The Turner Family

We took our mid-afternoon meal today at Johnson's Boucaniere in Lafayette. (We have a tendancy to eat two meals a day when we are on the road, one early, and one mid-afternoon or later.) Johnson's is a small walk-in place in an older home, situated in a nice old neighborhood. There are no tables inside, but the porch on the north side of the house has tables that could seat at least 30. That's where we feasted. They offer mostly cajun and smoked foods. They had several specials  today, including a pulled pork sandwich (Kay) and smoked pork ribs with corn bread (Bil). Everyday they prepare boudin, a cajun sausage (Bil). Boudin is a sausage made from pork, rice, onions and spices. I have had it twice before, and it's growing on me. The skin has always seemed to be like very thin leather, but steaming hot - it is inedible. The filling is ground very fine, and after cooking is like a very thick paste - actually as I write this, I ...

Boca Chica is a very small village about 15 miles straight east of Brownsville, about 2 miles from the Gulf, and a mile north of the Rio Grand. It was founded about 100 years ago by a hustler who advertised it heavily in Poland. He sold parcels to about 2000 investors. Thirty two houses were built. There are now 6 permanent residents. Water is trucked in from Brownsville. It's a very desolate area - the soil is so salty and sandy that virtually nothing grows. One photo shows the gas station/ bait shop at the entrance to the village. Folks surf fish in the gulf. Kay is standing by a group of floats that mark the entrance to the village. In the photo of Bil, the land over his shoulder is a wide salt flats, with low dunes about 2 miles behind him. Those dunes are at the Gulf. Apparently, depending on the storms and tides, sometimes the land along the shore becomes a barrier island, and the salt flats become full of sea water. We can only wonder what the weather ...

Don't laugh ! Snow on South Padre Island, even a trace of snow, doesn't happen once in 10 years. So this was a big deal. The little triangle of snow on our balcony was about 1" deep. We had a bad cold snap last Wednesday through Friday, the same days you in Michigan got a big dose of snow. We were actually at the bottom end of the same front that brought you the snow. The temp got down to about 27/28 two nights in a row. Thursday night it spit snow and freezing rain. The bridge that connects the island is 3 miles long and was a sheet of ice. The State put sand on the bridge, but they ultimately closed the bridge entirely about midnight. They re-opened it the next day at noon. The municipal systems down here seem sort of fragile, and our power went down both nights, and the water pressure reduced dramatically on Thursday night. Nearly all the maintenance people who work on the island live on the mainland, so they could not get to work and make things right. E...

I thought I'd post some pictures from South Padre Island, so you can get a flavor of our environment. We are on the 1st floor of the building, just right of center. There are two floors below us, but they are the parking garage - the big blank wall shown here. Kay shown standing on our balcony. It's a 2 bdrm, 2 bath. The living room/kitchen area is quite small, but it's adequate for us. We see parasail surfers whenever the winds are up - which is almost always. The parasail shown is the view from our balcony. There are a couple of drilling platforms straight out from our building, perhaps 3 or 4 miles out. There are usually a couple of ships anchored out that far, waiting for a slot in the Brownsville harbor. The urban picture is taken from the top (11th) floor of our buiding, looking north. The farthest buildings are less than a mile away, and mark the end of the developed part of the island. The island goes on for perhaps 50 miles, but is a wilderness. You can ...

Tiffani and my one word DALMAC summary: awesome! The weather was occasionally brutal , poor enough for some of the rest of the time, and delightful on the final day. But the sheer fact of riding 325 miles over 4 days with (dwindling) like-minded people was really inspiring. Then, a day off for Labor Day , and WHAM! Back to school and my new job. The timeline of our DALMAC: Day 1 Thursday's route took us from the  MSU Pavilion to Vestaburg, which we managed by 1 or so P.M. But, of course there was a complication: in all of the lists and preparations , I had decided to chill our four water bottles in the refrigerator, and you can sense where this narrative is going: we discovered they were left at home when we were en route with Dad and the kids to our departure spot. And Dad, of course, shoved the slight panic aside by volunteering to drop us off, then retrieve our bottles, and meet us somewhere north later that morning. We hooked up with an ex-student and -athlete of m...

Looking for an opportunity to camp in our new RV before the summer closes and fall activities begin, we got lucky with a final minute reservation -- the last available site -- at Yankee Springs State Recreation Area , on Gun Lake . Packing, then driving an hour southwest, pulling into the site, we were setup in no time and swimming soon after. This trip's purpose was to familiarize ourselves with the workings of the rig before our planned big trip next summer, and the whole endeavor proved successful. The refrigerator and freezer worked cold and flawlessly, the stovetop boiled water, the microwave reheated coffee, and we slept with just the vents and windows open on Friday, but the air conditioner blowing freezing cold Saturday night. Another nice feature included the space to unwind, stretch out, or change one's own scenery as you're traveling. A quick cleanup and loading later, departure this morning from the campground was quick: overall, a comfortable success. Thanks...

Our last afternoon and evening in Germany was spent in Friesen , a medium sized town north of Munich and near the Munich airport. We had a fine time strolling the cobblestoned alleys that led from one street to the next. The highlight of the day (at least for me) was the evening meal at the beirstube of the Weihenstephan Brewery. A monastery was established in Friesen about the year 1000 AD. The monks started brewing beer about 1040, giving the brewery a creditable claim to being the oldest continuing brewery in the world. I've had the beer b efore , purchased in Lansing, but now I have a clear picture of where it starts its journey. Some time ago an agricultural and technical college started around the monastery . All of these: monastery , brewery and college are stretched along the top of a long narrow hill. The buildings gardens and walls are all arranged handsomely . The photos are: the vaulted cellar room where we ate, Meg in a small formal garden, and the restau...

The backdrop for this photo is the Grote Kerk , or Great Church, in Haarlem. Our hotel was across the street from this nice old church. We walked over the tombs of the hundreds of people who were buried in the floors as we toured the building. This one-hour boat cruise through the canals in Haarlem was a great way to see the city. We had time to have a beer and some apple tart just prior in an old weighing station that still had three heavy balances that were used to weigh goods as they were taken out of the cargo boats in the canal. As you can tell it was a rainy day as exited the cafe for the boat ride. The draw bridge in the background was bridge number five. It was tended by a woman who had been doing the job for years. She cruised around on her moto to the four or five bridges she was responsible for as the larger boats made their way up and down the canals. A better view of the Grote Kerk, but with a crazy teenager in the foreground.

Here's a few photos from Amsterdam. Meg is standing in front of one of Sarah's favorite lunch places. It was great - and we arrived just before the crowd. They make both sweet and savory pancakes - very thin. I had a huge thin pancake with onions and tomatoes. Wonderful place, Sarah ! This is a typical medium sized canal scene. The boats are mostly old canal cargo boats converted into living quarters - and they are everywhere along the medium sized canals. Most of the larger boats looked like they never moved, folks just lived in them. A few of the smaller ones appeared as if they could move under their own power. There are shops on the ground floor of many of the buildings, with apartments above. This is the Anne Franke house - just a couple blocks from Pancake place. The line to go in was more than a block long and it was raining, so we chose not to wait. The entrance to the tour was a few doors to the right. Everyone is pointing at the sign because I hadn't unde...

Ahni, take note: Beginning in May , hikers seeking to conquer Yosemite 's Half Dome will be required to fill out a backcountry permit and pay $1.50 for the privilege. We're going to have to plan ahead.

Texas Kites

Hello All, We have attached some pictures of and from our South Padre Island place. Two photos from the balcony, looking south then north. It was sort of hazy. Some days the visibility is great. There are often fishermen in the surf every hundred yards or so. Not too many swimmers yet. The apartment reminds me of something those "wild and crazy guys" from SNL might have wanted. The entertainment center seems to be from the 70s – in fact the whole place does. It's virtually all red, white and black. There were "decorator items" on every flat surface in the place. We concentrated many of them on or near the entertainment center, to get them out of our way. The two bedrooms are shown. The black and white squares on one wall are actually blocks of styrofoam glued on to the wall. Lots of mirrors in both bedrooms. We're told by others in the building that the place was redecorated a couple of years ago, and that it was even more weird before.     ...

Snow's BBQ Texas Monthly Magazine has rated Snow's BBQ as the #1 place in Texas to eat barbecue. When deciding on such subjective matters as ranking the taste of food, it's difficult for me to conclude that one establishment is the best of all. It should also be said that we have not eaten as widely as the judges for Texas Monthly Magazine. However, I don't think the magazine was wrong in placing Snow's BBQ in a very small group, say the top 2%, of all that they have sampled. I believe their scouts visited more than 300 barbecue houses. It's not easy to arrange a visit, with Snow's schedule as restrictive as it is, but the memory of the brisket will make me want to find a way to return. We learned of Snow's BBQ thanks to an alert last year by Harry Turner. Harry sent us an article that Calvin Trillin had written in The New Yorker about a virtually unknown small barbecue house being named the best place in Texas. Each year Texas Monthly Magazine ...

It goes without saying that there are many famous barbeque restaurants in Memphis. Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Q  falls in that group. We have eaten at Interstate once before, in January of 2002, on our first trip to Texas. At that time we had almost no barbeque experience, and so we just looked in the Memphis Yellow Pages and went to a place that sounded promising. Since then we have seen this establishment featured on several television shows and in many reviews of great barbeque houses in the US. As an aside, Jim Neely is the uncle of the Neelys who have a weekly show on the Food Network. Interstate was our second choice today. We attempted to eat at the equally renowned Rendezvous in downtown Memphis, only to find it closed for the entire New Years weekend. Memphis barbeque is quite varied with some dry rubbed only, some rubbed and sauced and some with sauce only. We're also told that the Memphis sauces are quite varied, as compared to Texas or the Carolinas where th...

The weather was wonderful, so we found ourselves out in Jack and Jenny's neighborhood, at Charlotte's Country Mill on Sunday. We enjoyed fresh cider, doughnuts, and intimate interactions with the entirety of Eaton County's bee population. (This post is being published not only to show off pictures of our kids, but to also push the airshow blog entry to an older page, to keep the video and audio portions of that entry from automatically loading and irritating our readers.)

Jack telephoned yesterday to say that he and Jenny couldn't use their 4 MSU football tickets for the September 5th game with Montana State, as they were traveling north for the Labor Day holiday. Of course, we jumped at the opportunity. This was the maiden game for Nick and Seamus, Sophia attended one with Tiffani and me when she was about 9 months old. Here we are tailgating out of Dolores ' boot in Lot 39. The lot was a great mix of sunburned, over-enthused college drunkards, cigar-smoking Cadillac drivers, and serious buffet-serving RV types and tent erectors. We had a great tailgate experience ourselves, the menu consisting of chips , fried chicken, and cookies , along with some football tossing. Pictured above is the halftime show, the military is unfurling a gigantic American flag. The seats were amazing ( much thanks Jenny and Jack! ), right near the 20 yard line, and we were shaded by the upper deck's overhang almost the entire game; I'm sure those seats are p...

If for no other reason but to stimulate blog submissions, enclosed is our second weekend activity, a trip up to the St. Johns Mint Festival with just Tiffani and Sophia. Even hotter than the previous day at the air show, we walked around the craft (crap) show, attempted to buy some mint ice cream -- inexplicably, they were out! It's the primary reason for attending?! Sophia refused an elephant ear (heat? or the chance that they were actually derived from elephant's ears?), and we paid a buck to wander through a packed little trailer with exotic and sometimes poisonous reptiles. Here's Sophia with an oversized bunny and a tortoise... And now with an unfortunately-penned junior crocodile... And again with the tortoise and stew-ready rabbits -- that white one could feed a small village, eh Jason? -- complete with Tiffani and the hind-end of a male kangaroo. Incidentally, why are people currently insisting on taking their dogs everywhere? Just as the bottom picture was taken...

Noting in the previous Sunday's Lansing State Journal that there would be an air show at Mason's Jewett Field , the little kids and Tiffani and I piled in Dolores for a hot afternoon at the airport. The highlight of the show was to be a B-17 bomber, the Yankee Lady , part of the Yankee Air Museum organization. The event drew a bit of a crowd , and folks were lined up to pay $425 apiece to ride the giant, mature, historic aircraft, one of only twelve still flying. Because of the weather, we parked ourselves in the shade of a hangar, just adjacent to the plane, wondering what the expectant crowd was all doing watching this beast too. But, we learned it was about to takeoff, so with the approaching start of the engines, Tiff and the kids left to a distance safer for eardrums. It's interesting how long of a process it is to start these engines, each motor taking quite a bit of spinning and warming up before full combustion, one engine at a time. Inside motors first, right t...