Texas RV Travel blog

Please add your name to the petition for clean water today.

Benefits of Clean Water

Americans make an estimated 1.8 billion trips to go fishing, swimming, boating, or enjoy other activities at water destinations that they judge are clean and safe enough for these activities.

In 2001, sport fishermen spent more than 557 million days fishing the nation’s and spent some $36 billion in goods and services to support their fishing activities.(1)

This $36 billion in direct expenditures for fishing, in turn, generated another $102 billion in purchases throughout the economy and 1.1 million jobs with benefits to local economies wherever fishing takes place.(2)

The $45 billion commercial fishing and shell fishing industry depends on clean water to sustain fisheries and deliver products that are safe to eat. The industry employs 250,000 people harvesting over 10 billion pounds of fish and shellfish from the Great lakes, Gulf of Mexico, Puget Sound, and other water bodies.(3)

Manufacturers use about 13 trillion gallons of water a year.(4) While manufacturing operations vary widely; nearly all require a reliable source of clean water for production purposes, cooling, or as an essential ingredient in products.

The soft drink manufacturing industry alone uses over 12 billion gallons of water each year to produce products generating over $54 billion in sales.(5)

Other benefits include increased value of shorefront properties, income to local governments from downtown development along riverfronts and from increased beach use from clean beaches, and reduced sickness from waterborne disease leading to greater productivity of the workforce.

* 54 percent of Americans believe clean water is a right not a privilege.
* 90 percent of Americans believe that a federal investment to guarantee
clean water is a critical component of our nation’s environmental well-being.
* 91 percent of Americans are concerned that America’s waterways will not be
clean for their children and grandchildren.
The Luntz Research Companies, February 2004

The above information is an excerpt from the report A National Clean Water Trust Fund — Principles for Efficient and Effective Design by Kenneth I. Rubin, PA Consutling Group.

Please add your name to the petition for clean water today.

——-
1. US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Outdoor Recreation, US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC (October 2002).
2. American Sport Fishing Association, The 1996 Economic Impact of Sport Fishing in the United States, http://www.asafishing.org.
3. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Liquid Assets: A summertime Perspective on the Importance of Clean Water to the Nation’s Economy, EPA-800-R-96-002, May 1996, p.6.
4. U.S. Bureau of Census data cited in U.S. EPA, Liquid Assets, p.10.
5. U.S. EPA, Liquid Assets, p.10.

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Things I’ve learned from my Boys (honest and not kidding):

1.) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.

2.) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.

3.) A 3-year old Boy’s voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.

4.) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20×20 ft. room.

5.) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.

6.) The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn’t stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.

7.) When you hear the toilet flush and the words, uh oh, it’s already too late.

8.) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.

9.) A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year old man says they can only do it in the movies.

10.) Certain Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old Boy.

11.) Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.

12.) Super glue is forever.

13.) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can’t walk on water.

14.) Pool filters do not like Jell-O.

15.) VCR’s do not eject PB&J sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.

16.) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.

17.) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.

18.) You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.

19.) Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.

20.) The fire department in Austin, TX has a 5-minute response time.

21.) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.

22.) It will, however, make cats dizzy.

23.) Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.

24.) 80 percent of men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.

Pass this on to your friends, with or without boys.

For those with no children, this is totally hysterical!
For those who already have children past this age, this is hilarious.
For those who have children this age, this could save a mother’s sanity.
For those who have children nearing this age, this is a warning.
For those who have not yet had children, this is birth control.

Keep your wheels on the road!

Eileen

P.S. Feel free to add your own nuggets of wisdom gained from your boys.

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Welcome to the Southern Gal (Dana) Goes North (Chicago) blog. Dana is a writer with a great sense of humor. She writes about sacred memories, Southern spaces, recipes, poetry and dieting. Visit Southern Gal Goes North blog today.

Keep your wheels on the road.

Eileen

P.S. To the other blog who wanted to rent space on USAer this week: Sorry I may only choose one and Dana had been waiting because I was traveling. Please reapply next week.

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Another species is battling extinction in Texas. The Attwater’s Prairie Chicken, once more numerous than the buffalo, now number in the 40s. The Attwater’s Prairie Chicken is actually a subspecies of a grouse called the Hearth Hen. The Hearth Hen went extinct in the 1920s.

Each spring, males gather to perform an elaborate courtship ritual. They inflate yellow air sacs and emit a booming sound across the prairies, vying for the attention of the female of the species. Once silenced, the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken will never be heard again. Another unique voice will have been quelled by encroaching urban blight.

Attwater’s Prairie Chickens once inhabited 6 million acres of coastal prairie, from Corpus Christi, Texas, northward to the Bayou Teche area in Louisiana, and inland some 75 miles. Grasses of many species waved in the winds including little bluestem, Indiangrass, and switchgrass. Today less than 1 percent of this rich coastal prairieland exists. Rice, oil, houses, ports and canals cover the land once home to many species.

In the 1960s, the World Wildlife Fund purchased about 3,500 acres of virgin prairie 40 miles from Houston, and the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken had at least one place to call home. The land was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1972. Today, the refuge is more than three times its original size. The problem is, the population is already at the critical point, where the gene pool is just too limited to flourish. Attwater’s Prairie Chicken is on the way out.

Why Did the Prairie Chicken Cross the Road to Extinction? Because no one cared enough to try and save it until it was too late. Do not let this happen to another species. God gave us stewardship over the other species on the Earth. We have failed our God-given mission.

Visit the Attwater’s Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge this spring. Maybe you will here the booming voice of the male for the last time. Maybe this will be a good spring and the population will flourish. I hope to God that is so.

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I found a new source for maps of the Texas coast and south Texas. Texmaps publishes atlases, wall maps, specialty maps and has a wonderful selection of free maps. Their digital mapping system is incredible.

We love maps! They hang from our walls like priceless paintings and are covered in fingerprints. In fact, I worked for one of the largest university Geography departments in the US, so I have seen some serious maps. However, these maps are so far beyond anything I have seen before. The aerial color infared maps of the Texas coast are incredible (left).

Take a look at this map of Aransas and Copano Bays. The entire picture looks like some exotic jewel and, if you click a square, you can zoom in to almost street level.

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I love living in this century! Just when I think I have seen everything, something else surprises me. Back in December, I was excited to find and write about virtual travel. I found many websites where you can take virtual tours of destinations around the globe. I thought that was pretty hot. But, hold on y’all, because you have not seen anything!

An article in MediaPost’s Search Insider(Lights, Camera, Point And Click! by Gord Hotchkiss) makes virtual travel come alive.

Here is his idea of the virtual tourist:

You’re watching a movie that features some gorgeous locations in France and Italy. As you watch the movie, you hit a flag button on your Media Center remote every time you see an interesting villa, an intriguing town, a vintage bottle of wine or that little bistro that seems so romantic.

By the end of the film, you have a detailed travel itinerary, including airfare costs, hotel availability and restaurant suggestions! Just one or two more clicks and you have reservations.

This means that virtual travel will become more relevant to consumers. That means that the technology will be there to faciliate this process. Finally, I see what the search engine buzz is about. Someday we will not search, but point and click. Cool?

Keep your wheels on the road!

Eileen

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The USAer Blog of the week is Haunted House Dressing. Please visit this eclectic blog.

My favorite article is the recycled comic strip made with finger puppets. I laughed so hard when the ghost puppet, discussing the problems associated with being dead, turns to the pumpkin head, who commiserates:’Sometimes I poop seeds.’

Jeremy C. Shipp, the blog owner, has a unique marketing strategy. Visitors may write a review of a book, poem, article or picture featured on the blog (or not). For each blog entry, you will receive a chance to win six 12-oz bags of coffee beans. This is enough caffeine to light up my hometown!

Keep Your Wheels on the Road!

Eileen

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