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!