04.01.14 Texas is hot, dry, and very very different!

Texas is hot, dry, and very, very different!  Haven’t seen a pine tree in days.  Lots of trees look crippled.  One of the pictures below shows a little of that.  There are beautiful fields of wildflowers and lots of green, yellow and grey bushes!  Everyone we’ve met or spoken to has been very nice.  Southern nice!  We are in southern Texas and since I have Texan friends I have to acknowledge that this is just our story about southern Texas.  As time goes on I hope to see more of what makes up this huge state and share that with ya’ll.

I also have to say a BIG thank you to Ann and Bill Morgan for hiring us to stay here while they travel to Europe in a couple of weeks.  Without this opportunity we wouldn’t get to stay in this part of Texas for an extended time and experience what they love about living here.   Thanks to them also from our readers who are experiencing the adventure with us!

As we drove the last leg of our journey towards the MEW Ranch yesterday along the 9 mile dirt road it took us about 35-40 minutes to go those 9 miles.  Can’t take a moving house down a dirt, extremely bumpy, road very fast so slowly we made our way.  We saw nothing but bushes and dirt road the whole 9 miles.  The best way I can describe the road is that in Louisiana when they are getting ready to resurface a road they grate the road and dirt beneath down to a rough surface and you see the ground that was grated lined up on the side of the road.  Imagine 9 miles of that!  Only thing is that here they are not going to lay anything over it.  That IS the road!  Roy said it will not be as bad when we’re driving on it in our truck, whew!!

We did come across a few signs  on other ranch’s entry gates along the way so we knew there was life out there somewhere!!  Mr. Bill was very nice helping us out on the phone letting us know what to look for along the way.

 

When we finally came to the MEW ranch sign and pulled in, we saw another long road leading to what we hoped was going to be their house!  We kept driving and finally saw the house and there was Mr. Bill standing on the front porch awaiting our arrival!  We got out of Dora and went to their house where we met Bill’s wife Ann.  We went inside and visited with them for a while.  Bill has dozens of deer heads mounted on their walls and even a rhinoceros head on a bedroom wall.   How I wish I had my camera with me when we saw that!  Hopefully I’ll get another opportunity to capture all that for ya’ll to see!

Mr. Bill took us in the monster golf cart like vehicle to where we would park our RV and briefly showed us the chickens, peacocks, and green house that we’ll be taking care of.  They don’t leave for a couple of weeks so we’ll have plenty of time to learn our responsibilities and make friends with the precious dogs they have.   We’re parked a good distance from the house which gives us privacy yet we’re close enough to be able to walk there to take care of things.   Roy went for a ride this morning in the monster vehicle this morning to see the property (I was still sleeping!) and saw a bobcat, a rabbit and a huge rattle snake.  The snake didn’t survive the visit – thank goodness!

This 700 acre hunting ranch has been in their family since 1850, he’s the 4th generation to live here!  It’s called MEW Ranch (Mew is Mr. Bill’s grandfather’s name) and the website for South Texas Hunting Services is http://www.southtexashuntingservice.com/index.html

If you go to the website you can see pictures of some of the animal kills and information about where we are staying.   A lot of the pictures are taken right next to (within 10-15 feet) where we are living.  We’re parked next to two big freezers where I think they store the animals killed by the folks  who come here to hunt.  Behind those two freezers are two portable buildings, one of which is a laundry room where we can do our laundry.

I panicked yesterday when we arrived and our phone reception was almost nil.  The internet reception was soooooo slow I had flashbacks to when I first started working at Southeastern and waiting for the homepage to come up took close to 15 minutes.  Now a days the browsers don’t wait that long before they time out so within minutes we knew we were in trouble.  Not only do I love to connect with folks back home through Facebook and email we need it for our job with RVillage! Since you’re getting this blog post you know we must have figured something out.  By “we” I mean Roy, my terribly talented husband who works out all the technical difficulties we run into while living on the road.  Roy has our mifi placed in the square foot area where we get 2 bars of reception so we do have internet now. Now he’s on to trying to get local channels so we can watch TV!

Yes it is hot, yes it is dry, yes we are totally isolated but imagine the time we have now for spending time with God along with reading, working and just plain old peaceful living!   We’ll spend some time exploring out here, learning the culture, finding a church to call home for a while, and enjoying the quiet and peace! Everything here is green so there must be rain and the breeze in the evening yesterday was very refreshing.  This traveling does require a lot of adjustments and aggravations, but the experiences greatly out weigh the adjustments and aggravations!

We are here in this place, at this time, for a reason – now we go along the journey as it unfolds before us!   Roy will be flying his plane and helicopter, we can get our bow and arrows out from under the bed and make use of the target range here.  As we learn more about this new place we call home we’ll share with ya’ll so you can go on the journey with us!

Ya’ll come back now, ya’ hear – p.s.  We went out today for a while and will share with ya’ll about that tomorrow – see ya next time!