Blacktop Conestoga

Flight has always been a fascination for me. My father was an aeronautical engineer who learned the trade on the cusp of World War 2 and pursued it through the heyday of the United States space program greatness, instrumental in the development of the Atlas booster that first thrust America in to space. He worked with the giants of the industry, among them Werner Von Braun, J.S. McDonnell and others. So, from an early age, flight fascinated me. Summertimes, I hung out in the library and read accounts of the early aviators, Langley, Lilienthal, Orville and Wilber Wright. It wasn't powered flight that captivated me, but rather gliding on the wind. Later I would sail the oceans on the wind in what I realize now was the same fascination. I would dream then of flying silently above the world, buoyed along by another fluid medium. There was this gully behind where we lived filled with old fallow fields on the other side that ended up against the property of my best friend, Stev...

  5 September 2019 We left Houston in what was a general bug out / shakedown for the Blacktop Conestoga during the time that Hurricane Laura was bearing down on the Upper Gulf Coast region (08/27). We had just finished the general refit and hurriedly tossed together the most important items (including 4 brand new 10 ply Goodyear Endurance tires)  into the truck and headed west towards Gonzales, Texas where we have camped before at Palmetto State Park. We knew in advance that Palmetto was booked, but we also knew there are many other small and lesser known parks in the area. Besides, we are well suited to boondocking so with little worry we left Houston amid it's traffic and seething mass of humanity for literally, greener pastures.  On the way we ran into one lone rain shower from a feeder band of the hurricane which apparently didn't get the notice that the storm had headed east and north into Louisiana.  We drove west on Alt-90, through Shiner (where Shiner beer is...