South Texas Weekend Getaway

This past weekend Catherine, Wilma and I all set out on our first road trip together. We went to south Texas to meet up with Catherine's parents, Jim and Luann. Any excuse we get to head down that way we take, but this time we had an actual reason and not just for a vacation. You see it was Jim's birthday this weekend and he wanted to have a birthday dinner at the King's Inn.

If you have ever been close to the Kingsville, Falfurrias, Premont area and have not stopped at the King's Inn, you do not know what you are missing. It is a restaurant that sits right on Baffin Bay and serves fresh seafood that was caught earlier in the day. I mean the food is amazing, and I know good food!

So not only did Jim's wife, daughter, son-in-law and first granddaughter (Wilma) make the trip south, but also so did his mom and dad (Mollie and Sloan Williams) and also Luann's parents (Gene and Sammie Johnston). It was a great time of sitting right on the water, smelling the sea in the air, and stuffing ourselves to the gills. We had many laughs over the meal and all needed a nap and a bigger size pants afterwards.

After we recovered from our seafood induced coma, we drove around the ranch that we stay at down there. I have blogged about this before. If you would like to read about the details of the ranch, check this out.

While we drove around, Catherine, Luann, and I were riding on top of the truck in the "look-out" seats. I am not sure what the exact name is but it is a platform on the bed of the truck that has seats on it from another truck. It is like the third seat in a SUV but placed in the bed of a truck and elevated to where we have to climb up some steps to get to it. Do you get the picture? Maybe.

I took our camera and we got some pretty neat shots. The ride was really putting my skills to the test because trying to get clear shots when you are being bounced around is a little tricky.


We were driving around trying to look and see if we could find any animals out and about. It was maybe 502.4 degrees down there, but as the sun began to set we did start to see some deer. If you look real close you can see two deer in the tall grass along the right side of the picture.


The wildflowers down there were crazy! So many different colors and smells (some from Wilma that weren't so bueno) that it was like a peaceful retreat to go and forget about all the bothers in your life.

I think that I have some sort of weird fixation with windmills. The fact that windmills are the only way for the livestock and wildlife to drink, aside from the occasional pond, and that they are powered by the wind just makes me think that we have turned back time to the olden days where we have to walk up hill to school both ways! As we were driving around I took some pictures of the windmills.


Here is one of the holding tanks that holds the water before it drains into the water trough. With the warm weather I was very tempted to climb that latter and go for a swim. But with the Coral snake and Coachwhip that we saw I think that I will just stay in the truck.


Here is another one with the sun setting in the background. How pretty!


We also had to check on the cattle that were on the ranch. One of the bulls really wanted to be a part of Our Little Ranch and posed for a couple of photos.


This is one of my new favorite shots. It is very funny how we get so excited over the pictures we take. We did not have a computer with us down there and we were a little too enthusiastic to put the card into the computer and look at the pictures. Then we sit back and go "Ooo, Aaa, WOW!" over our pictures. Then we try to remember who took what ones. But I am pretty sure that I took this one!

The sunset in south Texas was breath taking. I tried to take some pictures of it, but really you have to see it in person to do it justice.

I will leave you with just a picture of the sky. Imagine yourself sitting out in your most comfortable lounge chair, smelling the wildflowers, listening to the birds, and looking at this wonderful sky.

Enjoy you day!