Hello, Texas Miata Roundup!!

Howdy and welcome to the "unofficial" photo hub for the 2022 Texas Miata Roundup hosted by the Houston Miata Club!

That's me, Sarah Jo, and our 2021 Mazda MX5 RF (Joy) in the background.  I was the one on the other side of the iPhone asking you to say 'cheese' at some point this weekend.   You may have met my hubby, Rich, taking videos with the drone along the way.

You might be asking - what are you doing here on a camping blog?  RDB and I started this blog 10 years ago to document our camping adventures, and this year when we purchased Joy we decided to take a detour and add our Miata fun into the mix. 

Freddy Riggs, the Houston Club President, asked me to be the "officially unofficial" club photographer for this weekend's events, and since I had the blog, I figured this would be a quick and easy way to get everyone access to the photos and videos Rich and I captured.

We hope you enjoyed the runs, made new friends and had lots of fun, we sure did!

CLICK HERE to go to the Flikr page with our photos.

You can also go to my full write up here: 2022 Texas Miata Roundup

And here are a few videos RDB made over the weekend:

Feel free to stick around, #ENJOYN the adventures with us! You can always search for 'Mazda' on the upper left hand corner of this blog to see our Miata-specific posts. (And if you can't see a column to the right side of the screen - scroll down to the bottom and hit 'view web version')

Be safe, have a great weekend, and we'll see you around!

Sarah Jo and Rich, and our Mazda, Joy

Game Over.

Well, the waiting games are over. 

I found out Monday morning my Sr leader has chosen not to hire me to fill the position I spent the better part of three months covering while my boss was on leave; instead, he's brought in two of his prior colleague/friends to fill the open positions.  

After 17 successful years with this business unit, stepping in to lead both virtual teams for the better part of the summer, and taking the past seven years to focus on gaining the skills and experience needed to be in the right space to take one of those WRL roles, this hurts. 

On top of that, since my role is being eliminated in the reorganization of our teams, my leadership responsibilities will be stripped from me, my associates distributed across the other leaders' teams, and I have till the end of the year to find another role at the company, step back into an individual contributor role, or take a severance and leave the firm. 

Just. WOW. 

./`./` Behold the bitten apple, the power of the tools

But all the knowledge in the world is of no use to fools

And it's a long road out of Eden." ./`./`

It's a long road out of Eden, indeed.

παιχνίδι αναμονής

./`./` "I heard some wise man say 
that every dog will have his day; 
he never mentioned that 
these dog days could get so long..."

We spent the past week waiting for a hiring decision at work that will significantly impact my career, only to find out about quarter to five on Friday that the hiring manager would rather meet Monday morning. *sigh* At this point, I know I've done everything I can and ultimately I can't control the outcome, so RDB and I settled in at site #110 in Brazos Bend State Park to get away for the weekend, trying to make sense of it all. Y'all, career politics are Greek to me.  παιχνίδι αναμονής.....

Saturday morning we took a long walk around the camping loops in the park, chatting about Jeeps and overlanding and Casitas. Yes, we love our fifth wheel, and yet, we'd love to have a smaller rig, too! We continued the conversation on our way into town for lunch at a crazy (and I mean crazy) cafe and then made our way over to the Fort Bend County courthouse to walk around and take a few pictures.

RDB and I both had a surreal moment walking up the steps to take pictures of the building's historical plaque. The stairs of this 113 year old building are so well worn that you can immediately feel the concave granite underfoot.  Well worn, but still effectively serving a purpose.  Kinda like my heart these days.

On our way back to the park, we stopped off at the George Ranch Historical Park.  We've driven past numerous times (since we've camped at Brazos Bend numerous times) but today made it a point to drop in and do a little exploring. I'm so glad we did because they had the grounds around one of the two historical houses laid out with hundreds and hundreds of pumpkins and gourds. It was GOURDS-geous. ;-)

We only toured the 1930s George Cattle Complex and House, since we were there just an hour before closing, but we certainly want to come back again to visit the rest of the grounds (there's a mile-long paved road to walk along) and the 1890s Davis Victorian mansion - perhaps when the weather turns cooler, or the next time we're back at Brazos Bend (I know, I've said it before: so much to do around here and so close to home!)

Saturday night found us resting back in the camper, enjoying cranberry bubbly and watching Despicable Me 2.  We heard from Mr. Miata (my name for our Houston Miata Club President) confirming that we would be available to sweep a run for the upcoming 2022 Miata Club Round Up next week and asking if we could join a Zoom planning call Sunday night.  Oh, and I've officially become the Club Photographer for this event; I asked Mr. M if he minds that it'll all  be from my iPhone: "Beggars can't be choosers," he said. Ha!

We ended the night with a round of our usual three questions (What was good today? What was funny? What are you thankful for?).  It may seem a simple thing, and I may not always remember what our answers were, but those three questions every night keep me grounded in the moment.  And being in the moment is important right now. 

It was a rough night's sleep Saturday night, though, as I couldn’t get my brain to ‘turn off’ and found myself awake and worrying nearly every hour.  I finally fell fully asleep around 7am, only to wake about three hours later, still frustrated. It’s hard to rest when there is so much uncertainty about my job, something I’ve loved for 17 years, even as much as I love camping. It’s almost impossible to come to terms with what is happening right now (and sorry to be so vague - there’s just not much I want to share until I know what tomorrow brings). Needless to say, I'm trying to keep my Worry Less playlist on repeat this weekend. 

Sunday morning we went for another long walk in the park, this time taking advantage of one of the many trails that BBSP has to offer. And I'm so glad we did! 

Half way around one of the lakes there is an observation tower, several stories tall, that gives you an incredible view of the prairies and wetlands that the 5,000 acre park boasts. It was startling to see the high water lines from the flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017; I'm a short 5'4" and you can see that I would have been completely underwater and then some!

The walk around the lake gave us a chance to really enjoy the wildlife that the park boasts about - turtles, frogs, lots of birds, and of course, no trip to Brazos Bend would be complete without an alligator sighting; and this time, it was one of the best yet!  From the tower view, we could see several people gathered around a corner of the pond, so we made our way down to see what it was....

While there, we met Rick, a park volunteer and explorer-extraordinaire. You could tell he was passionate and knowledgable about the park, the wildlife and the surrounding area.  He shared his website with me and I can tell we both enjoy writing about our varied adventures.  I really enjoyed his page on Spoonbills (we saw one on our walk, too; such cool pink birds!)

As we stood there chatting, another LARGE gator ever so quietly lifted his head out of the water. It was incredible how stealthy he was - we'd been talking for a solid 10 minutes and never even knew he was there.

It's such a beautiful park; you can totally understand why people can spend decades exploring and enjoying the place.

We cleaned up a bit and had lunch (we brought salads with us from our fav place, Salata) and then jumped in the truck for another adventure down to Bazoria County to get a picture of their historical courthouse. Or well, courthouseS, as they have more than one!

And there were other neat things to check out there in Angleton:

I've driven past this statue of Steven F Austin at least a hundred times going back and forth to the chemical plants down in Freeport when I used to travel for work.  It was cool to finally have a chance to stop and check him out!

The weekend felt years-long as we packed up to head home and the sun began to set.  As I finish up this blog post, it'll be just a few more hours of the waiting game before I know what my future holds at work.  I wish we could shine some light on what's waiting around the bend....

"I've been waiting in the weeds,     

waiting for my time to come around again..." ./`./`

PS: kudos if you figured out what the title of my post means.

Living in High Cotton

Friday evening I was texting a.Fox on our drive out to Lake Sommerville State Park and said that it was a bummer to leave out later than we had hoped, but when the universe gives you the gift of a sunset sky like that? Yeah, can't really be upset about it. 

It's been a very intense month at work as my business unit is going thru a reorg, new role for associates, and manager realignments which impact my team... and me.  There's so much in flux and only so much I can control; I'm just trying to say focused and worry less.

Even with the upcoming changes, there are still lots of positives at work this season - it's open enrollment and the company is doing "Benefits Boardwalks" in the regional centers; for those of us who are remote, we had the opportunity to have a 'benefits fair in a box' sent to us.  UPS delivered the SnackMagic box as we were just about to leave, so I brought it along. RDB and I have loved snacking on the goodies I picked out! 

Late Saturday morning we went into town to have brunch.  Y'all - sometimes we stumble upon the BEST little places, and this weekend was no different. We went into town to the Blue Willow Cafe and were super happy with our expereince there.  Have the blueberry lemon curd muffin - it is worth every single carb!

Afterwards we drove the give-or-take two blocks over to the Texas Cotton Gin Museum.  We've seen the sign advertising it on 290 every time we drive past Burton, and so it only made sense to drop in today and check it out. 

I'm glad we did! Steph was on staff and gave us a quick introduction - you can tell she is both knowledgeable and passionate about the place. We watched a short movie about the historic Burton gin and the community around it that keeps it in running, functional condition even today - 108 years after it was first built!

Interesting fact: cotton fibers can hold water 24–27 times their own weight and a typical cotton bale weights 500lbs. 

Interesting fact: Tall cotton bushes are easier to pick and yield higher returns, so if you're living “in high cotton,” you feel successful and well off.

Interesting fact: cotton "gin" is short for engine - the power that separates the seeds from the fibers. 

There's no cost to tour the small museum, but donations are accepted; you can pay a small fee for a guided tour of the actual gin itself (we chose not to this time) or you can come back on the third weekend of April for the Annual Cotton Gin Festival where they not only show off all-things-cotton but fire up the engine (Lady B) and gin a few bales of cotton.  Doing this each year keeps their designation of the oldest operating cotton gin of this vintage in the county.

It was a neat walk down memory lane for me as I thought back to childhood with the cotton fields near our house and the way I thought it looked like "snow" on the sides of the roads during harvest.  Occasionally Mom would pull over and let us kids pick up a few of the bolls of cotton that had flown off the harvesting trucks, so I've seen the natural, raw material up close and personal before.  I couldn't help but wonder about the history of the long-defunct community cotton gin there on the outskirts of town that we passed every day of my youth. 

It's a real treasure that the Burton community has made such an effort to keep this part of Texas heritage alive for so long. RDB and I are already considering coming back for next year's Cotton Gin Festival. 

Keeping with the historic theme, we drove the short distance over to Giddings to visit the Lee County courthouse.  The entire block around the building, erected in 1898, is fenced off as there appears to be construction taking place.  Such a bummer, because this one, like the Ellis County courthouse we visited last weekend, is unique in that the entrances are at the corners of the building rather than on a side. (I still managed to get a semi-decent picture with my phone held on the other side of the chainlink fence.)

Back at the campsite, we set up the hammock and a chair and spent some time (achoo!) in the beautiful (achoo!) fresh country (ACHOO!) air.  It's ragweed season and though I've diligently been taking my Claritin every night, I didn't notice the ones here in the camper are expired.... so this weekend I'm suffering thru the sneezes. And the watery eyes. And the itchy ears (what is UP with that?!)

But it's worth the seasonal allergies to get to enjoy moments like this:

Saturday we got up and made a day of driving the two units of Lake Somerville SP for our Park n' Drive YouTube channel. Between the two we drove into Brenham and had lunch at a little place on the square: 30 North Gastropub. It was a neat little spot with decent food and a great atmosphere.  We're always happy when a place has cauliflower crusts for the pizza, and theirs was really crisp and delicious!

We walked over to the town square, having not realized till we drove thru town that Brenham is the county seat of Washington county.  So, another courthouse picture to add to the collection. (I wonder at this point: how many courthouses out of the 254 counties in Texas have RDB and I visited? And why does Texas have so many counties anyway?)

We made our way back over to the camper and started packing up for the drive home, grateful to have a park so close that we can spend the better part of Sunday enjoying ourselves and still be home at a decent hour.  Looking at my work calendar for the next few days (12 back-to-back meetings on Monday, 14 back-to-back on Tuesday) has me really wishing we could just stay at camp and rest and relax, but change is in the air.... here's to hoping it's not as frustrating as the ragweed that is still driving me nuts! 

Achoo!

We were at Lake Somerville State Park - Nails Creek Unit Site #50.  See that big tree to the left? It got a haircut when we got in late Friday night (and just a note: being on a ladder perched against the side of the camper, trying to prune off inch-thick branches with hand shears while fighting off hoards of flying bugs is NOT my idea of a good time) but the next camper who pulls in will be grateful we took that extra step to clear the roofline.  And see the clump of trees on the right? Yeah, those suckers got the tail end of our camper leaving when we swung wide to miss the tree we pruned.  Sometimes, y'all, spaces just fight you! Patience pays off, though, because the view out our windows was worth it. 

Coming soon:

For more camping pics....

For a drive thru video of the park...