A rare excursion in our winter of downtime: while staying at Lake Conroe, we drive 1.5 hours south to Houston to visit the Space Center there.

It was a rainy day up north, but I knew it was dry south of Houston:

Houston:

Minute Maid Park:

A space suit outside a McDonald’s near the Space Center:

Space Center Houston:

SpaceX Falcon 9:

Space Shuttle Independence atop a jumbo:

Space Center Houston:

We had lunch at the Food Lab food court:

Exhibits:

The Shuttle on a jumbo; the Shuttle is a replica, but the plane is one of two used to transport the Shuttles:

Exhibits in the plane:

We had wanted to do one of the guided tram tours of the space center, but their reservation system was being dodgy, so we weren’t able to do so, which was a little disappointing:

Inside the replica shuttle:

Gift store:

Selfie:

A few more pics of downtown Houston on the way home:

The Thousand Trails campground was near a small town called Columbus in Texas. We drove though it to get some Whataburger drive-though, our first experience of that fast food chain.

Colorado River bridge:

Downtown Columbus:

Whataburger:

Not bad; we tried the Dr Pepper shake, which was interesting. The fries and burger were decent, but we’ve had better:

On another day, we went back to Whataburger for a second time, going inside this time:

After dinner we went across the road to the H-E-B grocery store, right next to the Walmart:

A fairly small store, and not as nice as others we’ve been in:

“If you hit this you’ll hit bridge”; a 14’ 6” bridge, which we went under on our way to the Thousand Trails (our coach is 12’ 7”):

We were still recovering from our colds while at Lockhart, so not feeling too adventurous, but since we were 45 minutes south of Austin, we felt we should at least do a quick driving tour there.

All the roads into Austin seem to be toll roads:

We stopped at a MOD Pizza for lunch; a favorite chain of ours for years:

Then we drove by downtown Austin:

We looped around the capitol building:

No doubt Austin has lots of interesting things to see and do, but we weren’t up for it on that occasion. So of course we weren’t overly impressed by the city. It did remind us of Portland, which shares the “keeping it weird” theme, but we weren’t overly impressed by there either. We’re just not big city folks anymore; we prefer small towns.

While staying at Lockhart State Park we visited the city of Lockhart a few times.

The first visit was to the Lockhart Post Office, to pick up a General Delivery package:

This was actually the first time we’ve used General Delivery — that is where you just address a package to [Your Name], General Delivery, [City, State ZIP], then you can pick it up at the post office counter. A useful service when staying at somewhere like a state park that doesn’t accept packages for campers.

The Lockhart fire station:

The Lockhart courthouse is a fascinating and distinctive building:

Lockhart claims to be the Bar-B-Que Capital of Texas:

A castle-like museum:

There certainly are a lot of BBQ restaurants in town. The oldest is the Original Black’s Barbecue, operating since 1932; Texas’ oldest BBQ joint owned by the same family:

We got some BBQ to go; it was pretty good:

Another couple of pictures of the courthouse:

Downtown buildings:

The museum again:

A hat shop:

Another BBQ is Terry Black’s BBQ; yes, from the same family as the original one, but they had a schism. After working at the family restaurant for a few years, they set off on their own in Austin, then recently opened this restaurant in Lockhart:

Also very tasty:

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my first experience of a H-E-B grocery store; very popular in Texas, and we can see why; lots of good house brand stuff, we could find everything we wanted, and super-friendly people:

Super-friendly people really describes Texas as a whole, actually.