March 2003
Palmetto SP-Texas
27-30 Mar 2003 Site 5. About 4 hours West of Houston.
This is our second visit to Palmetto SP. The last was July 2001. This park is a well kept secret and in great condition. The floods of 2002 really did some re-engineering to the river and it looks a lot different now. The weather was windy and got down to 37 degrees but warmed up real nice during the day. We did a day drive to the Shiner brewery on Friday, Gonzales on Saturday and to Luling on Sunday. We even managed about 6 miles of bike riding and had a great time as usual with Susan and Shawn. Having camped with them a few times now we really enjoyed their company again. Nice new camper you all. We also met some new campers Sam and Eileen from Laredo. They were on their way from buying their new camper in Katy and on their shake down campout for the weekend. Really nice camper for you all too. It looks like a mobile Holiday Inn! We all visited a lot and had the group dinner together on Saturday night. Maybe we can pick up another set of camping buddies? Watch out, it could turn into a club before you know it... All of us need to do this again real soon.
Wildflowers In The Park
Pumpjack Art In Luling
Brewery and Gonzales
Park entrance
Wildflowers in bloom
Campsites covered with trees
Our site
These wildflowers are great
A nice shot of the wall and trees
Lets hit the bikes!
Time for a hike in the woods
A natural spring makes a good place to rest and take a photo
So does this old water tower
Before the floods there was a bridge here
Rhonda snitching a cookie before the group dinner
Susan and Shawn having a good time in their new camper
For a good time dial: Sam and Eileen in Laredo... :o) Here they are with their one day old camper
Sam and Eileen's camp site
Saturday night we had a group dinner for the six of us with fajitas and fixings, BBQ chicken, sausages, chips and cookies. Here I am getting the fajita meat ready to munch. The rule was that you must return to the food table at least three times
Shawn getting some things ready for the dinner
Following up with some hamburgers for lunch the next day. Cant waste a good fire now
Shawn, Eileen and Sam munching down
This looks like Rhonda's first wave through the food line
Almost time to kick back
Good conversation and fellowship was had this weekend
Cool super twisted vine that has to be really old
Ready to go Rhonda?
A nice shot from one site to another with ours in the background
Group shot L-R   Sam, Eileen, Susan, Shawn, Rhonda and Tim
Wildflowers were out in full bloom and Rhonda captured them on her camera
Really red ones...
Pink and white ones...
Yellow ones...
White ones...
Cactus about to bloom...
Mixtures of colors...
Light yellow ones...
And bunches of the red ones
On the way out of the park we decided to stop in Luling to see what is there
And found water towers that looked like watermelons
And oil wells dressed up like
Butterflies
Cow jumping over the moon
Farmer eating watermelon
Girl picking flowers
Football players
Grasshoppers
Armadillo riding a watermelon
Tigers
Flamingo surfer in a car
And Santa!
Old log cabin in town
Tim at the Shiner brewery. We finally got to take a tour of the place. It is really interesting and well worth the effort to do
Rhonda at an old beer keg cart
Here is the beer lady at the brewery. I guess there are a lot of people that like her. The beer is free!
In front of an old brass kettle
After the tour we stopped downtown at the "Home Plate" for lunch
We did a driving tour of Gonzales. This is the jail with the hanging gallows still there
Tim made real sure the doors wouldnt lock before walking into these cells
Along the driving tour are many huge, historic homes in the city. This is typical of what you will see
We figure the oil business was good to a lot of people in the town since there are so many homes of this size
There is even an old, restored Mobil gas station
Just outside of town is the Oak tree where Sam Houston and the boys decided to head to San Jacinto for a small battle
We no doubt enjoyed this outing. The many photos were so difficult to choose from. We are hoping that all of out outings are as nice as this one was.