Feb. 2:The King Ranch

The first picture is of the visitors center. The second is the Santa Gertrudis cattle with the sandhill cranes; and the last one is of the carriage house by the home.

Drove south today to Kingsville, home of the famous King Ranch. I'd heard of this ranch since I was in my teens, when I was reading all about horses. This ranch was started by a steam boat captain that had settled in the area. He made a few land grant purchases in 1853 and it eventually sprang into over a million acres of ownership in three different states. It is recognized as the birthplace of the American ranching industry. It now has 825,000 total acres. Pecan farms with the product coming out of New Mexico and Texas; the largest orange groves anywhere in the world in Florida; and cattle, horses and crop production (cotton, sugar cane, milo and sod) in southern Texas. The King Ranch developed the Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle and more recently the Santa Cruise breed. This ranch produced the first registered American Quarter Horse. There are over 60,000 cattle and 300 Quarter Horses at the King Ranch during the peak time of the year (before the cattle are sold off for meat and the yearlings sold to other buyers). The horses used to be sold at auction but now are sold thru independent buyers. We saw a 17 year old stallion that they had just sold for $25,000 to some place in South America. This is one of the largest ranches in the world. A lot of the ranch land is reserved for hunting. It is sectioned off and each section has it's own land/wildlife management manager.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many photo ops. I did get one of some sandhill cranes and one of the carriage house but they're in my camera and not on my memory card so I'll have to figure out how to get them off without wiping out my card.

We then went to eat at the Kings Inn. Came recommended but we didn't have a clue what we were in for. We sat in the back room with a view out over the bay - Loyola Beach on Baffin Bay. Waters here weren't quite as prestine as in Corpus. No menu. You order an assortment of fish (4 different kinds of fish, king crab legs and crab cakes) by the pound except shrimp which is by the piece. After we had her repeat the menu and a few questions later, I ordered 5 pieces of shrimp and Larry ordered a rib eye Came with a plate of salad with house dressing. A bowl of their homemade tarter sauce and a plate of sliced tomatoes. The dinner came with a platter of onion rings and another of french fries. The tarter sauce came with the salad and looked like tuna salad. I tried it (I don't eat tarter sauce) and it was delicious. We both ate it on crackers. They said there was no meat in it but it was sweet and hot - my kind of snack. I tried it on my shrimp but didn't like it - went back to their homemade cocktail sauce that tasted like it had wine in it - very good. All that for $36 plus tip. I didn't think that was too bad a price for a unique dining experience.

Got home around 6ish, rested, and went to the club house for bingo. First time I've ever done Bingo with English first and French second. It was fun. We took over two items and came home with 4. Mostly white elephant stuff.

Tomorrow is the Super Bowl Party at the club house. Should be lots of fun with all those French who probably don't care who wins. We'll have a 32" HD TV and food - I probably don't care who wins either.