The Most Delightful King Cake

I finally made it out of Texas. I was lucky enough to get through Texas before all that horrible weather hit Texas. All that I saw was cold windy weather, but the temperatures were still in the fifties. I felt so bad for Texas. They just are not equipped to handle those cold extremes. 

I am a huge fan of state parks. I figure that there must be some really great reason why they built state parks where they do, whether it be historical, cultural or natural landmarks. The problem is that to get into a state park, you usually have to plan ahead many months in advance. That doesn't work very well with the way I travel. Commitment is difficult for me. But sometimes the State Park gods smile on me. I was able to secure a four day spot at Fontainebleu State Park located on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. If you cross Lake Pontchartrain on the Causeway ( I call it a bridge), it is a 23 mile drive to New Orleans. I did not go to New Orleans, although I meant to. I pretty much just hung around the park, did chores, hiked a little bit. It was nice to have some down time. I was at this park the week before Mardi Gras. 

Well, I found water and I found trees.  Now I just have to find green.

But look at this tree - is it not glorious?

There was a pier that you could walk out on

In one direction you could see the New Orleans skyline 
I don't know what that dark blue ridge is - it was a solid sheet of water to the naked eye.

In the other direction was the 23 mile long Causeway

 This year, because of Covid, there were no Mardi Gras parades or celebrations which really depressed many Louisianians. I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing a Louisiana baker. Evidently one of the staples of Mardi Gras is something called a King Cake. It is an oval ring cinnamon cake, almost like a coffee cake. They come in all different flavors: strawberry cream, chocolate, cheese, etc. The cake is iced and then heavy sprinkles are put on top of that in Mardi Gras colors. But wait, there is more. In the olden days, they would bake a plastic baby in the cake. It was considered very lucky if the piece of cake that you got had the baby in it. You would not only have luck for the next year but you would also have to host next year's celebration. Nowadays, they don't bake the baby in the cake, I guess for liability reasons, you don't want anybody choking on the baby. The cake sounded yummy, so I had to go find one and I found one, it was huge. I selected a Bavarian Creme filling. When I got back to the campsite, I immediately went to the camper next door(who I didn't know), knocked on their door and asked them to help me out. I gave them ¾ of the cake, kept a ¼. Once I tasted the King Cake, I was extremely sorry I had given any of the cake away. This cake was incredible. I think I am going to have a King Cake shipped to me every year now to celebrate Mardi Gras.

The King Cake in all it's glory.  See the baby?

Oil Drilling and Snapper Wings

 

Galveston is only an hour south of Houston and I meant to go down there to hang out at the beach. Instead, I found the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum, an actual decommissioned drilling rig. How could you pass that up? I must admit, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this, but as a friend once said “sometimes the things that you think will be the most boring or uninteresting turns out to be fascinating”  That was definitely true in this case.

I think I thought that this museum would be all about how great fossil fuel is and the world will fall apart without us continuing to increase our dependence on that black gold. It wasn't like that at all. I think there was one display where they talked about how many of our consumer goods were made from oil. Even when they talked about oil spills, the focus was more about how they happen, what technology is being used to make sure it doesn't happen and how to clean up the spill. I really enjoyed this museum. They talked, among other things, about the different types of oil rigs, how the drilling was done, the equipment used and what life on an oil rig was like.

Drill bits - aren't they pretty?

The harbor

I do so love the big ships

Pelicans were everywhere. 
When a fishing boat came in, it was like a scene out of Hitchcock's 'The Birds'

I did do a rare restaurant outing at Katie's Seafood Restaurant in Galveston. I ordered a couple of appetizers. I asked my server what is a Galveston specialty and he highly recommended Snapper Wings. They are deep fried and come from the throat of the Red Snapper. The restaurant thought it would be too gross to call them Snapper Throats, so Snapper Wings they became. I had to ask my server how to eat them because they come with fins and all. He told me to eat the fins like potato chips. I thought they were crunchy and rather disgusting. I also found out that Red Snappers have dark meat and white meat. I ate a couple of them, and really did not feel too good for the rest of the day.

Snapper Wings

I also had crab cakes which were excellent

Eye Candy in Houston

 

Speaking of Visionary Art, Houston might be the city to check out. Tucked away in various neighborhoods are little pockets of wonder.

There is Smithers Park, which is a half acre community park dedicated to practitioners of self-taught art. It is open to the public and on Saturdays you can watch the artists at work. I loved this park.

This was one of my favorites

Right next door to Smithers Park is the Orange Show. It is described as “a monumental work of handmade architecture”. It was built by a retired postal worker, Jefferson Davis McKissack, who built it single-handedly from 1956 to 1979 on a small city lot. It should be noted that McKissack had absolutely no construction experience and his Orange Show definitely shows this lack of experience. Floors were uneven, shortcuts were made. He was definitely a learn-as-you-go type of guy. McKissack was a huge fan of Oranges, he thought that they would solve many of the world's problems. It was right around the time that Disneyland became a big deal when he started building the Orange Show and he envisioned doing something on that scale on his lot. You have to admire a guy like McKissack who had a dream and worked to try to achieve it. I also found it a little bit sad, in a way, that he worked so hard on his dream and did not see it become the Disneyland he envisioned.

This boat would go around and around in a pool of water. 
The only problem was that McKissock forgot to put a drain in the structure so it got a little funky.

And then we have John Milkovisch, a retired upholsterer. In 1968, he began inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks and metal pieces into concrete in his front and back yards. He said that he was sick of mowing grass. When he finished doing that, he started adding aluminum siding to his house in the form of beer cans. They estimate that there are more than 50,000 cans that have given their lives for Milkovisch's house. Milkovisch, his neighbors and his wife all did their part drinking 'whatever was on special'. I especially liked the garlands which were like wind chimes in the wind.

Back of the house

The back patio

Inside the house they had a pantry with many of the types of beer cans Milkovisch used

  

Houston has the National Museum of Funeral History. I visited this museum one afternoon and I was surprised that I was the only visitor in the whole place. What? People don't find Funeral History interesting? Go figure. There was a large section on Presidential Funerals, a little tiny bit on embalming history and a section on Popes becoming saints but what I found interesting were the coffins and hearses.  

Look at this beauty

This hearse is from the 1860s.  It took two horses to pull it. 
If the horses were black, the deceased was a man, white horses for women

These are coffins

Of course you need to make sure that the coffin mattress is comfortable

The coolest thing of all, though, was that Star Trek's James Doohan(Scotty) and Gene Roddenbury (Star Trek's creator) both had their ashes sent off into space - the final frontier.  

Last but not least - Houston is also the self-proclaimed the art car capital of the world. Every year there is an art car parade and there is even an actual museum dedicated to the art car world. There is an art car parade and a World Art Car Day. Unfortunately there was nothing happening for me in the art car world when I was in Houston as the museum was closed.

Keep Austin Weird

 

Ya gotta love Austin Texas, the town whose motto is “Keep Austin Weird”. Own It, Be It.

 I think that Austin is going to have to maybe start working a bit more to live up to and keep their motto. The place is becoming home to Big Tech firms (Apple, Google) and is booming. Yes, they do have SXSW and parts of Austin seem funky, but it seems like it is becoming a happening place to be for up and coming corporate types.

I really like my new iPhone's night camera

I am a great fan of outsider art, so it was with a great deal of anticipation that I went to see the Cathedral of Junk. I have to say that I probably did not understand or particularly enjoy this installation. It is probably just me though, as some people have actually been married at the Cathedral. Vince Hannemann started in 1989 collecting junk for his project. After a while, people started bringing him their junk. He has incorporated it into a three story 60-ton pile of junk in his suburban back yard. I felt rather bad for his neighbors. You can climb up to the top and overlook the neighborhood. There are several theme rooms – such as a yellow room, or a bicycle room.

The Cathedral of Junk

Looking up in one of the towers

This is in a front yard(a different yard than the Cathedral)  Evidently this chicken gets a new and different coat of paint every so often, many times to correspone with a holiday.

My brilliant nephew, Alex, lives in Austin and it was so nice to see him. He was a wonderful host. We went out to dinner every night which is something I don't usually do in my travels. I insisted that if we went out, we had to eat outdoors on the patios. It was quite chilly, I think there might have even been a windchill factor. 

Giant warm chocolate chip cookie with ice cream

 One day, while Alex was working, his roommate Mina and her three dogs (Mina always moves in a pack) took Miko and Me to a park. I found water and trees. Yes, most of the trees were brown, but it just felt good to be in this type of nature.

Alex and Mina

And finally - the kids
Doesn't the screen make them look sort of arty?

Spelunking The Most Beautiful Cave In The World

 

All roads in Arizona lead to Tucson – at least for me. I lucked out again and got a site at Catalina State Park which is nestled up against the Catalina Mountains. I had been hearing for years about the Mt Lemon scenic drive which goes up the backside of the Catalinas. Scenic drive is right. You start off in the desert and within an hour you have ascended almost 8000 feet into pine country. In fact, at the top of Mt Lemon, there is a ski resort. The ski resort and the restaurants were all closed up on top, but the drive itself was worth it. Half of the time you are driving along, looking down out of the passenger side at certain death , the cliffs are so high. The other half of the drive, you are nestled up tight against the cliff walls that rise up hundreds of feet. I must mention that I also got to see my Cousin Ann one more time which was, as always, most enjoyable.

Those gorgeous Catalinas

See the road way down there wrapping around the HooDoo?

I must mention that I also got to see my Cousin Ann one more time which was, as always, most enjoyable.

The first night after I left Tucson, I made it as far as Deming, New Mexico. I spent the night at a rest stop along the interstate. This rest stop was rather unique in that they had places for campers to spend the night that were pullouts away from the general rest stop busyness that rest stops are. Not only that, but each pullout had a little shelter that housed a picnic table. It felt like having an extra room.

Boy, Texas is big. My son told me that if you drive from El Paso, the westernmost city in Texas to the Pacific Ocean, crossing three states and ending up at the Pacific Ocean that it will take about the same amount of time as driving straight across the great state of Texas from El Paso to Houston in the east. Crazy.

After driving for several days (it seemed longer than that), I ended up at the Caverns of Sonora in Sonora Texas. It is a National Natural Landmark and they had RV sites where we could camp. It was literally a five minute walk from my campsite to the cave's entrance. I had to laugh when I read a quote about the cave - “This is the most indescribably beautiful cave in the world, its beauty cannot be exaggerated, not even by a Texan” It might not be the most beautiful cave in the world, but it comes pretty darn close. Of course my pictures do not do it justice. 

Peafowl Krewe

Bossman and his Minions
It was so windy there that he had trouble walking with that big tail of his.
It kept blowing him off course.

Bacon Ribbons
Seriously that is what they called these types of formations

This was sort of spooky - coming around a corner and having a face leering at you.

This is a clear pool of water with a green bottom.  
Before the cave was protected,people would throw pennies in the pool
which turned the pool bottom green