Good bye to the Lone Star State

Armadillo Willy isn't he cute? Guadalupe State Park, Texas











Today is our last day on Mustang Island.  What a great day.  Temperatures were 80, winds were slight, it was just a great day.  We did the wash, then loaded up the jeep and drove to Padre Island National Seashore.  Padre Island National Seashore is a 60 mile long barrier island (the longest in the the US)  wild sand dunes, 60 miles of beach, areas to kayak and to fish, and great Bird watching.  Its ok to both drive and camp along the beach, $8.00 a day to camp.  We drove along the beach for 5 miles, lots of birds, people fishing, camping and just hanging out on the beach.  It must be nuts here at spring break and during the summer.  Its not really season here until April.  Water temperature is just 55 so not a lot of people in the water.  Nevertheless it was a great day.  Other than the beach, fishing, and birding, there isn't much to see in Corpus Cristi.   We did have a nice lunch at a place named Snoopys located at the end of the bridge leading from CC to Padre Island.  Funkie place along the water just perfect.  Great sea food.  Jack had an oyster sandwich which consited of perfectly fried oysters on a roll with letuce and tomato, I had shrimp creole wonderful shrimp cooked in a spicy tomato sauce served with cole slaw and rice.  Both meals were perfectly cooked along with wine and beer it was only $20.00.  .

All that I can say is  beach here on Padre Island is very nice and I would certainly come back for the beach.  If we didn't have to be in Florida I would consider staying here for a few more days.  But we need to move on, if not because of the need to get to Florida but also the weather is changing and we want to get ahead of it if we can.

Camp Site at Mustang Island State Park, Corpus Cristi Texas

Padre Island National Seashore

Jack- Fishing Mustang Island State Park

USS Lexington Corpus Christi Tx

Campsite- Guadalupe State Park Tx

Today, Jan 31 we left Mustang Island and headed toward Louisiana.  The weather is changing today its expected be 75 in south Texas today then perhaps snow tomorrow.  So were off.  Headed toward Huston then east toward Lake Charles LA.  Once again the landscape in Texas changes heading from CC to Houston. The landscape near Houston turns from dry looking mesquite land to farm land.  The first real row crop looking ranches that we have seen.  Quite pretty land, flat but nice green and attractive.  About 25 miles from down town Houston the affluent burbs of Houston begin.  Everything is big, big malls, big houses, big office buildings, big medical centers.  The skyline of Houston is big and tall.  We stop at only one of two Costcos in Houston to buy coffee, wine, bread and gas.  Costcos are very few and far between in Texas.  It turns out the gas at Costco was not the cheapest that we saw.  Gas ranged from $2.75 to $3.05 between CC and Houston.  Costco was priced at  $2.95.  Once we gassed up we headed east.  The weather is falling apart so we stopped for the night just outside of Lake Charles LA at an RV park off the freeway.  Nice place, A+ Motel and RV Park.  For $25 per night you get a concrete site with table, wifi, cable tv.   Not a bad place just down wind from an oil refinery.  I wouldn't want to spend a great deal of time here but for a night or possibly 2 its not bad.  rI weather permits its off to Baton Rouge LA for a few days then off to New Orleans.

One last thought.  Both Jack and I enjoyed Texas.  The land in interesting, the people are friendly, the roads are excellent, and the food good.  Texas was not what I expected.  

Texas State Capitol, Austin Texas

On The Beach

We departed Guadalupe State Park headed for the gulf of Mexico, Corpus Christi to be exact. The route to Corpus Christi took us through San Antonio out of hill country into flat ranch land. The hill country dissolved in to the burbs of San Antonio about 12 miles from the city limits. San Antonio has a population of over 1million people the strip malls start about 12 miles from the city center. Traveling through town of a million plus people there wasnt a lot of traffic. San Antonio has an easy freeway system. Nice new roads, beautiful overpasses constructed with red rock, there seems be lots of tax money at work... Could it be a strong congressional delegation?


Destination today is Mustang Island State Park.

Mustang Island is a barrier island that lies between east of Corpus Chisti and the Gulf of Mexico. We arrived at the park, pulled up to the office and the first thing that we saw was a sign in big letters "Watch out for Snakes". Yikes, what did we get ourselves into? It turns out that lying inamoungst the beautiful sand dunes that lay between the campsites and the ocean are three kinds of rattle snakes. The rangers just suggest not to walk through the dunes. No problem...
Great park $16.00 per night.
Fishing is suppose to be good so Jack bought a new rod and reel so that he could fish. Two days in still no fish... But he is having a good time.
Friday, we rode the tandem 35 miles round trip. The destination was Padre Island national Seashore. What a great ride. Beautiful country, marshes, sand dunes, blue sky, birds of all kinds, people fishing, hunting, flat roads, no traffic. Just a great bike ride.
It's ok to drive on the beaches here. So you can drive for 15 miles along the shore from Mustang island to the end of the national seashore. Just beautiful.

Today, we drove into CC. Well, not much to see in Corpus Cristi, a very nice sea wall with great views of the bay but no one out walking, no restaurants no shopping. It was a very odd downtown. City fathers should work harder selling the area. After walking around town, we drove back to Padre Island and had a great lunch. Jack had an oyster sandwich, I had shrimp creole. Both meals were great and not too expensive $20.00 for both along with a beer and a glass of wine.
Prices here in south South Texas are about 30 % less than in the the Bay Area. Today,
One more day here at Mustang Island; tonight we are expecting strong thunderstorms. That should be exciting. Then a cold front moves in and temps drop from 71 to 46. We are lmoving a head of the front on to Mississippi.

Great camp ground. For $16.00 per night you get, water, electricity, grass area, pic nick table with a sun cover and an ocean view. What more do you need? Maybe WiFi would be nice. I have lots of pictures to load. I need my computer!

Texas Hill Country

Im having problems posting pictures. I'll post when I have WIFI.
Its been a few days since I updated my blog. The day after we toured the bat caves we woke to snow flurries. This was quite a surprise since it had been 75 degrees during the day and not cloudy when we went to bed. We packed up the RV and headed east towards Texas.
No silly snow flurries were going to stop us. Before we out of Carlsbad the flurries were done and blue sky broke out. Today's destination was Ozuma Texas 200 miles to the east. More high desert country, a few ranches and oil fields. Not much in the way scenery. Texas's speed limit for autos is 80 m/hr for trucks it's 70. M / hr. The traffic moves fast though this part of the world, the road is in excellent condition; Texas must spend more money then California on ther roads. They have all been in excellent condition. FYI Texas also has a 20 billion dollar deficit like California and are looking at steep cuts in spending.

We arrived in Ozuma too early in the day to quit driving so we pressed on. We finally reached Junction TX about 80 miles east of Ozuma and 130 miles from San Antonio our destination for the night. We stayed at a very nice KOA on the banks of the North Llano River. Big sites, pool, pic nick tables and the river. If I'm ever back in this part of the world in the spring or summer I would stay here. It's to cold to take advantage of the location the night is suppose to drop to 22. During the drive to Junction, the desert gave way to rolling hills studded with oak trees and Texas junipers. The landscape looks like the Auburn area.

The North Llano River KOA was just a short trip to our next stop, Guadalupe River State Park located out side of Boerne Texas. Boerne is a town about 40 miles north west of San Antonio. The main drag of Boerne has lots of cute shops, cafes, wine stores etc. Quite a nice place and looks prosperous. The main drag lies along the banks of the Guadalupe river. Boerne looks like a place that I could live in. Guadalupe  state park is about 12 miles out of town we have a large site with water and electricity for $20 per night after paying for a Texas state park card which costs $60. This is just a great park located between San Antonio and Austin that we are going to stay for 5 nights. Wow, I just saw my first armadillo.... What a funny looking creature.

Today, we drove up to Austin. Nice drive of 80 miles. Downtown Austin is dominated by Lake Lady Bird. Quite a nice lake with walking and biking trails. Austin must be an out doorsy town as there were lots and lots of runners and bikers moving around down town. We toured the state Capitol. The Texas state legislature only meets of 140 days ever other year something that California should consider. Perhaps something. The Texas state Capitol building is larger than the Capitol building in Washington.  Once we finished our tour of the capitol we ventured off to the LBJ Library and Museum.   Good tour, free of charge the only presidential library that is free with exhibitions highlighting LBJs life.  LBJ was born in the Texas Hill country and lived in Johnson City as a child.  I wanted to tour the LBJ ranch we probably will not get to it.  Tomorrow we are off to San Antonio.

San Antonio, another interesting city.  We toured The Alamo, walked the river walk, toured San Fernando Cathedral (oldest Catholic church in the USA).  All very interesting and worth the effort.  The River Walk was neat.  The City really did a fine job with it.  All in all both Austin and San Antonio is worth a visit.

Next stop Corpus Christie and the gulf of Mexico....  Hopefully nice beach weather ahead.

Holly batcave Batman!!!!









Entrance to the Bat Cave

We left Tombstone AZ two days ago traveling south east toward El Paso Texas.  East from Tombstone the landscape looked remarkablely like the southern San Jauquine Valley near Bakersfield.  Mesquite, yucca cactus, brown grass, lots of rocks and high mountains peaks spread here and there.  Miles and miles of what I would call high desert landscape.  There wasn't much to look at.  Just before we reach the New Mexico State line out of this barren landscape there was a vineyard and a few miles of Pecan ocrchards.  Wine in AZ????. That was the only break until we reached Las Cruces New Mexico our stop for the night. 

 

We stayed in the Shady Acres RV park, $30 / night with hookups, wifi, and cable TV.  The park was located in an industrial / motel area by the highway of Las Cruces. The park was for the most part was gravel sites with some sites with winter grass (brown).  We had a pull through site just gravel very dusty.   There were some long term RV's stay there.  The park wasn't bad for the night but I don't understand why someone would want to spend the winer season there.  There wasn't much to look at and no where to walk to.  The area was somewhat depressing.   The gravel RV site seems to be the theme in the southwest.  Anyway what the heck it was  only for one night and in the end the park had great bathrooms. 

 

We awoke to another perfect southwest morning, cold but clear.  We have been lucky daytime temp are much above normal up to the low 70's so there isn't anything to complain about.  We left las Cruces heading toward El Paso TX with the goal reaching Carlsbad New Mexico.  The trip was more of the high desert landscape, not many towns, houses or even cows to look at.  We stoped for lunch at the Gradalupe Mt. National Park, the highest point in Texas and about 40 miles from Carlsbad.  Great views from the park head quarters.  We thought that we would spend the night at the park but the RV sites here were just a parking lot so we decidede to go on to Carlsbad. 

 

Carlsbad New Mexico,  small town along the banks of the Pecos River.  During other times of the year it must be busy here because there are lots of motels along the highway.  The motels must provide for people visiting Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  There isn't much else in town other than a nice bike path along the Pecos River.  Were staying at another gravel RV Park, Carlsbad RV Park,  $30 per night with all the usual amentites including an in door pool, which is closed....Oh well.  One thing that I found suprising about Carsbad is that this small town in the middle of no where had a preforming arts center and a small airport.  The performing arts center was totaly unexpected.  Who know that there is culture in the middle of nowhere?

 

Today we spent the day exploring Carlsbad Caverns National Park- a ture adventure.  After hiking down 850 ft into the bat cave, which took 45 minutes   you reach a massive catherdral room filled with calcite formations of unbeliveable demenisons, and crystal clear pools of water.  Taking the hike down the trail it seemed like u were decending into hell.  I can't really discribe the trail down into the caverns.  If you're a weenie you can take an elevator down to the main chamber.  I would not recomend the elevator since the hike down was awesome.  Park entrance fees includes an unsupervised tour of the cave, for addtional fees there are some other supervised tours that you can take to other parts of the caves.   We chose to take a special tour of the lower cave.  This tour is only open o 12 people per day and costs an addtional $20 per person.  Since its not season we were lucky and there was only one other person on this tour.  The tour takes you down underneath the prinary cave uisng ropes and 3 ladders and takes 3 hours to tour the lower cave.  The tour was beyond discription.  Certainly worth the time and admission. 

 

Jack in a small cave of the main chanber of the Lower Cavern



Jack in the Main Chanber of Carlsbad Cavern



After an exciting day underground we finished it with an excelent dinner at Larez Mexican restruant.  Good place to stop for the best flour tortillas that I have ever had,and  excellent chile rellanos.

Off to San Antonio Texas tomorrow.



Shootout at the OK Corral

We traveled from Quartzsite to Tombstone AZ on Friday. This was one of our longer travel days, 311 miles in total.  We bought gas in Tucson for $2.61 per gal.  I don't really understand why gas is so much cheaper here in AZ versus California.  It doesn't see right that gas in LA costs 75 cents more then in Tucson....

We pulled into the Wells Fargo RV Park in Tombstone AZ around 6:00 PM.  It was too dark to get a good look at the place, they gave us a spot in front close to the highway.  No picnic table at the site, the site is gravel with out any shade, large clean bathrooms .  Having no shade could be a consideration later in the year but for us the sun feels great. Since it was dark when we arrived we decided to go out for dinner.  The folks who run the RV park directed us to the Longhorn Diner for food.  We had a great dinner,  Jack had the chimichanga.  It was filled with pulled pork and it was yummy.  I had the Dixie fried chicken.  The chicken was great .  For $11.00 they gave you four pieces for perfectly fried chicken, cole slaw, and mash potatoes.  It was a great deal.  I would go back just  for the chicken. 
Saturday we spent the day exploring Tombstone.  What can you say about an old western town that has built a tourist business around the Wyatt Earp's shoot out at the OK Coral?  The main street of the town is closed to car traffic so its pedestrian friendly.  Both sides of the street are lined with shops selling sliver jewelry, western wear, and the usual nic-nacks found in tourist spots around the world.  Several times during the day for a small charge you can watch the re-enactment of the famous shoot out.   In addition to the shoot out there lots of private "museums" that charge entrance fees to view the historical items.  These museums include a museums dedicated to the worlds largest rose bush, 9000  square feet of a single rose bush, the Tombstone courthouse,  Bird Gage theater, ride in a stage coach or a covered wagon, etc.  In addition to Tombstone being the site of the "Shootout at the OK Corral" its also an old sliver mining town.  In lite of this we chose to take a sliver mine tour at $12.00 per person.  It was a very interesting tour where they took you  several hundred feet down into an old sliver mine. I would recommend taking this tour.  It was neat to see walk the tunnels and to learn how the miners worked mining with only hand tools.   All in all, if one is in the area then Tombstone is worth a half day stop.

Today Sunday we took a short 16 mile bike around town.  During the ride we discovered a nicer RV park in town it is the Stampede RV Park.  If we ever come back I would stay at the Stampede, larger sites, some trees, and off the main highway. 


Stage Coach- Tombstone

 The views around here are just beautiful.  Large mountain ranges across high desert country.  The elevation here is about 4500 ft so the ground cover is much different then what you see in the Tucson After our morning ride we drove to Bisbee.  Bisbee is an old copper mining town turned artsy.  We walked around town, in and out of various antique, and art galleries.  We didn't buy anything. Who needs art when you're traveling in an RV?  Anyway,  Bisbee is a very cute town again worth a stop if you find your self in southern AZ. 

Monday we are off to New Mexico. 

Palm Springs to Quartzsite

Playing in the Snow on Mt San Jacinto

Shorts and snow what could be better?  Palm springs was interesting.  Even with lots of people with lots of money there there was lots of store fronts with r rent signs.  A good indication of how bad the economy must be.  This week was the Palm Springs International Film Festival.  Earlier in the week lots of Hollywood people in town.  We didn't see any one.  Tonight Michel Douglas was coming into town to be awarded some kind of life time achievement award, but alas we won't be in town to see all the hoopla.   We left Palm Springs this morning and traveled a long 125 miles.  At this rate wemay never make it to Florida.  All I can say is welcome to Arizona, gas has dropped from $3.35 per gal to $2.95 a gal and camping costs from $40.00 per night to $28.00. 

We are now in Quartzsite AZ for the night.  Quatzsite is an interesting place.  All through the desert there are flea markets and gem/rock shows people selling any thing that you may want or need.  If your interested in making jewelry or collecting interesting rocks this is the place for you.  People selling small polished rocks for much more money than I would have thought that they are worth. The rock shows go on for the next few weeks  then a huge RV show comes to town.  We walked around one of the flea markets, people selling rocks, gems, beads, jewelry , RV parts, and general junk that is found in all flea markets.  The flea markets are just beginning, later in the month they get larger.  I really can not imagine that.  The other amazing part of Quartzsite is RVs everywhere you look, RVs camping in the desert for miles and miles and miles.  Its unbelievable to look at.  And its only the start of the season. 

Its all BLM land around here so you can camp anywhere that you want.    There are areas  run by the BLM that for $40.00 per month or $180 for the season you can camp with potable water, dump stations, and pit toilets.  A very cheap way to live in your RV.  If you don't want to pay for the BLM spots you can stay anywhere else for free, but of course there is no water or dump stations or pit toilets.



RVs in the Sand

I don't think that this picture really captures the essence of Quartzsite....

Yahoo Sunshine and warm temps

Finally we have found sunshine and warm temps. This is day 2 in Palm Springs, it's 70 degrees today and it feels great. Yesterday, we spent the day on the tandem riding around the valley. In total about 40 miles. All I can say is that the area is a typical So Cal town where everyone is in a car going some where, not really a walking or biking kind of town. After the ride we jumped in the hot tub at the RV park and was basically done for the night. The RV park that we are in is small with maybe 80 sites, with concrete pads and hedges between the sites. It's filled with snow birds from Canada, Washington, and otther points north. There are lots of old people with gray hair, and expensive cars in Palm Springs. I guess this is how Florida is going to be like, old people waiting for the early bird specials. Oh heck I guess Jack and I belong to this group....

Today, we woke to a beautiful morning with blue skies. We took the tram ride to the top of San Jacinto mt where there was 4 feet of snow on the ground. Air temp of about 55 so it wasn't to bad hiking around. The views were awesome. Once we have wifi I will attached some pictures. I haven't yet figured out how to attach pics using my I pad.

More warm temps for the rest of the week. Tomorrow we are off to Quartsite Arizona for one night. Quartzite is famous for a winter RV town that grow from about 4000 people in the summer to over 100000 people in the winter all just parked in their RVs in the desert. Supper to be quite a sight. Not high culture but an uniquely American experience.
That's it form today.

First stop Castaic

We awoke this morning to a beautiful morning, a perfect day to depart on our adventure. We loaded the RV fridge, cleaned up our home fridge, set the home furnance, reved up the RV engine and set off on our adventure. An uneventful six hours later we find our selves parked for the night in Castaic CA watching the football play off game. What could be better? It's 4:30 and Maddy is barking for her dinner. Sorry old girl you will just have to wait until 5:00.

Tomorrow, the plan is to continue on to Palm Springs for a couple of days. Hopefully, we will have some sunshine. Today was foggy all the way down 5 until we reached the top of the Grapevine.

Pre Adventure Sunday

Heading out

Today one week and counting until we depart on our adventure across the US.   Both of us can't wait to leave.  We have our GPS, sirrius radio, I Pad, PC, and telephones all charged ready to keep us on track and in touch with everyone.    We have a new, for us, 30 foot class A RV with a single slide to call home for the next 9 months or so. 

 Our first stop is Palm Springs California to visit with some friends who are living there in their RV.   We plan on staying for three nights.  Then its off to new unexplored territory.  Our only set plan is to make it to Disney World by the 9th of February.  Amanda, Todd and Alec are meeting us there for a week vacation with the Disney Gang.