As bad as the Internet service was in Dallas it is worse in San Antonio. I’ve given up. I’m posting this in my computer and will transfer if I ever get connected.

Before leaving Dallas we spent Saturday (1/30) at the Dallas Convention Center with our budding star friend Ellie Thurston. Ellie tried out for “America’s Got Talent.” She won’t know the results until sometime in April.

It was really a kick to see over a thousand people lined up to have a three minute shot at launching their career. Spectators can’t be in the judging room, but there was ample entertainment as people practiced and gave impromptu performances in the large waiting area. People came in from hundreds of miles away, waited six to eight hours and had one brief shot to impress the judges.

Sunday we left a cold Dallas and headed southeast. We visited trains in Rusk and Lufkin, Texas. Both places had cabooses to add to my caboose gallery. We then set up camp in the parking lot of Sam’s Club in Lufkin. Micki was embarrassed to stay in the parking lot, but after seeing the one RV park in the area she voted for Sam’s Club.

Tuesday we headed south to Diboll, Texas and met with their local museum. This is a small museum that encompasses the towns logging history and railroading as it relates to logging. Saying the museum is beautiful is a great understatement. This small town has a first class facility (Including a train with a caboose.) that any town would be glad to have. The folks in the museum encouraged us to stop by their local library and check into their storytelling program.

The library was another big surprise. Not just a library, but set up to give a warm cozy feeling like you were in someone’s private estate setting. The library was very welcoming and I posed for a unexpected photo shoot in their entrance as I held a copy of the RCC along with their librarian.

Monday evening we arrived in San Antonio chased by the cold wet weather. Folks here said it’s the coldest they have seen in over ten years. We are currently in a super cool RV park. It has got everything you can imagine, except the Wifi is down. They call the place an RV Resort. Cable TV, hot tub, heated pool, play grounds for kids and dogs, and a daily activity program with different events each day of the week. We would stick around longer, but with no Internet service we are going to hit three train museums in the area and then head out.

I have to be in Albuquerque on Feb 10th for a fifteen minute consultation with my doctor. We are planning to leave the trailer in southern Arizona and I’ll fly to Abq., for the day and meet up with Micki that evening.

A combination of good weather and our friend Ellie Thurston flying in for Saturday's "Amerca's Got Talent" try-out has caused us to hang for a while in Dallas. I have to confess, I've been goofing off and doing tourist type things like rodeos and two-stepping.

Sunday we will head to S.E. Texas for more serious work.

Wow! I said I was learning to do the blog thing. I didn't know people were posting comments. I just found that door. What a fun surprise to find all the loving comments. What a great way to start the day

Texans do love their cows. The Ft. Worth Stockyards is a beautifully restored historic area with great restaurants, shops full of cowboy stuff, and museums.

I had no sooner parked the car when a cowboy came riding down the main street on a giant long horn cow with a saddle. He stopped and allowed the tourist to climb aboard for photos. A few minutes later they ran a cattle drive of long horn cows down main street. When that was over they had a typical old west gun fight where just about everyone gets shot.

To our disappointment the train was down for maintenance. However visiting the Cowboy Hall of Fame and having lunch in the historic old hotel made the visit worth while.

If you are ever in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, I give the Stockyards a "Thumbs Up" for a tourist attraction.

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