San Antonio TX

TUE May 25 – FRI May 28

Marla joined me here for a few weeks and we had a wonderful time in San Antonio with O & MA. We just hung out and were turistas; La Mercado, Mi Terria, Fort Sam Houston, Cooper’s BBQ, Jim’s Chili-cheese burger with shoestring onion rings. Mexican food and BBQ, how can you get better than that?

One night we went to hear Ollie and the band and really enjoyed ourselves.

San Antonio is growing like mad and Brooke Army Medical Center seems to be either doubling or tippling in size, lots of MILCON dollars.

Also found some time to do some minor on the trailer and organize a few things to make traveling a bit easier.

Spring Branch TX

MON May 24

Left Corpus Christi and drove north to San Antonio area to visit my sister and brother-in law for a few days, hang out, swap lies, get caught up on family and be tourists in San Antonio.

Drove past oil refineries leaving Corpus Christi and fields of corn. Got off the interstate once for a MANDATORY snack stop of fried pork rinds and a coke and when getting back on was passed by a Cardinal Health semi; Shawn your company is out there.

Padre Island TX

SUN May 23

What a great day. Today I went out to Padre Island and had a blast just hanging out on the beach, reading and eating good food.

Except for going to get something to eat I spent my time at the National Park Service P.I. National Seashore because I have a National Park Service Golden Age Passport and don’t have to pay and they had the best facilities. I joined a Park Ranger on a 45-minute beach tour and she explained how along this area of Texas coastline up to 17 Gulf currents converge and besides making that a very good fishing area it also brings in a lot of seaweed and trash.

The wind has been blowing in from the Gulf at a steady 25-30 MPH with gusts to 35 for the last 2 days and that means very high salty-air humidity and buffeting the trailer around at night.

But the water is great. 820 and lots of waves to swim in. I have spent more time in the water here in the last 2 days than I did in the San Diego waters in the 23 years I spent there. And I have gotten lots of use out of a sports towel that Di & Gus gave me a couple of years back.

A couple of things I learned about beaches here. “…in Texas all beaches are public highways and all traffic laws apply…” Yep you can drive on a lot of the beaches in your car but be careful of getting stuck in loose sand; bet the local tow companies just love to charge to pull folks out. Also here the County charges a fee to park on the beach, $12.00 for a 1-year permit, so keep driving or pay for the permit.

Corpus Christi TX

SAT May 22

A nice slow day of less than 150 miles as I drove North from Brownsville to Corpus Christi where I am staying at the Naval Air Station RV park right on the bay. Temperature is mid-80s and the air is heavy with the feel and smell of salt from the Gulf and bay.

I haven’t been to NAS Corpus Christi since 1962 or 63 and it has definitely seen better times but it is hanging in there and shows visitors a very welcome time.

SAT was shopping day and laundry day, not exciting things but necessary things.

Oh yes a couple of things I forgot to mention about yesterday in Brownsville:
A FIRST: and that is one of the things this trip is all about, firsts.
I was approaching a high school; not a first.
There was a school crossing sign both before and after the school; not a first.
The FIRST was under the school crossing signs were additional signs that said “No cell phone use.” I have been in lots of places that either banned cell phone use or restricted use to hands-free but this was the first time that I had seen banning in the school area.

The second thing I forgot to mention was I drove passed the Customs & Border Protection Detention Center, read prison, in Brownville area and it was well back from the road and screened by lots of vegetation, fencing and armed guards.

South Padre Island

FRI May 21

I have never been to Brownsville and never been to South Padre Island, back when I was in college in San Antonio we used to go down to Corpus Christi and Padre Island a couple time a summer but that was a l o n g time ago. It was great being back on the Gulf and saltwater that was a decent temperature. [My opinion is that the Pacific is way too cold.]

South Padre Island looks crowded and very much like lots of pictures I have seen of many seaside beach communities. But that’s what draws people and there are a lot of nice homes and hotels.

After hanging out at the beach for awhile I headed over to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. I only saw shorebirds but there are also ocelots, alligators and sea turtles.

The Refuge was nice but it was spoiled by Best Buy calling me that they wanted $250.00+ to fix my computer. I can receive e-mail via my Outlook program but I can’t send and Best Buy says it is Trojan Horse, etc, etc, etc. I decided to wait and get it checked again in San Antonio.

Brownsville TX

THU May 20

Driving south from Laredo through West Texas oil country and you can see lots of evidence of oil exploration and every now and again a convoy of drill trucks moving to a new field location; finished in one area and moving expensive equipment to another location; capitalism, got to love it.

This is also cantaloupes & watermelon country and let me tell you it is much more pleasant driving behind a truck of cantaloupes than it is driving behind a cattle truck.

Thought this was going to be an easy day of driving, only about 200 miles, but didn’t count on the wind, it really made for both hands tight on the steering wheel and short breaks very relaxing.

I have checked into a very nice RV resort and they gave me a super discount, www.winterhavenresort.com, I enjoyed cleaning up my car and spent down time at their swimming pool; that’s retirement

Laredo TX

WED 19 May

No shoes, no shirt, no service, ah heck, no service anyway. That means no cell-phone or internet service. Got cell-phone back for about 10-minutes when I left the park and then not again for 200+ when I was about 20-miles north of Laredo TX and where I staid the night had a Wi-Fi signal but couldn’t connect to the web.


Driving out of the Park I saw a Javelina, tough to take a picture at 50 MPH.

Another thing I learned about driving across West Texas, don’t assume just because there is a town marked on the map that the town has gasoline. When I finally did find gas one side was blocked by 2 pickups of fishermen buying beer so I U-turned to the other side, fun when you’re pulling a trailer, only to then be blocked from exiting to highway by a Bud Lite semi delivering to the bar & BBQ joint next door so I had to go down a dirt road and around the block.

Big Bend National Park

More pictures

Big Bend National Park

TUE 18 May

After effectively being blown off the road last night by the storm I found a RV campground and chose to dry-camp because I wasn’t about to go out in the driving rain to hook up electrical and water [no TV was offered]. I was tired and in this neck of the woods the sun sets a bit after 9:00 PM because it’s on the western edge of the time-zone.

Wasn’t hard going to sleep but because of the closeness of the RR tracks and the trains that blew their whistles and came by every 45 – 60 minutes it was hard staying a sleep; 7 trains between 11:30 PM and 5:30 AM.

The drive down the final 70 miles into park headquarters was wonderful desert waking up in the morning; cool, clear with not a cloud in the sky. The Turkey Buzzards sitting on the fence-posts warming themselves up and drying out from the rain of the night before and waiting for the heat of the day to start the thermal currents so they could ride them up to search for food. The coyotes were also out searching for food and the Jack Rabbits knew it and were running for cover. And small birds everywhere waking up and making noise. Later in the day when it was warmer the lizards came out and they knew everyone was looking to make a meal of them.

I did a couple of short hikes to Boquillas Canyon and to a hot springs area, it was 1030 when I was the only one at the hot springs and I was taking a very slow hiking pace. Also got in a few miles on my bicycle.

The Rio Grande River is not very wide or deep here but illegal crossing isn’t that big of a problem because of the lack of roads out of the area and because it is over 100 miles to a major highway for dispersal; but you still see Border Patrol in the area. And yes I did wet my toes in the RG, it was warm, muddy [possibly from the rain of the night before or maybe it’s that way always] and the rocks were very slippery.

I read in National Geographic magazine a couple of months ago that Big Bend National Park is one of the darkest places in the US because there aren’t any large cities with their lights to light up the night sky. Yep, it’s dark at night and stars are everywhere, I’m going to run out of superlatives on the trip I know, the stars were wonderful to experience and see.

In the middle of nowhere West Texas

Yep, I am about 70 miles north of Big Bend National Park and had to stop because of a big storm; lots of wind blowing the trailer back and forth or to and fro, anyway not fun driving. Also lots of dark clouds delivering me copious amounts of rain and thunder so I stopped in Marathon TX and am dry-camping because I’m not going out in that stuff to hookup.

But all was not bad today, I back in the land where you can get sweet tea in restaurants.

El Paso TX [Fort Bliss]

I forgot to mention yesterday when Marla and I were at Ft Apache for the gathering she was talking to a Navajo jeweler about the relationship between the Navajo and the Hopi. I could tell that they had different opinions regarding the different tribes so I moved away so I wouldn’t be caught in the Indian wars.

Today I headed East through the mountains of Arizona to the western mountains of New Mexico, crossing the Continental Divide and passing the Very Large Array Radio Telescope [I looked but didn’t see Jody Foster [Ellie Arroway in “Contact”] and it was so quiet there I could hear the airliner that had to to 25,000 ft+ above me, it was nice.

This area must have been pure boredom for highway surveyors, draw a 22 mile straight line where you want to go, jog around a small hill, draw a 9 mile straight line to where you want to go, etc. finally hit I-25 South and down to where it connected to I-10 East and pulled off the road to stay at the RV park at Fort Bliss, the price is right, no TV hook-up though.

We have a beautiful country and I enjoy seeing it.

Fort Apache & Song and Dance Competition

On SAT we went to Fort Apache for 11th Annual Apache Song and Dance Competition and we had a lot of fun. Great Apache dress, great dances and we had a great time. There were also some very good jokes, we think because all of the jokes were in Apache and we didn’t understand any of them but the crowd laughed. This was really an Apache gathering for Apaches but they were happy to see non-Apaches there and made an announcement that they would be checking our papers later. I’ve attached a couple of pictures and as you can see by the men making fun of women, it was a fun time.

First day

Tentative and flexible, the watchwords of Tom’s Big Adventure 2010 and Day 1 illustrates. I have been thinking about this trip for several years and really planning the route for the last few months. And then a few days ago when reading the newspaper I saw that on SAT May 15 there was an Apache song and dance competition at Fort Apache in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona. I don’t anything about the Apache except what is misrepresented in movies so we decided to leave a day early and spend the day seeing the competition. We because Marla decided to drive her car and then on SUN to return to Sun City West.

Finish loading the trailer and finally hit the road. I hadn’t gotten 2 miles when a car pulled up beside me, honked, rolled his window down and told me I hadn’t raised my trailer jack all the way up and was only clearing the road by 4 – 5 inches, oops. The Tahoe pulls the trailer really well, you know there is a trailer back there but it isn’t overwhelming.

Headed east through Globe AZ and saws the scars on the land from open pit copper mining, paste this in your browseer to see what I mean http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=globe+az&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=32.472848,78.662109&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Globe,+Gila,+Arizona&ll=33.416255,-110.886383&spn=0.133541,0.307274&t=h&z=12
, but Globe is big-time, they have a drive-in movie theater that was advertising current movies showing on FRI, Sat & SUN nights.

And from Globe more mountain climbing into the beauty of the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache Indian reservations and the Salt River Canyon. [Two strange things, why are there so many “white man’s” names on creeks and places on an Indian reservation, N Chinatown Rd, and is it ironic or mean-spirited that part of the Apache reservations are in AZ Navajo County?]

We checked into the Hon-Dah RV Park for FRI & SAT nights and went across the highway to enjoy a seafood buffet, love the crab legs and shrimp and I made three trips up to the line.