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