Confessions of an RVer: BUCK OWEN'S CRYSTAL PALACE

We arrived in Bakersfield yesterday. We were meeting up with our friends, Jim and Terri. We stayed in River Run RV Park. It is a very nice RV park. The facilities were very modern and exceptionally maintained. They give a 10% discount for Good Sam members. The park is also conveniently located to most any and everything you may need.

We were only going to be there for one night and we really wanted to go to Buck Owen's Crystal Palace. Mr. W had looked up the schedule a few weeks back and we thought that a Texas band was going to be there last night. But, they will be there Friday night. It was a "have to do" thing no matter what, so we put on our boots and headed over there.

They have a restaurant in the dance hall so you can have dinner. On the nights that you have to buy reserved tickets, they have a limited "concert" menu, but still serve dinner. When we called to make reservations, they told us that the band would be playing 7:00-9:00. We arrived right at 7:00.

This place is a museum of Buck Owens and "friends". There is trophy case after trophy case of hats, outfits, boots, guitars, music, playbills, album covers, etc. from Buck and some of his "friends" like Johnny Cash, Dwight Yokum, Roy Clark, and Merle Haggard, to mention a few.

They turned the lights off in the dance hall when the band started and so you can't really see the cases in the dance hall, nor take pictures very easily. I wish we would have arrived earlier so we could have looked around at each case a little closer and taken some pictures. But, who knew?

They had these statues made from metal throughout the place of Buck and his friends. They were very well done and were very detailed. George Strait even had a Texas star and a state of Texas shaped pin on his guitar strap.

Buck Owens with some of his memorabilia behind him

Garth Brooks had his signature ear microphone

Johnny Cash with his long coat, guitar and Bible

The band performing was The North Forty. They were from the Bakersfield area and must be regulars because people in the audience were hollering things at them and they were replying. They were actually pretty good. They played a mix of songs they had written and did cover songs of some classic country. Both were good to dance to.

The band

Mr. W and I doing a little two-stepping. Besides Jim and Terri, there was 1 other couple there with boots and dancing the two-step.

When our waitress came to take our order, she asked where we were from. I can't imagine how she knew we were from somewhere else when I spoke???? We told her Texas and she said she had lived in Katy when she was very young and doesn't remember much about it. There was young couple sitting at the table next to us and they told us that they are getting ready to move to Waco. So, we told them what we knew about Waco and that area of Texas. We told them that the people in Texas are friendly. So, all you people in the Waco area, be friendly to any new people moving in around the end of this month!

One interesting thing was Buck's car was hanging on a wall behind the bar. We went to take pictures and a man standing by the bar told Mr. W that Buck use to drive that car around town. This guy worked at a grocery store when he was a teenager and Buck came to the grocery store and was always driving that car.

Before we knew it, it was 9:00 and they were closing. They are open later on Friday and Saturday nights. The food was sucky but the dancing was great. Mr. W told me that you don't go there for the food. You go for the experience. I guess he is right. It was fun. I guess you could say that we walked (and danced) the streets of Bakersfield.