Cowboy Time --- The King Ranch

Poquita's New Traveling Perch on Dianne's Lap

Roger here.... ON THE ROAD AGAIN!  Dianne and I have had the King Ranch in our sights as a destination since we established roots in south Texas.  The various divisions of the ranch pretty much surround the town of Kingsville (about two hours north of our home).  Since we needed to do another shakedown trip in our new tiny Airstream Sport, we made arrangements to spend four nights at Nature's Own RV Resort and booked reservations for a ranch tour.  

Nature's Own RV Resort....  

Even though the sites are pretty close together, this is a nice RV Park.  We had a paved site with convenient full hookups.    Our pull-through site was quite livable and right across from the clubhouse lounge (more about that later).

Enjoying time outside in the shade required moving the furniture three times a day --- from the front of the trailer --- to a spot underneath a small tree --- to the back of the trailer.  Fortunately, the site was very long, so there were plenty of options.

People traveling with dogs would find this to be a great place.  There were three fenced dog parks, one of them long enough for Bandido to get plenty of exercise retrieving his ball.

Kleburg Park...

An unexpected bonus --- a rear gate at the RV park led to the many acres of Kleburg County Park where we spent quite a bit of quality time.

A lengthy pathway paralleled a peaceful lake and prevalent meadows filled with wildflowers

Dianne, Poquita, Bandido

We ambled along miles of paved roadways in the park past athletic fields, disc golf, butterflies, birds and picnic areas.  One of the roads took us to a Skyhawk fighter that saw action in the Vietnam war.  The McDonnel-Douglas jet was donated to the town of Kingsville in 1989 by the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

A four-day trip left plenty of time to enjoy the park as well as the sights that drew us there.

The King Ranch Museum....

This very interesting museum was located in downtown Kingsville. It was full of various ranch gear, including wagons, saddles, and King family buggies and vehicles spanning the time from 1853 to present day.  The gigantic ranch photographs mounted on the walls, and the placards filled with information about the family and the ranch operation were fascinating.

Too bad that we can't show you those things.  Photographs were prohibited --- not sure why.  We did get a fantastic photo of the sticker that I wore on my shirt to indicate a paying visitor :-).

King Ranch Saddle Shop....

This was an interesting, but expensive place.  During the early years of the King Ranch, Richard King determined that existing saddles did not meet the unique needs of ranching vaqueros.  So he hired his own saddle maker.  The current artisan still hand-crafts the King saddles that are used and marketed throughout the world.  It was my intention to purchase a new wallet at the saddle shop.  They were really nice, but not in my price range. I settled for a t-shirt.

The King Ranch....

Our tour guide, a professor at Texas A&M Kingsville, was outstanding.  The bus was very comfortable during our 1 1/2 hour adventure.

This was honestly one of the best tours we have taken during our years of traveling.  We knew little about ranching, old cowboy movies really don't tell you that much.  We still know little about ranching, but we have a much better understanding of it.  The stories of Richard King and his family were intriguing, as were the stories of the vaqueros (Kinenos - kings men) who Richard King recruited from a small village in Mexico during the mid-1800s to work on his ranch.

Generations of those kinenos have lived on the ranch where they grew up, went to school, and learned their trade.  Many are descendants from that original group from the Mexican village. 

 Richard King was a river boat captain searching for a new profession when the Civil War ended.  He purchased a large tract on the Santa Gertrudis River to start his ranching ventures.

The most widely known King Ranch brand

 After he literally moved a village from Mexico, along with their longhorn cattle to his ranch, he married Henrietta, a minister's daughter from Brownsville, and raised their family.  He expanded his holdings to four large tracts -- larger than the state of Rhode Island.  Later family generations developed the very successful Santa Gertrudis cattle by breeding various breeds with Brahma cattle, to better withstand the tropical conditions in South Texas.  The King Ranch also operates farming operations and orange groves in Florida.

The horns on Santa Gertrudis cattle are often contrary.  They can point backward, forward, or up.  They can also point in different directions like those of the lounging steer above. Sometimes there are no horns at all.  

Note the King's Ranch brand.  The 7 indicates a birth of 2017.

The cattle graze in the endless acres of the ranch.  Their diet is also supplemented by milo which is grown on the ranch.

A representative of future generations

King needed horses to manage his cattle.  He refined the quarter horses that were agile and quick --- ideal for cutting cattle.  One of those quarter horses, Assault, was the only Texas horse to win the triple crown.

Quarter Horses Grazing 

Below is a photo of the quarter horse barn.  The King Ranch is very proud of all the honors that its quarter horses have garnered.

We remained on the tour bus for the entire tour except for a stop at the weaver's cottage.

The gentleman in this photo weaved all the saddle blankets for the ranch from scratch.  He recently passed away.  He did this for his entire life.  Interestingly, the striping on the blankets and the brand were not achieved by dye.  The effect was created by using the wool from sheep of different colors.

Various ranch items and interesting photos were displayed in the weaver's cottage.  The placard to the right portrays a brief summary of the King Ranch and its importance to ranching and the State of Texas.

Beto Maldanado (a side story)...

The photos below show one of the ranch's most revered kinenos (Kings Men).  Beto, now an elderly gentleman, was born and raised on the King Ranch.  He also learned his trade there.

The photo below shows Beto as a child proudly showing a steer.

The next photo shows Beto showing an impressive Santa Gertrudis specimen as a middle aged man.

Before our tour began, our tour group had the privilege of meeting Beto.  This energetic, effusive and very happy man has such a positive spirit and outlook on life.  It was an honor to meet him.  He now greets visitors before their tours and tells tales of his past life as a kineno.  The picture below shows Beto taking a Santa Gertrudis steer through the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (before TSA :-) on his way to New York City.  Later in the trip he guided the steer onto a hotel elevator for the cattle show on an upper floor.  Human interest stories from the ranch and its history were a large part of the tour.

Back to the tour....

As the tour wound down the bus slowly drove past the impressive family home, the King Mansion.  The original home on the ranch burned to the ground during a wildfire.  Mrs. Henrietta King (then a widow) oversaw the construction of the new mansion.  Her two instructions to the architect were to ensure that it was a place where people would not be uncomfortable wearing their cowboy boots, and that it be fireproof (no wood).  Henrietta lived in the mansion until her death.  It is still the family home and is used for meetings, dinners and reunions even though no family members are permanent residents.

The pictures below show Henrietta's Buggy Barn. Henrietta vowed to never ride in a motorized vehicle other than a train.  When she traveled away from the mansion she insisted that one of the kinenos drive her in a horse-drawn buggy.  She had quite a collection of elegant conveyances.  We saw a couple of them at the museum the previous day, no photos allowed :-(

After the tour ended Dianne and I ambled back down the road a bit to get a closer look at two of the magnificent longhorns.  One is in the opening picture.  The other is in the photo below.

As a bonus we were able to wander through yet another display of the wildflowers that are prevalent in this part of Texas.

Back to our new RV lives....

One of the prime incentives for this excursion was to fine tune quality of our travel lives in a smaller trailer.  Since we had a full day away from the local sights, we were able to check out a few things...

Meals...

The trailer on the cover is a photo of a puzzle that Dianne assembled.  It was a gift from our daughter and son-in-law, Robyn and Atul. They bought it for us after we bought our trailer.

We have both subscribed to a keto-like diet by cutting out most (but not all) of the carbs.  The weight loss has been dramatic, as well as a lowered blood sugar count.  The flip side is that going off the diet results in dramatic weight gains.  We cannot afford to go off the diet during our upcoming four-month trip.  Fast food stops are not an option.  Dianne is an excellent cook and quite the organizer.

She put together a  rotating14-day list of keto friendly meal recipes with an accompanying one-week grocery list --- one week of meals with one grocery stop per week.  She also included recipes for easy meals on travel days.

She plans to cook most of the meals outside, weather permitting (knowing full well that indoor cooking will be necessary in poor weather).  Since storage is an issue, the only cooking appliances that we intend to use are a George Foreman grill and a small instant pot.

We ate really well during this trip.  The meals were filling and yummy.

Television...

We will not have cable tv when we travel unless it is at the RV park.  The on-air antenna works amazingly well, but of course it does not have all the channels we watch... oh, well.  The tv is on a reticulating arm, so it can be viewed from the bed as well as from the dinette.  Our entertainment system allows us to enjoy CDs and DVDs.  Unfortunately, the first two rounds of March Madness took place during our trip.  The RV park did not have cable tv connection.  I was able to get a CBS station and see some of the games, but I was NOT able to watch the Thursday night Purdue/Old Dominion game on TBS.  Bandido and I watched the rolling scores of the Purdue game during the Michigan game --- frustrating and stressful.  However, Purdue won!

Fortunately, the club house lounge TV had cable and did get TNT.  The Saturday night Purdue-Villanova game was a big deal for me.  So, we ate an early dinner so that I could arrive well before the start of the game.  The lounge was empty.  I claimed the remote and kept it with me the entire game so that no one could change the channel.  I even took it with me to the restroom :-).  My strategy worked well and my Boilermakers annihilated last year's champion Villanova --- a good night for me.  Dianne watch a "Time Team" documentary via DVD in the trailer.

The awning...

Other than watching a demonstration by a staff member where we bought our trailer, we have never had the awning down.  We wanted to try it to be sure that we knew how to put it out and take it in.  We don't!  We read the owners' manual and watched a video.  We still don't.  We don't seem to have a mechanism that appears in the owners' manual.  Perhaps we have a different awning?  We were able to unlatch it and pull it down, but that was about it.  We could not raise it the the final position.  Unfortunately, we were also not able to latch it back in place.  We had to move our picnic table over in order to secure the latches at the top. Frustrating, but not the end of the world.  Maybe one of our "Airstream" neighbors at Retama Village can tell us what we are doing wrong.

Ice machine...

Before we traded RVs I ordered a portable ice machine.  I knew where it would fit in the motor home.  With the change of RVs I assumed that we would not be able to use it, but I did want to try it out.  As it turns out, it works extremely quickly and well.  It is something we would use for extended stays in a location.

It was great to have ice cubes to cool our drinks.  I will find a place to store it in the SUV.










Coffee --- a morning necessity...

We just don't wake up in the morning without caffeine.  We also enjoy decaf on cool afternoons.  The French press system that we use in our casita would require too much space.  So, Dianne purchased a small, lightweight k-cup coffee maker.  Wow, is that ever a simple appliance to use.  We still use our French Press when at home, but also use the new machine occasionally for an afternoon cup.

Time to head home....

You can probably tell that we had a great time in Kingsville, and that we love our new traveling profile.  Any trepidations that we had regarding taking it on a four-month trip have vanished.  

It was time to head back to our casita in Mission, Texas and the flowers that are exploding in our back yard.

Our next post will probably be written in May as we embark on a four-month journey.  The itinerary includes:  Louisiana, Florida (daughter, granddaughter, brother, sister in-law), South Carolina (friends), North Carolina (cousin), New York (Hudson Valley), Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,  Jackson Center, Ohio (Airstream factory), Indianapolis area (where we grew up, raised a family and worked), West Lafayette, Indiana (Purdue University, the great university of the north) (more cousins), the Door County of Wisconsin, Duluth, Minnesota (friends), and several days of driving back to Mission, Texas.  Lots of adventures!

Pet Pictures of the Day...

Disturbing the Peace... As we were calmly reading books in a shady spot and enjoying what turned out to be great weather, a much dreaded squirrel scampered by and climbed onto our small tree.  The nasty squirrel then started chittering at our dogs.  Needless to say, the serenity was irreversibly broken.

This is the view our leashed dogs had before the noisy melee.