Meeting RV-Dreams Friends for the first time

April 21 – 23, 2017: 

We left Victoria TX on Thursday the 21st after just one night there.  We found out that Steve and Debbie McCormack of (Debbie and Steve Blog) will be crossing our path near Beaumont TX so we decided to rendezvous with them for the weekend. We have never met Steve and Debbie before but we have corresponded on Facebook and we follow each other’s blogs.  They have been full-time RVers since 2013. 

We were going to head up to Shreveport LA from Victoria TX and then take route 20 across to Atlanta.  But now with the change of plans to Beaumont TX, we are now going to take route 10 a little more that we had wanted to.  Route 10 is just so damn bumpy! So we will continue on route 10 to New Orleans and then head northeast on route 59 up to 20 to Atlanta GA. 

We just had to stop at Buc-ee's.  Anybody coming through Texas needs to stop at a Buc-ee's once just to see it.

Beaumont TX is about 189 miles from Victoria so it was a good travel distance for us in a day.  We made the trip with no issue, a nice travel day for us. We arrived at the Robbins RV Park about 4pm a little ahead of Steve and Debbie.  Gary, the park owner, got us a couple of spots where the 2 of us could park next to each other, very cool!

Our site at Robbins RV Park.

After Steve and Debbie arrived it was time for happy hour! After some relaxing, storytelling, and cocktails it was off to dinner.  The owner, Gary, gave us a dinner recommendation at Floyd’s Cajun Seafood just a few miles east on I 10.  This place was hopping too, after all, it was a Friday night.  But even still, we were there sort of late at around 9 and we still had to wait.  Floyd’s has seating for what looks like about 150 so this is a really popular place in this area.  The food and the service was really great too. We were told the owner started the Landry's chain. We highly recommend Floyd's if you are ever in or near Beaumont TX!

Saturday the 22nd we all decided on a couple of attractions to see in the area.  We decided on the Spindletop oil site and on the Botanical Gardens.  We started with visiting the Spindletop oil attraction about 6 miles away.  Spindletop is where the first mega oil well was found.  It was also the largest oil well in the world at the time.  The oil find here basically started the Texas oil rush at the turn of the 20th century.  The oil well at Spindletop was so big that it is credited with starting the oil industry too.  The attraction is a replica of the well area and the town that grew up around it. Some of the well structure and the buildings are original too. It's an easy attraction to visit and makes for a nice walk around learning about the well and the people who found it. It was trip worth taking if in the area but not one to go out of your way to see. It was definitely a great learning experience.

Would like to have had one of these oil stocks at these prices today!

Cheap casket next to the deluxe "box".

Just had to do it, Me, Patty, Debbie, Steve.

While at Spindletop Patty and I were introduced to Geocaching.  Steve and Debbie are very much into it and found a couple of caches right there near the attraction.  We tagged along to learn how it works.  I even found one of them after they led us to the area.  We knew of it and knew many full-time RVers participate but really didn't know how it was done.  Actually, we are probably the last to learn about this fun activity.  Well now we know!  Not sure we will pick it up or not but it's fun to do.

Stopped for lunch at Bamba.  It was good except very little meat in their meat burritos!

After Spindletop we headed off to the Beaumont Botanical Gardens.  Getting to the gardens was a little more of an adventure.  We used our Garmin to navigate us which took us to an obviously wrong site.  This has been happening more times since I just updated the Garmin a couple of weeks ago.  I am going to keep an eye on this for sure! 

Next up was Google Maps on one our phones.   I really wish Garmin was more like Google maps! Anyway, Google got us much closer to the gardens but it tried to get us to make a turn onto a one way road in the wrong direction! By the time we looped around the town park where the gardens are we ended right back at the one way road.  However, now we could see the correct way in but it would require another entire loop around again.  A quick run on the one way road in the wrong direction looked much easier.  So, Don’t tell anyone, but that is what we finally did, we waited for oncoming vehicles to clear and then we drove the few hundred feet to the parking lot!  

This is not a very big garden by comparison to other we have been to. However, it was a nice place to visit, and like Spindletop, only if you are planning to be here anyway. 

This woman was having pictures in the garden area
taken to celebrate her 60th birthday!

We bought some fish food.

Even here there is a 9/11 memorial with part of the twin towers on display at the entrance to the gardens.

After all of our sightseeing adventures we decided to have a treat none of us do very often, we went to Dairy Queen.   Not real sure why we went here but, what the hell!

We didn't know what these were until Steve and Debbie told us about them.  These are Crayfish holes.  Almost anywhere it gets wet you will see these mounds.

There were many of these mounds around the Robbin's RV Park.

We finished the day off with a nice dinner and cocktails at the McCormack’s 5th wheel.   After dinner and a few shots we all called it a night.

Sunday the 23rd we noticed that Steve and Debbie had not come over to say goodbye and it was going on 11 am.  We went over to see what was happening and found out that they had a leaf spring shackle bolt missing.   That sounded like something that would only happen to us!  Anyway, Gary (the owner) came through again, he had a replacement! After a little sweat and hammering, they were good to go.  

We hope all goes well Steve and Debbie, safe travels, and maybe we will see them again later in the year.

OK, now we need to deal with our failing fridge!

Stay Tuned!