April 28 to April 30

Monday, April 27 we looked around Rockport a little bit and took some pictures at the beach on Aransas Bay. We tried to go to the Texas Maritime Museum and an aquarium but they were both closed Mondays, so instead we found some interesting fountains and sculptures and took pictures. Then we headed south and east through Aransas Pass. It was getting late for lunch so we started looking for a Subway. We drove and drove but no luck, so we looked for a restaurant that could accommodate our big old RV, no luck again. Charlie found a seafood restaurant on the Garmin but when we got there it was a stinky seafood market...the restaurant was gone. We started talking with this old guy who recommended we take the ferry to Mustang Island and go to a place that he couldn't name but he described it's location. We were going that way anyway so we took the ferry (it was free!) and found the restaurant. It was excellent. Charlie had tuna and I had coconut shrimp. We ate outside overlooking a marina. The restaurant is Trout Creek Bar and Grill, if you are ever in the neighborhood I recommend it. Charlie had mentioned to the old guy that we are retired and he asked Charlie how old he is. Charlie said 58, and the old guy said he is 55! Well, maybe the old guy is not so old after all. We continued south to Padre Island and then back west over the intracoastal to Corpus Christi. We stayed at Colonia Del Rey RV Park. They had a pool but it was closed, it was kinda green so I wasn't really interested anyway. Tuesday morning the pool was open, still green, still not interested. It was a nice enough park though and we hung out awhile and then went to the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi. They had dolphin, bird, and otter shows, and we watched a diver feed some fish. There were at least three groups of 7, 8, and 9 year olds so it was a noisy experience! We took a break in the RV for lunch and when we went back in most of the children were gone. It is in the high 80's here, but we were able to park the RV under a bridge so Toby kept cool in the shade. The only cross breeze in the RV was over our beds, so Toby was on Charlie's bed when we came back at lunch and at the end of the day. I have broken two windows the same way so far. The windows slide open and when I pulled the window open, the frame and lock broke completely off. We can still shove them open and shut, but we can't lock them now. Then yesterday when we were riding down the road the windshield wipers suddenly started up, stopped, and started up again. Charlie said “I am not doing it!” If we can make this whole trip without breaking into pieces we will be lucky! Where this RV is concerned, we are taking it one day at a time. Another minor problem Charlie is having is his computer. Before we left home he left the laptop on the floor and it got slightly squashed under Natalie's lift chair. The result was the screen was all black up in the corner but it had mostly cleared up before we left home. Now a big old black jagged line has marched across the screen and it looks like it is going to stay. So we may be computer shopping in the next few days. Oh well. Tonight we are staying in Corpus Christi again and this park has a very nice clean pool. I went swimming but Charlie just kept me company. The sun was not shining and it was a little windy. They said the pool was 80 degrees, and I guess it was but I could only stay in for about 20 minutes. Wednesday morning we headed back to Mustang Island to stay in the state park. Mustang is a mostly undeveloped barrier island habitat. It is a long thin strand of land with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Corpus Christi Bay on the other. Kind of like Merritt Island. We got a camping spot about 75 yards from the gulf as described on the web. There was a catch though. There are scrub covered dunes between the campsite and the gulf so we had to walk about half a mile back down the road towards the state park office (and the facilities) and then out to the beach. The sun was hot in the afternoon so we left Toby in the RV with the A/C and made the walk. It is a wide white sandy beach with lots of seaweed everywhere. It was very windy and so the gulf looked and sounded like the ocean on a rough day. There were a few people trying to swim but they were not out very far. There were just a handful of people on the beach including a three or four year old who took off for the parking lot with his Mother in pursuit. She wasn't moving too fast but he was, luckily he wasn't headed for the gulf. We found some shade at a picnic table that was more or less covered, and we sat awhile and took a few pictures. When we got back to the RV we were tuckered out. Charlie took a long nap and I read and napped. We went back to the beach with Toby just before the sun went down and had a wonderful long walk on the beach out to a couple of jetties. The sand was hard and easy to walk on and there were a couple of cars on the beach. Toby enjoyed trying to chase all the birds. Charlie is sending David Harrell e-mails and describing things, so I am posting some of what he wrote, he is saving me a lot of writing! Charlie wrote..... “It is 5 am here (Thursday) and I thought I would look at the pictures I took yesterday and I discovered that the state park has free wifi. I remember they have it at the rest areas in Texas. The park is not nearly as nice as Florida parks. The bathrooms are in rough condition but work and there aren't enough of them and they are far from our site. The wind is still real strong and the waves are those kind that start way out shallow and keep coming in, real rough and impossible to swim. The beach is about a half mile not 75 yards. We walked to the beach when we first got here and it was hot and tiring. We went back around 7 and took Toby with us for a long walk and it was nice, lots of seaweed spread all over though. Our neighbor pulled in late in a really big bus like RV towing a little storage trailer. I noticed letters plastered on the front that are in reverse mirror image so you can read them in your rear view mirror, they spell 'You DA Dad'. I thought it was going to be a senior, but no it was a guy with 8 kids. He looks barely 40 and there are some twins. The wife looked a little smaller than average, not like she had a lot of babies, so I looked closely at all the kids. Didn't look like any were adopted. They are from Indiana and have been all over the place. They all went to check the beach out and DA dad said they were disappointed there weren't many shells. They thought they would stay 6 days but would head out in the morning. Texas isn't the place for great beaches. He also commented that they just got back from Hawaii and didn't find many shells there either. I told him to go to Egypt by the Red Sea, I found at least 20 beautiful tiny shells in every handful of sand I picked up. I think if he believed me he's going to go because they have to be wealthy enough and there would be a lot of educational places for the kids. I'm not sure where we will go today, maybe back to Rockport and see the maritime museum that was closed Monday. There is even a little aquarium right near it. The HEB Supermarket was huge in Corpus. They had employees at various stations hawking products like at Sam's. The prices overall were almost as good as Wal-mart and with three times the selection on a lot of things. Their food section is at least twice as big as Wal-mart and is eighty percent of the floor space. I tried their own brand of apricot chunks in pineapple juice in a pop top can, I want a whole bunch more, it was 89 cents.” ..... We did go back to Rockport by way of the ferry, and visited the maritime museum, but the aquarium was still closed. Will post pics of the museum next time. Tonight, Thursday, we are staying at the Circle W RV Ranch 'A gated retirement community'. They have an indoor pool in a quonset hut style building. I enjoyed the pool, and Charlie got in for a few minutes but had to go back to the RV. He had a sticker in his foot. Ever since we have been in Texas Toby has been attracting stickers like a magnet, and they get in the carpet in the RV. It is hard to keep up with and really hurt even when they don't go in the foot. Charlie's sticker was tiny but we got it out, I hope. Don't know where we are headed tomorrow. More later!

April 22 to April 27

On Thursday morning we left Magic River and drove down to the bay and along US 80 and the white sandy beach toward Bay St. Louis. We had been near Pass Christian, MS, 28 miles from the Louisiana state line. There were many vacant lots for sale and beat up live oaks opposite the bay on US 80. Probably from Katrina, since there were sidewalks and steps on the vacant lots. We drove through Louisiana on high roads across the bayou. The bayou looked like a flooded forest, very pretty. We stayed in Texas at the Gulf Coast RV Resort. I swam in the pool there and we met a masseuse. We established we were both from Florida and then I said Titusville, and she looked at me funny and I said near KSC, and she said she had heard of it, she is from Melbourne! Ha! Friday morning we met her husband, also a masseuse, at the free breakfast. They were nice people. Before we got there we tried another park, and this is what Charlie wrote about it in an e-mail to David. He may have exaggerated a little........”We are in Beaumont TX at the Gulf Coast RV Resort, a really nice place. it has almost everything and a free breakfast. and it's half price at $17.50. Got gas at $1.869 and saw it a few cents cheaper. Still getting 7 plus or minus a few tenths gallons per mile. I just drove all day not counting shopping at Wal-mart. Tomorrow we will be at Leigh's cousin's ranch near Karnes City. I don't know how long we will stay but we may go on from there to the gulf around Corpus Christi. We did try an RV park off the beaten track that was almost 100 miles east of here and it was really bad so I moved on. It was also a Passport America member and was going to cost $13.50. It had nothing extra to offer other than loose rabid dogs and hells angels gangsters. It was worth the push through the traffic to get here and closer to Karnes City.”....... On Friday afternoon we arrived in Karnes City. But even with the GPS we could not find the road to Jeanne's ranch so she came and got us. She looks great and surely does fit in with the lifestyle she has chosen. Jeanne has 16 acres and has been working with her good friend John, who also has a place on her ranch, to clear it of brush. About 2.5 acres are cleared and green and we parked our RV under a huge live oak known as the hangin tree. A lot of wildlife passes through including turkeys, coyotes, a cougar, and javelinas. Javelinas look like boars but are related to the hippo. A whole clan came through two of the evenings we were there. Jeanne feeds everything on her property with corn and sweet feed. She says the squirrels are so fat they can barely climb the trees. Jeanne might exaggerate a little too. We had a good visit and talked about everything under the sun. We went to a local restaurant called Jerry B's and I had chicken-fried steak. I have always wanted to try it and this seemed like the place to do it. It was excellent, and they served a lot of food. Charlie had a chicken-fried chicken salad, and he enjoyed that too. Although John and Jeanne offered us the use of a bedroom at his place, we stuck with the RV like we did at the Morgan's. We plugged in but did not need to run the A/C the first two nights we were there. The weather was mild, and sometimes windy which made for good sleeping. Jeanne and John each have a Chihuahua. Jeanne's Simon was not happy to see us, in fact he is kind of a maniac where company is concerned, and Toby just sent him over the edge. So whenever company is at Jeanne's place Simon stays with John and his little dog Sandy. Sandy didn't like us either but she tolerated my petting her. It seemed she was just backing up Simon. On Friday we went to an old time grocery store named Looney's, a family name. We picked up steaks and ice cream for a bar-b-que. Looney's was the kind of place I had been to in the hills of West Virginia years ago. Charlie was reminded of the little stores in the Caribbean, but this was a big store that had everything. It had a rough floor and lots of personality. We went to the bar-b-que Friday evening at Jeanne's only neighbors on her road. Toby stayed in Jeanne's place whenever we left him rather than in the RV. Glenda is a schoolteacher and Tom is an electrician who was a big help getting Jeanne setup when she moved up there from Corpus Christi. They, the Bakers, are on top of a hill and they have a great view. They are hard workers and are still in the process of getting their place finished. They are temporarily living in a 5th wheel camper and are remodeling their home. They almost have the kitchen, front room, and one bedroom and bath done, and hope to move in this summer. They are very nice 'salt of the earth' folks who made us feel very welcome. They have 5 dogs, three horses, and a bunch of goats, including a new baby goat that Jeanne delivered a few days ago. Jeanne did the job since she has the smallest hands. We really enjoyed being outside amongst the animals watching their antics and eating great food. They fixed chicken for Charlie and the rest of us had steaks and threw the steak bones to the dogs. Five steak bones to five dogs....it worked out perfect. I especially liked a dog named Beans who would lie down with all four feet in the air in front of anyone anytime anywhere hoping for a pet. Beans got my steak bone. John made potato salad and fixed corn on the cob and Jeanne brought salad and other stuff, we contributed a few dollars to the meal. We sat and visited until 10 o'clock. Charlie and I were given a real feel for what living here is all about. Neighbors working together, helping and depending on each other, and being outdoors most of the time. Jeanne has had chickens and goats in the past year or so, but she doesn't have any livestock right now. She has plans to get laying hens one day soon. She also has plans to build two blinds in the brush for photography. Jeanne is a retired Navy Corpsman, her expertise is in the medical field, and she works with an organization that gives medical care in Guatemala every year. She is going there in June to survey the villages. She is also a professional photographer, though she is not in business now. She did sports photography and worked for PBS. We hung out together with Jeanne and John all day Saturday and had a late lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We visited an old court house/school house, post office, and barn in Helena; all are historical landmarks from the 1800's. Finally we visited a beautiful old Catholic Church that was open even though no one was around. We saw a lot of cows, including longhorns, and a huge bull just stared back at us when we stopped to look at him. It seemed like the cattle were always looking at us as we drove by. Beautiful cactus with yellow blooms were along the edge of most of the pastures. We left Jeanne's on Sunday afternoon and headed for Rockport which is south and near Corpus Christi. It was a very windy ride and a bare landscape most of the way. Charlie drove quite a bit below the 70 mph speed limit because of the wind. We weren't, but it seemed like we were on the shoulder of the road the whole way so traffic could get around us. Jeanne told us that is how they drive on two lane roads in Texas. The shoulder is as smooth as the rest of the road, so it is okay to move over, you just have to be careful you don't run completely off the road. We stopped at Wal-Mart (as usual) in Beesville and got gas there. We arrived at the Ancient Oaks RV Resort about 15 minutes after the office closed so we didn't get the code to get on the Wifi and the combo for the bathroom till this morning. We are still using the porta potty because the black water tank still leaks. Oh well, we will probably not get the tank pipe fixed till after we get home. It is not all that bad. We did use the heated pool last night so we got a little exercise. We have cable too. It was windy all night so we had all the windows open and it was good sleeping. Today is Monday and we plan to go to the Maritime Museum, the aquarium, and tour a ship. More later. PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOYCE!

April 17 to April 21

We finally got going Friday morning at 11 am April 17, 2009. We were delayed getting started because Charlie got the flu at the end of February, the same day Joyce, Larry, and Mom left our house for home. The flu left Charlie with his asthma and it took a long time before he was feeling good again. Then we needed to get the RV repaired. So we left on Friday and drove up to Tallahassee to visit my second cousin Ann Morgan, her husband David, and my third cousin Becky who is our age. They have a beautiful place and an ideal living arrangement. Their single family house is really two separate living quarters including separate kitchens and master bedrooms. Becky also has two additional bedrooms. They have a couple of acres with wonderful live oaks, and they have plans for a greenhouse for Becky's orchids, a vegetable garden, fish pond, and fruit trees. They have been there since July 2008 and they are enjoying their big screened porch that adjoins both sides of the house. Toby made himself right at home. He took advantage of the fenced yard and the doggie door from the porch to the yard. Just like home, only better! It was so great to spend time with Ann, David, and Becky. We haven't seen each other in over 25 years, and they are just as I remembered them. They were so nice to Joyce and me when we were kids spending the summer with Gramma in North Port. I really enjoyed their company back then and it was the same on this visit. Ann has kept in touch with us over the years and I am so glad she was kind enough to do that. Our first evening there, David grilled chicken and shrimp kabob and we had lots of vegetables and a different kind of coleslaw that was all good. We shared a little family tree information; an interest of David's. I was particularly interested to learn about an ancestor on my Great Grandmother's side. Allen Wylie Prather was a Colonel of the 120th Indiana Volunteers in the Civil War. He was born January 15, 1836 and died November 19, 1891. He was wounded in the battle of Franklin, TN on November 30, 1864, by concussion of a shell, leaving him paralyzed on the right side, and leading to dropsy which eventually caused his death. He is buried in grave 82 of the Civil War section of Arlington National Cemetery. Next time we go to Arlington we will visit his grave. Saturday morning we looked at family pictures that Ann has and that I brought along on my computer. I was able to copy the pictures onto a CD for Ann, most of those pictures belonged to Gramma Terry. There are a number of people in the pictures that I don't recognize. Ann helped with some, but most remain unidentified. Oh well. The Morgans had another guest for the weekend. Raphael, a friend of Becky's. Becky raises and shows orchids and there was a show in Tallahassee that weekend. Raphael is from Sarasota and he is in the orchid business. He has a large facility in Sarasota, 15, 000 square feet of orchids. Raphael and his family also have acres of orchids in Venezuela. I would like to see that! Becky and Raphael went to the show at 7:30am and we went later in the day. It is quite something to see so many varieties of orchids at one time. Becky and Ann and David took us to Wakulla Springs, but first we went to lunch at a Greek restaurant. The food was great and I learned that Gyro is pronounced 'hero'. How come I didn't know that? Anyway, that is what I had and we all enjoyed our lunch. The Wakulla Springs were very interesting and there were lots of young people swimming and jumping off a high platform. They must have been northerners, the water was cold! We had a nice boat trip and saw lots of wildlife including birds, gators and turtles. There was a great variety of birds. The Morgans say that the experience is always different especially when the birds are migrating. Becky bought me my first magnet of the trip so I am starting a new collection. Then at Charlie's request they took us into Tallahassee to get a look at the capitul. We took pictures of the capitol building and the dolphin fountain. The fountain was beautiful with the water shining in the sun. Before we headed home we ate out again at a small family Italian restaurant called Mom and Dad's. That was good too. Boy did we eat good that day! When we got back we looked at family pictures again and visited and then Raphael came back and we visited with him too. Becky and I took Toby for a walk and we all had a good time. Sunday morning Raphael made blueberry pancakes and we had bacon too. When I got up I noticed that the fridge in the RV did not seem cold enough, in fact my breakfast drink was not cold at all. Charlie was sound asleep so Toby and I went in the house and left Charlie to discover the problem. Just as we sat down to eat Charlie came in and said we have two problems. The fridge is not working and our black water is leaking! I was mortified. The water is treated and there was not that much on the ground...but oh how embarrassing. The Morgan's were gracious about it though. Another issue during our visit was Toby versus Becky's cats Lucky and Buzz. Becky kept the cats on her side of the house while Toby kept to the other side and the porch. They could see each other from the porch and at first all the staring was cute. But both Toby and Lucky, a beautiful black cat, were determined to get together. Toby managed it twice. The first time they had a little fight, but both were unscathed. The second time, Toby slipped by and got into Becky's house. Becky grabbed Lucky and Toby ran around and around while Charlie and I chased him. Buzz is mostly invisible and luckily Toby didn't see him. Finally I caught Toby and apologized on my way back to Ann and David's house. Although we tried, we were not exactly perfect guests. Anyway Charlie was concerned enough about the RV's problems that he thought we should head home instead of continuing our trip. Everyone was sympathetic to hear that. They even invited us back for when we do head out again. So I guess we weren't too much of a nuisance. We hung around until about 11am and then we headed back East. Becky gave me a sprig of Rosemary to sweeten up this old RV. We got about 80 miles away and stopped at a Wal-Mart for lunch. There, as hoped, we discovered the fridge was working again. Charlie asked if we got a porta potty, at least temporarily, if I would want to keep going instead of going back home. I said absolutely! So that is what we did. We turned around and headed back to the Florida Caverns in Marianna, west of Tallahassee. We got to the cavern park at about 4pm (one hour time change), but because of all the recent flooding there was no camping there. We went to the Arrowhead Campground which is private and sells and services RVs. So we spent the night and got the RV looked at in the morning. A young man said the black water pipe was not broken but had come apart at a seam. He glued it together and said it should hold. We hope so. Just to be safe we are using the porta potty for a few more days. We left there and stopped at a Wal-Mart (we can't seem to pass those up), then we went to the Florida Caverns. The caverns had also been closed due to flooding until the day before, and were only partially open now. They are always closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we hit it just right. There was a Korean church group from Macon, GA on our tour of the caverns and Charlie talked with them a little bit. It was not a long tour but the cavern was very pretty. We left the park and pulled to the side of the road, a sort of dead end behind some fast food restaurants and had lunch. We drove to Falling Waters State Park, still in Florida. We got a nice camping space but it was not quite level. The trouble with the fridge was probably due to parking for two days and nights without moving on a spot that was not level while running the fridge. So tonight we put the RV up on levelers (I didn't even know we had levelers), though it is still tipped a little bit. We took a walk with Toby down to the lake. There is a beach and a netted swimming area. We tried to take a short cut back to the camp but the trail got muddy....so we ended up with a longer walk back. This park is on a hill and the path was a climb to get back. This may be Florida but it sure doesn't seem like it. We saw a lot of pretty long leaf pines and other pines as well. Some areas were burned, but signs said it was done on purpose and very controlled in order to keep it a pine forest. Long leaf pines once covered 30 to 80 million acres from Virginia to Texas, but because they are so useful for building they have been reduced to about one million acres, so foresters are trying to cultivate them. They look like a bush when they start to grow, they grow straight up without branches, then finally they branch out. We got our showers today and we are getting used to this RV and getting better organized, even though we are still stuck with the porta potty. It fits in the bathroom for storage, but we can't use it in there. This morning, Tuesday, we got up early and took the trail down to Falling Waters. It is a 73 foot waterfall down into a sinkhole. It is a pretty amazing sight. A boardwalk takes you to the falls for some great views below the falls but high above the sinkhole. We walked another trail and then headed out. Now we are in Long Beach, MS. Haven't seen a beach but we are at a nice campground with a couple of lakes (more like ponds). It is called Magic River Resort, a rather grandiose name for what it is. But it is part of Passport America which we belong to so we got half price and wifi. I am finally posting these notes tonight. At the end of these days I am pretty tired so I don't know how well I can keep up with this. Note to Joyce: Feel better soon!