Last night we had a horrific thunderstorm. Officially we had over 10 inches of rain. Our rain gauge overflowed at 6 inches so I'm not sure, but I bet it was at least that amount. There was thunder and lightening and flash flood warnings all night. Fortunately, it did not flood here, but it did in many parts of Houston. The day before, there had been a major flood in the hill country. My brother-in-law Ches (Val's brother) has a vacation house in Wimberly in that area. They were there for the Memorial day weekend and his neighbor called and woke him. He looked out the window and the water had come up to his deck. The little creek he is on had risen over 40 feet in an hour. About 300 houses were washed away. Not sure how many deaths.
Also when we got up today, saw this on our bank going down to the lake out our back door. I think we had an alligatornado come through.
We are planning on leaving here on Saturday for the trip to California. We will stop for a couple of days in Santa Fe and a couple of days in Sedona before heading out to dry, dry California. With all the smart people in California, why can't someone figure out how to normalize the water in this country??
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Friday, May 1, 2015
Starting to think about trip to Carlsbad
Well, spring finally came and we have had a string of gorgeous days punctuated by a few days of torrential rains and high winds. But I think that it won't be much longer until it starts to get hot. And that is my clue that we need to start thinking about our annual summer trip to Carlsbad. We are planning to leave here at the end of May and spend a couple of days in Santa Fe and Sedona on our way out, arriving around the 5th of June. We will be driving Val's new CR-V. Yes we finally traded in the Acura. It was still running perfectly and would probably have gone on for another 10 years at least, but Val needed a somewhat smaller car and one that she could really feel was her own.
We have not done too much this winter, but we did take a spring trip to Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah. Neither of us had been to those old historic cities and we loved it. There is a lot to see and appreciate. Charleston was a major city where the Civil War actually started at Fort Sumter. The fort is a little bitty island in the harbor that still stands, sort of. Charleston was also the center of the slave trade prior to the civil war and there is a museum at the old Slave Mart where this all happened.
Beaufort is a well preserved city that the Union occupied early in the war so the city was spared the destruction of many other southern cities. There have been a lot of films made in this part of the country including Forrest Gump, Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, The Big Chill and lots of others. It was interesting to see where some famous scenes were actually filmed.
Savannah is interesting in that it is well preserved and is built around many squares. If you think about most towns, there is a central square. But in Savannah there is a square about every other block. There is a lot of wrought iron like New Orleans and brick and cobblestone streets. The much of this material was brought from England as ballast on ships and then dumped to make room for cotton, rice, tobacco etc to go back to England.
Before we came home we went to Charlotte, NC to see the Kings Mountain battlefield that was the site of a major revolutionary war battle where Val ancestors fought to defeat the British. At the time the war in the north was at a stalemate, and the British were beginning to look to taking over the south. They occupied a ridge on the SC and NC border called Kings Mountain. The colonists who volunteered to fight were mountain men who crossed the Appalachian chain. They used guerrilla tactics to soundly defeat the British and this changed the momentum of the war. It was said to be the turning point.
Fort Sumter |
We have not done too much this winter, but we did take a spring trip to Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah. Neither of us had been to those old historic cities and we loved it. There is a lot to see and appreciate. Charleston was a major city where the Civil War actually started at Fort Sumter. The fort is a little bitty island in the harbor that still stands, sort of. Charleston was also the center of the slave trade prior to the civil war and there is a museum at the old Slave Mart where this all happened.
Beaufort is a well preserved city that the Union occupied early in the war so the city was spared the destruction of many other southern cities. There have been a lot of films made in this part of the country including Forrest Gump, Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, The Big Chill and lots of others. It was interesting to see where some famous scenes were actually filmed.
Savannah is interesting in that it is well preserved and is built around many squares. If you think about most towns, there is a central square. But in Savannah there is a square about every other block. There is a lot of wrought iron like New Orleans and brick and cobblestone streets. The much of this material was brought from England as ballast on ships and then dumped to make room for cotton, rice, tobacco etc to go back to England.
Before we came home we went to Charlotte, NC to see the Kings Mountain battlefield that was the site of a major revolutionary war battle where Val ancestors fought to defeat the British. At the time the war in the north was at a stalemate, and the British were beginning to look to taking over the south. They occupied a ridge on the SC and NC border called Kings Mountain. The colonists who volunteered to fight were mountain men who crossed the Appalachian chain. They used guerrilla tactics to soundly defeat the British and this changed the momentum of the war. It was said to be the turning point.
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