Kingsville, Texas

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 5,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 23rd year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

---

The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails RV Resort in Chehalis, Washington. I expect to depart here June 4th.

 

Since my RVing life is changing (see above), I’m starting to re-visit previously visited places. So rather than constantly re-blogging past entries, I’ve decided to do something different.

 

In 2011-2013, Mary and I did a 682 day, 12,679 miles in the motorhome and 8,000 miles in the Bronco, circumnavigation of the United States, which I called The Great Adventure. I called it so because other than my oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation in June in Connecticut, I didn’t know where we would be going or when we would be there!

 

So, unless I do something really different and unusual warranting a new blog entry, I’ll be posting entries from that trip.

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted January 13, 2013…

 

 

 

Yesterday we drove the motorhome the about 120 miles from Brownsville to Kingsville, Texas.

 

 

 

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

About 75 miles North of Brownsville we passed through a Border Patrol Station with no problems…

 

 

Kingsville is the headquarters of the famous King Ranch which you can read about by clicking their website link…
http://www.king-ranch.com/legacy_overview.html

 

 

Here’s a Wikipedia link about King Ranch…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ranch

 

 

 

 

 

Upon arrival we went to the King Ranch Museum…

 

 

The King Ranch Museum is one of those museums that I give a GREAT BIG BOO too because they do not allow photography. Once again and as always, I saw nothing in the museum that would make the World stop turning if a few photos were taken. Most uncommon for me, I did not care for this museum for I saw it as shamelessly flaunting its wealth which I have never cared about. It seems so funny for me to be saying I didn’t enjoy a museum.

 

 

 

 

 

After the museum we went to Elks Club #1926 where we parked for the night. The folks there were very friendly…

 

 

 

 

 

They suggested a location where we could plug into electricity so we ended up with this very colorful view from our dinette window…

 

 

Enjoying interesting museums that don’t flaunt their wealth is another joy of the full-time RVing lifestyle!!!

 

 

The red dot on the below map shows our approximate location in the State of Texas. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

 

 

The weather here in South Texas has been erratic lately. First it’s too hot like in the mid-80’s with high humidity and then it’s too cold with highs in the mid-50’s and mid-30’s at night with the wind …which seldom stops blowing…providing a really chilly wind factor. Like yesterday at 6:00 AM it was 78 degrees and this morning at the same time it was 54 degrees. Crazy!!!

 

 

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…
http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

 

 

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE! MARY WROTE A MANY GREAT BLOGS…SO WHENEVER SHE PUBLISHED A BLOG POSTING THE SAME DAY THAT I DID…YOU WILL BE ABLE TO READ HER BLOG BY CLICKING THE BELOW LINK! DO IT NOW!

https://otrwjam.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/kingsville-king-ranch-museum/

 

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS.

Forecast for today is rain and 60 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

 

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

 

 

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

 

 

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

 

 

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

 

 

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

 

 

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

 

 

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

 

 

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2018

INDIA-A LAST LOOK

Looking back at my travels, I’ve done close to 3,000 blogs and this effort was disjointed and irregular. I’ve missed events, lost or misplaced pictures  and today I’m laughing about it. I thought I’d blog pictures that I didn’t fit into any narrative, like the Bengal tigers, snatched from the film we saw. Aren’t they magnificent animals?

 

We learned a lot about the Hindu Gods. The great Mahatma Gandhi was  much admired,  But I never mentioned his seven dangers to Human Virtue:

Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience;  Knowledge without character; Business without ethics, Science without humanity; Religion without sacrifice and Politics without principle.

They resonate with me.

We learned a lot about weddings;  the groom rides a white horse, an elephant or a black horse. What about people who don’t have a horse? This groom can afford to hire a horse and carriage and decorate it. But, I never found out how even poorer people get married?  Maybe next time.

And wouldn’t you just once like to ride free and unfettered on top of a car or truck? As a farm girl growing up, I had that experience. And many times rode in the back of a pick-up. In California even your dog can’t ride untied in the back of a pick-up.

OAT is such a great company to travel with because of the great off-itinerary items included in the experience.  Though my cricket  lesson was canceled, one of the employees posed with his cricket racket for me. A cricket serve and return is like a baseball pitch. You can’t see it unless it is coming at you at 112 miles per hour. I missed the lesson, but enjoyed the match.

And I have to wonder, will I ever enter a bus with a crowd of people waiting to get on, and look for a vendor holding belly dancing beads or some other fascinating item you can buy nowhere else?

I’m an art nut and an artist. I took pictures of art everywhere.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Art isn’t only about paintings, prints, sculpture and fabric wall hangings. What about this doorway in the Palace Hotel?

And this carved door into Agra Marble Company.

Bronze carvings on the hip of a hippo at Chandela.

And a foot rest on the end of our bed at our last hotel. Some flights were early. Others were late in the night.  We got to enjoy a professional sari fitting. A yoga class designed to remove tensions and let go of all cares. I marked down every posture he taught us.  I learned to breathe out loud. Ahmmm. Ooohhh. Mmmmm.

The gift shop had an interesting assortment of things.

These shoes have tread miles of India. A country I’d recommend for its wonderful traditions; its diverse and colorful  people. People here are warm and giving; they speak 607,000 languages. It is hard for me to imagine. My nearby town of Stockton has 22 ethnicities, which means great food.

At the airport in Dehli I saw something I’d never seen before. A smoking lounge. Paid for by Camel cigarettes my guess.

Even a decorated camel is art.  Those of you who know me, know I have to get my art “fix”. And, I did.

Alaviha. I’ll let you guess which of the thousands of languages it is. It means, goodbye.

 

Natchez, Mississippi – Day 8

Note: Mary flew from Baton Rouge Airport, Louisiana on March 12 to her home in California. I’m hoping to get her back with me by mid-April. My current plans are to drift SLOWLY north along the Mississippi River to Memphis, Tennessee where I’ll then turn northeast heading for New England for the Summer. Can’t go north too fast because it’s still cold up there! The Mississippi River is rich in history…I expect it to be an interesting passage.

————————————————————————————————————–

The motorhome is still parked at the Loyal Order of Moose Lodge #1662 in Natchez, Mississippi.

Natchez remained mostly undamaged from the Civil War. Hence this old city with its narrow and many one-way streets remains a beautiful city. To read about Natchez, click this link…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natchez,_Mississippi

Yesterday I drove the Bronco the about one mile to the Longwood Mansion. It’s reputedly the most unusual mansion in all of Natchez. Out tour guide Gay Guercio did a great job telling us of its history.

You can read all about Longwood by clicking these two links…

http://www.natchezpilgrimage.com/dailylongwood.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwood_%28Natchez,_Mississippi%29

If you looked at the above history links, you know the family lived in the 10,000 square foot basement while the upper floors were never completed. This “basement” was lavishly furnished for its time. My only complaint about my visit to Longwood is that no photography is allowed in the furnished basement. As usual…I saw nothing unusual in the basement that would make the world stop turning if photography was allowed. I would think someone would be more likely to visit Longwood is they could get to see some of the furnishings in the basement. I just cannot understand that narrow and misguided thinking.

One thing about my Blog postings…you know you are going to get my honest opinion. ‘Nuf said!

Here are some of the photos that I took…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

I found this YouTube video about Longwood on the Internet which you can watch bu clicking this link…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl0Ilch2I9Y

I’ll explore more of Natchez today.

Enjoying historic places is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Mississippi. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…
http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2013
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

RIGHT OUT OF DICKENS

PBS programming has featured Charles Dickens programming  this month in honor of his 200th birthday, or some such hallmark of accomplishment, and they’ve proved to be very popular programs indeed. Maybe because there are parallels to today’s social and political system? From the early 1600’s, in merry olde England, destitute people were cared for with money raised by a tax on their neighbor parishioners. A parish was a unit of combined religious and political authority. The parish distributed money or food to the poor, who were allowed to remain in their homes and maintain some dignity. Parishes recognized that caring for their poor people was a public responsibility and that it was in the best interests of all to look after their poor neighbors.

Large estate owners always had the upper hand in things from Napoleonic times,  passing laws that favored the rich, keeping peasant people in control enough to just let them get by. (Middle class).  Even though wealth and avarice controlled  the legal system and always had, during the Industrial Revolution  the ranks of the poor grew steeply and the growing poor became an outrageous nuisance. Thus The Poor Law of 1834  was passed, and instituted  debtors prisons, and being poor became  a crime. (Not unlike our homeless today).   Dickens’ father, who temporarily fell on hard times, was dropped out of the middle class and locked up in a debtors prison along with thousands of others.  Oh, the wonder of   government at work. It didn’t reduce the number of poor, of course, but the cost of caring for them was reduced by 36 per cent. A great accomplishment!   Our prisons are full, too, but not from the ranks of  “white collar” criminals. That designation of  “white collar” is interesting. It is a division of class, where the rich and powerful are treated differently than the common man.  Not much has changed. Our prisons are mostly  filled with uneducated, poor black men.

The rich really didn’t care about the abject misery they had created, then.  And our current political climate is determined to stomp the middle class into the ground and make laws to keep them there. I know many people who vote against their own best interests. The purveyors of wealth and avarice can make you believe we can run this country today, on the same amount of taxes we paid thirty years ago, while our infrastructure is falling apart, our educational institutions can’t find enough doctors, nurses and teachers to fill our needs,  and immigration is blamed for our problems instead of the rich, congressional shareholders.  Americans pay billions of dollars over cost for their health care,  and our political system runs on a steady stream of corporate money. That money never trickles down to our pockets. The 99% are desperately trying to change that, but without a free press (you only think it is free), the battle they are waging is a drop of water in an ocean of contempt. Not much about government has changed since Dickens.

But, there was a time of honorable intentions, insisting that all men were created equal. Unfortunately, they aren’t, and they weren’t treated equally, either. Despite the fact the preamble to our constitution states in part that our government was organized for:  “…the general welfare of the people.”

 

THE MANSIONS OF NEWPORT, RI

From Mary’s desk:

In the 1800’s, Newport, Rhode Island became the playground for the wealthy. New Yorkers built beautiful mansions as second homes to spend summers in the cool weather. Commander Vanderbilt amassed a fortune of $2 million dollars. His son, William doubled it in a few short years. Money begets money and it flowed like water. The Vanderbilts controlled steamship lines and railroads.  The summer villa at Newport built by William’s son, the modest Cornelius Vanderbilt, has a fifty foot high ceiling, decorated in frescoes, marble carvings and gold leaf. The other rooms surround this massive central room to the house which has 138,000 square feet. The library has leather walls, another platinum panels.  Gold, marble, rich woods and lavish furnishings are the norm, here. The opulence reminds one of European castles and royalty. In a sense, these American giants of industry were the first American Royalty.

No pictures were allowed on the inside, though some replicas in the gift shop were from inside the house and made worthy photos. The Vanderbilt story is an interesting one and many good books are available there as well. The picture above is a decorated lamp post on the Breaker’s driveway.

The estate gates had just been refurbished to the tune of $35,000. The Vanderbilts kept 40 gardeners busy about the grounds. Its easy to see why these places were impossible to maintain.
The new income tax law of 1913, followed by the great depression, did many of the mansions a lethal blow.  If they hadn’t put some control on the barrons, America would have been just another Great Britain, with the wealthy upper class and the struggling, working, poor. Glad we can be that some of the largest mansions were saved to become open to the public as the Vanderbilt’s Breakers and Cornelius’ daughter’s nearby mansion, Marble. The Breakers has been open to the public since 1948.
We visited on June 3rd.
You can find other mansions open to the public at this sight and listen to the audio voices of some Vanderbilt children describing what life was like in the big house at the following link:

http://www.newportmansions.org/

The visitor’s center in Newport provides a map for visitors to drive around the lavish neighborhoods and gawk. Which we did. You can’t see much, the gates and lamp posts make an impressive photos and the atmosphere, shaded woods, acres of lawn and mansions hidden behind then make for a lovely sight, even so.

We also drove around the marinas and yacht clubs in the fog. It had a beauty of its own.

People seem to love living here.