Boomtown - The Road is calling... OWGrv is answering.

A good day – great weather and a fun and interesting museum in Beaumont TX, on the way to Houston.

But first, as we were leaving Louisiana… You know you are in Louisiana when you notice a certain laissez-faire when it comes to enforcing laws on the highway. On Interstate 10 we noticed several 3-car trains – a truck or a van towing a car towing a car. Each of these seemed to have homemade towbars bolted to bumpers, and it looked like each was taking the vehicles on their last trip to a junkyard. Some might have had working taillights on the last car, but none could have had brakes working on any but the first car and, in any other state, it seemed unlikely that they would have been legal or even attempted.

Looking for interesting things to see, we found Spindletop Gladys City Boomtown Museum – a recreation of the town that sprung up after the Spindletop gusher that created the global liquid fuel economy in which we live.

This was a creation by Lamar University around 1975, and the various buildings and exhibits told the live and times of the boom economy that started with a gusher than rained 800,000 barrels on that part of Beaumont. It polluted the ground water so badly that a barrel of water cost $6, but a barrel of oil sold for just $.03.

The recreation of the gusher is done using water today – see video just below.

Plots were spaced so closely, because people would drill on whatever property they could afford to buy or lease.

Fires were a constant threat.

But that didn’t stop the drive to “Strike it Rich.”

Admission for seniors was just $3, and the person at the cash register assumed that meant us. But – according to the website – for $50 they would shoot water out of their derrick to simulate the gusher for you (and all the others there) to see, so Scott sprung for the $50 and we have pictures and videos to prove it.

Modern Day Boomtown

After lunch (Street Tacos at the museum) we headed into Houston to spend the night boondocking in the back yard of our new Houston dealer Survey Equipment Services, Gary Sayers (co-owner) gave us a nice tour of their impressive facilities with two Haase CNC machines, then let us plug in and fill up with water.

Ruben Morales (a consultant for SES) joined us for a very good a BBQ dinner at Pinkerton’s Barbeque.

After a delicious meal with pleasant company, we returned to watch a documentary on the Titan disaster. While it was OK, it did seem to be 15 minutes of information crammed into and hour and a half.

Tomorrow we go to Austin for Superbowl Weekend.