Day #6: Good-bye Bandera ~ hello Austin

The very wild wild west of Bandera, TX
includes occasional deer bones
faithfully brought up to the house by Speedy (pet dog)

This is the outside of Nick and Rachel's house
Bandera, TX

We had a really full day today and are presently in Austin. Grandpa Jones is too exhausted to get the laptop set up and upload pictures, so I'm going to do a post without photographs to just briefly share our day. I'm doing this mostly for Nana because she checks the blog to see how all of us are doing.

This morning as we drove from Kerrville (where our hotel was) over to Bandera, we took the alternate route. On all of our previous trips, we took the fastest route ... but today, we took the rollercoaster ride that winds you around the back of the steep hills and valleys of Bandera County. The ride was an adventure. I don't think I've been on a steeper, curvier, crazier road since we were in Israel in 2004! Very beautiful to see the hill country from this perspective. We drove past numerous creeks and rivers ... that actually had water in them this year ... the drought is official over here in mid-Texas.

The day we played at the Toy Store in San Antonio,
the store clerk GAVE Nathan this funny green rubber
hat thing because she said she'd never
seen a child have so much fun with this ...

Lottie thought the green rubber "hat"
was pretty cool too.
Nathan wore it for awhile, but seemed to
prefer it on other people ...

We spent the morning just hanging out with Nick, Rachel and the kiddos at their house. What sweet and beautiful grandchildren. I'll have to post more pictures of them at a later date. I was sad to begin with this morning, because it's always difficult to say good-bye to one family as you are moving onto the next family. And Nick and Rachel are considering some very big changes in their lives in the near future ... PLUS ... Liam Calvin is due at the end of April but is threatening to arrive much much sooner than that. We hadn't seen Nick since September, and it was so good to see him again and share a few days with his family.
This is the train layout that
Grandpa Jones and Nathan built ...
they looked up different train layouts on the internet
and then built it together!
It was difficult for me to get a last picture
of Nia ... she really really enjoyed
her donuts throughout the morning ...
so this is Nia, with her donuts!

It was about noon when we pulled out from Nick's house, drove down to the Medina River so that I could snap a few pictures, and then headed on over to Austin.

This is the Medina River ...



A very pretty place ~ don't you think?

We arrived in Austin at 3:00, hoping to be in time to meet Jackson at the bus stop. As it turns out, Jackson has been sick the past few days and has missed three days of school this week. We were enthusiastically greeted by both Jackson and Karis and had a fun afternoon with them. Jackson seems to be on the mend, but has a bad cough. He is still hoping to play in his T-ball game tomorrow morning ... and Grandpa Jones and I are looking forward to watching him do that very thing.

Grandpa and Karis

Olivia came home from school at about 5:00 and later in the evening, we met Andrew and had dinner out. Everyone has just been tucked into bed and now it is time for us to ... crash and get some rest. We'll try to post some pictures with

tomorrow's post ... for now, good night!

Jackson Drew showing us how to do the computer ...

P.S. Photographs were added Saturday, March 6

Day #5: WAY too many pictures ...

I intended to return to the hotel tonight, take a BRIEF look at our pictures, post perhaps 5 of the best and be done ... but we took SO many pictures today and they were so much fun to look at ... and here it is very very late and Blogger is giving me all kinds of grief while uploading. So it is what it is at this point.

Remember how I was going to feed the deer this morning? Well ... since we had planned to take a nice morning walk around the property where Nick and Rachel live, we decided to walk first and then put the corn out when we returned. The five deer pictured above were the only deer we saw around Nick's place all day! We put the corn out before we left for the day ...

This picture shows Nick lifting the 50# bag of corn and pouring it all in a nice pathway leading up to his house. We then left and spent the day in San Antonio. When we returned this evening, not a single kernel of corn had been eaten ... and no deer in sight!

We went to the Japanese Sunken Gardens in San Antonio, located right next to the zoo. It was a perfectly gorgeous day and we enjoyed it to the full!

We walked all around the gardens ... there were enormous gold fish and carp swimming in the ponds. We have a ton of pictures of the fish and turtles, but if I posted all of those pictures I would basically be up all night.

Little Lottie is such a doll ... she is not at all camera shy ...

Nicolas has perhaps the hugest lens I have ever seen on a camera. He is a fabulous photographer. He just has an eye for a great composition and he does a wonderful job photographing just about anything!

Nia is quite keen on her daddy and he's kind of sweet on her too ...

Grandpa Jones took these pictures of Rachel and Lottie and they turned out so well, I really had a difficult time choosing which ones to post.

So I chose these three out of about 45 that he took!

We also rode the cute train that gives a very satisfying and relaxing almost 20-minute ride. The train took us all around the park and into the woods ...
We packed a lot of fun stuff into our stay in San Antonio and then went back to Bandera and played around the house, enjoyed some pizza ... and the day zoomed by ...

We're going to spend the morning in Bandera tomorrow and then head on up to Austin. I'll try to post more pictures in the evening tomorrow, but I need to get quicker with this whole process ... I take way too long going through the pictures and then I do a terrible job with the narration!

I'll try again tomorrow ...

Day #4: A fun and beautiful day

We had completely clear blue skies today and 60+ degree temps. A perfect day! I totally forgot to mention in my post yesterday that the road to Bandera has a TON of deer along it. I'm talking deer that wander around in broad daylight. Large groups of them. Beautiful animals! When you reach the long dirt drive that leads to Nick and Rachel's house, you can oftentimes see deer ... and this morning, we were lucky enough to see a lot of them!

I tried really hard to get a good picture of them leaping high over the fence as they were running, but they were pretty far away. When we were out and about today, we purchased some corn to feed them ~ we're going to do that tomorrow and see if we can lure the herd closer to the house where I can get better pictures. Grandpa Jones is doubtful that 50 pounds of corn is going to do much to bring them out of hiding and thinks it would take several days of us feeding them to get a good result. We'll have to see! It isn't illegal to feed deer in Texas. In fact, these very deer can be shot on the owner's property year round. It makes me sad to think about that! Thankfully, Nick doesn't own a rifle!

When we were here even last fall, there wasn't much water on the property. The drought had been pretty severe in this area. But they've gotten plenty of rain over the winter months. This little pond is not far from the house.

We walked around the property for a little while and watched the deer all run away from us. I couldn't believe how many there were!

And look where this little monkey is! We decided to drive down to San Antonio and do a bit of shopping, so we all went outside to load up the vehicles and I heard this small voice talking to me, but I couldn't find him until I looked ... WAY up ... I won't tell you how far he was up ... (!) I told Nathan that he was scaring Granny Jones half to death! He was completely unphased by this.

We went to one of my favorite kind of toy stores ... huge and packed with great toys. We had purchased a gift to give their family in honor of Liam's coming birth ... but they already had the very toy that we had picked out. So we brought it to this toy store and they gave us store credit because they actually carry this very toy right there. And then we got to pick something else out instead.
Lottie had fun demonstrating the toy we picked out. We played with all the fun stuff in the store for quite awhile. There were other folk in there doing the same as we were ... so don't worry ... we were NOT being obnoxious. The owners of the store encourage customers to play. So we did!

We enjoyed a hearty meal over at Maggiomo's (I think that's the name) and ate way too much, but it was SO good!

We ran some other errands after lunch and ended up letting the kids run out their energy at a McDonald's with a playscape. We had enjoyed an hour at a discount book store earlier and decided to just rest while we watched the kids have a good time. Look at Nia's pose. She looks like a natural pro with a joy stick.

Lottie posed for all of the pictures we wanted. She is such a sweetie. We had a really full and fun day just hanging out together. We're looking forward to more of the same tomorrow!

Day #3: Bandera, TX!

After leaving Arkadelphia at about 8:00 yesterday morning, it took us all of 10 hours to reach Bandera. But what a drive! Our global positioning device (Garmin) took us west of Dallas and down through the hill country on steep winding roads and through tiny towns and vast empty ranch lands.

We went through Hico, a little town that boasts this slogan: "Hico: Where everybody IS somebody!" And we drove through Llano, a beautiful little place with a bridge over a waterfall. I'd really like to go back there and get some nice pictures. I did get some and I'd show you some of the pictures, but I need to make this post kind of quick this morning so that we can get back to ... the reason why we came!

But we finally made it to Bandera! And these are the little faces that greeted us!
King Nathan was wearing his very cool crown and eating a bag of apple crisps. He let me taste one and it was quite yummy.
We ate a nice dinner together. I got to sit next to Queen Nia. When we got to the restaurant, a gentleman greeted Nathan like this: "Good evening, young fellow." Nathan responded that he was not a young fellow ... he was a KING.

Little Lottie girl wasn't sure what to think of us at first. Grandpa wanted to hold her right away, but she was NOT going to have anything to do with that! But after just a little while, she warmed up ... and Grandpa Jones was very happy.

Isn't she precious?

She has beautiful, flaming red hair ...

And Nia wasn't too sure of us either ... but I think we will have a real nice visit during these next few days.

I'll show you more pictures later!

Day #2: Arkadelphia, Arkansas

We got back on the road from Effingham at about 8:00 this morning. Another clear weather day, but lots and lots and LOTS of truck traffic. Everywhere. HUGE vehicles. WIDE loads. Endless trucks! We had stopped at a little rest area and had seen pictures of a cute depot not too far out of our way, so we wandered off our prescribed trip map (and Garmin had a total fit!) to see what we could see!

There really wasn't much to see in Tamms ... and the depot was being used as a village hall, but we stopped by and snapped our pictures, went inside to see how nicely the depot was renovated, chatted with the folk there for a little bit, and then got back on the road.

I took the picture above just because I was so happy to see the color GREEN ... ah, there is hope of spring!

We took a little drive on S-127 where I missed what would have been a fabulous picture. We were driving alongside an abandoned right-of-way (no tracks ... just a path), went over a bridge, and I looked to my right to see a wooden trestle railroad bridge reflected in a muddy creek, that was all entwined with vines and gnarly branches ... where a graceful, light gray-colored heron was resting beneath. It just about took my breath away, but by the time I realized what a great picture it would have been, we had gone way past it ... and a certain somebody would NOT turn around for me to photograph it. I know. If we stopped every time I begged to, we would make extremely slow progress towards Texas. I also missed several really beautiful hawks in flight today, as well as a sweet little doe that was standing beside the interstate ...

We crossed the Mississippi, and it was approaching lunchtime. We have heard stories about the famous Lambert's Cafe, "home of the throwed roll," (shouldn't it be thrown roll?)and since we were so close by, we just HAD to visit it for ourselves!

I will say that Lambert's completely lived up to all that was raved about it! What a fun place.

We came at just the right time, had no wait at all for either a table or our food, and soon the rolls began flying! They have helpers who walk around with freshly baked hot rolls (completely yummy), and if you raise your hand, they send one hurtling across the restaurant to whomever can catch it! Grandpa Jones and I both caught one, but the table across from us had a bunch of guys that kept missing the throwed roll, so there were lots of spoiled buns on the floor.

Oh ... and they serve you enough food in this place to last ... days! We ordered our lunches and as we waited, they brought freebies around like deep fried ochre, fried potatoes, mac and cheese and other assorted extremely fattening (and very delicious) stuff ~ and then lunch arrived on plates big enough for 2-3 people. I was very close to ordering the Chef's salad which was described as being served on "a bun," but instead ordered a chicken salad with cottage cheese and peaches on the side. Whew. I later saw that Chef's salad, and honestly, I have never in my life seen a bigger salad on a bigger bun. It looked like a salad on top of a gigantic pizza crust! I don't know how one person could have possibly eaten the whole thing!

We ate our lunch at 1:00 in the afternoon. It is now 8:00 in the evening and I am STILL stuffed. We decided we did not need to eat another thing for the rest of the day ... and we haven't! Plus, I actually drove about 80 miles of our trip today. Grandpa Jones was getting sleepy, so a sure way to wake him up is to have ME drive. We switched back as we were arriving Little Rock during rush hour.

We checked out another Daniel Silva book on CD from the library to listen to along the way. We've listened to the first three discs so far. Another spy thriller type of story that helps pass the time on the road.

So tomorrow, our destination is Bandera by way of Kerrville (because that's where our hotel is reserved). We are looking forward to seeing Nick, Rachel, Nathan, Nia, Lottie ... and evidence of Liam's soon arrival!

P.S. Happy birthday, Mom!

Day #1: We're in Effingham, IL

We're on the road again! We left for Texas right after church this morning. We had a wonderful time serving little children this morning and then the worship service was so ... worship-FUL! We decided not to push it with our travel today ... just drive leisurely and stop early enough to get a good night's rest ~ so we have "landed" in Effingham, Illinois for the night.


We had a pretty uneventful day. Clear weather made for nice dry roads. Light traffic. I hardly took any pictures because well ... everything was brown ... or a dirty color of gray! But the sun breaking through the clouds near the end of our drive was pretty enough for me!
We naturally saw plenty of trains during our drive. I-57 follows train tracks for miles and miles through farm country. I also saw plenty of hawks, but not in flight ... just every now and again I would see a beautiful one perched high in a tree overlooking the interstate. We did see a ton of migratory birds, thousands and thousands of them (!) just south of Chicago. I think they were ducks and they were flying ... north! Perhaps that's a good sign of an early spring?

Well ... not much news to share. We're hoping to arrive to see Nicolas, Rachel and the grandchildren sometime Tuesday. We'll hang around Bandera for a couple of days, as long as they can stand us, and then we'll head up to Austin to see Sabrina, Andrew and the grandkids there. In the middle of our Austin visit, we're going to head down to Houston to see Grandpa Jones's sister, Peg, as well as meeting up with Kathie (Don's other sister) and Dan (from Coshocton) and all go to the rodeo together. Grandpa Jones and I will return to Austin for a few days after that and then travel on to El Paso to spend some time with Jesse, Di and the little kids there. So we have a busy few weeks ahead of us ... so thankful we are retired and able to make this twice a year trip! We'll keep in touch along the way.