From Lake Charles, LA to Port Arnsas, TX--January 25th and 26th, 2013

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Friday January 25^th—Lake Charles, LA

It is 68 degrees at 9:55 this morning with many clouds.

We woke up early this morning and went inside the casino for their buffet breakfast. It was ok, but nothing really good about it. Surprisingly, they had no potatoes on the buffet at all--no country fried nor hash browns.

We both signed up for their frequent player's club or whatever it is called. This gave us each a free T-shirt, not in either of our sizes, and $5.00 each in free slot machine play. To get started however, you had to put in $1.00 of your own money in the slot machine. Valerie played for a while on a "Turkey Shoot" machine and left with a plus of $5.51. I didn't play but, watched the antics of this program where depending upon what combination the machine spun if you landed on the "turkey" it would gobble and "eat" everything on the screen that was a food item--pies, corn, and apples. It was a fun game to play plus it paid out enough to keep you interested. However, this was a smoking allowed casino and they had no, no smoking section so the air was quite polluted.

Left and headed out I-10 toward Texas and stopped at the Welcome center when we crossed the state line. Got brochures and continued onto Orange, TX for gas at $3.039 per gal taking 21.55 gals for a total bill of $65.50. Continued just a bit further on I-10 to Beaumont where we exited at exit 353A to highway 105 toward the town of Conroe. This area is full of oil wells and flat land used for cattle ranches.

At the intersection of 146 and 105, in the crossroad community of Moss Hill, we had lunch at the Country Cafe. This is THE place to eat in this neck of the woods. I had catfish, fries, and slaw. Don't remember if Valerie had the same, as that was the day's special--it was Friday after all. She is not a big fan of fish.

Continued on highway 105 through towns named "Security" and "Cut and Shoot." We had previously traveled through the town of "SourLake."

As we neared the town of Conroe the land became hilly and covered with piney woods. Huge homes sit around LakeConroe with the town being only 45 miles north of Houston; it has become a suburb with lots of new homes and businesses. Prior to today's growth spurt, Conroe boasted more millionaires per capita during the 1930s than any other US city, due to oil profits, but it had remained a small community.

Continued traveling out of the congestion, still on 105, as it climbed into the Hill Country of Texas. Lovely ranches in this area with occasional small herds of prime looking long horn cattle in the fields. We had been in this general area on a previous trip a couple years earlier to look at the blue bonnets in bloom. At the town of Brenham, we turned north on highway 35 to the Corp of Army Engineer's LakeSeminole to camp for the night.

The campground was absolutely filled with white tailed deer. We sat in Rosie and watched them cross the road down from our campsite, one at a time. We named them as they crossed starting with "A" for Abigail to "Q" for Queenie before the light faded and we couldn't see them anymore.

Saturday, January 26^th—Lake Seminole,TX

9:15 and really foggy out at 57 degrees. Starting mileage at 35,962.

Lake Seminole is a really nice campground with large, level spots, and large trees covered in Spanish moss and blooming air plants that would provide shade in summer. The camping area is situated on a "thumb" that sticks out into the Lake so all camp spots had a view of the Lake. The fee was $13 per night for water and electric hook-up. More does were out this morning as we broke camp and followed farm road 1984 to highway 290 that was a 4-lane. Along the way, we stopped to read a number of historical markers about the early settlers, schools and churches. Most of the settlers were Germans who came to the US/Texas in the late 1840's. Turned south on FM 237 and drove through land filled with small ranches and small communities.

One such community was the village of Roundtop where the population is 80 people. It was settled early by the Germans and quaint houses reflecting that heritage were built. In the last century, other buildings now housing restaurants and shops were moved to this location to preserve them. It has now become an events/venue center with a huge antiques fair and a performing arts school/center housed in an old mansion, its chapel, and the outbuildings. The location helps its popularity as it is located equal distance from Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. Unfortunately, for us, being winter time, the village was closed up tight.

At LaGrange, we turned south on US highway 77 toward the city of Victoria. The closer we got to Victoria, the wider the highway became until we were traveling a divided 4-lane that will soon become a new freeway. We entered the city in an area with new growth of familiar big box stores and chain restaurants---the type of place with stores so common in the US now that you really can't tell where you are, if you just looked around at the buildings.

Stopped and got gas at a Sam's Club at $3.10 per gal. She took 23.70 gals for a total of $73.69. While talking with the station guy, who noticed our GA tags, we asked him for a restaurant recommendation. He told us about a Mexican place down the street that we found and went in for lunch. The place was packed.

The specialty of this restaurant was everything with avocados on/in/under the dishes especially fried avocado. I decided to try a chicken stuffed fried avocado. Not sure where the "fried" part came into play, but I was served a chicken stuffed HUGE avocado covered in melted Mexican cheese. It was really good and enough that I had it for dinner also. Valerie had large pieces of pork chops covered with a special sauce. Food good, but service poor is our bottom line on the experience.

We left US 77 south of Refugio, and turned onto FM 744 for a few miles and then went south on 136 crossing flat, flat farm land. 137 cuts close to the TexasCoast and we crossed several rivers and bays as we made our way to highway 35 that would take us to Aransas where we could catch the ferry to Port Aransas. We had a reservation at the Holiday Inn Express there---a freebie we reserved ahead of time. Because we were Priority Club members, they gave us a little snack bag of pretzels, candy, and water.

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