Trip down to the Valley is an adventure for Winter Texans

Bruce and Maila Hedin enjoy staying at Fun N Sun RV Resort in San Benito, but they had a blast just getting there, too.

“We wanted to stop and sight see in Oklahoma City,” said Maila Hedin, 68, of Jordan, Minn. “It was fabulous. We really were going mostly to see the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It was wonderful!”

People from throughout the United States head south this time of year to enjoy the winter months in the warmer climate of the Valley. They enjoy shuffleboard, card games, bird watching and the beach. But what about the trip itself? They pass through numerous states and attractions on the way down, and one can only wonder what kind of adventures they encounter along the way.

They all agreed that State Highway 77 between Kingsville and the Valley was the single most boring stretch of road they encountered on their trip. However, beyond that, their experiences were all quite different.

Besides the Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the Hedins also visited the museum at the site of the Arthur P. Murray Federal Building where 168 people died in 1995 after Timothy McVeigh detonated a car bomb.

“It was the most memorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Hedin. “There was not a dry eye in the area. And then we wanted to go for a steak dinner. We went to the Cattlemen’s Steakhouse in the Stockyard district.”

The restaurant has been in business for 100 years. In 1945 the owner, Hank Frey, lost the restaurant in a game of dice to Gene Wade, and the family has owned the restaurant ever since.

‘It was awesome!” said Maila Hedin. “One of the best steaks we’ve had in our lives. We’ve always said the best steak we ever had was in Kansas City, Mo. But this one beat it. Now it’s in Oklahoma City.”

Although they appear to have seen a great deal, the trip to South Texas took only five days. They drove a pickup truck that pulled a camper with their motorcycle inside, and that’s where they slept while they were on the road.

“It’s got sleeping and a kitchen and all of that,” she said. “We stayed in campgrounds.” Those campgrounds include Terribles Lakeside Casino in Iowa, which also had a place to pull in their camper. They also stayed at a campground in Oklahoma City and in Tyler State Park. Their last night on the road was spent at Goliad State Park.

They spent about $400 on gas; the Texas state parks were the most expensive at $26, while the campground at Terribles Lakeside Casino cost only $15.

“We only ate out a couple of times,” Hedin said. “Mostly I fixed meals in the camper.”

She and her husband enjoyed traveling through Iowa.

“It was pretty going through Iowa,” she said. “It’s really rolling hills and green, and pretty farms.”

Although they’ve never gotten lost, on one trip about three or four years ago her husband forgot his wallet. Fortunately, they were only about two hours into the trip, so they were able to go back and retrieve it.

She strongly suggested that new Winter Texans take their time getting down here so they can see the sights along the way.

“There’s so many interesting places in this country,” she said. “You’re paying for the gas, you’re on the road, you might as well take advantage of it and stop and see some things. I mean you’ll feel a lot better when you get here. It doesn’t take you a week to get over it.”

Ron and Luanne Kalas of Polo, IL. have been coming to the Valley for 20 years. This year, they went north to Wisconsin on their way south.

“We went to Wisconsin to see our great granddaughter get baptized,” said Luanne Kalas, 67. “It was awesome. The pastor there did an absolutely fabulous job, and not only in baptizing her but including her in the whole service. The whole sermon that she did was around Gracie Rae being baptized and how we as a congregation needed to be there for her and needed to support her, and it was a very impressive service.”

The dress that the two-month-old wore for her baptismal was made from the wedding dresses of her grandmothers, Kalas said. One grandmother, Kalas’s daughter, combined the dresses of both grandmothers to make the baptismal dress.

While this was probably the highlight of their trip, it was only the beginning.

“We saw relatives in Iowa,” Kalas said. “And then we went on down to Missouri to visit some former Fun N Sun residents, and then over to Oklahoma. And then we stopped again in the Dallas area and visited more relatives.”

Although they got to visit many people along the way, they left on a Sunday and arrived in the Valley the following Wednesday. Staying with friends and relatives cut down on their grocery bill, and they slept in a van they’ve converted into a camper.

Luanne Kala said she and her husband also enjoyed traveling through Iowa.

“We usually come down 55 in Arkansas, and there’s lots of nice hills and stuff,” she said.

While she still dislikes 77 which she and her husband catch in Waco, she didn’t much care for the traffic around Kansas City, Mo. either, nor did she like traveling near Tulsa, Okla. The whole trip cost about $300 in gas, their biggest expense.

“We have an ice chest and we carried lunch and most of our dinners with the families we visited,” she said. “So other than gas, we probably didn’t spend over $50.”

Usually if they forget things along the trip, they leave them there.

“I forgot my insulin at the first stop, at my aunt and uncle’s in Iowa,” she said. “But it was almost at the end of the bottle so I had more with me so we just called and said, ‘Throw it away and enjoy the container for whatever purpose you can u se it for.’”

That’s not the only thing she’s forgotten. She always carries vanilla creamer for her coffee, but when she left a nearly finished container of the stuff at one of their stops, she told them to go ahead and keep it.

Like Maila Hedin, she strongly advised new Winter Texans to take their time getting down here.

“Enjoy the sights along the way,” she said. “Plan your trip so that you don’t have to be here in two days. We used to take a couple of weeks to get here because we would enjoy the sights along the way. But after you’ve been here this many years, there’s not as much to see, and so we’re usually in a hurry to get back home. This is home for us.”