Heritage Viillage was lame, oh so lame. I need to spend more time reading real peoples' real opinions of places like this. Possibly the issue was that it was a Monday and not a holiday weekend, because there was nobody there and nothing going on.
Someone had taken a bit of trouble putting the place together, gathering up a lot of old stuff--mostly junk you could find at garage sales--and putting it in little buildings recreating those from frontier times. They'd even labeled a bunch of stuff...although I have to admit the wanted posters in the Sheriff's Office reminded me strongly of ones I'd seen in a hundred other places. But it all seemed haphazard, lazy, and lame, and the Christmas decorations someone had added were awful.
The gift shop was more entertaining than the $5 per person tour. It had some great crocheted baby clothes from a local artisan, a bunch of tee shirt designs I'd never seen, and a decent display of Indian artifacts and rocks. Most of the artifacts were collected locally but the rocks came from all over.
The food at Pickett House was...well....
...not from a can. The menu of the day was fried chicken, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, dumplings, pinto beans, greens, biscuits and cornbread. Plus watermelon rind pickles, my secret obsession. I've had better--these were hardly spiced at all--but they didn't come from a can. When I'm retired I'm going to make my own.
The dumplings were supremely rich, tender and irresistible. A cross between my mother's and my own from the red-checked cookbook. The chicken was definitely better than any from a fast-food restaurant, but probably not free-range; I didn't ask. The greens had a little too much bacon fat seasoning and the biscuits were not nearly as good as my own. Oddly enough, the beans were excellent--and for no reason. There was absolutely nothing special about them, but they were tender and flavorful and somehow exactly what a pinto bean should be.
The pitcher of molasses on the table was promising, but it turned out to be blackstrap, not sorghum. In the old days people had sorghum, I'm sure of it. Even in Texas.
All in all, we enjoyed our meal but I wouldn't venture out of my way for it. But if you happen to be a person who was raised on real home cooking and don't know how to make it for yourself, go for it.
I'd suggested we might go another 17 miles east to check out Martin Dies Jr. State Park and try to see some alligators. But during our drive to Woodville, the front had started to come through. The national Weather Service forecasters had decided a tornado watch was in order for that area of east Texas, so we headed back to camp. The wind appeared to have picked up a little during the drive, but only when we hit the road along the lake shore did we see whitecaps and know we were in for trouble. Jumping out of the warm truck wearing a light hoodie, thin pants and sandals was an eye-opener to me for sure--
Yikes!
The temperature hadn't fallen much--yet--but the wind was knock-down icy. Whitecaps dotted our lovely lake and waves were lashing the sides, shooting spray over the walkway.
It was an afternoon fit for hunkering down with a good book...or in our case, a recorded episode of How the West Was Won and a knitting project. So after doing the dishes, which I'd put off on the previous day because it was just too nice outside to stay in and wash dirty dishes, I unraveled about six rows of my knitting and redid them. There's a technique to swapping colors in the middle of a row without causing holes in the finished project, and I'd forgotten it.
Knitting is oddly addictive--you just keep saying, "I have to do one just more row before I stop," and it can never be just one. But eventually I stopped, bundled up in coat, gloves, hood and hat, and took Zack for a nice long walk.
It wasn't so bad once I got out in it, but of course there wasn't a bird to be seen. A couple of campers were just pulling in, poor things. Imagine doing hookups in a twenty mile-per-hour wind with temperatures in the forties and falling rapidly.(But imagine their happiness when hookups are done and they can retreat indoors!)Although I would note that later on at our bedtime walk Zack and I noticed a pair of intrepid individuals had started a campfire. (in a sheltered spot, so not unsafely) That would have been nice, too.
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