25-31JAN10 - Kerrville, TX (& brookshire, tx & kinder, la)

On Monday, 25JAN, we departed Corpus Christi for Kerrville, TX, to visit with Dan’s sister, Sharon, and husband, Tim Tompkins. As you probably know we have visited them often since we started full time RV’ing in 2007. Check out the below BLOG entry for more on a previous visit:
http://theryanrvexpress.blogspot.com/2009/03/05-24mar09-kerrville-tx.html

As usual it was an very enjoyable time with home cooked meals and reminiscing about past family times. Unfortunately the area was experiencing record cold and rainy weather which prevented us from enjoying outdoor activities, and kept our propane heater running full time. In spite of the weather Dan was able to assist Tim in a renovation project by tearing down the ceiling of the covered patio. This was something Dan has told Tim he would do for the past two years, but finally did it. One evening Tim & Sharon took us to PoPo’s restaurant which is a very out of the way restaurant that has been famous for fifty years for their fried chicken and their massive collection of souvenir plates on the walls.

http://www.poporestaurant.com/home2.htm

After a short but good visit we hit the road on Saturday to continue our return to Houma, LA. As we usually do we broke the return trip up into three days driving. Saturday afternoon we stopped on the west side of Houston. The RV campground we spent the day in had just finished having a chili and gumbo contest; so we were invited eat as much as we wanted of the leftovers. None were as good as Dan’s world famous chili, but it was a free meal!

Sunday morning, 31JAN, we continued west on I-10, enroute to Kinder, LA. Since we needed both diesel fuel and propane, we pulled into the nearest Flying J truck stop. If you have ever stopped at a Flying J, you may have noticed that they have dedicated RV lanes where RV’ers can get diesel, propane, fresh water and dump you sewage all in one place. Unfortunately, when we pulled in the propane tank was surrounded by numerous cars, all with many empty propane bottles needing fueling. Apparently many Texans have been using portable propane heaters to heat their houses/trailers during the colder then normal recent weather and now every one is running low. Since we were low on diesel & propane, we decided to wait in line to refuel. At the end of the day’s driving we stopped at Coushatta Casino in Kinder, LA. Readers of this BLOG know that we almost always stop there before we finish our drive tomorrow to Houma, LA.