Perfect and Deep Love

It's birthday weekend and when you have Grandma Mail delivered before you head out, you not only take a moment to read it, but also make sure that you follow her instructions to a T.

"Have a lot of fun and create a lot of memories to last."  

I think we can make that happen!  I took several days off work on both ends of the weekend so that we could enjoy a long trip. The original plan was to spend the weekend at Huntsville SP, but they had just done a prescribed burn, and we didn't want to hang around with the possibility of smoke all weekend, so we jumped online and made reservations at our favorite hidden gem: the Texas State Railroad in Rusk.

We had a leisurely morning Friday, full caffeinated (not on purpose!), and enjoyed the easy drive up to the piney woods of east Texas. We got settled into our site, hooked up the water, and (do you hear the horror movie music yet?) found a leak fast-flowing into the basement. Oh, geez. NOT AGAIN?!

It's a good thing we purposefully keep a 5-gallon bucket down there just in case, as that caught most of the water while we worked to figure out where it was coming from.  We found a loose connection on the faucet in the bathroom, and after Rich twisted him self into a pretzel to fix it, we were settled in and looking forward to a fun weekend!

Saturday we fixed a great lunch in the camper, then took off for Tyler and several adventures to make those "memories that last" like Grandma instructed!  

Along the way to our first stop, we happened across an unexpected side quest.  RDB happened to notice an older gentleman making his way slowly across the sidewalk to the front door. "Probably going for a cup of coffee," he said. 

"At the post office?" I questioned.  

Come to find out the old post office had been transformed into a really nice coffee shop!

We enjoyed our cups of coffee as we made our way to our first stop: the Plantation Pines Christmas Tree Farm (yes, Christmas trees!) for their spring seasonal crop: tulips!

It was such a neat adventure, though I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I could have while we were there, I certainly have enjoyed looking at the boquet I picked here in the camper all weekend.

From there we went over to the Tyler Junior College's Earth and Space Science Center where the Hudnall Planetarium is celebrating it's 60th anniversary this year!

RDB and I both have the northern lights on our bucket list of travels someday, but since that's not in the budget for this birthday, we settled in for a showing of Extreme Auroras filmed in 360* panorama in Norway.

We were heading back towards the camper and RDB had a hankering for a steak, so a quick Yelp search had us u-turning back towards downtown. I'm telling you, sometimes we have the best luck on those u-turns and side quests  in our adventures, because we found ourselves dinning at the Petroleum Club's Prime 102 right across the street from the Smith County courthouse!

Not bad for an impromptu birthday dinner!

Sunday we spent the day relaxing around the campsite, enjoying my fresh-picked flowers, and watching local LAFF TV. 

As Sigmund Freud once said: "Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.” 

It was a perfect day, with perfect weather, for hanging out in the hammock and enjoying the quiet peacefulness of the park. 

Monday we did a little more exploring around Rusk - starting with a coffee and muffin at The Daily Grind, before heading over to the Rusk footbridge - said to be the nation's longest footbridge at 546 feet.

It also happens to be the home of the 75th geocache we've found along our adventures!

We did a bit of geocaching around the area - surprised that we hadn't done this before with as many times as we've been here to Rusk.  (And we can add one more to the roster, as we'll be back camping here again in April for the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse.  Tyler, just an hour up the road, is in the path of totality.)

This was a great weekend of memory making, and I couldn't help but notice as we went on our many adventures that there were hearts EVERYWHERE...

I'm pretty sure Grandma was sending her love along the way. 

We were in site #12, full hook-ups, at Texas State Railroad Campground in Rusk. The trains weren't running this weekend, but we still love this park. We had the entire place to ourselves with the exception of one other camper - who appears to be a long-term tenant, the camp host, perhaps?  A shift from the last visit - the park is no longer first-come-first-serve, now you can make site-specific reservations, which I think is great! But do me a favor: don't tell anyone! We still want this quiet little park all to ourselves!

We've been here several times before: Believe, Valentine's Camping, A Gift: Long Weekend, Long Post, Easter Weekend, and Blessed.

Believe

 

RDB and I were super excited for this weekend - because we're finally getting a chance to camp with KD & the Vowels!  We were so grateful that everything lined up just right for us to be able to camp at one of our favorite campgrounds (the Texas State Campground in Rusk) AND get to share the magic of the Polar Express with them!  K joked at one point: perhaps RDB and I are living vicariously thru them? (Spoiler alert: why yes, yes we are!)

We checked into the campground before sunset on Thursday; for dinner, we took a short trip north into Jacksonville and had dinner at The Jalapeno Tree.  When we checked in, chatting with the office host, she informed us we couldn't' save a spot - the entire park would be full with several 'groups' of camper.  We've never seen this park full, but can certainly understand why: everyone's excited about taking a ride on the Polar Express!!  

To jump straight to my review of our magical experience, go here.

But we purposefully kept it a secret from the Vowels (to explain: the girls' names all start with a vowel: A, E, I, and O!) so that Sunday night, our last night camping, we could truly surprise them with the Christmas trip of a lifetime. (And if you've followed my blog long enough, you'll know how much of a railfan I am, too, so this was the perfect excuse for me to give my inner child the gift of a Polar Express train ride, too!) 

Friday afternoon KD & the Vowels (and their trusty - er well, rusty - steed, Howie) rolled into camp and settled into a spot beside us.  We started up a fire in the fire pit for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, and heating up the cast iron pans to sear the steaks we were sous-viding for the adults for dinner.

With four Girl Scouts, one troop mother, and the daughter of an Eagle Scout in attendance, we got the fire started in no time (and I had the fire hose ready to go, you know, just in case!) 

It was a delicious evening of steaks, s'mores, and hanging out by the campfire, and enjoying the time outside, knowing that most of Saturday it was going to rain, rain, rain.

Perhaps the sweetest moment that evening was when "I" came over and said: "Miss Sarah, you know what I haven't done today?" "What's that," I answered.  "Hug you!"  and then proceeded to give me the sweetest little hug.  My heart melted like a roasted marshmallow at that!

Sure enough on Saturday morning we woke to rain.  

A slow, laid back day ensued.

RDB and I went into town for lunch (back to The Jalapeno Tree again - yes, it was that good!) and then into Rusk to see the Cherokee County courthouse. With the cold front that the rain brought in, we didn't dawdle, just grabbing a few photos and then heading back over to the campground.  Reading the historical placards just now, I realized that I'm drawn to the art-deco styling of this building (and others like it, too).

Back at the campground, I was ready for KD and the Vowels to come over and decorate cookies! I had purchased a few of Color My Cookie's Christmas kits and was incredibly impressed with what arrived: everything we needed to watercolor cookies, including paintbrushes, a cookie "palate" of icing paint, extra liquid icing, sprinkles, even edible silver paint! K warned me not to put out the sprinkles and extra icing unless I wanted to find sprinkles in my camper for months to come... even without those additions, the girls had an absolute blast coloring cookies!

They were such a success! Little to no mess and we LOVED the way they all turned out!

I couldn't help but laugh that both "E" and I had our serious crafting faces on while we were painting our cookies.

Of course, after the girls left, I did break out the extra goodies to put a little more pizazz on mine. ;-)

I would 100% recommend Color My Cookie Decorating Kits because not only were they packaged in a way that you could send it straight from the vendor as a gift to someone, but the cookies themselves were as delicious as they were fun!  "O" totally approves!

Done with our craft for the day, we all grabbed a cookie (or two!) and settled in to watch a movie in the camper - The Polar Express of course!  

By this point,  the oldest of the girls, "A," had figured out that the 'adventure' of this weekend was likely more than just camping ("K" did a great job of throwing the Littles off the trail when they pulled into the campground Friday and immediately saw the "Polar Express" advertisement by saying 'maybe it's just their theme for Christmas?').  "E" cracked us up at the scene where the elf with a very raspy voice tries to reassure the little boy to "just trust me" with his Christmas present when she commented: "I'm not trusting an elf with that kind of voice!" Regardless, we enjoyed one of the themes of the movie:

Saturday evening, with the rain finally behind us, we lit up another fire and enjoyed some true winter weather - it was dropping quickly down to 49*! "I" brought over her game Disney Color Brain and we played a few round in the camper - during which she throughly kicked my butt! Looks like I need to catch up on my Disney shows before our trip to Walt Disney World in March next year! 

Sunday morning we all slept in; well, we slept in,  I have a feeling the Vowels had K and D up at the crack of dawn again - when you're all sleeping in 20 feet of space, when one kid is up, all the kids are up!  All the girls went for a walk, eventually meeting D over at the lake - he had brought along two new RC toys - a couple of small boats.  When I asked him, why two?, he said: "Why get just one when you can have twice the fun for twice the price?"  That - and having four kids means it's easier to share two than just one.  

But the fun didn't stop with just the boats, as RDB had purchased another DJI drone  - the DJI FPV (First Person View).  It's a totally different way to play with remote controlled flight and RDB, D, "A," and me all had a turn flying it.  It was surprisingly easy to operate and lots of fun!

"Please don't break it. Please don't break it."

Not to be outdone, D brought out the mini-drones their family had purchased (this time, four of them, well, because four kids!) These were so cool that I couldn't help but buy two for RDB and me (Merry Christmas, hun!) Getting these two guys together always results in some kind of electronic fun!

RDB and I drove into Palestine for lunch and to 'chase the train' during a one of its other Polar Express runs that afternoon.  Lunch at Giovani's didn't disappoint, but we were a little bummed when we realized that the motive power for the day was one of the TSRR's diesel engines, not the steam engine as we had hoped.  We also took the opportunity to go over to the Anderson County courthouse and snag a few pictures and a geocache. 

Sunday night the big event was finally here!  The Littles still hadn't figured out that we were going on the train ride (we told them I knew a great place to go see Christmas lights and they all piled into the Jeep).

To see the excitement in their faces when we finally told them (standing in the parking lot next to the big steam train!) and their hugs and 'thank yous' all throughout the evening are 100% the reason for the season to me.

I've dedicated an entire post to the experience, because there was so much good and fun and joy (and this post is already so long!). You can read about the Texas State Railroad Polar Express here.

This post, as the whole weekend, was long and stretched out. Its as if time stood still for us to enjoy the magic of everything this trip had in store - from good friends to fun activities, to awesome experiences and great memories. This one was a long time in the making; I think we first wanted to camp with KD and the Vowels over a year ago and it was definitely worth the wait!

We were at the Texas State RailRoad Campground, site, um 12? (it's first come first served, and the sites aren't numbered very clearly, except on the map). We truly love this park - the only downside is the road noise during the day.  First time here with the 5th wheel, and we had no problem finding a large enough site - in fact, there were probably 3-4 other 5'ers in the park this weekend; however, with it being first-come-first-served for sites, you may want to plan to come in on a Thursday (especially in the holiday season) so you can grab one of the larger sites. 

We've been here several times before: Valentine's Camping, A Gift: Long Weekend, Long Post, Easter Weekend, and Blessed. 

For more camping photos, go here.

And for a drive thru of the campground, go here.