Nimitz

From Luckenbach, we made the short hop over to Fredericksberg.  My uncle Bob told us to go check out the recent additions to the the National Museum of the Pacific War – a.k.a the Admiral Nimitz Museum.  Bob’s childhood buddy, David Richter, was the architect. We had wanted to get up here on Dec. 7th to meet Bob’s father, Commander Donald E. Skewis (USN Ret.), and some other guy named George H. W. Bush who was there for the dedication.  As usual, we were running a little late and missed it.

The museum is pretty impressive and has an interesting collection of artifacts from the war in the Pacific, including a Japanese mini-sub. The labyrinth-like exhibit hall winds you through the all the notable  events of the war with Japan and includes high-tech audio/video displays and plenty of military hardware.  Bode was most impressed with the anti-aircraft gun that seemed surprisingly functional. He could spin the gears and aim it with ease.

We had lunch in town and overhead the guy at the next table talking about our friend Dave, who we are headed to visit in Marfa – 400 miles away.  Everybody knows Dave.

Enchanted Rock is here too, but I’ve been many times. We still intended to go there and camp for a night and scramble over the rock with Bode, but it turns out the park was closed this week for deer hunting.  I’ve never heard of a State Park closing for deer hunting, but there you go.

Next, we decided to make the drive over Kerrville. Angela wanted to stop at James Avery’s HQ and have a look around and we have always heard the town was pretty cool. We drove around the town but didn’t really see any reason to stop. Maybe we missed something, or we just need to come back for the big folk festival.

We’ve made it this far from Houston with no interstate driving, so we pulled out the map and set course for Del Rio and some campgrounds near Lake Amistad and the border. This was followed by hours of driving next to ‘big game’ ranches.  Signs advertising $1500 for a ram hunt.  Really?  $1500 to go shoot a ram inside some guy’s fence.  How sporting.

As we got closer to Del Rio, the landscape evolved to barren desert and the sunset was blazing red.  Right at dusk, we came across our first random border patrol checkpoint. A Latino family was stopped in the northbound lane and standing outside their car not looking like they were having much fun, but we were headed south and all traffic was free to go in our direction.

We ended up within just a few miles of the Mexican border and Angela started half-joking that we just go ahead and cross over and start the Mexico leg of the journey right now.  Hmmm….