Hard, hard life back then.
Sunday, April 3rd: Perini's Steakhouse Ranch
Morning started with a super bike ride around the camp. Since we walked a lot yesterday, we thought we should mix up the exercise routine a bit. After a nice shower and breakfast, we did a little planning - playing the calendar out a bit to get a better overview of our trip and the dates of when to be where.
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| Love these flowering yucca! |
Tom Perini catered events for George W. Bush at the White House. He also did quite a Texas Christmas party at the James Beard House in NYC. If you want to know more or get steaks shipped home, check out their website: www.periniranch.com
Just coming to the ranch was an experience - a working oil rig, antique/old stuff all around the rustic restaurant, scuffed/beat up tables to eat at, buffalo heads and steer skulls hung about, and our first sighting of a cowboy with spurs eating alone. There was no air-conditioning in the restaurant, but fans kept it relatively cool on this hot night.
Now for the food ---- The Texas steak was magnifique, of course. The zucchini casserole as a side could have been a meal by itself. The piece de resistance was the Jack Daniels bread pudding for dessert. We fortunately discovered that there is a Perini Steakhouse cookbook and we are bringing the recipes home!!! Hope if you visit we can offer up something close to their version of the bread pudding. Even if you don't like bread pudding (Don is not a fan), this will convert you.
Monday, April 4th: Carlsbad, New Mexico
Driving another 365 miles, we made it to the KOA in Carlsbad by 3:30. We drove into another time zone, Mountain Time, so we really got here by 4:30 body time. It was a wild, windy drive across Texas and the truck was sucking up the gas. After talking with a fellow at the campground, he confirmed that driving into headwinds greatly reduces your fuel efficiency. Makes sense. He told Don that many RVers closely follow the weather and if high winds are predicted, they either wait it out or leave at the crack of dawn to avoid the high cost of travel on that particular day.
Carlsbad KOA is our priciest campground so far - $42.31 a night - and this is with the KOA discount. This place got the best www.RVparkreviews.com in the area, and since we didn't want a parking lot scenario, we selected this campground. The people were wonderful and the park was super-well maintained, but we were still out in the middle of the desert and it was windy and hot. Glad we were not here during tarantula mating season, as we were told these huge spiders are everywhere. All we saw were lots of noisy birds and cute bunnies running without abandon throughout the park.
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| Note the windmill toward middle back of picture. They have the wind to generate power! |
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