Tuesday November 10, 2009-Rayford Crossing

Here we are having a great lunch at the El Palenque restaurant.



I started out the day in the rally hall. We are having 11-12 guys down for coffee every morning. When I came home, Stella fixed us some breakfast while I talked with Bob as he loaded his motorcycle onto the trailer behind their Landmark trailer. They have decided to leave tomorrow instead of Thursday as they had planned. We will be very sorry to see them go but hopefully we will see them again soon when we go to Stephen F. Austin state park in January.



We had told Bob and Christina that we would go for a ride around Houston one day before they left, so we knew today would have to be the day. We got loaded up and took off around 11:00 and decided to go up to Huntsville to the Texas Prison Museum. Before we got there we stopped at the huge statue of Sam Houston which is on I-45 just before getting to Huntsville. The statue is modeled on a 10:1 scale, and since Old Sam was 6'6 or 6'7", the statue is 67 feet tall and sits on a 10' base.


Sam Houston was a very interesting man. He was the first and only man to be elected governor of two states (Tennessee and Texas), was elected to Congress in both states, and was the first President of the Republic of Texas. We toured two of his houses and the small museum on the grounds. When we got through there, no one wanted to go to the Walls prison unit. We did go spend over an hour at the Prison Museum in Huntsville on I-45. It was very interesting and I was able to give some more insights into some of the prisoners and events that have happened over the years when I was in law enforcement. I probably put more than 50 people in the penitentiary during my years as a cop. It was always very satisfying to lock someone up because I was always positive that they were guilty. Most of the time, they confessed or there was positive evidence that linked them to the crime, fingerprints or DNA.



We returned to this area to eat lunch/supper at El Palenque. Bob and Christina both wanted mexican food and this was probably the best in the area, so we went there.

We came back to the park in time to go to the ice cream social. This is something that the park scheduled and is manned by volunteers from the committee that I serve on. I wasn't needed for this one, but will be soon.

So long.