One Last Salt Water Day

 After our "fun day" at the Freightliner shop, we headed due north for a stop near Alice, Texas, at Paisano Mobile Home and RV Park. Not the most glamorous park ever, but it served our purpose for a half-price Passport America place to land before we started our journey due west this year. We're going to be traveling away from the ocean, as we don't plan to go all the way to the Pacific this year. So Denisa requested one last salt-water day to walk on the beach before we headed further inland.

It was a 45-minute foggy drive to Corpus Christi, and then another 15 minutes to get to White Cap Beach on North Padre Island. We visited South Padre Island a couple times this winter, and now we are on the north side of this 113-mile-long barrier island. One source we read said that is the longest barrier island in the world. We watched this flock of pelicans fly south overhead, wondering if they were going to make that long flight all the way to South Padre Island.

Driving is allowed on some of the beaches, but we opted for some good old-fashioned walking on the sand. The wind was causing the red flags to stand straight out from the flag pole, so we won't be swimming in the salt water today.

We saw almost no sea shells on this beach. The only thing that seems to wash ashore right now are the man-of-war jelly fish. Their iridescent blue color is lovely, but touching their tentacles would leave a nasty sting. That's another reason to stay out of the salt water today.

The other thing that can wash ashore here is trash. This Turtle Patrol worker is busy digging up and removing the plastic that would be harmful for a sea turtle mother's attempt to bury her eggs on this beach.

After walking the beach, we returned via the cement sea wall for a four-mile hike this morning.

We decided to make a loop drive today, so we headed north along Mustang Island for another beach stop in Port Aransas. It was still foggy here when we started our walk on the granite jetty.

We forgot our good camera, so we had to be very close to get good wildlife pictures with our cell phone today. The local pelicans don't mind letting the tourists get close.

That's because most of the people that have walked this far are more interested in the fish, rather than the pelicans. We probably saw 100 people fishing, scattered along this .7 mile-long jetty. It's the best way to go deep-sea fishing on a budget, as the water is very deep this far from the shore. 

We watched as some good fish were hauled in along the jetty. This sheepshead fish was fresh out of the gulf, and will make a delicious meal. Notice the teeth, that allows the sheepshead to crack the shells of its prey.

We also saw a few drum being caught, and a little puffer fish. Fishermen told us that they fished ten hours yesterday with no success, but it looked like everyone was getting their five-fish limit on this foggy morning. We made it to the very end of the jetty--a mile out from the beach. We didn't get our picture sitting on the very last rock because that place was already taken by another big group of people fishing.

This 1.4-mile hike to the end of the jetty and back is not for the faint of heart. We've hiked a lot of rocky mountain trails, but this un-level granite walkway will rival any of them. Add slippery algae growing on the rocks, and wet patches of salt water, and it would certainly be easy to slip and fall on this hike.

The channel along the jetty provides a deep path for large ships to get to the refineries and freight yards on this coast. It was hard to get the entire ship in one frame. A smaller pilot boat helps to guide them, and also gives some scale to the size of these big boys.

We also saw double barges heading out from Port Aransas. Watching the ships go by is a fun project, but it's also a good place to see dolphins playing in their waves. We saw fewer dolphins this year, and didn't have the right camera to capture their antics.

It looks like Port Aransas is ready to celebrate Easter, with this bunny sand sculpture in Roberts Point Park.

To complete our loop drive, we must ride the free ferry over to Aransas Pass. Denisa would have gotten some better pictures of dolphins frolicking in the ferry waves, but there is a new policy that people must remain in their cars during this short crossing.

Our loop drive brought us back to Corpus Christi for a couple stops we found on the "free things to do" list. One was visiting the Texas Surf Museum. It was a little tricky to find with instructions like "walk through the restaurant around the corner, take a right at the fountain, and turn left at the woody."

Not known for its great waves, the gulf coast still managed to support the Pat Magee's Surf Shop from 1969 until Pat retired in 2005. 

This unusual museum displays surf boards and Pat's favorite nostalgia from the 1970s and 1980s. The unusual part is that everything inside the museum is for sale. You can buy everything from 8-track tapes to surf boards. That tall board beside Denisa is a bargain--marked down from $6,000 to only $3,500.

From there we walked to the Corpus Christi downtown sea wall for a view of the marina. We've had a covering of clouds all day, keeping the temperatures very comfortable for us.

Our next stop was the Selena Memorial. The memorial includes a statue and display right on the sea wall, with a bilingual recording that tells about her career. This local singer is known as the Queen of Tejano music, even though her career was suddenly cut short when she was shot by her manager in 1995. 

We were surprised by the large crowd of people visiting the memorial of this unknown-to-us singer. Do they have crowds and fresh flower bouquets here every day? Then we read that today was the 26th anniversary of her death, and we think that explains the extra presence today.

We enjoyed our day filled with salt water, and the chance to walk on the beach one more time before we head west this year. We are saying good-bye to the ocean as we head inland for the rest of 2021.

The Worst Day of the Travel Year . . .

Getting to travel full-time means that we have more than our share of "best days" every year. But everyone that owns a diesel motor home also gets that one "worst day" each year. That is the day when you have to roll into one of those big diesel shops for the annual preventive maintenance. Our Tiffin motor home was built on a freightliner chassis, so we must find time in our fun travels to find a freightliner shop. 

It's always a stressful thing to find a good place to get the oil changed on our diesel engine. Preventive maintenance also includes things like changing the oil in the generator, changing the air filter, servicing the air dryer that runs the air-ride and air brakes system, etc. All this is necessary to keep our home running well. Mark spends a lot of time checking reviews and calling places. We settled on Doggett Freightliner in Pharr, Texas, this year for preventive maintenance. So our first day of traveling was only 17 miles long. It's not very far to Pharr, Texas.

We've had our annual maintenance done in six different Freightliner Shops all over the country--Tucson, Arizona; Gaffney, South Caroline; Missoula, Montana; Superior, Wisconsin; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and now Pharr, Texas. We would give some of those places stellar reviews, and others really bad reviews. We've spent a night or two at each one of those Freightliner service centers, camping in their parking lots. All of them had electric hook-ups and a safe place for motor home customers that live in their RVs. We planned to do the same here in Pharr as well. It was only after we were parked and settled in for the evening that we found out that they usually don't allow that. We didn't have any other option planned, so they let us stay--just this time.

It was a tight parking spot, and they had no option for electricity for us here at Doggett Freightliner. It might come in as our least photogenic camping spot ever, as they placed us between two wrecked truck tractors.

It's not only stressful to find a reputable place to get the diesel maintenance, it's also very expensive. These shops are used to working on truck tractor rigs, and we often think that they look at motor home owners as dumb old cash cows. After feeling like we were over-charged badly on our first year's maintenance, Mark now asks for an estimate on cost. It took several weeks and several phone calls, but he finally got the estimate. It seemed inflated with the number of hours to perform those oil changes and filter changes, and this year we were due for them to service the air dryer. We just hoped they worked faster than those inflated estimates when they actually pulled us into bay #15 at 9:15 a.m. We also take it as a good sign that we are not next door in unlucky #13.

We knew we had a boring day ahead of us, as they estimated 7.7 hours needed to perform all of our maintenance. At $110 per hour, we're hoping for a speedy mechanic. We settled into the stark customer lounge at Doggett. During the course of the day, we walked several laps around the property, keeping an eye on bay #15. Our mechanic took some time off for lunch, but he was back on the job until we saw him pull our home out of the bay at exactly 2:02 p.m. If you're keeping track, that's 4.75 hours after they came to get the motor home this morning.

Mark was then summoned to the cashier, where he didn't even get to see the itemized ticket before they expected him to pay. When he requested to see it, we noted that it's probably not a good sign when your receipt is three pages long. 

We found a few things wrong. The first problem was that the hourly fee was higher than $110--it seems it had just gone up this week!?!. The second problem was that even though the motor home was only in bay #15 for 4.75 hours (and that included time for our mechanic's lunch), we were charged for 7.7 hours!

The shop manager tried to convince us that they used some kind of "industry standard" to charge a standard hourly amount for preventive maintenance. His point was that mechanics would be cheated for being fast workers if they charged $110 only for the hours that they worked. Does that make any sense? So they would rather cheat the paying customers! Over and over we found excessive labor charges on that receipt. They charged two hours labor for changing the oil on our little generator! When reviewing our past receipts we see that in all the other years' receipts we were charged 30-45 minutes labor for the generators. But never two hours! 

Mark had already checked the air dryer's manufacturer's web site, where they estimated that it should take 0.8 hour to do the service on the air dryer. Doggett's "standard charge" for air dryer service is 3.2 hours. We just got madder as we looked at that receipt! 

As we loaded up and headed down the road, we definitely felt ripped off by Doggett Freightliner. We can't recommend them, and we hope we never have to go back to them for anything. This day of preventative motor home maintenance has lived up to its billing--it was an expensive worst day of the travel year.

We're on the road again! But first . . .

We took a day to get the motor home ready to roll again after its two-month vacation lounging around at the resort. We're ready to be on the road again, but first . . . we had to do all our laundry, top off the water in the batteries, reload the bike rack, and put away the pickle ball rackets. 

We are really looking forward to being on the road again! But first . . . we have to give an update on an interesting plant at this resort. We took this picture beside this big aloe plant when our son was visiting over a month ago.

Then we had those two nights of rare freezing weather, and many of the resort's cactus and aloe plants were frozen. We were glad to see that this big plant fared well in the cold, even though we noticed that most of the tips are now brown. We also noticed that a new ten-foot-tall shoot was sprouting from the center of those huge spines.

So we had to ride our bikes to check the progress before we left to drive Denisa's Mother home to Oklahoma. That sprout was noticeably taller. We found that this is a relative of the century plants that we found so interesting on our first year of travel. These plants can grow for thirty years without ever flowering. But then they suddenly sprout a tall stem that will eventually bloom.

It's time for us to be on the road again, but first . . . we had to check the progress of our century plant one more time. It has been ten days since the last picture, and it has grown several more feet in height. We're guessing that it is around 20 feet tall now. We'd love to see it when it's flowering! By the size of the stalk, it's going to have some huge blooms! The sad thing about a century plant, is that after it blooms, the entire plant dies. So the next time we see it, this big beautiful plant that caught our eye a couple months ago will be gone.

We are ready to be on the road again, but first . . . we had to get hair-cuts. Everything is cheaper here in South Texas--including hair cuts for just $10. Mark also had a follow-up appointment with the podiatrist, and Denisa got to dance one more time. So it was a very busy last day before we finally rolled out of the resort that afternoon.

Now we're really ready to be on the road again, but first . . . we have to make one more stop. But that will take another blog because Denisa feels a rant coming on. Stay tuned for one more thing we have to do before we're on the road again!

Locking up and leaving for eight days

The reason we extended our stay in Mission, Texas another month was to take care of some things for Denisa's Mother. During that second month, she got her second vaccination, and should now be immune to the effects of Covid. We could also help her with packing up her house and preparing it for another six months of storage. That's a big job for a 90-year-old, and she thought it was the easiest year ever since we did most of it. We covered the windows, cleaned and stuffed the refrigerator with newspapers, turned the water and electricity off, got everything locked up . . . 

Then we were ready to be on the road in her car to take her home to Oklahoma for the summer. We passed some beautiful displays of spring wildflowers along the Texas highways, letting us know that spring is definitely in the air. But we didn't stop to take pictures. So instead, Denisa is going to sprinkle this blog with some beautiful tulip pictures she took later in Oklahoma.

We took two days making the 850-mile drive to the panhandle of Oklahoma. That includes driving through some parts of Texas where the towns are few and far between. Mark usually likes to keep the motor home's fuel tank above half-full, but he will get much lower than that on a passenger car. 

So when we pulled into the little town of Brady, we were getting pretty low on fuel. No problem, as there are several gas stations here. But the first station had plastic sacks over all their pump handles--out of gas. The second had all their pumps closed--out of gas. What is happening?!? We don't have enough fuel in the tank to make it to the next town!

After calling the other stations in town, we finally found some gasoline and we didn't care how much it cost. Talking to a local at the pumps, he said this had been going on since the ice storm when fuel trucks couldn't get down the highways to refill the tanks. Even now, someone will post on social media that they are about to run out of gas in town, and all the locals run down to top off their tanks. Then they really do run out of gas. Sheesh!

Our less traumatic stops included time in Fredericksburg for a fine German meal, and an overnight stop in Abilene. We realized that we hadn't taken a picture of Denisa's Mother in a while, so we took a picture that evening in the hotel. It's picture-worthy, because we so rarely spend a night in a hotel. We much prefer staying in our rolling hotel as we wander about the country.

While the wildflowers are blooming down south, we found a little snow along the highway as we continued north. 

It took us two weeks to travel these 850 miles down to South Texas in the motor home in January, but it only took a day and a half in the car this trip. We were traveling at lightning speed when compared to our usual standards! Once we arrived, we carried everything out of that well-packed car into Denisa's Mother's house. Since she has traveled back and forth between the tip of Texas and the panhandle of Oklahoma for 36 autumns and 36 springs, she is well practiced at this project.

We spent the next three days visiting with Mark's Mother, who lives just 15 miles from Denisa's Mother. This area was blessed with two inches of rain and a smattering of snow during those days. In a farm/ranch community that has been plagued with drought, this was indeed a blessing. We got to see two of Mark's siblings and their families on this stop so it was a great time. It's a tough job, but we even talked Mark's Mother into taking a picture before we left.

Our next stop was the Oklahoma City area, where we have more relatives to visit. It was here visiting Denisa's sister that we took all those tulip pictures on a windy spring day.

Oklahoma is enjoying beautiful spring-time weather now, and we walked through Hafer Park in Edmond, taking way too many pictures!

Oklahoma's state tree is the redbud, and they are blooming now to add a nice splash of purple to the tulip display.

That evening we visited our son and daughter-in-law, where we planned to celebrate our son's birthday.

His choice for a celebration was at "Chicken 'n' Pickle." Recently opened in this area, it's a very big complex that includes outdoor and indoor pickle ball courts . . .

and other outdoor games like bocce ball and corn hole. The "Chicken Coop" serves rotisserie chicken and other yummy items. We've visited the flagship location of this new concept developed in Kansas City in 2016. Even during a Covid year, they are expanding. This is their fourth location, with two more to open in 2021. The parking lot for this new entertainment venue in Oklahoma City was packed, with more cars wedged into parallel spots on the road. We had to drive another quarter-mile to the overflow parking. Even with all those cars parked, it never felt crowded once we were inside their giant campus, as we took this picture from the upstairs lounge.

It was a great evening with our son and daughter-in-law and her parents, celebrating Blake turning another decade older.

We visited Denisa's other sister, who took us to the airport for our return flight back to south Texas. We've flown in and out of the Oklahoma City airport many times, and we have to say that it has a curious claim-to-fame that we have never seen anywhere else. If you've visited the bathrooms in this airport, you know what we are thinking about. But you'll have to read to the end of the blog to see pictures of this curiosity. It's interesting to note that you will pass oil pump jacks as you speed down the run-way, but that's not the claim-to-fame that we are talking about.

 After enjoying high temperatures in the 60's and 70's during our last days in Oklahoma, we can't help but notice that the Texas Rio Grande Valley's forecast high for the day we returned was 98 degrees! That is too warm for these wanderers that are always chasing temperatures in the 70s. So we'll be putting in the slides and rolling down the road towards the north very soon. After eight days of visiting with family back in Oklahoma, we're anxious to be wandering God's wonders again soon--even though a tulip-filled walk in the park feels wonderous to Denisa.

You made it to the end of this blog, so you deserve to see the Oklahoma City airport's unusual bathroom option. It's the only place we have seen with toilet seats that are covered in plastic. 

The instructions on the wall tell you to press the button that rotates a fresh plastic covering over the seat for "hygienic seating." We don't remember seeing this option anywhere else. Have you? That's the kind of information you get when you follow us--wandering some rather strange wonders.