Happy Birthday to my wonderful love and best friend Diane !. Our goal was to give Diane a special kick off for her special day.. and what better way to do that than a Snake Farm Birthday ?!?!
We’d seen this place the day before and decided it was a perfect birthday place for our sweet diane. It turned out to be so fun !
We had so much fun at this place.. it was full of animals and was very well run and clean.. not like the song “Snake Farm” I remember from Ray Willy Hubbard
Max and Becky called to wish diane a happy birthday.. so we showed them around the snakes a bit
From there we headed towards Wimberly in search of the summer camps that Billy and I used to go to in the 70’s .. First stop was our search for Rim Rock Ranch Camp.. our online search didn’t show up anything.. but we found a map reference.. so we drove up in the hill country.. and believe it or not.. we found it !>. It was abandoned.. but some of the structure was still there.. I think we went to camp here once.. and it must have been in the early 70’s.. maybe 1970 ? I remember the music we listened to.. (I remember Mongo Jerry’s “In the Summertime”) I also remember getting stung by a scorpian as I pulled on my bathing suit.. YOW !
It was so cool walking around this place we camped 53 years ago !
We found a chameleon lizard outside.. he wasnt happy to see us.. .. heres how they show they’re angry !
Next attempted stop was nearby El Rancho Cima scout camp.. billy and I went there a couple of years in the early 70’s.. It was a beautiful place. We read online that it had been recently purchased and was being turned in to a wildlife preserve. Unfortunately the road to it was now private.. and it had many signs discouraging trespassers
We tried to get a good look at where the camp was by going to a nearby devils backbone overlook… That turned out to be an adventure in itself… It is some sort of “haunted Highway”… People put lots of tributes to people who have either died on that highway or at other places. It was pretty spooky and kind of sweet… Lots of really nice tribute. From there we could see where the camp used to be through all of the strange memorials that people have left on the fence.
That overlook was a short Drive from the devils back bone dive bar… Believe it or not a place I remember. I remember going with my dad to get beer there… Even though beer was not allowed in the scout park.… That was dad 🙂
We all split a Lone Star beer and a shot of tequila and memory of dad
From there we headed back towards houston… It was about a 3 1/2 hour drive so we decided to stop and throw a proper birthday celebration for ‘Diane. We stopped at a marble slab ice cream place got a cookie and some ice cream and improvised on the fire and sang happy birthday.
Happy Birthday my love.. You are such a wonderful person !
nite all, nite sam
-me