King Ranch

Today began with a great job. The flapper in our toilet was not engaging any more so it was either stuck open or stuck shut. I had to get out my rubber gloves and proceed to tear the whole toilet apart. Not a fun job and you might guess I had a few choice words and thoughts about the engineer who designed this thing. Although I am sure he is living proof that the little ring engineers wear on their pinky does cut off the blood supply to their brain. My apologies to all those smart engineers that wouldn't think of designing such a shi*ty system.

After I got that out of the way I headed out on my daily walk. I am making it the full two miles before breakfast but at the rate I am consuming victuals (Mickey -that's defined as "supplies of food or provisions") I really need to be traveling about 10 miles.

Then we grabbed Dennis and Denice and loaded up and headed out to the King Ranch near Kingsville, Texas. At 825,000 acres it is one of the largest ranches in the world. Beautiful ranching country but no worry about hills, there isn't one for a hundred miles I don't think. We went to lunch in Kingsville at Harrell's Drug Store, they have a good little restaurant in the back room that serves a wide variety of food for dirt cheap prices. After lunch we headed back out to the ranch and went on the tour, down past the Horse Barns and a bunch of their Santa Gertrudis cattle and a lot of acres. The highlight of the tour was stopping and talking to a retired Kineno named Lolo who had actually put the first rides on the Triple Crown winning Throughbred, Assault, here on the ranch. I am sure if we could have got rid of the rest of the tour folks he could have told stories all day about the ranch and it's operations. This is the carriage house near the big house and is built in the same style as the Alamo. Until 1925 when Mrs. King died the ranch was actually known as the Santa Gertrudis Ranch, after her death her daughter and her husband changed it the King Ranch in her memory.
After we finished up with ranch tour and Denice got a few more flower pictures around the Visitor Center
we headed back to Kingsville where we had a look around the King Ranch Museum and then the Saddle Shop, a high end furniture and souvenir store.

Here is a shot of our dinner place. We ate at the Hungry Fisherman and once again it was good food and at a reasonable price although we didn't indulge in the chicken gizzards or livers and stuck with seafood.