Visiting Bowie and Montague County

Tuesday Patti had the enjoyment of visiting with a blog reader and Trek owner, Karen. We have been emailing each other for a while, during the time that Karen was a Trek wannabe and then owner. We had tried to hook up to visit once before, but it finally worked out while we were at Bay Landing.

Karen came by and met Miss Doozie, and then took Patti to Bowie for lunch and to see a community where she owns land on the water in Silver Lake Ranch. Silver Lake Ranch also has a spot for RV hookups for owners and guests of owners in the community.

We went to Bowie for lunch at a wonderful "tea room" type restaurant in an antiques store, Nostalgia. Highly recommended!!!

The main street in Bowie - neat looking shops - a place to come back and visit!

Inside Nostalgia, you couldn't ever see everything there. Even if you stared at one part of the store for a long time, you would still miss things!

Dolls and medicine bottles on the wall behind

Tin ceiling tiles behind a bike hanging from the ceiling

 

Another bike hanging from the ceiling - and an S&H Green stamps sign. Patti remembers pasting the stamps into the books and looking through the catalogs for things that we could get!

This large plate reminded Patti of plates her family had when they moved to the farm.

All the boxes on the shelves were player piano rolls!

An interesting collection of board games - most of which we had not heard of previously - "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em", "The Hardy Boys", "Little House on the Prairie", "Patty Duke", "The Partridge Family", "Laverne & Shirley", "The Flying Nun" - we knew the TV shows but had never known there were board games for them!

Glassware on a counter near where we sat for lunch.

Mural on the wall above brought to mind the chicken farm that was near here.

From a Bowie, TX website, http://www.cityofbowietx.com/index.aspx?NID=172

Mr. Mose Johnson established a small chicken hatchery in 1904 and from this small beginning developed the largest White Leghorn Chicken Ranch in the world.

Karen's friend, Carolyne Ledbetter, met us for lunch - she is in real estate with Ledbetter Realty in this area - I would recommend that anyone looking for property contact her! She really seems to have the heart of the area.

After lunch, we drove through Silver Lake Ranch - a beautiful spot, though I would like to avoid driving on "suicide hill"! Maybe ok in the Jeep!

I also got to meet "Max" and enjoy his antics when hunting for mice - wish I had gotten pictures! Karen did send me a few pictures - and here's one of Max with their cattle:

Max the dog is a sweetie!

What a fun day! So glad to have met Karen in person! Thank you, Karen, for sharing these special folks and places with me!

Around Bay Landing

We have really enjoyed our stay at Bay Landing. We think this is one of the nicest Thousand Trails campgrounds at which we have stayed!

You can see Miss Doozie with the Jeep in front in the middle of the picture. The sites are very deep, plenty of room to park the tow vehicle and even another vehicle in front.

We were out walking one evening and this was a picture of our shadows (Patti has her jacket tied around her waist - it isn't really saddle bags!).

There is a pond between Section 1 where we are parked and Section 3 where the clubhouse, ball fields, pool, etc. are located - called "Ye Olde Fishing Hole". In this picture, the water you can see beyond the pond (just a tiny speck) is Lake Bridgeport.

 

Another (maybe better) picture of the Jee-rage and Miss Doozie. You can see how deep the site is. The utilities hookup (electric and water) is way at the back of the RV, so we had to park Miss Doozie pretty deep in the space to be able to hook up the electric.

Learning from weather warnings

When there is an alert sent out, the text associated with it has been teaching us new terms. It could be that folks who live in these areas are quite used to these terms, but they are new for us.

"20 Foot winds..."

 I found this on a National Weather Service site: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/forecasts/wfo/definitions/defineWind20ft.html

20ft winds: Is defined as sustained winds averaged over a 10 minute period and measured 20 feet above the average height of nearby vegetation. This is the standard reported by the Remote Automated Weather Stations(RAWS) owned by land management agencies and used in the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS).

The rest of the alert for Roswell and areas around.

"Hydrologic Statement"

This is the website it referenced: http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=shv
This is what the map looks like at this time (when there is a "Hydrologic Statement" for the Shreveport area):

I bet we have friends who could use this!

Dwayne saw this at Sams:

We have so far avoided going to Windows 10... but are betting that we have friends who could use this!

Getting educated...

Patti received an email recently inviting her to a free seminar by Dr Elizabeth Lee Vliet. Since it was in Dallas at the time we were going to be staying at Bay Landing, she signed up for it and went yesterday. It was a very informative seminar, addressing in the morning hormonal concerns for both women and men, and in the afternoon, addressing health across all aspects of body, mind, and spirit.

Dr Vliet

Some interesting things that Dr Vliet shared with those of us in the seminar:

• Gen 1 - God created the environment before creating the creatures, before speaking them into being. He separated the water and the earth and the sky. He then said "Let the earth produce vegetation...", "Let the water swarm with living creatures...", "Let the earth produce living creatures...".
• Note how the creation of man differs: "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" - man was created not produced by the earth but made by God.
• After indicating 3 times that God created man in His own image, scripture records, "He created them male and female." The very study in which Dr Vliet is engaged, hormones, differentiate male from female. She shared that since it is the characteristic first mentioned, that it must be important!

While Patti was in the seminar, Dwayne was getting things done around the Coppell and Dallas area - so both of us had productive days!

Miss Kitty on the bus

Miss Kitty is frequently out and about in the bus (unlike Tabitha). She will even come out sometimes when we have guests over on the bus.

While at Midway RV Park near Roswell, Miss Kitty was at the front window looking over the driver's seat - when I first saw her, I could just see her ears and she looked like a Batman advertisement!

I couldn't get enough flash to be able to really see her other than a silhouette

Later, she was enjoying the sunshine on the leather reclining chair.

She was barely opening her eyes - the sun was just too bright!!!

Herd's Hamburgers

On Thursday, Sam and Doris came and picked us up and took us to Herd' Burgers, a hamburger place that Sam's grandmother had begun 100 years ago.

Herd's Burgers is in Jacksboro - and the sign says, "They're Larrupin' "

World Famous Hamburgers!

The building isn't what you would call impressive - but the burgers are!

The decisions that you need to make are few: single or double, with cheese or not. Chips and drinks you serve yourself. Sam's cousin Danny is in the blue shirt cooking the hamburgers.

The business has been in the family since 1916

Recognition from the Texas House of Representatives on the retirement of Orlene and Claude Herd, Danny's parents, in 2008; there were other framed documents recognizing the 75th anniversary of the business. Danny said that a news group (maybe Texas Country Reporter) had come out and recorded last week, due to air in late April.

Dwayne, Sam, and Doris, after we had thoroughly enjoyed our lunch!

Danny said that he plans to recognize the founding of the restaurant later this year, probably in the fall. They aren't certain exactly the date that Ella Gafford started cooking burgers.

Sam told us that he remembers her saying that she sold the burgers for 5 cents apiece or 6 for a quarter, and that the first day she sold only one burger. But he also remembers her saying that the burgers put $400/month into their bank account during the Depression - that would really be a good amount of money!