Back to Texas

Corinne Boondocking, Family 2 Comments

We had some time before we were expected at my brother’s in Albuquerque for Easter (about two weeks worth), so we decided to retrace our steps back to Galveston a longer visit with Janelle. Plus it turns out there are a whole bunch of people in Austin to visit!

First we had to make it across New Mexico. We had strong winds the day we were driving. The possibility of a dust storm was real. Fortunately, we didn’t experience any! But there was definitely a dusty haze to the air.

April means wildflowers

If you even want to see the wildflowers of Texas, April is definitely the time to visit.

The Bluebonnets were out everywhere, especially along side the roadways.
The median of this highway was a burst of color.
The Bluebonnets were in full force outside our RV at one of our campsites.
You could even find wildflowers in the sand along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Kerrville

Our first stop was Kerrville, Texas. We have been there twice before, but that was before RVing friends bought a casita in this the Buckhorn Lake RV Resort. We stopped and paid Al and Cindy a visit. Alsa, no pictures of us! But what is the casita of which we speak?

A casita is a small building alongside your RV pad. This casita is missing its owner’s RV, they must be off somewhere. You can see the hookups (water, power, etc) on the left contained in the white pillar. Inside the casita is typically a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a small living area. Many fulltime RVers own casitas and use them as their home bases.

Austin

We spend three nights in the Austin area. It must be a testament to us not liking cities that we didn’t venture into downtown Austin once, we stuck to the western suburbs. We had dinner with my sister Christine and her husband Rick one night. Another night was dinner with Mark and Nancy, friends from our early Kodak days (Mark quit Kodak long ago before things really got bad). We also saw….

Martha! She is the mother of Janelle’s best childhood friend, not to mention friends with us. She moved from Rochester to Austin in October. No snow here!
Steven! Steven lived down the street from us when we were still in Spencerport. I’ve know him since he was three. He now goes to the University of Texas. Being in Austin was a great opportunity to sit down with him and catch up (and feed the college student a real meal).

Galveston

Finally, it was time to join Janelle in Galveston. Galveston is a popular place on the weekends since it’s right on the Gulf of Mexico…and we were arriving on a Saturday. What to do? There is free beach camping, but we had no desire to get the Blue Flame stuck in the sand. So, you get creative. I called the Texas A&M Galveston parking office and got permission to park in their commuter lot for Saturday night. Problem solved!

This is the view from Janelle’s lab. There is the Blue Flame way out in the distance, basically in the middle of the picture.
Here is our intrepid scientist, Janelle, in her lab. She was taking care of her snails while waiting for us to show up.
I’ll tell you all I know about Janelle’s snails. They are in these things called falcon tubes. Inside each tube is a snail, a blade of sea grass, and some sea water. I’m not sure why the snails are in the tubes, but they are. If you want to know more, you will have to ask Janelle.
We had to stop by Janelle’s desk to see how her rubber duck collection is doing. Quite well! And she is putting to good use all of the postcards we send her. She has run out of windows to put them in!
After the first night in the TAMUG parking lot, we got into the RV resort two blocks from Janelle’s house for the rest of the week. This was the view out of front door….palm trees and the Gulf of Mexico.
We also got to meet Dez, Janelle’s roommate Ashley’s dog. We brought Dez this hopefully indestructible ring toy as a welcome gift. I give it two weeks before it’s destroyed.

So what did we do in Galveston? We are a family and had family time. We had dinner together. Jim fixed a few things around Janelle’s house. We sampled the local cuisine. Life is good.

Turtles on Parade

For those from Rochester, remember when the city did “Horses on Parade”? Well, Galveston is doing it with turtles. Janelle and I went downtown on evening for ice cream and came across these sea turtles. People are given a “blank turtle” and embellish it as they want.

This lady caught my eye.
Check out those lips. I think they were an addition.
And her shell was quite lovely.

Janelle spent as much time with us at the RV as she could. It was like home came to her. She’s much more familiar with our RV than she is with our new sticks and bricks house!

Pool time at the RV Resort!
This is Jimmy’s on the Pier. We went here one night for drinks and snacks. What a view!
From the end of the pier, I took this picture. You would think these are city lights. No. They are all the ships at sea waiting to get into Galveston Bay and the Port of Houston.

Time to leave

Unfortunately, our week went all too quickly. It was time to go. We have learned that it is much easier to get on and off Galveston Island if you exit at either the west or east end of the island. You totally avoid Houston and all its horrible traffic that way. So, we exited from the east end via the Bolivar Peninsula. That meant, taking the free Bolivar Ferry. Janelle has research plots on the Bolivar Peninsula, so she takes this ferry often in the summer.

The Blue Flame on the Bolivar Ferry.

Once we got on the ferry, we realized that we had our dash cam running. Hmmm, what if we made a video of our ferry transit? Viola…here it is! I speeded it up 8 times. So what could have been a 25 minute video is only 3 minutes. You are welcome. You can also use this link to view the video: https://youtu.be/XFIj6qzSxuo

Happy 5th Birthday Blue Flame!

We are now celebrating five years of owning the Blue Flame. Since we bought the rig, we have put 66,899 miles on it. Wow! Maybe this occasion is more an anniversary than a birthday, since our rig is actually 15 years old (we continue to mentally thank Tom and Pam for taking such good care of the Blue Flame during the first 10 years). We are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Tonight is prime example.

Tonight we are staying on the grounds of the Red Caboose Winery in Meridian, Texas. The stay is free, and the winery has even provided 30 amp power for us!
Here’s to more years on the road!

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2 thoughts on “Back to Texas”

    1. Corinne Post author

      It WAS a nice visit. Janelle wasn’t in the path of the storms. We were at the far edge of the storm system and had rain. But nothing bad fortunately.

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