Ice cream for breakfast

We woke up to 35 degrees - pushing the envelope to not winterize.  Actually, Sprinty could sustain a few hours below freezing, say 30 degrees or so, but it would not be good for the water lines to have the water freeze.  We are monitoring the forecast low temperatures closely hoping we can avoid winterizing this winter.

We did not dally in our morning routine as our first stop of the day was Blue Bell Creameries (www.bluebell.com) about 40 minutes away in Brenham, TX.  

After getting Sprinty settled (pretty easy as we were the only visitor that early in the morning) we walked to the Visitor Center.  Out in front of the building was the iconic Blue Bell statue, as well as the first refrigerated truck, a 1936 Ford, which transported 25 gallon cans of ice cream distributed to stores around Brenham.  

We spent some time in the Visitor Center learning about the history of Blue Bell Creameries.  Originally formed in 1907 as the Brenham Creamery Company, they only made butter back then. Four years later, ice cream was cranked out at the rate of 2 gallons a day.  And 1930, the name was changed to Blue Bell Creameries after the Texas wild flower that blooms in the hot summer months.  During this time, ice cream was only sold in the small towns around Brenham.  In 1960, they expanded into nearby Houston.  They went out of Texas in 1989, into Oklahoma, and have continue to expand ever since.

We then made our way to the observation deck where we could look down on the production of three different kinds of ice cream (no photos allowed).  We also learned that the production area we could observe was just one of four at the plant in Brenham.  We also learned that once the ice cream came off the production line, it went into “Hold and Test”, where ice cream was held for seven days while the lab runs tests on every batch.

Adjacent to the Observation Deck (and gift shop) was the ice cream parlor, where they had about 30 flavors at the ready for scooping up for only one dollar per scoop.  Kris got to enjoy her favorite - having ice cream for breakfast.  Staff was very helpful to identify flavors they did not have vanilla that Darrell might be able to enjoy.  In the end, he settled for just a taste of Rocky Road, a flavor they were sure did not have any vanilla or vanilla flavoring.

We then headed west to the Texas Cotton Gin Museum (www.cottonginmuseum.org) in Burton, TX.  Along the way, we passed a camping trailer on the side of the 4-lane highway, and had to turn around to get a picture:

We arrived at the Texas Cotton Gin Museum before they opened at 10am, but decided we would wait.  So glad we did.

The museum staff lady grew up on a cotton farm and was a wealth of knowledge.  She spent 15 minutes with us and four other people providing a detailed tour of the key artifacts in the small museum.

We learned that cotton was originally brown when it was grown in Egypt thousands of years ago.  The white cotton we know today came from mixing it with light cotton to make white that could be died.  We were shown recently grown samples of brown and green cotton, which were used in WW II for military uniforms so it did not need to be dyed.  We got to pick seeds out of cotton.  Separating seeds from the soft white fiber was very labor intensive before the invention of the cotton gin in 1793.

The Burton Cotton Gin was built in 1913, originally steam powered.  It was converted to 16-ton diesel in 1925 that drove a 57 foot drive shaft.  This diesel is the oldest running diesel of its vintage.  They operate the gun, including running to diesel, twice a year.  The Burton gin was the third gin built in Burton due to farmers having to wait in line to gin and bale their cotton.  And from wagon to bail it took 12 minutes!

In 1974, demand for cotton fell with the introduction of polyester, GIs coming back from Vietnam who did not want to farm cotton, and farm subsidies that paid farmers not to farm cotton.  The Burton Cotton Gin only processed 7 bales of cotton that year.  It was around this time that Texas went from having about  4,000 gins to only 400.

We learned that in the 1920s, seed was returned to the farmer who brought his cotton in to be ginned, and most of the seed the farmer got was just thrown away.  Then folks figured out uses for cotton seed, and guns would even take seeds are payment for ginning cotton.  And Crisco stands for “Crystalized Cottonseed Oil”.  As the display Crisco can said it was “All Vegetable”, we were left wondering if cotton was a vegetable - a question we did not ask in the interest of time.

We learned that the phase “Fair to Middling” came from classifying cotton:

The biggest threat to cotton gins is fire - from stones that are in the raw cotton coming in contact with the steel blades turning at 250 rpm, creating embers, and getting baled with the cotton.

We decided not to do the tour inside the gin as we hoped to get some golf in today.  We headed west about an hour to Colo Vista Golf Club in Bastrop, TX.  We warmed up, and went out behind a group.  It was slower than we preferred.  We played better than Sunday, so we were enjoying making better shots.  Kris was bombing the ball off the tee, with most drives over 160 yards, and two almost 190 yards.  After nine holes, Darrell was up by 2 strokes.  On the back nine, it remained very slow and got slower.  After 3 holes, we decided to skip in front of the four-some in front of us, only to find things were very backed up.  Faced with three groups (two four-somes and us stacked on a tee box) as well as not making as good a shots, we called the pro shop and asked if we could just go back to the front nine and play the rest of our 18 holes.  We were able to drive all the way back to hole 1 (over a mile away), play 5 holes, drive back to the pro shop (almost 1/2 mile away) and put our stuff away by the time we would have been teeing off on hole 17 - and we had bailed out on the tee box of hole 15.  In other words, we drove over 1-1/2 miles and played 5 holes in the time we would have played two holes had we just continued.

We both were happy with the decision as it enabled us to finish the round before the light got any worse, and for us to set up camp before dark.

Our camp for the night is at Bastrop State Park in Bastrop, TX, all of 12 minutes from the golf course.  We arrived after the office had closed, reviewed the self-check-in procedures, and decided to pick a site, then complete the self-check in.  The camp area was over a mile from the entrance to the park, and we were starting to have second thoughts about driving back just to complete the paperwork.  The camp host flagged us down, and told us to just pick a site and settle up in the morning.  While the site is pretty close to Texas Highway 71 so we are getting some highway noise, we enjoyed great showers in the bathhouse, and great cell signal.