Spring Time in Texas

Before I came to Texas, the images I had of the state were shaped by the old cowboy movies. It looked rough, dry and barren. And certainly there are parts of western Texas that are like that. In fact the drive from El Paso to San Antonio is 600 miles of barren flat desert land.

The area around Houston is much different. The weather there is affected by the Gulf of Mexico. During the winter it was mild, although this year was unusually cold. Houstonites told me this was the first year ever that they had two days of snow. There are sections of forests and lots of pastures and small rolling hills. It was a nice place to hang out for the winter. I hear the summers are very humid. I guess that is why most of the snowbirds we camped with have left for the northern climates.

Spring starts early in Houston. In February the flowers were beginning to bud. By spring break we had trees full of green and flowers. I found some pretty wildflowers right outside the campground gate. I love the orange and yellow colors.

Then I got in Agatha to drive to Tyler, about 200 miles north. I drove on the country roads, which didn't make the locals too happy since I drive 50 mph and they go 65 mph. The trip was beautiful. I saw fields of wildflowers among the rolling hills. Some fields were all white, some were all yellow, some were all purple. I just never pictured Texas so beautiful.

Now I understand why Lady Bird Johnson spent time preserving Texas wildflowers. The amazing colors and varieties. It seems like a Texan secret... spring time in Texas is delightful.

Tyler- Rose Capital of the Nation Rose Garden

Tyler Texas is in the north east corner of Texas, about 100 due east of Dallas. It was named after John Tyler, tenth president of US. Yea I had to look it up. There are about 100,000 people who live here. Actress Sandy Duncan and a bunch of football players are from here. It is a nice small city and easy to get around in.

Tyler is best known as the rose capital of the nation. That is because the sandy soil and sun and rain make it a perfect place to grow roses. So I had to go to the Rose Museum and and fabulous rose garden.

As you enter the building your nose is greeted to the wonderful smell of roses. There was a display of children's art, spring flowers, which was very nice. The Rose Museum has a section on types of roses and their history. Did you know roses came from China?

The coolest part was the exhibit of the dresses and crowns worn by the various Queens for the Festival of Roses. You know how Texas has everything big...well these dresses were unbelievable. They had 20 foot trains. Each dress was matched to the theme of the year: Peacocks, magic, patriotic, birds, dragonflies. Each dress was full of glitter and just spectacular.

Then you go out the door and a rainbow of colorful flowers calls you to run and prance. Yea well ok excitedly walk, but my soul was prancing. There are 35,000 rose bushes and 500 different varieties.

The rose garden was started in 1952, a very good year I might add. It sits on14 acres.

It was like wonderland. Birds flying around, beautiful roses and incredible aromas. There was a peach one that smelled like peaches..really.

I enjoyed walking around and talking to people. I met another full time RVer. She was a single and was originally from New Hope,PA. A lady from Georgia took my pictures. She is in one of mine.

the Rose Festival is in October.

We need more ceremony

I think we can all agree the American culture is so screwed up that no one knows how to make it better. The Navajo say that it is because WE are out of harmony with nature. WE are certainly out of balance. So I thought about this as I watched the news: kid killing kids, elementary kids selling heroin, babies having babies. What is wrong here?

We have lost all sense of right or wrong. Our governments and businesses are corrupt. Our families our dysfunctional. Schools are lost in a quagmire of policies. No wonder our kids are lost; no wonder we are all lost.

History may show us some suggestions. What were people doing right in the past that we have forgotten? Simple traditions.

The most important traditions that we are missing our the coming of age ceremony for young boys and girls. In the past, these ceremonies were used as a sign that young people could marry. But we are living longer than 35, and I don't think suggesting marriage to a 13 or 14 year old is a good idea. But the ceremonies were important as instructional tools to teach young people their responsibilities.

Among Apache: pubescent girls are chanted into womanhood over 4 days by elders. They call the primordial mother was the White Painted Woman. Elders build a ceremonial lodge: 4 main poles (4 directions of earth, 4 seasons, 4 stages of life, 4 myth grandfathers who hold up universe Before dawn, first day, girls dressed by godmothers. (guides). Outside, sprinkled with yellow cattail pollen (fertility). Close ceremony, girls run 4 times around a basket filled with fruit, nuts, candy, and money. (4 times symbolizes: infancy, childhood, adulthood, old age). While running reenacts White painted Woman's travels : 1st West, as old woman, and returned from East as young girl. After 4 times round basket, it is tipped (bounty is out: easy for her to get). Girl returns to lodge: godmother explains responsibilities of sex and motherhood. 4th night, girl dances for welfare of community - sunset to sunrise "You will become the mother of a nation" *

Gabon, Africa: Eshira girls painated white and wearing red adornments for Mabandji rite. Red = life force, white = strength and good reproductive health.*

Kota people of Congo: paint faces Ghost-like colour blue = transformation of boy to man. (age 9-10) Used to sacrifice wild animals, now, after schooling is completed, gifts of money take the place of sacrificing wild animal. * reprinted The Circle of Life (Edited by David Cohen

The Jewish people practice the coming of age ceremony with Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and their children don't seem as lost as the rest of us.

Perhaps if we had a ceremony as a child reaches "coming of age" where we celebrated the child and had elders/grandparents/Aunts/Uncle etc.(not parents-because we all know kids don't listen to parents much). teach the child about the responsibilities of sex and the responsibilities of the family. If we could teach the children that their are choices, some better than others and the consequences of those choices. If young people had a clue of what to expect in life rather than spending a life time trying to figure it out or worst yet trying to correct stupid mistakes.

How to do a ceremony: Add your own flair but here is a suggestion. A weekend is picked for the ceremony. On Friday dinner, the family gathers and have a simple meal explaining how proud they are of the child, etc. stories from mom and dad and family. The young person is sent to a special room by self no tv's etc. for the weekend. This begins the time of silence., a time of thinking and dreaming.

Saturday parents and siblings can not talk to the child. This is a time when the women for girls and the men for boys one by one talk to the young person. Usually the Grandparents are the ones that talk about sex and the Aunts and Uncles talk about family, life, jobs, country responsibilities etc. The child stays in the room. Food is brought, only bathroom breaks.

On Sunday, the young person takes a shower, puts on new clothes and with much pomp and drumming and or music or cheering etc. presents themselves as no longer a child, but a full member of the family. The Elders speak, the young person speaks and then gifts are given and they have a great feast, with happy music.

Anyway you get the idea. A coming of Age ceremony is very important part of life and we need to recreate this ceremony so our children understand the preciousness and responsibilities of life.

Our Favorite Friends - our pets

When a person goes on an RV adventure, they leave their family and friends at home. Luckily our little furry friends come with us. Almost every camper we have met has a dog, or two. One Rv houses a cat the size of a dog who gets to walk around the campground on a leash. One RV houses 3 or 4 birds which we hear "singing" every evening, if you can call what parrots do as singing.

The majority of the campers have dogs. Most are small like bichons or terriers or dachshund. Generally, if the Full time RVers have small dogs, there is usually two of them. Like our friends Tom and Donna have Millie and Hank, who are bichons. Then there is a cute Cocker spaniel puppie named Maggie. Another friend we met, Donna, who is now in CA. has four dogs and a cat. One is a Great Dane, Hermes, and three medium sized dogs, all rescued. That's alot of dogs and we know if it is a cold three dog night, she's got it covered.

The dogs comfort us when we are feeling blue. The dogs sit with us when we are sick. They are friends and family, and a way to meet other people. We would all be lost with out our furry friends.

DOG STORIES: Dakota loves to play with all the dogs, especially Millie and Maggie. Maggie used to live in the site behind us. We would let Dakota and Maggie run and play with eachother, until they tired. It was so funny seeing little Maggie try to jump up on Dakotas face to give her a kiss. They would run around the RV, tails wagging happily. Everytime Maggie got out, she would run over to see if Dakota was out to play. Then Maggie and group moved to another site up near the front gate. I would walk Dakota over so she could see her little buddy.

Hank and Millie also were in a site behind us, but Dakota met them in NM first when we all worked at Desert Haven Animal Rescue. Hank is older and all he wanted was people attention, but Millie loves to play with Dakota. Tom and Donna moved to the other side of the campground. One night they decided to see where Millie would go if they just let her lead the way. Yep she took them right to my RV...to see Dakota and maybe me.

We love our four legged family and sometimes it is sad if we have to say goodbye. Maggie's older brother went to Doggie heaven, and yesterday our friend Jesse and his family had to say goodbye to their basset hound, Phil.

Living on the road is hard on the dogs. They get hot in the RV's, they are always in a new locations, with new smells and strange dogs. The water changes, food changes, but they hang in loving us and keeping us sane.

Camping and thoughts about family

Last week in Texas it was spring break. The campground was filled with many families. Yogi Bear campgrounds cater to kids. There are activities like tee shirt painting, hay rides, Yogi Bear visits and outdoor movies. There is also a waterpark with slides and a huge bucket that empties water onto all the screaming kids. It was crazy here. Kids all over the place. They were all having fun riding bikes, roasting marshmallows and fishing at the lake.

Our jobs were cleaning the bathhouses, security, pool duty and I worked in the snack bar one day. I also went around meeting people, especially those near our RV. There was a guy, Bob, who played his guitar for two nights. Most of the people around us were families.

The neat thing was that many were groups of families. I meet the families of two sisters. They invited me for a margarita. Yum. Across the street from us was a big group: three siblings with their families and Grandpa and Grandma. Each had their own RV parked next to each other. I loved watching Grandma pass around the new grand baby, who was about four months old. These families went to the pool together. The uncles took all the kids fishing and at the end of the day they had a great feast around the campfire. Laughing and drinking as the kids roasted hotdogs. A large group of related people tented together and had a big fire everynight.

These families are lucky. They have discovered a way to keep the family connected and bonded together. So camping is a great way to bring families together.

Many of us however, come from fractured families. The ones where someone doesn't talk to the other because some thing that happened 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. I come from one of those. It makes me sad to think how fractured my family is. Most of them seem like nice people. They all profess to be Christians, yet they can't follow the Golden Rule and certainly have no compassion for people who are different from themselves. Traditionally it was the variety of talents that made a family strong. People don't seem to care about that anymore. Too many view their families in terms of greed. I'm too poor to be around my brother's kids.

Many of you have the same story. So what we "black sheep" have done is created our own family. A family of dear friends. We watch the children grow and love them as our nieces and nephews. We watch each other get older. We probably could spend more time together, maybe we could all go camping...

I'm out in space at the Johnson Space Center NASA

One of the best places I have visited was the Johnson Space Center. You drive in on NASA Drive and see rockets. There is a model of the solar system in the parking lot with planets markers. Like Neptune was across the parking lot when we stood at Jupiter. I was again with 11 yr Camden and Grace and Lee. The main building had a shuttle display that you could go inside. There was so much to see. A movie on "What is it like to be an astronaut". Space suits worn by astronauts. Simulated shuttle crafts that you could try and land. I crashed every time! There was also a lunar rover that I crashed too! There was a life sized model of the mars rover hanging from the ceiling.

We walked into a full size space shuttle mock-up, seeing the flight panels and living quarters. It is easy to understand how cramped the area is.. we were fascinated by the toilet...where does it go???

We took a simulated space ride to some wild space port. Camden really liked that! The center was fun, interactive and educational. It is a great place to bring school kids, and there were several schools there.

The best part is the tram ride to the actual NASA part. It is in a restricted area and we had to go through security and get our pix taken. Once on the tram, we rode through the campus like facility.

The first building-building 32, is the mission control offices. We had to walk up 87 steps....to the 3 rd floor where the original Apollo mission mission command center was. I was looking at where history was made. Where Apollo 11 reported "The Eagle has landed" and Apollo 13 "Houston we have a problem". It was amazing.

Right below the Apollo command center, is the shuttle command center. Since the shuttle was still at the space station when we were there, we got to see, via TV monitor, the shuttle mission control.

The next building we went to housed the training facilities. This is were all astronauts and staff learn to work in space. They had the model of the observation pod that was just installed on the space center. Our guide explained some of the training the astronauts have, including living in space and learning to work the large arm/crane that is helping to build the space station. There was a bonus, we got to see the next group of astronauts in a training session. I wish I was younger, I would have so done this.

Our next scheduled stop was to see the over 800 pounds of lunar rocks and soil, unfortunately as we were turning the corner, the tram driveshaft broke..bang...and we stopped. We sat there until another tram came, of course I commented, "Houston, we have a problem" everyone laughed.

Once on the new tram, we went to the rocket building. there was "Little Joe" a test rocket, a Mercury rocket and the Saturn V rocket. Watching the rockets on TV does not give you an indication of how huge the rockets are. As we walked into the rocket building, every person said "Wow" in many languages.

The last part was driving past the Astronauts Memorial garden. A tree was planted for each courageous souls who ventured to space and was lost. As we stopped to reflect, the tour guide played a speech George W. Bush gave after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. It was a wonderful speech. (see Dad I can say something nice about Bush!)

A great day was topped off with a Mexican dinner..Thanks to Grace and Lee for taking me with them.

Houston Museum of Natural Science and Children's museum

HOUSTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE

I met some wonderful people here. One couple is Grace and Lee. Their grandson, Camden, came to visit from NY state. They were going to visit some of the sights and I asked if I could go along. We all got Houston City Pass, which gave us 6 venues for $39, which was a deal.

Our first stop was the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Did you see the movie, "Night at the Museum"? This place really reminded me of it. There were huge Dinosaurs, stuffed tigers, little men talking to you, and a mummy. The museum also has a big butterfly room, and the Fabrege' collections was there too.

As you might expect, the museum has a big section of the museum devoted to geology and the oil industry. One display simulated going down an oil well and how they drill for oil. That was fun and noisy.

There was also an amazing mineral and gem collections with some wonderful examples of emerald, beryls, rhodochrosite and calcites.

Another great display was the Mayan and people of the Americas area. There was a beautiful totem pole and a painted story bison skins. A wonderful collection.

Because NASA is a big part of Houston, the museum has a simulated space shuttle command center, but there were several school groups who were in there, so we just looked.

The web site is www.hmns.org

HOUSTON CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

Not far from the Natural Science Museum is the Childrens Museum. Camden wanted to go, but the adults had just as much fun. The primary attraction is a kid's Main Street in Kidtropolis. It had a working bank, city hall, grocery store, diner, vet, EMT, and TV station. The kids got to do adult jobs. It was fun, especially watching the kids get into their jobs. They were cashiers, cooks, bankers, and TV staff. They could do a TV broadcast.

There were also jungle gyms, those dance step machines, which I tried. I got a score of 1200, Camden got 6000.

They had a great energy section, where kids could experiment with forces. And then there was the phone man. A 20 ft Telephone man made of recycled phones. He was cool! The dragon and faerie room was filled with a Vietnam village explaining their culture and religion.

We did art, business, science and exercise at this museum...we all slept well that night.

The web site is www.cmhouston.org

Houston is the 4th or 5th largest city in the US. They have freeways all over, but the traffic is crazy. Getting around takes some time. They do have a Metro system, but it needs to be extended to the burbs, The city is very widespread.

All the museums are in one area and nearby is a beautiful park too.

This city also has a major medical area with many teaching and research hospitals, mostly aimed at cancer. Rice University is situated right between the medical and museum centers.

I like it here thought, much to do and see. Tomorrow I will blog about NASA.