Our Travel Blog

Getting warmer! Today reached 21C, not quite as hot as the 27C forecast, but at least it was warm and dry.

We headed back to Aransas to visit the University of Texas Maritime Research Unit. There were a series of small aquariums with South Texas marine life in them inside the building and a self guided walk outside that showed what life lived on the beach and dunes, as well as how dunes form. In fact S. Pardre Island is basically a large sand dune, and is one of the largest barrier islands in the world. Towards the end of the walk we passed by a number of pelicans sitting on a wooden rail looking over the water. Every so often one of them would dive into the water and grab a fish and then return to the rail.

Pelicans UofTx Maritime Research Unit Aransas, Tx

Pelicans UofTx Maritime Research Unit Aransas, Tx

Once we had finished the walk we headed down to the beach just in time to see a large(ish) tanker passing by.

Tanker and Pelican Aransas, Tx

Lyn spotted 3 dolphins frolicking right in front of the tanker, they were actually swimming and jumping within the bow wave directly in front of the ship! This was our second spotting of dolphins in their natural habitat this trip.

We headed back home across the ferry, and while we were in line to board we saw another three dolphins playing in the channel.

We didn’t sign up for this!

Clear blue sunny skies greeted us this morning, the cost of this was a further drop in temperature to 44F.

Although cool, it was a good day to go exploring so we headed off to Padre Island. Essentially Padre / South Padre Island is a large sand bar that runs down the coast of Texas from  Corpus Christi to Brownsville. It is broken up in places to allow shipping to pass through into inland waterways.

We headed over to Port Aransas, about 18 miles east of here, it’s on the island joined to the mainland by a  bridge and a ferry. The ferry was almost unique in that it was free. Although the distance across the water was only a few hundred yards and only took a few minutes there were 5 docking stations on each side of the crossing and seven ferries available.

We crossed into the town, which was nothing special. I did get excited at one point when we saw a cafe / bakery, especially as it was mid morning coffee time. Unfortunately the bakery part didn’t seem to bake, and everyone inside was digging into big breakfasts; we left un-satiated (if that is a word, which I doubt).

We drove out of the town and discovered a beach access road, which we took. This led us through a golf course and directly onto the beach. At the entrance was a sign that the beach was considered a town road, and as such all rules of the road applied.

Beach Port Aransas, Tx

As we moved further down the beach we saw a group of trailers

Trailers on beach at Port Aransas, Tx

It seems trailers can stay for a maximum of 3 nights, and there appears to be no cost. There is also no hydro, water, sewer, internet or other essentials to living it rough!

We parked the truck and wandered down the beach for a while but the wind was pretty cold so we headed back to the truck. The beach itself must have been 2 or 3 miles long, and pure sand.

After the exercise and disappointment of the bakery it was time to find lunch. We headed back to the town and found a seafood restaurant on the outskirts where we had a delicious meal of fresh shrimp.

On the way to the restaurant Lyn spotted a nature park, so we headed back there to walk off lunch. We parked the truck and headed off towards an observation tower about a mile away. The path was either fine gravel or boardwalk and was well maintained. We saw our usual egrets and blue heron as well as a roseate spoonbill which is the colour of a pink flamingo (sorry Amanda, too far away for a photo).

Next to the park was a small airfield where there was some parachute jumping taking place, this rather surprised me as there was a good 15-20mph wind blowing. One parachutist landed back on the airfield, the other appeared to land on the beach… not sure if that was intentional!

We headed back across the ferry, and halfway across I spotted a dolphin fin in the water. In fact there were a pair of dolphins that swam and jumped, and passed a few yards in front of the ferry…. an unexpected bonus.

The other unexpected bonus (this time for the truck) was a trip to the car wash to get rid of all the mud from the previous campground.

It’s a few degrees cooler up here, but still overcast and showery. Evidently February is the wet month.

As you may recall, when we set-up at the previous site we had a couple of problems due to water freezing over the winter. One of the victims was the pull-out spray head on the kitchen sink. For the last 5 weeks we have been using just the hose that used to feed the spray head. This worked OK as long as you remembered not to turn the tap on fully, if you did the hose would whip around sending water everywhere. Although the spray head was replaced under warranty (!) there was a mess up with the shipping. The spray head finally arrived and has now been fitted. Luxury, we have controllable water in the kitchen.

This afternoon we headed out to explore the local area, Lyn has been suffering severe withdrawal symptoms as she hasn’t been to a JoAnn fabrics store this year. Today we just happened to visit JoAnn fabrics.

After that we headed out to an RV store as I needed a new hose coupler for the sewer pipe (I wont go into the not so pleasant details). While we were in the store we met our next door neighbours from the camp ground. We had seen them around, but had not spoken to them. They live in Ontario about 120 miles from Ottawa, and the wife is originally from Glasgow!

Once I had the sewer pipe fixed we took a walk down to the beach, about 50 yards away. There are a number of birds on the water, there were different species of herons and egrets as well as some ducks. From the beach you can see across the bay of Corpus Christi towards the downtown area. There are also a number of oil refineries around the coast line, as Corpus Christi is on the Gulf of Mexico allowing tanker access. Quite often they would light off some of the gas that must be a by-product of the refining process and there are giant orange flames coming from some of the chimneys.

Well, the rain continued to fall so after speaking to the boss man, I figured the best place to be was inside the truck watching the worker bees! The plan was to fill in the ruts with what they called leechee (sp?), to me it looked like gravel. Once the ruts were filled they would put down wooden boards so I could get the truck in and hooked up

The tractor arrived with its front bucket full of gravel, this looked promising until he dumped the gravel in the rut. One bucket load did about 4ft of rut! There was at least 20 ft to fill! For the next 20 minutes or so the tractor hauled in around 5 loads of gravel, while another guy packed and smoothed the ruts. In the mean time the boss returned and figured we should give it ago while waiting for the boards! Must admit to being a little nervous as the gravel strips were only slightly wider than the tyres and I had to both stay on the gravel and get the hitch lined up with the trailer. After moving some of the gravel around to allow me to line up squarely I backed in the final few feet to be met with a large bang. This was good news as it meant the hitch had connected and locked. A gentle tug forward confirmed that the trailer would now go wherever the truck went.

Next problem was to get the 16000 lb combination moving without finding the mud or spinning the wheels. The truck was in 4 wheel low and started to move just fine, The problem I had was when I reached the road I would have to turn the truck 90 degrees left or right to stay on the road as there was mud on the far side. If I turned right the trailer would go off the gravel into the already soft mud, if I went left the trailer would cut across the property of the mobile home next door, but this way was more solid. I went left, and all was (almost) well. The trailer went over a decorative log that formed the boundary of the property and promptly snapped it in half. The boss man declared this a non-issue, and we were free of the mud and firmly on the road.

Once clear I hooked up the trailer brakes and electrics and we headed out to Corpus Christi. Previously I said that the journey would take about 5 hours…. this is what the GPS predicted, however once on the road, the signpost and the GPS differed by about 120 miles. The signpost was right, and we had just cut 2+ hours off the journey. Lyn reprogrammed the GPS and distance to go then looked fine. Not sure what I did wrong earlier!

About 50 miles into the journey we had to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint (the border was about 60 miles behind us), the agent there looked at the licence plate and said “You’re Canadian?” My first thought was to congratulate him on his superb knowledge of geography, but quickly realised this may not be a smart move so replied “Yes” instead. He just waved us on.

We reached the new campground just after 2pm and checked in. The original site they had put us in backed right onto the water, but for some reason we had been moved to across the road, still close to the water but we now back onto another RV. This gives a feeling of being sqaushed in, but I am sure we will survive.

So far the weather has been cr*p, but it is less windy and less muddy here. Hopefully we’ll get out and explore a bit tomorrow.

Last night it poured with rain for about 5 hours, not exactly what we wanted. When we got up the rain had stopped, and I figured with the 4 wheel drive and the low gear position we should be able to get out if I took it slowly.

After breakfast the rain started again. I went out and dismantled the Satellite dish, disconnected the electric and water and then went to reverse the truck into position to connect to the trailer. This was the easy part..wrong! I got about 1 truck length back towards the trailer and lost all grip. I managed to gently “rock” the truck to get out of the mus and back onto the roadway. The ruts must have been 6-9″ deep, There was no way I was going to be able to try that again and connect up to the trailer.

Time to pay the office a visit and see what they could do. The two worker bees were all for me staying a few more days until the ground dried out. Luckily the boss man was around and he had other ideas (which would involve a lot of wet work for the worker bees). I went back to the campsite and waited. Not long after a tractor came down the road to help out with the problem.

It’s been a long trying day, part 2 tomorrow!