Fannett, Texas

OK, so we thought we were going to Beaumont, TX.  Why Beaumont? Well, when I was making the sabbatical plan, it was the right number of hours from San Antonio and looked like it had some interesting things to see!  So I booked the Grand Pines of Texas RV resort in what I thought was Beaumont!  It turned out that it was near a small town called Fannett, TX.  We loved the Grand Pines of Texas RV resort, mostly because of the SUPER nice Texans who ran the place and were our neighbors.  Our nearest neighbor who works in the oil industry and travels around for jobs told us he moved his truck so our kids could use his site for dribbling the basketball and riding bikes!  He also offered the use of his water hose if needed!  

The park design was kind of funky, all back-in spots with a big turn around in the middle.  Longer term residents had set up a basketball hoop in the turn around and, since it was right behind our trailer, Will played lots of basketball with the neighborhood kids.  There were also bike-riding friends for Zina and a running nature trail for Myra!  Bonus was free laundry for me.  We would DEFINITELY stay there again though it was obvious they were geared for longer term residents.

We arrived Friday evening.  I cooked dinner while the kids played outside and we had a pretty laid back evening.  Saturday we got up and did our trailer cleaning jobs. I took advantage of the free laundry to wash bedding and towels.  When I went to the office to get the park map the proprietor suggested we eat crawfish at Fannett Seafood.  Our neighbor suggested we go to Gator Country so we had our plan for the day!

Eating crawfish was an experience.  Will, Myra and I went with getting the one pound of boiled crawfish.  David decided he wanted his in a form that didn’t require cracking and eating so he went with the crawfish etouffee, which he said was delicious. It definitely took us a while to get the hang of getting the meat out of the tail.  Myra says it was difficult to eat her food when it still had eyes and legs but she also said that after a while she got used to it.  She was very careful to remove the digestive tract (neither Will nor I bothered with that.)  Zina had chicken nuggets & fries.

When lunch was over we headed for Gator Country.  We didn’t know what to expect but David described it as a wildlife encounter!  Our admission included lots of food for the wildlife.  We came pretty late in the day so skipped the petting zoo at first and headed to feed hot dogs to the gators!.  This involved lowering a pieces of weedeater filament (tough string!) with a piece of hot dog attached and the gator would rise up and snatch it with its big jaws!  Next the kids were able to hold baby gators that had their mouths taped shut.  They were pretty short staffed but we also found a worker (turned out he was from Lewiston!) to help the kids hold a snake.  They had a little “show” where they talked about their gators.  Not up to Sea World quality but still fun.  They have two enormous gators, one of whom was 93 years old (see picture).  Zina also fed lettuce to tortoises and some other feed to goats.  It was a good time!  We enjoyed a quiet evening at the trailer, watching a couple of episodes of the Brady Bunch which David had purchased on DVD.  It has aged well and is still pretty funny!

Sunday we went to church at the Chambers Branch in Winnie, Texas. There was a ward in Beumont about the same distance away but we thought the branch would be more fun and it was!  The branch president’s wife introduced them at the beginning of her talk and he was born in Moscow when there was no Pullman hospital!  His dad was going to vet school.  His mom, who can’t live on her own anymore, was there and came up to say hi but she remembers nothing about Pullman.   Later we found an LDS family who went to that Beaumont ward in our RV park (Zina made friends with one of the girls).  They wanted Zina to go swimming with them.  Zina prayed about it and said she felt good about doing it this ONE time.  We will see how that works out but I did get to talk to the mom at the pool and learned some things about full-time RV living from her.  Later she made us a loaf of sourdough bread.  Amazing!  We did manage to have to good Come Follow Me lesson in the evening.