We like history and historical museums. One of the museums we saw was the USS Lexington in the harbor at Corpus Christi, Texas. Corpus Christi was a good halfway stopping point between south Texas and Columbus, so we took a day to visit it.
Ray’s dad was in the Navy for 20 years, and ended his service on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier like this one. The USS Hornet is docked in Alameda, California just west of Oakland. Touring this ship makes one appreciate the work and dedication of men who serve in our Navy.
The ship is so long, it took two photos to get the entire length.
There are 5 self-guided tours covering 100,000 square feet and 11 decks. After watching a short film about the ship in the Mega theater in 3D, we toured the flight deck. Here we could see where the high-speed catapult launched the aircraft. We learned the stories of men who flew the vintage aircraft displayed on the deck, and saw the massive guns used in battle.
This gives you an idea of how high the deck is off the water.
The Foc’sle or Forecatle tour is the forward upper deck area that extends to the bow. What you see here is where the ship is guided.
The interior of the ship is a maze of “tunnels”.
Being a mom of 5, I was fascinated by this!
The maps to guide the ship across the vast oceans.
This is the hangar deck. This is where the planes were stored. Today it houses many exhibits along with a gift shop and snack bar.
I had to include these photos of the bridge being built and the harbor.
Yes, the water is green.
We enjoyed our day touring the ship. It gave us lots of exercise climbing ladders and walking the hallways. One caution for anyone who parks in the parking lot across from the museum; be sure you have a locking gas cap for your vehicle. We had nearly a full tank of diesel fuel stolen while we were in the museum.
Located in Harlingen, Texas, on the campus of the Marine Military Academy is the Iwo Jima Monument. This full-sized plaster model was used to create the molds for the bronze statue in Arlington National Cemetery. This working model was donated to the Military Academy (across the street) as an inspiration to the cadets. The humid climate of south Texas is the perfect atmosphere to preserve this plaster statue. The figures are 32 feet high raising a 78 foot high flag pole. The cloth flag flies 24 hours a day.
We visited the museum located near the statue and watched a very interesting film about the taking of Iwo Jima. The airstrip on the island served as a landing base for many US planes on their way back from Japan bombing runs. It is estimated that the island base saved more lives of pilots and their crews than were lost in the initial battle for the island. The island was given back to Japan in 1965. Many men who fought there thought it should always remain in the possession of the USA because of the huge cost of lives lost there.
Iwo Jima Museum
The statue is impressive. Near the grounds is the burial place of one of the five men who raised the flag. He was only 19 years old when he died, just days after the raising of the flag. Inscribed around the outside of the stone foundation are all the wars the marine corp has fought from the founding of our nation until present. Afghanistan is one of them with no ending date. It would be wonderful to see the end date inscribed someday soon.
The following photos show more detail of the statue. The sky was a beautiful blue the first day we visited the statue, but the flag was tangled up on the flag pole. The second time we visited, it was overcast and gray. But the flag was flying beautifully and I wanted to capture that. Plus, I wanted to get more details of the statue.
You can read more about this statue here: https://www.mma-tx.org/about-us/Iwo-Jima-Monument/
Harlingen is a one of the many cities in the south part of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). We explored this museum one afternoon. To my delight, in their rotating art exhibit, they were hosting quilt contest winners from The National Quilt Museum in the Oak Leaf and Reel Competition. We were given 3D glasses that turned the quilts into a unique display. There is a nice gift shop in this building also.
If you step outside into the courtyard, the museum has more buildings arranged in a circle displaying the heritage of the city of Harlingen. These included: the 1904 Lon C. Hill home (the first home built in Harlingen); Harlingen’s first hospital (1923-1925); a replica of the Paso Real Stagecoach Inn (originally built between 1850-1860); and the Historical Museum, which chronicles early Valley life and Texas History. (It was closed for renovations.)
Stagecoach Inn
The Stagecoach Inn housed the General Store and Post Office also.
Courtyard showing the Stagecoach Inn
The General Store
Home of Harlingen’s Founder Lon C. Hill
Inside the home of Lon C. Hill, you will find many rooms of time period exhibits including antique glassware and dishes, dresses, period furniture and more. You might even see Mr. Hill lurking in the hallway.
Inside home of Lon C. Hill
South Texas is cotton country. This is a dress worn by the “Cotton Queen” of 1962.
This is the home office of Lon C. Hill, founder of Harlingen.
Previously, we visited the lighthouse at Port Isabel and the museum. Nearby were two more museums. We visited one, but at the time, the other museum was about to close. We decided to come back and visit it later. If you visit all three museums, you can save money by buying a Combination Site Ticket. Combination tickets are available at all three museum sites.
The first museum we visited was the Port Isabel Lighthouse Museum.
The Port Isabel Historical Museum is located a block or so away from the lighthouse. It’s tricky to find the entrance. The museums are beside and behind the parking lot to the Event and Cultural Center Building. This photo is taken at the back of the building. The back is actually where the entrance is. Walk around to the left and the door is under the awning.
The Port Isabel Historical Museum houses exhibits on two levels of the building. It is mostly collections of Mexican artifacts from the US/Mexican War.
To find the third museum, Treasure of the Gulf Museum, follow the arrows on the sidewalk at the back of the Historical Museum.
Below is what the entrance of Treasures of the Gulf Museum looks like. Do you see any signs?
Treasures of the Gulf Museum spotlights history and artifacts from three 1554 Spanish shipwrecks.
While we were there, we also saw this clock tower and inscription near the parking lot. I thought it made a nice photo, and the inscription is a good admonishment to us about good government.
Quinta Mazatlan (KEEN-tuh MAH-zaht-lahn) “Quinta” in Spanish means country house, villa or estate. The word “Mazatlan” in ancient Indian means “Land of the Deer”. The history of this site starts with a man and his wife (Jason and Marcia Matthews) who built the mansion with a special mix of adobe in the 1930’s. They lived there for 30 years. In the mid 60’s the mansion came up for sale and the city of McAllen bought it to preserve it from destruction. It became an urban sanctuary whose mission is to work “to enrich people’s lives by sharing knowledge about birds, plants, and environmental stewardship in South Texas.”
Entrance
Quinta Mazatlan Adobe Mansion
Massive carved front doors
Notice the shell above the door.
Inside the adobe mansion.
One of two antique pianos of Brazilian rosewood.
Roman tub in bathroom
Tilework in archway
Courtyard
Pool and portico in courtyard.
Well in courtyard
Pathway to bird feeders and amphitheater.
Baby Cacti
A tangled mess of cacti growing in among the brush and trees.
Agave Plant
Large Agave Plant
Bird Feeders at Amphitheater
This water flows to the pond where it is pumped back to the top of the creek bed. The pump runs on solar electricity. On right are bronze turtles to illustrate the local wildlife.
Pathway to pond
Pathway around pond.
Portico with solar panels on the roof to run pump.
It was very enjoyable to see this historic adobe and walk the pathways in the garden in the afternoon under cloudy skies. I imagine it gets really hot here in summers, and the thick walls of the adobe would have kept the house cool.
It was a beautiful, but cloudy afternoon when we visited the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, Texas. We were able to use our National Parks Pass for admission.
This area of Texas is situated at the very tip of Texas state in the perfect location for migratory birds both from east to west, and from north to south. The refuge covers 2,088 acres and touches the Rio Grande River on the border of the US and Mexico. There are 14 miles of trails for hiking, or you can take the tram ride when it is in operation. (It was not available when we visited.)
Every morning there is a guided bird walk. Apparently, 400 bird species have been spotted here, but on the day we went, we didn’t see any birds except a few doves near the visitor’s center. It must have been the wrong time of day for the birds to be out.
Soon after you leave the visitor center you go up over a levee and shortly come to a pond.
A little further on, there is a pond on the opposite side of the pathway.
There are also 450 types of plants and half of all butterfly species have been found there. We saw plenty of plants but no butterflies. The Spanish moss is plentiful. We enjoyed walking under the shade of many trees.
A short walk from the visitor center is a suspension bridge.
The banner at the bottom of the suspension bridge shows the sizes of the largest birds. The largest one is the California Condor. The orange color represents the bald eagle.
A short walk away from the bridge is the observation tower. I didn’t count the steps up to the top, but I got my exercise that day!
From the top of the observation tower, I could see views of nearby lakes in the preserve.
Looking the opposite direction, I could see all the way into Mexico. I didn’t include that photo, because all you can see is trees.
Walking back, we saw more Spanish moss.
Spanish Moss close up
Our pathway back
Even though we didn’t see many birds, it was a beautiful area with lots to see.
This museum, located in Edinburg, Texas, chronicles the history of South Texas and Northeastern Mexico.
Museum of South Texas History, in Edinburg, Texas
The building lobby is beautifully and stunningly decorated in Spanish-Colonial style architecture, ornamental tiles, metal railings and furnishings.
Museum of South Texas History Lobby
The story begins on the second floor. Like the Rio Grande River, the museum flows through history from room to room beginning with ancient plant and animal fossils and a magnificent replica of a Mammoth skeleton. These exhibits tell the story of the Rio Grande Legacy with artifacts and multimedia. Spanish colonial artifacts, pioneer life, the cattle kingdom, and steamboat days are some of the things you’ll learn about in the interactive displays.
Mammoth skeleton
Early Spanish wooden cart
Indian display and Steamboat theater
Chuckwagon for cattle drives
Downstairs the story continues with a replica train station, irrigation history, horse and buggy, war history and ending in the post-WWII displays. Across the courtyard from the main building is the 1910 jail and the Will Looney Legacy Park with sculptures, windmill and a pathway through native plants.
Horse and buggy transportation
My favorite thing about this museum is imagining what life would be like in this area many years ago. Without electricity, running water and motorized transportation, life would be incredibly hard. Yet, there were people who dared to make a life here and left their mark behind. During this time, we were also listening to Robert Caro’s book called “The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson, Volume I”. The beginning of this book chronicles much of the early history of Texas pioneers. It is fascinating.
We took our Airstream for some minor repairs near Kerrville, Texas. We heard about Stonehenge II and decided to drive a few miles out to Ingram, Texas, to see it. Situated in the middle of the 13.5 acre Hill Country Arts Foundation’s Campus, this is a totally man-made (even the stones) smaller-scale reproduction of the one in Salisbury, England.
It all started in 1989 when Doug Hill finished work on his back patio in Hunt, Texas. He had one big extra limestone slab left over. As a joke, he offered it to his neighbor, Al Sheppard. Al stood the slab upright in the middle of his pasture. Doug and Al then built an arch around it. It reminded them of Stonehenge in England. A vision formed and Sheppard contracted Hill to build his very own Stonehenge II. Later, Sheppard added two Moai head statues after visiting Easter Island. After Sheppard passed away, Stonehenge II was donated to the Hill Country Arts Foundation and moved to its current home in 2012.
Ray was suffering from allergies that day, so I took a walk around the site and visited the Gift Shop in the Visitor Center. The Art Gallery was closed, so our visit was short. By then, we got a call that our Airstream was ready to go, so we headed back to pick it up. Instead of heading back to our campsite near Medina Lake, we decided to head away from the cedar trees and the pollen that was making Ray so miserable. Our campsite that night was in Seguin, TX, near the Guadalupe River.
The Guadalupe River was a beautiful calm river complete with lily pads.
As the sun started setting, we were treated to some amazing beauty.
About an hour’s drive northwest of San Antonio, is Lake Medina Campground. Our first campsite was in among the cedar trees. Big mistake! We didn’t know that December and January are the two worst months of the year for “cedar fever”, an allergic reaction many people have to the pollen that blows off the trees during that time of year. We moved to another campsite where there were less trees, but Ray still had terrible allergies from the pollen.
Our campsite among the cedar trees, Lake Medina, TX.
The lake itself is a blue shimmering gem among the rocky hills surrounding it, being situated in the Hill country of Texas.
Lake Medina
One day I took a walk near the shoreline and found an old rock chimney, all that remains of an old house.
Old Chimney
On the grounds are other old structures of bygone days—a two storied house and an old barn. The deer are so tame that they hardly move when you walk toward them. It is illegal to feed them, but I have a feeling that one reason they are so tame is that they have become accustomed to being hand fed by the campers. One buck loitered near our campsite and I got a good photo of him.
One afternoon, we decided to take a drive to San Antonio. Ray wanted to see the house where he spent his childhood days on Frost Street. They lived there when he was ages 3 to 4. When the family moved away, they rented the house out. They came back several times in between renters to fix it up and add some fresh paint. His last year spent there was when he was 12 years old. The house looks much smaller now, than in his memories. He remembered the big pecan tree in the back yard. It has a massive trunk now and it towers over the houses around it. They returned when he was 11, and his dad painted it turquoise blue with gloss black window trim and a coral orange front door. It became more sedate sometime after they sold it.
Ray’s childhood home on Frost Street
Ray’s childhood home with pecan tree in the back yard.
We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that was featured in Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives by Guy Fieri (Dewese’s Tip Top Cafe). The Roasted Pork Butt with Gravy was delicious, but I really wished we’d ordered a big plate of their homemade Onion Rings.
Our other major goal of the day was to visit the McNay Art Museum. We got confused about where the entrance was and so took a nice walk along the banks of the river. After we found the entrance, we realized we should come back another day when we had more time, which is what we did.
Walk by River in San Antonio
The McNay museum is housed in a 24 room Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion of Marion Koogler McNay. She was an American painter and art teacher who inherited her father’s oil fortune. The museum is named after her. When she died, the house was bequeathed to the City of San Antonio to house the museum. Most of the art is from the 19th and 20th century European and American art by impressionists like Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keefe and Mary Cassatt. My favorite was “The Cup of Tea” by Mary Cassatt, along with many other paintings of Mary Cassatt’s women showing the every day life of women of that period.
Mary Cassatt’s “The Cup of Tea”
One of the paintings by Mary Cassatt was done in pastel on paper called “Head of Simone in a Large Plumed Hat, Looking Right”. I thought this painting would be of interest to my daughter Christy who loves to work in pastels.
One of my other favorite paintings was the Yellow and Blue Iris by Lowell Nesbitt. I thought it was by Georgia O’Keefe at first because it reminds me of her large paintings of flowers.
“Yellow and Blue Iris” by Lowell Nesbit
Also in the museum was a large painting by Claude Monet called “Nympheas” (Water Lilies)”. It was Monet’s dream to make paintings that fill a circular room. The paintings were of water lilies from his garden in Giverny, France. The painting we saw was one of the many preliminary studies for the paintings he painted on huge canvas panels that hang in a circular room at the Orangerie des Tuileries in Paris. Monet gave those paintings to the French nation.
As we wandered around the museum, we found ourselves outside in the beautiful interior garden with palm trees and fountains and koi ponds. One fish was monstrous!
Courtyard at McNay Art Museum
Outside the museum were many modern sculptures. By then, we were tired and decided to head home.
Texas has 254 counties. Texas state is so vast that the founders wanted the people to be close to their local governments. By making the counties small, the people could travel back by and forth in a day by horseback or wagon to take care of their business at the local courthouse.
Our stay along the Colorado River (the Texas Colorado River) gave us a chance to visit a couple of these courthouses at Columbus, in Colorado County and at La Grange, in Fayette County.
Columbus, Texas Courthouse
As we walked around the grounds of the Columbus courthouse, we noticed the beautiful stonework of the building. The different colors are different kinds of stone. Although we didn’t go inside the building, there is a Tiffany-style skylight in the dome. Historical accounts say that the original court business was held under an oak tree by Judge Robert M. Williamson (“Three Legged Willie”), before the courthouse was built.
There are other historical buildings close to the courthouse that we visited briefly. On the corner of the courthouse lawn, there is a water tower. It’s now a museum. The old Opera House is still in use today as a performing arts theater. A block or so away is one of the few remaining original carriage steps that people would step on as they got out of their carriages. There’s also an old log cabin that is furnished with period style furnishings within a block or so of the courthouse.
Water Tower
Old Theater
Carriage Step
Log House
A few miles away in Fayette County, we visited La Grange Courthouse. Fayette County was named for Marquis de la Fayette, a Revolutionary War hero. As in most towns, the oldest and most interesting buildings surround the courthouse square. We decided against visiting the Texas Quilt Museum because of our limited time. Perhaps we will save it for another time.
We did, however, take a look inside of the courthouse. What a surprise! Inside was a beautiful sunken garden atrium complete with a large fountain and tropical plants. The current courthouse was built in 1891 in a Romanesque Revival style using four types of Texas stone on the exterior—Belton white limestone, Muldoon blue sandstone, Pecos red sandstone and Burnet granite. Around the hallways of the inside was a small museum of its history including pictures of past court judges.
La Grange Courthouse
Atrium in La Grange Courthouse
Our Colorado River Campground was situated right near the banks of the river. I took several walks and enjoyed the scenery especially in the evening sunsets. This Colorado River is not the same as the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and western states. This is the Texas Colorado. The name means the same—“colored red”.
