This time the drive between projects was only about 160 miles.  Easily done in a day. But why take a day, we say, when you can just as easily take two – and see some fun stuff along the way.

We pulled out of Camp Tejas on Thursday morning – a very misty Thursday morning at that!


Hey, wait for me!!!!
He did.
By the time we reached our first stop, the mist was beginning to clear.

Nothing like a brewery tour to start your day! Wink.
We actually had to wait until 11AM for the tour of the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, TX – home to one of Texas’s favorite beers – Shinerbock.

No cameras allowed on the tour (free and very interesting), but here’s a shot of just some of the copper involved in brewing this beer .
Oh, the shine of it all!
After our tour, and a bit of lunch, it was back on the road.


(Take note of the hills – they will soon be gone!)
We spent a quiet night at the Walmart in Port Lavaca

and come morning, we were back on the road for the final leg of the trip.
Here’s the Lavaca Bay in the early morning light -



Hello Boat!

And as the road stretched out in long strips of ribbon

(Good-bye, hills)
We were delighted to spot these big guys mingling with the cattle -


Love those Sandhill Cranes!
We made it without incident to our project – Texas Baptist Encampment, aka Palacios by the Sea. Here is our new view -

Pretty sweet, eh? That’s the Palacios Bay out there, which empties into the Matagorda Bay which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. (Check it out on a map HERE!)
Each project has its own “flavor” and since we’ve just been here a little more than a day, I’m not sure just what that flavor will be. But I know it will be different from our last couple of projects – beginning with our neighbors. November and December our neighbors looked like this -


As in, we had none.
January they looked like this -

As in, fair size group – a nice mix of SOWERs and other volunteers.
And this month, they look like this -

As in – Baby, we got us some Community going on!
All in all, a great start to what I’m sure will be a great month!

Later ‘Gator!

We’re starting to wrap up our time at Camp Tejas, and I thought I’d “flesh out” our time here. First of all, we’ve met and worked with some great people. Not only were there three SOWER couples here -

But there were six couples from the MMAPs Ministry -

We didn’t necessarily work together, but we shared devotions and breaks and a couple of meals and general good times. It’s always good to meet folks who share our hearts even if we don’t share the SOWER Logo (though we did make them sing the SOWER song most mornings! )
And speaking of work – I know I shared a little bit of what we ladies did all month –



but I haven’t really covered all that the guys did. And believe me, they were plenty busy. They started off with painting (and in fact went back to that during any lulls between jobs)

but probably their biggest project was a covered walkway off of the dining hall.






Came out great, didn’t it? All they had to go on was – Make it look like the other one!
Gary also got to work on another “out of the ordinary” project – making an indoor shuffleboard game. Apparently they had a base and they had the board itself, but they needed the frame to hold the game board.
Here it is getting close to completion -

and here it is just waiting for the board to be installed.

I think it looks great – and I’m really happy that we aren’t in charge of moving it to its final destination!
Today, even though the project is officially over, Gary and Jay built a railing on the golf cart pathway -

We’ll be here until Thursday AM, so who knows what projects he’ll dig up tomorrow and Wednesday!

I think this is enough chatter for tonight! I’ll get to the Places and Things in my next post!

Texas weather is….well, crazy! After a record hot summer (Waco, where daughter Lara lives, had 90 days over 100 – and that wasn’t even the record for the state!), you’d think maybe winter would calm down a bit. Well, this past month as we’ve been at Camp Tejas in Giddings, TX (about 60 miles east of Austin) we’ve had days in the 40′s, nights in the 20′s and then days in the 80′s. It’s been a total roller coaster of a month. Sunshine and Rain. Layers of coats and shorts. Heavy frost and balmy mornings. Crazy really.
But early this morning wins the award for the craziest (and maybe the scariest of them all). After a night of heavy rain, the howling wind woke us up around 5AM. And when you live in a tin can on wheels you REALLY REALLY REALLY feel the wind. And then there was the rain that felt like it was coming in diagonal sheets, battering against the sides of our tin can. We held on tight, and kept listening for the camp to sound any tornado warnings. We lost power around 6AM as the weather continued to rage around us. Finally, around 9 the rain stopped and folks began venturing out of their rigs to assess any damage. Fortunately, all the trees around us held their ground, and all their branches. And while the rest of the camp had many limbs and at least one big tree (falling on the wires – hence the no power)on the ground


I do not believe that any of the buildings were damaged or any of the folks at camp injured. After watching the news at noon (power was back on by 11AM), we learned that we had been the fortunate ones indeed. We got about 3 inches of rain overnight. Fifty miles to the SW – almost 9 inches! Tornadoes were reported thirty miles south of us. When we saw the flooding and damage that had happened so close, we knew that a little rockin’ and rollin in the house (ok, and some wet carpet by the slide) was NOTHING.  Thank-you, Lord, for sparing us (and our RV neighbors and camp hosts) any significant damage – and be with those families who’s homes and livelihoods have been dramatically altered due to last nights storms.

Phew.

During the week, things are pretty quiet around Camp Tejas.
The mornings are lovely

We go to work


and enjoy our breaks in a quiet dining hall.

The climbing wall and zip line are quiet

and the outdoor activity center lies still.

But on the weekend, this place really comes alive!
The zipline gets zipping

and that activity field?
Well, you might have thought that first picture was taken after a big rain, but that “activity” field is actually the play-in-the-mud field.




Yeah, that field is a happenin’ spot on the weekends – and while the girls weren’t quite as into it as the guys,

there were a couple of little kids there that were in mud heaven!


“Really, Mom, it’s OK for us to play in this?”
They even make cleaning up fun!

After everyone gets all the way cleaned up, then it’s off to the dining hall for another great meal, and when they leave the dining hall after dinner, they are met with the beautiful Lights of Tejas. They’ll be up until the end of February and they are lit on the weekends. I don’t know how the guests feel about them, but we think they are quite enchanting!



Oh yes, weekends here at Camp Tejas are quite a different story!
 

Well, we’ve just finished our first week at Camp Tejas in Giddings, TX, and it’s been a good one. Weather-wise it’s been everything from early summer (sunny and 75) to blustery spring (hard rain for a day or two) to definitely winter (highs in the low 40′s with wind gusts up to 30mph and skies that look like it could snow at any moment. Brrrrrrr). Work-wise it’s been a little of this and a little of that. There are three SOWER couples but there are also six couples that work with the MMAPS Ministry (Mobile Missionary Assistance Program).

So there have been lots of hands to keep busy! We ladies started doing “detail” cleaning in some of the guest rooms.
These rooms are beautiful and beautifully kept, so what we’ve done is some of the less-noticed areas – picture frames, baseboards, bric-a-brac, and the like.

Unbelievably, when summer comes these rooms are emptied out and are outfitted with addition bunk beds for summer campers. I’m still trying to picture that!
We also spent one day removing the lights and dismantling the 75 Christmas Trees that were in their main meeting hall.

Camp Tejas has a HUGE Christmas Light Festival during December, and it was time to start the de-Christmasing!
Here’s that room without any decoration -

But since yesterday was that Sunny and Seventy day, I took the camera out for a walk, and enjoyed some of the sights around camp. I haven’t explored all of the ins and outs of the camp, but I have discovered that it is quite a facility.

Some parts of it are rustic-

And some are just downright lovely -

There are Lakes


And swimming pools

and kayaking

(along with zip lines and other teen-friendly activities!).
Here are a couple of other shots from around the camp -


(This building was made with all re-purposed material! It’s amazing!)

And one of my favorites of the walk -

Sometimes when we work at such lovely camps I wonder if they really need SOWER help. But what I’ve learned over the last seven years that even facilities like this rely heavily on volunteers to fill in the gaps and take up the slack. We’re blessed to be able to see what God has been doing here at Camp Tejas! And we’re honored to be able to be a small part of reaching people with the Gospel here in great state of Texas!