TEXAS

Overalls-very Texan!

What's more Texas than football?  Go Broncos!

OK-I'll take any excuse to post pictures of the grandbaby!!

We’ve just spent the last two weeks enjoying ourselves in Texas.  We said good-bye to Emily and left Tempe very early in the morning to avoid as much of rush hour traffic as possible.  Our plan was to drive to Las Cruces, New Mexico; spend the night; and then drive on to Fredericksburg, TX where we planned to eat BBQ and German food, and listen to music for a day.  Well, we hit Las Cruces, NM at about noon, and the new, retired, flexible version of Pat and Elaine looked at each other and wondered what on earth we would do all afternoon in a city we knew nothing about………and decided to keep driving.  Ended up spending the first night in Van Horn, Texas which is located in just about the middle of absolutely nowhere which was just fine with us since all we wanted was to drink a glass of wine, eat dinner, and get some sleep.  I have to say that one advantage of being in the middle of nowhere (which means no smog, no dust, no hills, no city lights) is that the stars are absolutely brilliant!  They totally filled the night sky and it seemed like you could reach out and touch them.  Spectacular!  Drove on to Fredericksburg the next day and managed to pull into the RV park right as one of the tires on “the 5^th” went flat; so that extra day we gained in Fredericksburg was spent, in part, getting the spare put on and the flat tire fixed; but we still had a great time.  Wandered through town, went out to Luckenbach, ate great food, and relaxed.

South Padre Island

From Texas hill country, we headed for the Texas gulf coast and South Padre Island.

We stayed at a county-run RV park that was, by far, the largest we’ve ever stayed in (about 500 spaces).  It was located on the very south tip of the island; so it was surrounded on three sides by ocean and bay-it was beautiful. 

 

Sunshine on the sea

Pat and I walked through the entire park thinking there would be quite a few others folks there from Oregon.  However, the entire time we were there, we only saw one other RV from Oregon.  We spent our days walking, hanging out on the beach/in the sun, eating great seafood, and just relaxing.  One thing we did do when we realized that we were going to spend the rest of the winter and spring on the gulf coast, was to pack up all our winter clothing and break out the Capri pants, shorts, and t-shirts!

Pat relaxes on the beach

South Padre Island sunset

From South Padre Island, we headed up the Texas coast, north of Corpus Christi, to Port Aransas on Mustang Island.  This time, we were in a very small RV park (less than 60 spaces) right on the beach.  When we arrived, there were two other RV’s from Oregon already there – who would have thought!  Mostly did the same thing here as we had in South Padre – relaxed.  We did drive the pickup, “big Bertha”, on the beach which is allowed in Texas; but was a first for us.

Outside dining in Port Aransas

Pat and "Big Bertha" on the beach

We realized that this time on the Texas coast was the first time in the six months that we’ve been “on the road” that we’ve had no other agenda.  No specific sights we wanted to see, no genealogy that we wanted to do, no children/grandchild/friends that we wanted to spend time with – just doing whatever we wanted to whenever we wanted to.  We are feeling very decadent!

Our plan was to leave Port Aransas for Lafayette, Louisiana on Friday, January 24^th.  However, we started hearing about a big freeze that was predicted to create sleet, freezing rain, ice, and/or snow as far south as Port Aransas and in the Houston area (which we really couldn’t avoid) Thursday night and into Friday.  Since we didn’t know how long the bad weather would last and weren’t certain that we could extend our stay in the Port Aransas RV park, we decided to hitch up a day early and haul ourselves to Lafayette ahead of the storm on Thursday and spend an extra day there.  We pulled out so early in the morning that it was still dark and took the ferry (a five minute ride) to mainland and hit the road.

"Big Bertha" and "the 5th" take a ferry ride!

So, we arrived in Lafayette, Louisiana yesterday around 2:30 pm.  It was cloudy; but still close to 60 degrees out.  Lafayette is in the middle of Cajun Country in south central Louisiana.  It doesn’t snow much here.  But the forecast was calling for some sort of freezing precipitation; and they didn’t mess around.  By 6:00 pm, they had closed schools, city offices, county offices, state offices, and some highways for Friday in anticipation of the icy stuff!!!  We were under three different severe weather alerts:  Winter Weather, Wind, and Hard Freeze!  Well, the temperatures did fall; precipitation did fall; and we woke up this morning to a very thin layer of snow/ice on the ground.  It is now late afternoon and the temperature has not reached 30 degrees yet and it’s been sleeting or freezing rain all day.  We are still under a severe winter weather advisory until 6:00 pm.  We’ve decided to stay another day until the weather is supposed to get back up into the 60’s again and then we’ll head on to the Florida gulf coast.  So, presently stuck in Louisiana in the snow!  Do you think maybe we packed up those winter clothes a little too soon?

"Big Bertha" and "the 5th" in Louisiana snow!