travel – Page 3 – Veness Travel Media

Galveston, Oh Galveston

We have never had to pay to enter a city before, so the $2 toll to get into Galveston was a first for us. Passing through the tollway looks straightforward when you’re in a car, but less so in Fati. Is the lane wide enough? Will we hit the top of the toll booth? Is that barrier curb on the right too close? Was taking the coastal road instead of the highway a bad idea? How much does RV paint cost if we get a massive scrape down one side? A million thoughts went through our brains, except for the one that did catch us out.

The issue we hadn’t factored in as we were approaching the tollbooth was that we had to put our two dollar bills under a rock in the booth’s sliding tray. There was no hand to reach up and meet Simon half-way, so this was my view while he tried to get the job done.

In the end, the toll booth attendant (who had done this before) came out of the booth to take our money. And yes, we did fit through that narrow lane without a scratch.

On our way to the campground, we passed massive homes along the Gulf side of the road, and it was obvious there was money in Galveston. Whether it was due to familiarity with the more city-like setting or just the glorious views of the Gulf of Mexico all along our right-hand side, we immediately felt comfortable, and took a real shine to our temporary island home.

Once settled at the lovely Dellanera RV Resort, so close to the water we only had a 30-second walk to the beach, we took advantage of the nice weather and had a stroll. Like Galveston, the RV park felt comfortable right from the start, and we were delighted to have a full week to enjoy its seaside amenities. We could easily understand why “Winter Texans” made Dellanera their season-long stay.

*The walkway in the distance connects our campground to the beach.*

*Galveston’s beaches go on for miles and miles and miles. We’re pretty sure you could walk around nearly the entire island using the beaches.*

Ruthie now has her own vehicle. She can still take her walks for as long as she’s comfortable, then we drop the tailgate on her wagon and she can cozy down on a blanket and have a ride while we get more exercise. It’s been a boon for us – lots more walking! – and she’s getting used to it, though the movement feels a little bit odd at first.

Galveston is the world’s ninth busiest cruise port, and there were two Carnival ships and one Royal Caribbean ship in port when we took a drive to the downtown area on our first full day.

We also aimed to visit the area’s three wildlife reserves, but that term means something slightly different here to what we’ve come to expect. Here, it’s wetlands along the sides of some road, or, in one case, ponds in the middle of a brand new, upscale housing development, where we saw Roseate Spoonbills, lots of interesting ducks, some Snow Geese, and some sort of goose bird we’d never seen before, which turned out to be Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks. Who knew?

The next day, Royal Caribbean’s mega-ship, Harmony of the Seas, was just heading out of port as we were touring around, so we made a bee-line to Fort San Jacinto Point, where we joined lots of other spectators who were there to wave her off.

The people fishing in the foreground and the giant tankers in the channel in the following photo gives you some idea of how absolutely enormous Harmony is. We’ve sailed on her sister ships, Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas, each during their media previews prior to their maiden voyages. They’re whompin’ great ships, so enormous it feels more like you’re in a shopping mall than on a cruise ship. Harmony is even bigger, with capacity for 7,084 guests and a crew of 2,369.

Our next two days were taken up with work while we waited for delivery of a new motor for our tilt bed. We’re not going to go into this story – at all – other than to say we’d been sleeping with the head of our bed semi-upright for nearly two weeks, and we both felt like we’d been thrown from a high building.

*Mattress blocking the whole kitchen, but it’ll be back on the bed frame by lunchtime, right? Yeah…no.*

This little high-torque motor is the replacement for the rotten bastard of a motor under our great huge heavy bed frame that decided to stop communicating with the controllers that move the bed up and down. We appreciated the service it had given us, but couldn’t it go for just another 2.5 months? I mean, really!

*Cell phone shown here to give you an idea of size. How can something so small cause such a big problem?*

We expected the motor to take about half an hour to replace, and the mobile tech expected that, too. Again, we’ll say no more than the final result was, the entire bed foundation had to be removed, as did part of the frame. The single set screw that was supposed to be all that held the motor in, wasn’t. Some damned fool put another screw in while the rig was being build, under a metal box that can’t be reached without dismantling much of the frame. It took the poor technician nearly four hours to complete the job.

Some RVs have storage under the bed frame. Ours has a billion wires. And yes, that green thing on the floor on the right is soap. It’s supposed to help keep mice out, but probably only results in fragrant green mouse poop.

But we won’t talk about that. Because it’s awful and upsetting and we hated the world while it was going on. We hated the Lippert tech support people even more, when the first one said, “Yes, it’s just one set screw” and the second call resulted in, “I don’t know how you’ll reach the second screw. You’ll have to figure it out.”

But no more. It’s not something we’ll talk about. Because we’re not complainers.

Tonight, it’s “blowing a hooley,” (which is a British saying that sounds dirty but isn’t) and our rig is shaking with every massive gust of wind, but we’re going to be sleeping flat, so life is still worth living.

We don’t yet know what we’ll do with the last of our time in Galveston. We promised each other we’d get a really great steak while we’re here, which is a stupid idea after the expense of our repair but a great idea as a reward for all the heavy lifting we’d done and the massive amount of encouragement we gave our mobile tech when it all went to hell in a handbasket.

The Fire At Night

Our next port of call was Port Lavaca, nestled along the Gulf Coast’s Lavaca Bay. The area’s history picks up three threads we’ve been writing about: The Spanish holding of territory that later became Texas; Native Americans being driven from their lands (in this case, Comanche who survived a raid in what is now a town to the north, and came to the port area for refuge); and the names people use for bison, which, in Spanish, is La Vaca, even though la vaca actually means “the cow.” But we were mainly there for the scenery.

Most small county parks can’t accommodate big rigs, but Texas is no slouch, and the beautiful Lighthouse Beach RV Resort had no problem with 36-foot Fati. Our site looked out on the bay, and on a wonderful boardwalk over the water that was perfect for our evening strolls as the sun went down and the sky lit up like fire.

Fishing and birding are the big draws here, and it’s easy to slow right down to the point where a glass of wine and the view are all the excitement you need. Want more? Ramp it up with a walk along the pier and meet the fisherpersons, peer over the water through binoculars to see what’s flying and floating around, and marvel at the mad rush of the so-called “Formosa Five Hundred” that takes place along the State Highway 35 causeway during each shift change for Formosa Plastics Corporation, situated directly across Lavaca Bay from our campground, along with Alcoa and DuPont.

Now, those of you who’ve been following us from the beginning will likely have noticed we never drive Fati at night. Like, ever. It simply isn’t done. But circumstances dictated otherwise this time, and we found ourselves heading over the causeway as darkness fell.

*This level of visibility is why we try never to drive at night.*

Approaching and then passing Formosa, producers of resins and other chemically things, was like driving into the unsettling opening scene of the movie Blade Runner. A true dystopian setting right there in ironically named Port Comfort, minus the flying spacecraft.

The rest of the journey east ambled along dark roads through empty countryside, and ended with an overnight stay at a Walmart right off a busy road, with trains and their blaring whistles barreling past every half hour, all night long.

We were truly exhausted when we reached Oyster Creek the next day, and were somewhat dismayed to see our campground was just on the boundary of miles and miles of refineries.

But it was a peaceful little haven, mainly populated by refinery workers who put in such labor-intensive days that they were all asleep by 8 p.m. Silence reigned, even as the belching discharge from the refineries’ chimneys lit up the sky with fire, this time not of the natural variety.

*Those super-bright orange spots are fire blasting out of the chimneys.*

Everybody knows cars and machinery don’t run on daffodils and the laughter of unicorns. We all know there is a process of refinement. Seeing it in person when you haven’t grown up with it in your home town is both horrifying and fascinating. It’s like looking at a city comprised of the bare bones of enormous building complexes, but with no people, and we were filled with discomfort with the process and admiration for the people who work there.

Like so many things we’ve experienced during this trip, we were pulled in two directions, mentally. Years ago, seeing fish farming in Chilean Patagonia first-hand completely put us off from eating farm-raised fish, ever again. It was a simple decision. But not everything is that straightforward.

We had been told Surfside, a little town right on the water, was worth seeing, so at least that decision was straightforward. Surfside Beach was hit by Hurricane Nicholas in 2021, and many if not most of the homes there are new.

*Heading down a massive bridge, with Surfside and the Bay at the end of the road. Some of the dots in the water are tankers, some are oil rigs.*

All of them are high up on stilts, creating a hodge-podge neighborhood of houses that look like they were brought in and propped up on stilts wherever the moving truck happened to stop. There is none of the formal layout – or similarity in architecture – of the neighborhoods we’re used to, and we drove around pointing and commenting and being fascinated by the whole thing.

Freeport Channel seems to be the place where locals gather on balmy evenings to do some fishing and to watch the gigantic freighters that harbor there, presumably to fill up with whatever the refineries are pumping out.

Unexpected as it was, Oyster Bay made a good two-day base to decompress before we headed to Galveston, and when we learned the original Buc-ee’s was less than 10 minutes away, we headed over and grabbed a couple of bags of Buc-ee’s Nugg-ees, just because we could. We felt the circle from the beginning of our journey to the not-so-distant end of our adventure starting to close.

*How our relationship with Buc-ees started.*

Beads, Boats, And Brilliant Birding

If you’ve seen the movie, The Big Year, you know how passionate birders can be about their hobby. We’re casual birders at best, but we do enjoy seeing wildlife we can’t see in Florida. While much of Texas is known for its exceptional birding, it turns out our next destination, Port Aransas, offers some of the best in the state.

We arrived on Fat Tuesday and were delighted to hear there would be a Padre Gras golf cart parade that afternoon, the island’s answer to Mardi Gras. Campers were lining their chairs up along the campground’s main streets, and we joined them.

We were all set for the fun of clapping and cheering as each cart went by, but hadn’t thought about the paraders throwing beads and candy. Ruthie got to wear the beads for a while, then we gave them to our neighbor’s granddaughter. We doled out the six or eight pieces of candy over the following few evenings and called them “dessert.”

A fair bit of our five-day stay was spent wandering around wetlands and reserves with our binoculars. Many of the birds that live here or migrate here for winter are familiar to us; ibis, certain kinds of ducks, herons, egrets, and some cranes, but we were excited to see some new ones, including Roseate Spoonbills and the endangered Whooping Crane.

*There was a big flock of Spoonbills here, too, but they were just too far for our camera to capture.*

Florida has plenty of pelicans along its shores, but we don’t see them inland, so they’re still special to us. Here, they have both Brown and White Pelicans.

This little fellow wasn’t reacting to people passing by, and within a short time two women from a rescue center showed up and carefully took him away. We hope he’s feeling much better now!

Gators are always a bit special, but we’re pretty used to seeing them. In this instance, the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center’s resident gator, called Boots by the locals, is a great huge whompin’ example of the species, measuring in at 14 feet. He’s a grumpy 50-year-old who chased away his only potential buddy, Stumpy, who was missing a leg. Stumpy got relocated, then relocated again, and is now living in Beaumont, our destination a few weeks from now.

*You could make a lot of boots out of Boots…if he didn’t kill you first.*

Ship-watching is practically a sport hereabouts, and we joined the locals at Roberts Point Park, where cargo ships enter the channel to pick up oil from the refineries and then head back out to sea to make their deliveries.

There is a pier not far from the park that gives you a view of the ships that’s so close you can almost see the faces of their crew members. It’s also a great spot for fishing, and we watched a man feeding the small fish he caught to a couple of pelicans. His wife told us the pelicans sometimes attack the man, but it never seemed to occur to them that it was the natural result of hand-feeding a wild animal. We sort of hoped some of the bites hurt.

We had planned to take a trip out to San Jose Island (a.k.a. St. Jo’s), a private island whose owner lets people visit the beach, but the weather was turning and the primary draws are fishing and swimming, so we made the round-trip without getting off the little ferry.

*This is pretty much all there is to do on the island. Probably wonderful in summer, but not so much in winter when it’s cold and wet.*

Ruthie was not impressed. At ALL. The vibration of the ferry totally unnerved her, and we could hear her thanking all the blessed angels in heaven when her feet were back on terra firma. That dog can pull – hard! – when she wants to go back to the car.

*Ruthie looks calm here, but she was shaking and panting and having a real fit for herself. One of the passengers on our return trip helped by petting her head while I patted her rear.*

The island is all chopped up in this area, and while there are bridges, it sometimes requires less milage to take the free car ferry from Port Aransas to Aransas Pass, and that would be our route when it was time to move on to Port Lavaca. But first, we wanted to give it a try in Nippy to be sure we knew how to do it in Fati.

*Loading and unloading area. The whole set-up was super efficient, and surprisingly quick.*

*We were directed into that spot to the right of the pickup truck. Score!*

We got an up-front view for our crossing, and were astonished at how totally without movement the journey felt. It was only by being able to see the shore that we knew we were moving at all.

Our final two days in the area were so rainy and windy we ended up staying home. Happily, Port Aransas is small, so we felt we got the best out of it that a wet winter could give.

It’s All About The Sea In Corpus Christi

We have encountered countless Spanish, Native American, French, and German business names and locations during our journey, and, after a while, our brains automatically translated them into English, sometimes with humorous results. We were looking forward to visiting Body of Christ – Corpus Christi – an iconic port city along Texas’s Gulf Coast, named for the Roman Catholic Feast Day that was going on when the place was “discovered” by the Spanish in 1519.

We had two major attractions in mind, along with more fabulous Mexican food, and a heaping helping of seafood, at least for Simon.

“You like dessert, Jennifer, not coffee.”
My go-to line when Simon orders a sweet coffee drink. This time, though, it was a milkshake.

The city’s personality is defined by its beaches, its fishing, and its bridges, one of which can be seen for miles in every direction. As big as it is, though, an even bigger bridge is taking shape next to it, presumably to accommodate the ever-growing size of ocean-going vessels that make their way into and out of the port.

The skies were a bit grim to start with, but it was still pleasant enough for a walk (and a drive) along the beach. Ruthie was okay with the hard-packed sand, and happily trotted along when we made a trip out to Padre Island National Seashore.

*Happy girl! She loves the hard-packed beaches.*

The first attraction we wanted to visit was the huge aircraft carrier parked in Corpus Christi Bay. Ruthie couldn’t be left alone for an hour or more, so Susan waited with her in the car while Simon toured the ship. He’ll take over the blog for this part:

Walking up the ramp to the main deck entrance of the mighty U.S.S. Lexington is like walking back in history, to the turmoil of World War II and the life-or-death struggle in the Pacific theater, where aircraft carriers were the big dogs of most battles and the USA’s fleet helped to carry the day in some of the bloodiest exchanges of the War.

You feel that heritage almost immediately as you enter the gaping Hangar Deck, where the aircraft were stored when not on a mission. Amazingly, up to 60 planes could be stored here, but the area – which covers 40,000 square feet – is now given over to a variety of exhibits, video presentations, a Pearl Harbor memorial, several flight simulators, and a few vintage aircraft.

The Lexington has a long and illustrious history, from her commissioning in 1943 to service with the Seventh Fleet out of San Diego, when it was on call to serve as a major deterrent in places such as Formosa, Laos, and Cuba, before taking up training operations from 1962-1991, when she was decommissioned and eventually moved to Corpus Christi as a permanent museum and tribute to the many men and women who served in the carrier fleet.

All this history is available on a series of self-guided tours, and I did two of them, starting with the Lower Decks tour that takes visitors deep into the bowels of a ship that needed a crew of about 3,000 during the War (and 1,550 in later years). It includes a visit to the engine room, galley, medical and dental facilities and much more, including several memorials to other aircraft carriers and their crews.

The other must-do tour is the Flight Deck, the vast open space that is the carrier’s “airport,” covering two full acres. It is 910 feet long and 460 feet wide and had to be reconfigured for jet aircraft in the 1950s, but is an immense experience that includes more than a dozen different aircraft. You can also visit the captain’s bridge for an excellent overview of the Flight Deck.

There is a LOT to like about the whole experience and it would take you most of the day to take it all in. It remains a formidable figure on the Corpus Christi shoreline and presents an educational history trip through a grim period of the 20th century. The ship was actually hit and badly damaged by a Japanese Kamikaze plane in late 1944, killing 50 crewmen and injuring another 132, and there is a very heartfelt tribute to all the victims, which really brings home the full magnitude of the War’s horrors. Perhaps a bit much for young children, but a valuable lesson for older ones.

(Susan here again) With crummy weather heading in the next day, we drove out to the Texas State Aquarium for some time exploring what’s under Corpus Christi’s coastal waters. Obviously, we know SeaWorld in Orlando very well, with it’s big-scale experience, and this was on a much more intimate scale. Where the Lexington may have been beyond most youngsters, the aquarium is ideal for them and the grownups who love them.

We have a thing for themed environments when it comes to educational experiences, and the aquarium didn’t disappoint.

*The most peevish beings in the world. They are SO LOUD, and they squabble constantly, which is actually quite hilarious*

There was also a dolphin show, but we only arrived in time for the finale.

Our five days in Corpus Christi went by fast. We tried a few recommended restaurants, we spent a lot of time on the Island, and we were glad to have been there during the calm before the storm, when Spring Breakers and then the summer crowds would descend on this wonderful gem of a city.