Our Travel Blog

Woke up to sub 50F temperatures and pouring rain.

Lyn was feeling better but not 100% so we didn’t make any plans for the day. We got a text from Catriona (too painful to talk on the phone), she is doing well after parting with her tonsils yesterday. She said that the pain wasn’t as bad as she had expected, but then the 3 different painkillers that were prescribed may have helped a little.

Lyn was much better by midday; I am still not sure what came over me but I suggested we head out to Jo-Ann fabrics so that she can return some stuff. Anyway she was unable to return the item but still managed to come out with at least 4 more items! Later in the afternoon the clouds gave way to sun, but the temperature didn’t get much higher than 52F.

Woke up to the furnace running, but the temperatures crept up to around 70F overcast with a strong wind.

We were planning on going out on a ranch tour, but Lyn had the start of a cough and sore throat so we decided to stay put.

I finished off the bathroom tiles which took a while as I had to remove the tap fixtures so I could caulk behind them. The finished job is pretty neat, even if I do say so myself!

Now bracing for showers and thunderstorms overnight and tomorrow.

Another warm day up in the 80’s. No sun though, overcast and humid.

This morning was shopping morning, and the smart-phone had its turn to impress Lyn. We loaded an entire list of items we may one day want to buy when grocery shopping into a list, then selected the ones we needed that day. Once at the store we just ticked off the items we had bought, leaving only the needed items on the list. The original list of all items remains permanently, and next week we reset the list and select what we need. Lyn was impressed, I’m slowly turning her into a techno-junkie!

Back from shopping I went onto the internet and 5 minutes later it died. At first we thought it was just the campground system as it will randomly die for a few minutes, but Lyn was talking to our neighbours who needed to use the internet for a property sale and they had tried the library, MacDonalds etc and they were all out. Finally it came back late this evening so you are lucky to have a blog to read!!!!

This afternoon Lyn deserted me and hit the shops, in the meantime I installed a new igniter on the BBQ, much safer than trying to light it with a flame… my eyebrows should be safe now.

I have almost finished the bath room tiling, all the tiles are up and the caulking is about 75% complete. After Lyn returned we took a walk around the campground and down to the beach area where we saw a new species of bird, the long billed curlew, as well as anther roseate spoonbill and blue heron.

Partly Cloudy and up to 83F today with no wind until late evening.

Every thing started out fine, but after breakfast the water died. A quick check round confirmed that, for once,  we were not at fault; it appeared that the campground feed had died. Unfortunately this happened before shower time.

Next order of business was to help out a nameless person who has just traded in her Blackberry for an Android phone, and is now regretting that action. Got partway through the setup and the internet died, shaping up to be a real good day! The internet returned after about 20 minutes, but still no water.

Did a little more remote setting up of the Android phone, then decided to walk up to the camp office and see what was wrong with the water. On the way there we passed the laundry (Lyn had been hoping to do the washing this morning, but that wasn’t going to happen) which had a notice outside explaining that the city would be repairing a water valve between 0900 – 1300 and that the water supply would be shut off.

After lunch the water returned and while Lyn did the laundry I continued the remote battle with the android, all went well until the Google Contacts server took a vacation. At least the new Android owner has access to a calendar and e-mail that is synchronised with Outlook on the home PC.

Finally, summer has returned. Today was mostly clear with the temperature up to 24C.

This morning was routine work on the trailer, time to flush out the black water tank and, as the sun was out and the wind had dropped, I opened up the awning and gave it a wash down.

After lunch we headed back over the causeway towards Corpus Christi and the Aircraft Carrier USS Lexington.

USS Lexington Corpus Christi, Tx

The carrier is anchored in the bay close to the aquarium. Once on board you enter straight onto the hangar deck where there were a couple of WW2 fighter aircraft

Grumman Avenger USS Lexington Corpus Christi, Tx

Most of the hangar deck had been converted into an area for ticket sales, food, gift shop, cinema etc. We went up onto the flight, but it was a little disappointing with life size models of the aircraft that had flown on the carrier, unfortunately they really didn’t look too life like.

One aircraft on the deck was real

F-18 USS Lexington Corpus Christi, Tx

I am sure that the surface of the flight deck was not original either, it was more like a paved road surface and all the steam catapult machinery had been removed.  Visiting the bridge was a bit of a surprise, there was very little electronics there even though the carrier was in operation until 1991. In my mind the bridge hadn’t changed that much since she was launched in 1942.

We headed back down to the hangar deck and went to the Imax theater to watch a film entitled Fighter Pilot which was shot at a large international exercise called Red Flag.

After the movie we toured the living quarters and engine room areas. Unfortunately the whole self guided tour was laid out more as a museum with many glass cabineted exhibits, rather than leaving the boat (ship?) in its original condition. I certainly enjoyed the tour of the USS Alabama last year over this one as we got a much better “feel” for life on board.

Now for the translation, this is the patch of the Landing Signals Officer (LSO), these were pilots who , when not flying, provided assistance from the flight deck to pilots landing on board the carrier. What does the motto mean?

LSO Patch USS Lexington, Corpus Christi, Tx

Back at the campsite it was still a warm and sunny day. The picture below shows that we are a little more crowded here, but also shows the water is not too far away. Our trailer is on the right next to the grey truck

SeaBreeze RV Park, Portland, Tx

No furnace this morning, clear skies and around 65F.

Today is Presidents Day down here, which is a federal holiday celebrating the birthdays of two of the countries early presidents, Washington and Lincoln. In celebration of the day we hung around doing nothing in the morning (how unusual!)

Occasionally there has been a light aircraft buzzing around the bay, a couple of days ago Lyn saw it come in very low and head inland. Turns out there is a small airport just behind the campsite. We (I) decided to go find it, it looks as tho it may be an old WW2 training field, most of it has now been converted to farmland, but there are still some old hangars there. The runway only appears to be around 35ft wide and is somewhat overgrown, it also has a small public road crossing it with a stop sign on both sides of the runway. No aircraft were seen, however 20 minutes after we left we saw an aircraft landing there while we some miles away.

After the excitement of the airport we headed down to a wildlife area which is only a couple of miles from us on the causeway that crossed Corpus Christi Bay. There were very few birds there, however we did see a small blue heron which was a first. We also saw an aircraft landing at the airport mentioned above!

Back at the campsite we noticed  a new palm tree in front of our neighbours RV.

Palm Tree, SeaBreeze, Portland Tx

The picture is pretty bad, as I didn’t want to use flash.  We have found that campers at different resorts have different ways of “decorating” their lots, here it is tacky, illuminated palm trees.

Rained overnight and throughout the morning and the wind was as strong as we have seen it here. Temperatures around 20C

After lunch, the rain stopped and the skies cleared, we risked getting blown away and went for a walk around the camp site. Once we got into the hill area of the site the wind dropped to nothing and with the sun shining it was quite warm. Once we went down the hill back to our area the wind picked up again. There were plenty of white-caps out on the bay, and those birds mad enough to fly were having quite a struggle.

With the cold front having gone through the haze that had been present since we arrived disappeared and we had a clear view of the Corpus Christi skyline for once.

I started work on the bathroom tiles this afternoon, we’ll see how these ones survive.

The wind continued to buffet the trailer all afternoon making it shudder quite a bit, in fact lying on the bed (recovering from my hard work) I began to feel a little trailer sick!!

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Again, warm overnight and overcast throughout the day. We had many short sharp showers and the occasional thunder-boomer.

We decided that today would be a good day to visit the Texas State Aquarium which is just back along the causeway between us and Corpus Christi.

The aquarium has many indoor exhibits together with some outdoor pools that can be viewed from under cover or from outdoors. The former had its uses today with the showers.

Although this was an aquarium, there were a number of exhibits, and displays, featuring birds of prey and water fowl. One of the birds we had seen in the wild, but hadn’t been able to get a picture of was the roseate spoonbill

Roseate Spoonbill, Texas State Aquarium

There was a show featuring some red shouldered hawks that had been rescued by the aquarium, together with the obligatory dolphin show, where we managed to get wet! However the wetness was not due to being too close to the pool (we’ve learnt that lesson!) it was due to the uncooperative weather.

Inside the aquarium were a number of tank displays as well as a “touch pool”. One tank had a number of tiger fish, these are a bread of fish that are not native to the Gulf of Mexico, but have somehow been introduced here. They are at the top of the food chain and are playing havoc with the balance of native fish in the gulf as they have no known enemies.

Tiger Fish, Texas State Aquarium

Moving on to something more serene, the Gulf of Mexico is also home to seven different types of sea-horse, although they are not very common.

Sea Horse, Texas State Aquarium

Yet another institute that was worth a visit, a little expensive relative to similar places down here, but we did get a 25% discount for being out of state visitors!!