King Ranch, King Ranch Museum and Kings Inn, May 21 & 22, 2021

We learned that the rainfall the other day totaled 11.5" here in Kingsville. There was a very small amount of damage at the RV park but it was at the far end of the park. We did see one pickup sink into the ground as it tried to leave its site, but a neighbor pulled it out with another pickup. As you can see, we are on a concrete pad so no worries for us.

Linda's basil plant came through without any problem and she told me it was enjoying the sun today. Sun also means sun tea. (Linda speaking.  The refrigerator in Sophie could not hold a 1/2 gal jar so I use a quart jar to make the tea.  I use the same amount of loose tea that I use in the larger jars, so the tea is concentrated.   Each glass now has half tea and half water.)

Even though we've been here before it is always interesting to visit and go on the tour.  Yes, masks were required.

The rain filled the area behind the dam in Santa Gertrudis Creek and overflowed the dam making the low water crossing an actual water crossing. 

We frequently saw flooded fields along the rout the tour bus took. 

Ford pickup folks likely recognize this barn. It is a location on the ranch where the King Ranch Edition Ford commercials are filmed. Our guide said this years filming took place over the days in February when we had deep freeze and she couldn't believe they were out there filming in that weather.

Obligatory cattle photo. It is a ranch after all. 

Entrance to the main house.

Captain King's wife liked mission style architecture, so it is found in various ranch buildings.

The farm Linda grew up on had dairy cows. Like they say, you can take the girl off the farm but you can't take the farm out of the girl. I am so lucky I went on that blind date some 54 years ago. 

Tradition dictates we have a snack on the picnic tables near the visitor center after the tour is over. We got a chuckle over the fact that from the time Linda got the colorful table cloth out until we finished eating, the wind kept trying to relocate the table cloth to somewhere other than on the table. Concurrently with the moment we finished eating, the wind stopped blowing. What are the odds.

Every time we visit the museum we seem to see something we overlooked the last time.  Masks were required here too, and a NO PHOTOS rule in the museum.

Th wind shields worked perfectly which made for great burgers topped with melted swiss cheese. 

Linda's latest find at H-E-B. With everything smaller in Sophie, we have to make some changes in what we can cook and store. These refried beans were in a squeeze bag and were very good. Years ago a very experienced traveler told us, if something doesn't meet your expectations, change your expectations. That is one of the best parts about traveling, whether in an RV or overseas, we get to experience new things.

A friend suggested that we wanted to eat out we should try the King's Inn.

Avocado salad and what they call tarter sauce. Just not what we call tarter sauce. I don't believe the family tomato worm ever met a tomato she didn't like.

Fried shrimp, french fries, hush puppies, avocado salad, iced tea and Dr. Pepper. The iced tea and Dr. Pepper were excellent. 

It appears others have the same opinion about the food that we did.

 

A Rainy Day in Kingsville May 19, 2021

We nice, though somewhat windy drive from Brownsville to Kingsville yesterday. Today was certainly different. It started raining around 4 AM, and didn't stop until late afternoon. Usually it was raining very heavily, but sometimes it looked like it was going to stop with the sky getting brighter, but alas, no such luck.

 

What it usually looked like. We had a short bit of hail, and the winds were getting stronger when Linda decided her basil plant, which she had raised from seed, needed to be in a safer location than under the picnic table. So out she went, stepping in water over her shoes and putting her baby in the Cherokee out of the wind. Of course I just stood at the door watching her, never thinking about taking a photo. Bad Bob.

When not rescuing plants, Linda followed what was taking place back at Retama. We knew the intensity and total amount of rainfall from the data auto-posted every minute by the rain gauge on our Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station mounted on our coach house. 

When Linda wanted a break from following the storms, she decided to fix the breakfast egg casserole dish we have been eating for breakfast. It is really easy, especially when she tells me where everything is so I can get the ingredients out, then brown the sausage and cut the English muffins, peppers and onions for her. 

She got this recipe off of a friend nearly 40 years ago. It has always been eaten on Christmas morning, hence the name.

Linda's turn to work. She mixes everything but what I worked on together in a mixing bowl then adds my things and stirs it all up. She obviously knows how long to bake it, but that's not my department.

How small do want these cut dear, Bob.

Finished baking, we cut it into 16 pieces and have breakfast for over a week. We just take it out of the frig in the morning, warm it up in the microwave, then I top mine with some salsa. We have homemade pickles (I also have Hatch jalapenos) on the side. Makes for an awesome breakfast. If you haven't already guessed, we are not big eaters.

Making Sophie Ours, Pantry Improvements

Sophie's pantry is a pullout across from the refrigerator. It looks nice when closed. The problem as far as Linda was concerned was that when it was opened it also looked nice, but the shelves left something to be desired for holding what she wanted to put in it.

It works well for items and containers that right sized, but what about all the smaller things she wanted to put in it. She had a number of items in smaller plastic bags and they could only be stacked as high as front lip of the shelf.

She decided this was the shelf she wanted something made to hold those bags. She searched and searched the internet trying to find a container that would work, but she had no joy. Sad Linda.

To restore that wonderful smile she constantly beams out I said I could make something, but it wouldn't match the current pantry finish. She replied she didn't care what it looked like, she just wanted something that would work, and besides, since the pantry was normally closed why did it matter what it looked like. As you can tell from the photo, I took her at her word and went for function over appearance.

A modified and reinforced laser printer cartridge box was all it took. She did say she didn't care what it looked like. Possibly Bad Bob.

I did glue a piece of plain cardboard to the front to improve its appearance as well as give it more stiffness. I rounded off the back corners so it could be as high as possible and still be easy to remove. She quickly had it filled with bags of those extra of secret ingredients that make her cooking so awesome.

I made a cut out for the pantry latch. To rotate the box, the box has to be slid a bit to the right. Maybe some day  I will make one out of lauan plywood and finish it with something closer in color to the existing finish. It would look nicer, but would it really matter? 

The bottom compartment posed a different problem. Linda has her sweet tooth while I have a spicy tooth. That begins with breakfast where I enjoy a glass of spicy V8. The thing is V8 doesn't make a low sodium spicy V8, so I buy the low sodium regular V8 and add my own spicy mix to it, La Anita Habanero sauce and freshly ground black pepper. The refrigerator in Sophie isn't conducive to the large containers of V8, but the pantry is right sized for the smallest cans, it just can't hold that many.

The solution was a scrap piece of thin plywood I had saved when making some modifications to a previous RV. I cut it down to size and drilled a finger hole to make it easier slide back and forth. The corner cutout and surface imperfection that were already in the piece didn't matter because they would be hidden by the front piece of the compartment.

The slider in place.

Now I can stack the V8 cans higher than the front piece without fear of them sliding forward and jamming the drawer.

The slider in the closed position with the cans in no danger of sliding forward. When the pantry is closed you can't see either mod. When it is open, it is only for the brief time it takes to remove something or put something in it. Does it really matter what the mods look like? Not to us. Two easy mods that made Linda a very happy camper. Good Bob.

 

A SpaceX Morning

Never let it be said that it is too late to begin blogging about our travels. We left for our summer of 2021 travels on May 9 and here it is Saturday May 15, Sunday May 16 and I am just getting around to writing about the trip so far. I don't think that should classify as a Bad Bob, more like a Tardy Bob. We did not RV very much during 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but we did travel over to an RV park in Brownsville a number of times. I'm sure most people who know the area would be saying, "Why did you go to Brownsville instead of South Padre Island?"

The answer is a man who was born in South Africa, emigrated to Canada, and is now living in America named Elon Musk. Sometime in the next 10 or so years you will likely be driving an electric vehicle and someday your grandchildren could be vacationing on Mars. All this is because Elon Musk dreams impossible dreams, asks Why Not, then makes them come true. If I were a teenager again I would be doing everything possible to get the education I needed to work for one of his companies. Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. Especially Starlink, because RVers who spend significant time on the road and want to always be connected to the Internet will probably be a customer of Starlink. We certainly will be.

Boca Chica, Texas is where SpaceX is building their rocket factory and spaceship launch complex. In keeping with the promise of the future, Elon wants to incorporate it as Starbase, Texas. When we were down there today the new name was becoming a reality as the letters were being installed on one of the walls in front of the facility.

A common sight are cranes as there is building going on everywhere. This crane is one of five at the first area of the complex you pass. It is known as the Sanchez site and is where a plant is being erected to produce liquid oxygen, methane which are used by the rockets.

Mockup of the nosecone section of the Starship moon lander.

Starship SN16 in the highbay. The MaxQ nosecone test rig is to the left and GSE tank 3 is to the right.

The above from another angle. The rockets are all built onsite. 

A mile to the east is the launch site. Linda always has to take a photo from near this point. That is SN15 on test stand 2.

She wasn't happy with where I stopped for above photo, so I was directed stop closer to launch complex. It is difficult to comprehend the size of a Starship which is 30 feet in diameter and 164 feet high. Starship is made of thin stainless steel and with its fore and aft flaps, plus it falls back to the ground on its belly before turning upright and landing. It looks like something out of a 1950s science fiction movie or TV show rather than a modern rocket. It's a case of looks can be deceiving. All the old space company experts said it would never work. That's why they're known as "Old Space Companies" and are being left behind by the advances in rocketry pioneered by SpaceX.

The large crane is used to lift the starship from the mobile carrier up onto the launch stand. The difference between SpaceX and the old space companies in doing something like this is like night and day. Old space uses custom-built mobile carriers that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, SpaceX uses mobile carriers commonly used in the oil gas and chemical industries, fabricating a special base to mount the rocket on. Think of old space as a vacuum designed to suck up as many of our tax dollars as they can.

It is one thing to launch a rocket, but an entirely different thing to land that rocket. Sometimes they come down in one piece and other times they come down in many pieces.

Earth barrier to deflect the blast of the rocket. That is Highway 4  in the foreground.

We are so lucky to live as close as we do to such a history making complex.

The orbital launch tower is starting to go up and you can see the tops of the base of the orbital launch pad at the far left. A fully staffed starship will be nearly 400 feet high, higher than the Saturn five moon rockets. Currently they are planning to have the first orbital launch sometime this summer. But since that is what is known as "Elon Time" it's likely to prove a little optimistic.

Part of the GSE at the orbital launch site. GSE stands for Ground Support Equipment. Think of what is there other than the rocket.

It is amazing how close to the road all this is.

A gigantic, and I do mean gigantic, crane being assembled in the orbital launch area. In the foreground you can see one of the SpaceX security personnel. They take security on the site very very seriously.

You have to love a company with a sense of humor. The rocket engines in the starship are called raptors. When they say no trespassing they mean it.

Every time we visit Boca Chica I always wear one of my appropriate T-shirts. This one has Elon on it and his famous saying "Why Not". I think one of the things people in old industries are finally starting to understand is, never tell Elon that what he wants to do can't be done, since the result will be a total upheaval of the old way of doing things. Such things as, People will never buy electric cars, You can never land rockets and use them again, Satellite internet will always be to slow.

Dumpster filled with small pieces of debris from SN11 which exploded in the air scattering itself over a wide area. Linda said I should climb up and see what was inside. The security people really didn't like it. Bad Linda. (Bob only got yelled at by the security guard saying "SIR" when his head popped up above the edge of the dumpster.)