It was very nice to get here as the landscape has changed dramatically already and we are only about 120 miles north and east of Lake Charles, LA. Just to place it we are about 60 miles north of Houston.
The scenery is rolling hills, very tall pines and assorted hardwoods. The catfishing is supposed to be spectacular and the mosquito's are as strong as anywhere else in the woods in the south. Yoo Hooo!
We left Lake Charles yesterday morning after having spent Monday seeing Susan and Shannon off on their weeks vaca in Toledo Bend. The rest of our Monday was spent getting ready and completing any and all details requiring attention before we left. We did a bunch of laundry (including theirs, as we tried to help them out and say thanks for letting us stay with them for tow weeks, they didn't get to it while trying to get out of the house for their holiday, after a week plus spent arranging all of the details for all of the students being here for the work week), we returned the last rental car from the students, returned some movies we had rented, made some returns to Lowes from my previous attempt to make a bike holder for the new recumbent bikes we bought in Houston two weeks ago.
Megan spent time making the inside of the RV ready for the road. It takes on a different, um... atmosphere when we are stationary for two weeks. It takes on a different patina on the outside too, so I spent a couple of hours washing the RV and the car to get the SPRING TIME POLLEN off the vehicles along with any accumulated road crud. I also had to repair wiring on the tow dolly again. Sooner or later I will get the wires positioned so that they don't get pinched and break while turning. We'll See!
Later that evening we sat down to a easy rib dinner and took out all of our pre-gathered Texas pamphlets and brochures and selected a basic route to travel for the next couple of weeks. We moved the RV to a different location in their driveway that allowed us to hook up the tow dolly. I positioned the car in line behind it but left it off in case we need to go somewhere else prior to pulling out and hitting the road.
The next morning we continued to move through all of the final details and finish the laundry and get ourselves on the road. We were in the seats and roiling our way towards Texas by 10 :30 but i had a great desire to make an impromptu stop in Vinton, LA (just 4 miles before the border) at the City of Refuge where we had built last week, just to say good bye and get a final picture of the structures we had worked on. The people there were so nice, grateful and welcoming during the work week and it was no different when we arrived late this morning. They could not have been any happier unless we had answered their "Can you stay longer?" question with a Yes. We took a couple of pictures and had some conversations for the road and then we were gone.
Our next stop was to be in Orange, Texas.
We hav
e been stopping a
t any of the small interesting and appealing places we can find along the way. In this town we stopped in to the First Presbyterian Church that had some unique and notable architectural features. This building was magnificent in structure and stained glass. The photo of the Stained or Opalescent Glass on the left is taken from the inside of the second floor, which is the sanctuary, while laying on the floor between the pews. It is inside of the copper dome you see on the roof in the picture on the right. It is massive and measures about 24 feet in diameter and about 12 - 15 feet up from where the glass begins to the center peak. It was built piece by piece in place.
e been stopping a
t any of the small interesting and appealing places we can find along the way. In this town we stopped in to the First Presbyterian Church that had some unique and notable architectural features. This building was magnificent in structure and stained glass. The photo of the Stained or Opalescent Glass on the left is taken from the inside of the second floor, which is the sanctuary, while laying on the floor between the pews. It is inside of the copper dome you see on the roof in the picture on the right. It is massive and measures about 24 feet in diameter and about 12 - 15 feet up from where the glass begins to the center peak. It was built piece by piece in place. Then we headed down the road a piece to Beaumont, Texas. This place brought us to the site of the first electrical sub station here that ultimately and ostensibly changed the way this town existed. In honor of the devlopment of that utility they created a small yet interesting Thomas Edison Museum. they have a bunch of facts and hands on things to play with that illustrate the growth of use and marketing of electricity that brought us into the age of electric that we currently (pun intended) find so simple and accessible these days. 
While here we also visitied three other ornate and unusual church buildings as well as the Texas Firefighters Museum
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