Texas Trip for the Total Solar Eclipse

This blog post is about our trip to Texas to see the total eclipse of the sun on April 8, 2024. Our friends, Kris & Jan from Albuquerque, first suggested this trip three years ago and to stay at a Buckhorn Lake RV Park in Kerrville, Texas. Kerrville, about 60-miles northwest of San Antonio, was projected to be in the 115-mile-wide path of the total solar eclipse.

We also planned to meet up with our friends Vince & Lisa from Colorado and my sister Janet and wife Nancy from Sacramento. We all had RV park reservations for nearly three years.

Julie and I left Daytona Beach on Thursday, March 28^th and drove to Jacksonville, then turned left and followed I-10 west, with our usual overnight stays at RV parks in Tallahassee, Biloxi, and Scott, LA.

We took a fuel and lunch stop in Beaumont, where we discovered a Black Bear Diner. They are mostly out West, and we had not been to one since we moved away from Colorado Springs.

After lunch, we drove through heavy traffic in Houston and stopped in Sealy, TX at Kathy’s Kampground. It was our first time at this campground. It was nice, except for our campsite sloping severely towards the rear, resulting in our trailer not being level. 

We arrived in San Antonio on Tuesday, April 2^nd to visit Julie’s 93-year-old mom who is in assisted living. It was a really nice 3-day visit with her. Julie and I also had time to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant El Chaparral in Helotes, TX for lunch one day.

On Friday, April 5^th we headed west to Kerrville and got checked in at Buckhorn Lake RV Park. The Kerrville area was projected to have many visitors for the solar eclipse, so we hunkered down through the weekend.

Monday, April 8^th, the solar eclipse was to begin at 12:14PM and end at 2:55PM. The maximum was projected at 1:34PM and totality was to last 4 minutes, 25 seconds. We got up on Monday and the skies were cloudy and overcast.

Around noon, the clouds broke up a little and you could clearly see the sun (with your eclipse glasses on) from time to time. We got extremely lucky, and we saw the total eclipse with the moon passing directly in front of the sun. It did turn dark, and we saw streetlights come on. We could look at the eclipse without our glasses on for that brief 4-minute period. It was quite the experience for all of us.

The day after we left Kerrville with Kris & Jan and headed to Lockhart, TX to eat some barbeque. Lockhart was designated in 1999 by the Texas legislature as the barbeque capital of Texas. We stayed at Lockhart State Park, right outside of town. We sampled barbeque the first night at Kreuz Market, in business since 1900.

On Wednesday we ate barbeque from Chisholm Trail BBQ for lunch. Then we enjoyed dinner at Black’s Barbeque. Black’s BBQ was established in 1932 and has been owned and operated by the same family for three generations. The current owner Kent Black is the grandson of the original owners. He was very interesting to talk to as he served up the meat and then came around the restaurant tables to visit with the customers.

We left Lockhart and drove to Bryan, TX on Thursday for an overnight stay. After arriving in Bryan, we visited the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in nearby College Station on the Texas A&M University campus.   

We left Bryan on Friday and drove to Longview, TX to spend two nights, the last stop on our personal Texas BBQ Trail trip with Kris & Jan. The objective of our stay in Longview was to eat at Country Tavern, about half-way between Kilgore and Tyler on Texas Highway 31. Julie and I think Country Tavern has the best BBQ baby back pork ribs anywhere. We enjoyed some ribs on Friday night for dinner. On Saturday night, I ordered their brisket (with ribs) for the first time, and it too was awesome.

We said our goodbyes to Kris & Jan on Sunday morning as they headed home to Albuquerque, and we began heading back to Daytona Beach. We overnighted on Sunday at the Baton Rouge KOA for the first time. On Monday we drove to Spanish Fort, AL where we stayed two nights at a nice Alabama state park, just across the bay from Mobile. We enjoyed dinner both nights at the Original Oyster House restaurant, just down the road from the park. Very, very good seafood.

We stayed our last night on this 3-week trip in Tallahassee. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, but we’ll be glad to get back home again tomorrow.

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Brief Trip to San Antonio

 

Our maiden voyage to San Antonio was a little stressful. We drove to Jacksonville, then turned left and followed I-10 west. We overnighted in Tallahassee, then stayed two nights at a nice state park in Alabama, just across the bay from Mobile. We saw a huge alligator one night after dinner and enjoyed a seafood lunch just down the road from the park the next day.

We had a short drive to Biloxi where we spent two nights at one of our usual stops, Cajun RV Park. Our last night there, we went across the street to a local place on the beach for dinner called The Reef. We both enjoyed seafood platters, with a great view of the gulf waters.

On Saturday, August 24^th, we were headed to Scott, Louisiana where we had reservations, but saw that Hurricane Ida was headed close-by on Sunday. We changed our plans to overnight in Scott and to keep driving all the way to Beaumont, Texas, over 300-miles.

It took us 13-hours to drive across Louisiana as people were evacuating to get out of the hurricane’s path and Interstate 10 was clogged. Julie used Google Maps on her phone to help us get off the Interstate and by-pass Baton Rouge on city streets, then take U.S. Highway 190 and other Louisiana highways west. We still had some bumper-to-bumper traffic, but eventually got to Texas.

We enjoyed our three days in San Antonio, especially with Julie’s 90-year-old mom and several dinners and a lunch out with her. One night after dinner we played Parcheesi with Julie’s mom. She loves to play and is quite good. We’ve played Parcheesi many times over the years and this was the first time ever that I won. I couldn’t believe it because usually Julie’s mom wins.

We left San Antonio last Thursday and headed back east on I-10. We saw many trucks and trailers with generators, fuel containers, cases of water, electrical equipment, etc. headed east to Louisiana, responding to Hurricane Ida damage.

We overnighted in Beaumont, TX and Scott, LA, but spent two nights in Biloxi at the Keesler AFB Family Campground. It was Labor Day weekend and the Gulf Coast was packed with tourists enjoying that last big summer-time adventure. We tried to go eat again at The Reef but it was packed in the middle of Sunday afternoon with 45-minute waits for tables.

We passed and went down the road to Patio 44. We had eaten dinner there a few years ago with friends and enjoyed the place. What a great decision that was on our part. There were fewer people there and the early dinner was great. Looking through the menu, I noticed their Manhattan cocktail used the same ingredients I use in my Manhattan: Rittenhouse straight rye whiskey, Dolin sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters and a cherry. I tried one and it tasted exactly like the ones I make at home.

After an overnight in Tallahassee on Labor Day, we got home yesterday. We enjoyed the trip but were glad to get back home again. It was our first time traveling since we moved in to our new home in October 2020. It just seemed different coming home to Daytona Beach.         

Stay safe out there and please get vaccinated!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Maiden Voyage with Our Voyage

 

Spring and summer have flown by. We sold our 2016 Winnebago Tour motorhome in early-March to La Mesa RV. All along, we had plans to continue RVing. There are lots of nice state and county parks throughout Florida that we wanted to go back to and visit some new ones too.

We were researching getting a 25-30-foot-long bumper-tow travel trailer. We learned that most of those trailers weighed six to 10,000 pounds. Our 2015 Ford F-150 pickup was only rated to pull 5,000 pounds. In early-April, we traded the 2015 for a 2021 Ford F-150 with the max. tow package that could tow up to 13,000 pounds.

We continued our on-line research and narrowed our search down to about 6-8 travel trailers, but hadn’t actually seen any in-person yet. We decided to take a trip to the Tampa Bay Summer RV Show in early-June. On the way to Tampa, we stopped at a dealer outside of Orlando to take a look at one of the trailers we were interested in. It turned out that they had already sold that trailer, but we could order one for delivery in summer 2022. RV sales are high as families across the country were buying RVs to go on vacation. The RV manufacturers are now only making a couple of their most popular floor plans.

We saw lots of travel trailers at the RV show, but narrowed it down to the Winnebago Voyage. Lazy Days RV of Tampa sold the Voyage, but didn’t have the specific floor plan we were interested in. The Villages Lazy Days RV dealer did have the model we were interested in, and it was much closer for us to drive to. We purchased a 2021 Voyage 2831RB (rear bath) in mid-June. We absolutely love it. We’re thinking about naming it “Hurricane Evacuation Shelter” or “Key West Express”.          

We’re on our maiden voyage with our Voyage to San Antonio to visit Julie’s mom in assisted living. We haven’t seen her in person since last October due to Covid restrictions. We’re really looking forward to seeing her.

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

We Finally Sold Our Motorhome!

 

It’s been 4 short months since I last posted on our blog. We have pretty much got settled into our new home here at Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach. It’s been fun hanging pictures, putting up curtains, and assembling patio furniture.

We stayed hunkered down this fall and winter, but finally got our COVID-19 immunizations in early-January and early-February. My sisters Cathy, Marcia and brother-in-law Mike also got vaccinated the same time we did over in Bradenton, Florida. It was a mini-family reunion as we had lunch after our shots.  

We put our motorhome on the market the end of January after some minor repair work (our side view mirror cameras weren’t working). 

There weren’t any bites except the RV buyer from La Mesa RV in mid-February. After another three weeks of no bites, we finally negotiated a deal with the La Mesa buyer. We dropped it off at La Mesa RV Center in Sanford, Florida. It was bittersweet, as we’ll miss our home on the road, but we’re also glad to be out from under the stress of expensive maintenance and repairs. It’s been quite a transition for us (and our cat Shasta) to move from our “house on wheels” for 7 ½ years to this house and get settled in. We absolutely love it here and enjoy meeting and socializing with our 55+ year old neighbors and community members from all over the country.  

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius