Seeing Shiner, Texas

What a fun day!  The idea was to tour the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas but – of course! – we found more to do than that!

We hopped in Dick & Karin’s car and hit the road about 8:30.  The brewery tour was at 11:00 and we wanted to be there in plenty of time.  Time to spare when we arrived, so Karin & I went through a couple of quilt shops while the guys checked out the Ehlers Cigar Factory and enjoyed visiting with some of the locals.  Then it was on to the brewery tour.

The Spoetzl Brewery was founded in 1909 and bought by Kosmas Spoetzl in 1915.  They produce seven different German beers under the name of “Shiner Beers”.



Here’s Dick, Karin & John waiting for the tour to start…

We couldn’t take pictures during the tour, so you’ll just have to guess as to what it looked like.  It was interesting and everyone enjoyed sampling the different brews afterward.

After a quick burger for lunch, we went for a walk to see some of the beautiful historic homes and Welhausen Municipal Park.

This beauty was the Walters Boothe Home and was built in 1896.  It had gorgeous gardens.






This one was the J. Wolters Home, built in 1895.

It had beautiful, intricate detail that appeared to have been recently refurbished.

Across the street was an old, rundown home with this on the porch!  ?????


Then we decided to go check out the Kaspar Wire Works, but found out from the receptionist that they no longer give tours.  Karin asked if someone could explain the various items they had displayed in the lobby and Brian, a 40+ year employee, was happy to oblige.  He knew the answers to nearly everything we asked!


Next on our list was the Edwin Wolters Memorial Museum, the main part of which was located in a 1915 former home.  It was free, but definitely warranted the donations we left.  The curator happily showed us around, including several of the outbuildings – a home, jail and workshop.  It’s always a little startling to realize that we remember many of the items in these museums from our childhoods.  Yikes!  Could we be “old”???






Didn’t figure we should leave town without seeing the Saints Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church that we had heard about.  The church was named after two missionaries who first brought Christianity to Bohemia and Moravia. 



The stained glass windows were imported from Bavaria and are gorgeous.


Shiner is billed as the “Cleanest Little City in Texas” and as the “Eagle Scout Capital of Texas”.  We surely enjoyed our day there with good friends!

After getting back home and taking Bailey for a walk, we headed to the La Tejanita Restaurant for dinner.  We do love Mexican food!

Easter Sunday in Victoria

Well, hopefully we didn’t offend any of Dick & Karin’s neighbors today because we washed motorhome on Easter Sunday.  Needed to be done, but it was a pretty hot job!  Dick helped out by loaning us his lawn sprinkler which did a bang-up job washing the undercarriage.  We did our usual procedure of me washing the roof and John doing the sides.  Always entertains the neighbors when they see John sitting in a lawn chair giving me “helpful” suggestions while I’m up on the rig working!

Later we all took a nice long walk with Bailey and snuck into some of the houses being built in the neighborhood.  Guess we’re well-suited to this nomad life we’ve chosen, because those great big houses just don’t have any appeal for us anymore!  Still fun to see, but they sure look like a lot of work to maintain…

On to Victoria

This morning, after John went to wash the car and shop for some shrimp, we put everything away and drove over to Victoria.  The roughly 80-mile trip was uneventful and we arrived at Dick & Karin’s in the late morning.  It sure was good to see them and their pooch, Bailey, again! 

We parked the motorhome on the street in front of their house, plugged in and then toured their house and gardens.  We’ve been wanting to go see their house since last year so were glad it finally worked out.  It’s lovely and their gardens are really beautiful!  They spend lots of time out there watching the birds and geckos.  Later we enjoyed eating the shrimp while catching up on all our respective news.  For those of you who don’t know Dick & Karin, they are the couple who were the weekend camp hosts the same two years we workamped at our park in the Rio Grande Valley.

Tomorrow we need to wash the rig after spending some time near the salt water.  Our previous repair job involving replacing rusty framework has made us (i.e. me) a little paranoid!

Crashing the coast in Rockport

Time for new scenery!  On Tuesday, we finally escaped from the valley heat and headed north.  But not too fast…  We’re not ready for cold yet.

We decided a few days in Rockport ought to satisfy our craving for water.  We selected Coastal Oaks RV Park to stay in and have enjoyed it.  So nice to look out the window and see some trees!
This guy (gal??) was on our car hood at the RV park – pretty cool, huh?


On Wednesday, we walked along the harbor and the jetty, toured the Rockport Center for the Arts and the Texas Maritime Museum, and went to see the wildflowers at the local cemetery.  Here are some pictures:

Vance & Jody – is this boat big enough to live on?

There were some neat sculptures near the harbor and art center:



We saw lots of tiny fish jumping near the jetty, but I couldn’t capture them with the camera.  Fortunately, these guys were a little slower…

The Texas Maritime Museum was well done and we enjoyed meeting another Alaskan couple there.  We keep discovering how small this world really is: the wife was [our daughter-in-law] Jody’s kindergarten teacher!


And, of course, there were flowers everywhere.


And, then to see more flowers, we drove over to the local cemetery because we had heard there were wildflowers there, too.  I assume they must mow this cemetery after the spring wildflowers are gone, but who knows?



Here’s an old headstone (you can click on it to enlarge it and read the dates).

Later, we headed back in to town and ate at The Boiling Pot.  We chose to eat outside where the waiter covered our table with paper and then dumped our dinner straight onto the paper from a large stew pot: blue crab, shrimp, new red potatoes and small cobs of sweet corn.  Makes life simple for the staff: no dishes and no silverware!  Fun and different!!

Thursday dawned bright and sunny again, so we headed back down to the harbor to the aquarium and the Bay Education Center.
Aren’t the brown pelicans cool/weird?

Not sure which type of pelican this one is…

And, even though they are annoying sometimes, I still enjoy watching the seagulls!

The Rockport Aquarium was nothing fancy and not very large, but we still enjoyed it.  The star of the show there is Marley, the Honeycomb Moray Eel.

And a few other aquatic creatures from the area…



On to the Bay Education Center, where they had beautiful flowers….


…and the most amazing globe!  It shows real satellite images of recent weather patterns, but the MOST amazing was…

…this display of – get this! – all the Facebook members around the globe connected by lines!  There were no continents or any other world features on this – only the FB members and connecting lines.  You could actually pick out the continents by the density of the dots.  It was incredible and, for us “senior citizens”, a little frightening!



After the presentation, we couldn’t resist a picture of me holding up the Earth!

We were just getting in the car when this gentleman rode by on a very tall bike!  Wonder how he gets on and off…

Then we checked out some of the shops and art galleries in town.  One advantage of living in an RV is that we are seldom tempted to buy art or other decorative items – just don’t have room!

Today, Friday, we rented a double kayak and toured the backyards of all the million dollar homes in the Key Allegro subdivision.  A few had boats tied to their private docks that were probably worth a million!  And, as an added bonus, we got to see dolphins in Little Bay! Fun, fun, fun!  Sorry, I didn’t take the camera in the boat so no pictures…

I did, however, take a few of this egret fishing from the dock while waiting for the kayak.


Tomorrow we’ll head inland a little farther and visit friends, Dick & Karin, in Victoria.