For Donny’s birthday this year I planned a weekend in Jefferson, TX. Jefferson is 45 minutes from Longview in east Texas. It was our first vacation without kids in 13 years. Crazy, right? Neither one of us had been here, but we had heard nothing but really good things about it. The weather was suppose to be bad all weekend, but we didn’t care, we were on an adventure.

We got into town about 8:40 Friday night. Found our hotel easily, since it was right in the heart of downtown. We were staying at the Historic Kahn Saloon Hotel.

When we were bringing our bags in I saw a man sitting out front in a really large golf cart. I asked him if he was a taxi. He said, no, but I can take you anywhere you need to go. Turns out, he is the owner of the hotel where we were staying. His name is Eric and it took him 2 years to convert the once dilapidated building into what it is today. We got a little history. In it’s past lives it has been a saloon, complete with a brothel, and a funeral home. He actually found blood stains on the floors upstairs when they pulled them up. Apparently, when the flu epidemic broke out in the late 1800’s there were so many dead that the bodies had to be stored in coffins upstairs. UGH!

A little tidbit about Jefferson, it’s supposedly one of the most haunted towns in Texas. Eric had actually built himself an apartment to live in inside the hotel. He lived there for a while, but the microwave would turn on by itself, the refrigerator door would just open. There was knocking on the door with no one there. The final straw was when he was sitting on his couch and his Amazon Echo flew from the table all the way into the kitchen. He packed his clothes and computer and left. Now he rents it as a hotel room.

He also told us about Andrew. He was a little 7 year old boy that lived upstairs with his mother who was a prostitute. A man broke into their room, killed the mother and drowned Andrew. He likes the female guests and will pull on their shirts and touch their hair. He also gravitates toward bustier ladies. Dang it, I guess I wouldn’t get to experience his presence.

The hotel itself is beautiful and you can tell that a lot of time and money was spent bringing up to present day.

This is the second floor hallway to our room. Our room was the next to last. The floors are the original floors from the 1800’s.

Our room had a king sized four poster bed.

Once we dropped our things off we were starving. Eric had told us about Auntie Skinner’s just a short walk down the street. It looked lively and fun and one of they only places open at that time of night.

The waitress forgot to turn our order in so we were there for quite a while. No worries because their were adult beverages and some pretty good karaoke.  We don’t sing on the stage, but we do a mean table karaoke. Especially after a few of these.

Mine was the Ocean Water which is coconut rum, Blue Curacao and sprite. Donny had the Manhattan. I don’t know what the heck is in, but I took a sip and almost died.  The food was really good. Donny had the junkyard burger and I had a quesadilla. No pic because we stuffed it down like we’d never had a meal before.

I highly recommend Auntie Skinner’s. Even with a guy getting dragged out face first in handcuffs with a big ole sheriff yelling at him it was still very entertaining.

By this time it was 11:30. The weather forecast called for over 90% chance of rain for the remainder of the weekend so we decided to take a little walking tour. It was dark, spooky and fabulous! Across from our hotel was the Thomas Jefferson Park. There is a big bust of Thomas Jefferson and a fountain that is tucked in between buildings in a wonderful little courtyard.

We decided to explore some more since everything is so close.

This is the Sterne Fountain. It is at the intersection of Lafayette and Market Street. It’s beautiful and incredibly spooky at the same time. It was designed to be a drinking fountain with three different levels for humans, dogs and horses. It is made of solid bronze.

On top of the Sterne Fountain is Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth.

There are hitching posts all down Austin St.

Beautiful Catholic church next to a gazebo and park. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but the streets are paved with bricks.

And back to our hotel for the night. By this time it was after midnight and we were tired, but I had fallen in love with this little town. I couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow would bring.

Stacy