It is a beautiful, bright sunny, but cool morning here in Southwest Texas.  Sharon and I arrived in Brackettville at about 1400 yesterday afternoon.  The drive up from Taft only took about five hours.  Mapquest calculated the time at just under four hours, but I don't drive the RV at the speeds that I would in a car.  It takes just a little longer that way.  Steve and Leanne Kess, one of the other NOMADS on the Taft project, were heading for Kerrville, Texas when we left Taft.  They had made that trip several time and knew of a route that we could take to keep from going to San Antonio.  So, we decided to follow them.  I think that without Steve's leading me the way we went, we would have hit a lot of traffic around San Antonio making the trip longer.  Steve, thanks for the fine routing.  Scenery along the back highways is much better than on the interstate too.

We are at the RV park at Fort Clark Springs, which is just across the highway from the town of Brackettville.  Fort Clark was an old army fort that was established in 1852.  It was closed in 1946, just after WWII.  Some of the famous army Generals that served here were General's Patton, and Wainwright.  I will post a little more about Fort Clark during our stay here.  The park is very nice.  There a lot of Winter Texans here.  For those that aren't familiar with Winter Texans, they are northerns that come south in their RV's for the winter.  Many from way up north.  Of course, for us southern boys, anything above the Tennessee-Kentucky state line is way up north.

Ralph and Virginia Wiggers, our team leaders for this project were already here when we arrived.  We are parked next to them.  They took us for a little tour of the large city of Brackettville.  If Ralph hadn't gone down the same streets two or more times, the tour would have taken about five minutes.  It is a typical, small Texas town.  I was impressed with the many old buildings still standing.  Many made from the local stone, sort of a sandy yellow color.  Fortunately there is a nice grocery store since it is at least 35 miles to the closest big town.

This morning I went to a breakfast sponsered by some of the Winter Texans.  For $3.50 they serve you all you can eat pancakes, eggs, sausage, juice, and coffee.  It was pretty good.  But, I did get some pretty good stares when I ask if they had GRITS.  Oh, well, guess I will have to wait on the grits.

With the work at the church, which I believe will be installed a new tile floor in the fellowship hall, there are many activities planned for us.  The church has some plans, and the RV park has many activities to participate in.

Just a final note on our Taft project.  On Thursday, Valentines day, the local Methodist churchs sponsored a luncheon for the senior citizens in the district.  It was very nicley done.  We had a great lunch, I had a chicken dinner, some others pork.  There were a couple a men who sang song's from Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin fame.  They also did a Blues Brothers act.  They were very good.  Then there were a couple of dancers that danced some ball room dances for us.  One of the dancers was a very good looking young girl.  You would think that they would know better to have a dancer like that in front of us old men.  Heart attack time.  Oh well.

After lunch we went back to the house we had been working on and finished the clean up which included loading the left over building supplies onto a trailer to be taken back to Lowe's.  To close out the project we had a house blessting service.  The pastor of the church, John Saint, did a very nice job of the blessing service.  Sue and Brian Dixon were so happy with all that was done, and enjoyed the house blessing.  The NOMADS gave them a new bible for their partially new home.  We will miss the whole gang at the Taft First United Methodist Church, and Sue and Brian.  I hope we can get back there some other project.

Well, I guess I made a mountain out of this mole hill story.  Hope that all are doing well.

Remember, God Loves You