Where's the flowers????

This week has been a lazy, restful week with a scattering of trips here and there.  Mostly we have stuck pretty close to the RV enjoying the beautiful weather, good company and good food.  We only ate out at a commercial restaurant one time this week.  We decided to eat at Mamacita’s in Fredericksburg and enjoyed the meal very much.  If you go, try the Verde sauce on your chicken enchilada, chicken flautas or whatever.  It is really good.

Mostly we ate home cooked meals via Sophie and Bibi.  Things such as Mexican Stack, Oven Fried Chicken, grilled pork chops, grilled ribeye steaks with all the trimmings such as Red Lobster style biscuits, Olive Garden style salad and veggies galore.  Thank you ladies for keeping us fed so well.  We have not even grilled a burger or a hot dog yet.  Of course with all the feasts and the great weather comes the desire to be outside.  We have apps on the phones to measure how many steps taken daily so we are comparing notes every day as to our progress.   Two rounds of the RV park equal approximately one mile.  My personal goal daily is 10,000 steps.  That is equivalent to about 7 or 8 rounds of the park.  Slowly working up to it and got close one day at about 6,600 steps.  (I stopped in the middle of this writing to get in about 3,645 steps.  J )

Weather for the most part has been wonderful with high temps around 70 to 75 and low temps 50 to 60.  We have had a couple of days of rain showers but until this weekend, nothing major.  We are seeing evidence of wildflower progress and have gotten some live reports from folks indicating just south and east of Austin there are some sightings around LaGrange.  We will make a foray into the countryside next week before we leave this area to see what progress has occurred.  We are planning on a move closer to the recent sighting so we can be in-between where we are now and LaGrange.

In the meantime, the ladies took advantage of mine and David’s trip to the Pacific War Museum to do a little shopping and window shopping in downtown Fredericksburg.  They were inside a boutique shop on Main street in Fredericksburg when the lady owner came up to them and told them they looked like T-shirt people and would like the T-shirt shop just down the way a bit.  Of course, Sophie and Bibi were a bit taken back by the comment and were not quite sure how to take it at first.  Wanting to avoid any kind of a confrontation, they politely said “Thank You” and exited the boutique.  Now you do know that was the subject of conversation the rest of the day as they discussed voice inflection, facial expression, etc. from their memories in an effort to discern the intent of the shop owner.  Just sayin’.

All this time David and I were enjoying the museum which is in multiple parts, including the hotel Admiral Chester Nimitz’s grandfather built and owned where the admiral worked growing up.  Also there are outdoor displays along with an area that has re-enactments during the year.  The main displays are inside and trace the reasons for growing Japanese aggression prior to WWII leading to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the campaigns in the Pacific theater during the war to the unconditional surrender finally in late 1945.

Both of our fathers were in the military during WWII.  It was interesting for both of us to learn more about David’s father’s service while in the museum.  He was on Leyte and Okinawa during the war.  I had only heard about Leyte in terms of the Japanese Navy being all but destroyed during the Leyte campaign and found out there is a lot more to the story than just that piece.  We counted 13 Medal of Honor recipients that received the medal for their actions during the October to December 1944 campaign on Leyte.

This led me to do some research and I found out that Leyte is where General Douglas MacArthur stepped foot onshore returning to the Philippines making his famous speech where he announced, “People of the Philippines, I have returned!”  It is also the first time in the war the desperate Japanese resorted to Kamikaze airplane attacks.  The Japanese fully committed naval and land forces in the defense of Leyte and suffered huge defeats.  So much so that their navy was all but nonexistent the rest of the war, land based planes were essentially controlled by American air power and the land forces were constantly fighting from defensive positions as they were driven from the Philippines.  David’s dad took part in this effort as he drove a LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) and we saw a picture of some exactly like he drove on a huge wall in the museum as they headed toward the beach during a landing.  These experiences really bring history to life.

Well that is all for now but come back next week as we report on our return to Enchanted Rock, wildflower foraging and the upcoming move.  Until then, don’t miss out of your own adventures.