Disappointed with our stay in Bay City, Texas

We've been using our Texas state park pass a lot on our trip north along the coast. We love that the second night of camping is half-price! The only thing we don't love is that most of these southern state parks are already booked solid for the weekends. The local Texans also love their state parks. So once again, we have to head to a private campground for Friday and Saturday nights. As we left Goose Island State Park, we saw smoke ahead.

On this nice weather day, they are doing a controlled burn at Aransas Wildlife Refuge. We've learned that burning off dead 
brush is great for the new grass and the life of the refuge.

With the state parks booked up, we landed at the 60-North RV Park in Bay City, Texas for the weekend. It's a nice Passport America campground, and we can use some full-hook-ups to get some laundry done. Surely we can find something to do in Bay City!

We feel like we've been tricked by the names of our last three camping spots. We saw no mustangs at Mustang Island State Park. We saw no geese at Goose Island State State Park. And now we have no bay in Bay City. In fact, we had to drive 30 miles to get to Matagorda beach.

The last few miles, we drove along the Colorado River. It is at Matagorda Beach that this river ends its journey and dumps into the ocean.

We had considered a kayak trip on the Colorado River. But when we saw the oysters growing in this brackish river, we decided it wasn't a good option for our inflatable boat.

After our thirty-mile drive, we then had a quarter-mile hike on a board walk that became a pedestrian bridge.

A bridge on the beach allowed us to walk over the water of the river pouring into the Gulf.

We found more shells here at Matagorda than at our last three beach stops. We especially like the coiled circular shells that we found here.

Denisa likes spelling things on beaches, but she recognized that "Matagorda" would take lots of shells. So she opted for a heart-shaped sea shell project today.

We didn't stay at the beach too long, because we're going on a date tonight. So we literally left our heart at Matagorda Beach and headed back to our campground.

We discovered that Bay City is hosting a concert at the fairgrounds, and we bought tickets. We've always liked the music of Diamond Rio, and they're going to be in our town tonight. We were excited! Five years ago, when we downsized all our possessions from our 4-bedroom-house, we got rid of almost everything.  But we saved this old Diamond Rio CD that is now over twenty years old.

So when we heard that Diamond Rio was coming to Bay City this weekend, we sprung for the $20 tickets and started listening to that old CD again. These guys are about our age, and we expect that they have aged a bit since this album picture was taken. We remember most of the songs listed on the right side of the album cover.

We stopped in at the fairgrounds early to check out the barbecue cooking contest for the adults, as well as the baking contest for the 4-H kids. This is the table of grand champion 4-H winners. We watched the auction fundraiser, where we witnessed fruit cakes and cookies selling for $500.

The indoor fairgrounds arena opened at 6:00 for the 7:00 concert. At 6:10 we were the 3rd and 4th spectators inside. We didn't know if it was going to be a very small crowd, or if people were just waiting for the head-line band--Diamond Rio--which wasn't scheduled to appear until 8:00. It seems that this Texas crowd wasn't so excited about the opening band--Bag of Donuts.

We weren't excited about the opening act ourselves, but we like all genres of music. So even though we weren't crazy about their outfits (or some of their comments) their music was actually quite good. We were prepared to listen to them for an hour, but they played for a full two hours. We'll never be great fans of "Bag of Donuts," but they are popular in their home town of New Orleans where their outfits are probably more accepted. Their on-stage picture was blurry, so we took this one while they posed with some of their adoring fans.

We are familiar with the long process of changing out equipment between bands, and it was after 9:30 by the time Diamond Rio finally took the stage. We remember going to one of their concerts twenty years ago. They've managed to keep the same core group of musicians together for thirty years! In that time, they have sold ten million albums, and have had 19 different top-10 singles. What a successful career!

But we can't say that it was a successful concert for Diamond Rio tonight. With two bars open in the arena, a large percentage of the crowd was no longer interested in listening to music by 9:30. We were saddened to hear the hum of people talking out loud while the headline band was trying to perform.

More than once, their lead singer asked, "Is anyone listening out there?" while they sang one #1 hit after another. It was frustrating to the band, and it was frustrating to the sober fans that really wanted to hear their music. We watched the crowd dwindle by 10:00, while the headline band was still on the stage. It was crazy! They did perform one hour of music. But without any warning, they suddenly left the stage and it was over.

We were disappointed that the performance that we paid for was so late and that the crowd was so rude. We didn't feel like we got the concert we paid for. So we left Bay City after two days--a little disappointed with our stay here.