Connected at last!

My fantasy was to log on every day on tell of our travels and show pictures of trains. I thought every RV park and coffee shop would have quick Internet access. Wrong... We signed up for a week stay at the only RV park around Dallas. I also enrolled in a week of WiFi access. Last night after three hours of logging on and getting bumped off they gave me a refund and suggested I go see AT&T. After finding out the phone companies wanted a 2-year contract in order to provide traveling wireless for the next three weeks, I came back and humbly requested that we try again.

I found that if I'm patient and type in one or two words at a time Tengo (name of the RV wirless) will not bump me off line. Tonight I'm working on two computers. One for routine paperwork and the other for extracting molasses type words to place on the blog. Personally I'm of the opinion Tengo should be Nogo.

Yesterday was a travel day with no stops. Today we drove in to downtown Dallas and visited a beautiful display of trains at the Museum of the American Railroad. They are crammed into a small site with so many trains that you can barely walk around. The good news is that later this year they are moving the entire exhibit to Fair Park, Texas where they will have five times the space.

This museum has two great cabeese that date back to the days of wooden cabooses. One has three bench seats for passengers and an old wood-burning stove. It is the first caboose I've seen that was designed haul passengers rather than crew.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to spend the day at the Ft. Worth Stock Yards. This is restored cattle feeding and shipping area that now houses lots of ole' time stuff including an operating steam engine. They claim to get over 2 million visitors a year. Either it's something to see or Texans just like to look at cows.

Wednesday morning: We hit rain in Socorro so we turned left and landed in Alamagordo. We stopped by the Alamagordo Toy Train Museum. They have a beautiful red caboose sitting at their entrance. Better yet, just down the road, Micki spotted an old caboose sitting in the field of a salvage yard. I didn't have wheels but was sitting on dollies that looked as old as the caboose. As a kid I was always bringing home lost pets, now I wish I could take home all of the old abandoned cabeese along the way.

I'll try and post photos later.

My train tour book didn't have much to say about the Museum in El Paso, TX, so I almost didn't stop. Glad I did. Met up with Prince who works at the museum and he turned out to be a Prince of a man when it comes to train information. Prince explained to me that Texas is divided into historic zones and his team in El Paso travels west Texas and part of New Mexico helping towns do living history expositions featuring trains. Prince suggested I come along with them this year, which I plan on doing. Their first event is in March.

The El Paso museum has also requested I assist with setting up a storytelling venue using "The Caboose Club" similar to the one in Sacramento, CA.

I hope the next edition of the Train book gives better coverage to the El Paso museum. It is a beautiful facility and their staff is dedicated to family entertainment and education.

Prince loaded me up with lots of Texas train information that I hadn't found through other sources. With new data in hand, we headed east and landed somewhere near the intersection of I-10 & I-20 last night.

Prior to stopping we attempted to get a late night glimpse of one of Prince's suggested stops. We pulled off the freeway and into the twilight zone. The exit dumped us in a black hole. It was so dark and dusty that our headlights were of little use. We followed a railroad track about a quarter of a mile and ended up in the parking lot of of what looked like one of those big cement factories, but the sign proclaimed "Talcum Factory." It seems hard to believe one could get lost in an open area right off the freeway, but the obis was so dark and dusty that we couldn't regain our bearings. After circling and making some wrong turns we finally got back on the freeway and decided to bookmark that one for another day.

(Side thought) Camping when my kids were growing frequently consisted of me taking them into the wilderness with sleeping bags (sometimes a tent) and foraging for frogs, fish and anything we could find to eat. I was convinced that learning to live off the land would be character building. (Must have worked, because they all turned out to be characters) After two nights on the road with the travel trailer I was upset that Internet service was lousy and cell phone reception unpredictable and then I flashed back to the days of having bears and mountain lions come into our campsites. My kids don't recall any outing with me that didn't end up with them coming close to being offered up as a human sacrifices to the God that oversees the naive and green-horn campers. Even with those reflections I would still appreciate better Internet service.

Charles Karault made it look so easy.

It is Sunday afternoon and packing is nearing completion. Kahuna always gets nervous when he sees suit cases.

It took me ten minutes to get into my own blog. Now I need to figure out how to post pictures. My friend Penn says he can't get into my blog; well I can't either.

Twenty years after I was born they started adding something to the water so that young people are born with the ability to do computer things with absolutley no effort. People who were born without that water aditive do great damage to themselves as they attempt the unnatural . As Micki says "You can't make a cat bark."

I can do a pretty good meow and bark, but neither of those seem to help with computer knowledge. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

If you see any neat cabooses in your neck of the woods, be sure and send them to me at redcandycaboose@gmail.com