The Perpetual Tourist - Part 4 or 5 ro whatever

Heading out.

Boldly hooking up a new car to tow… It was with some trepidation that I agreed to be the one responsible for setting up the car to safely flat tow it behind the camper. It has an automatic transmission and an actual key that you insert into the ignition. Don had wired a switch so we can turn off the accessories while it is in tow. I took out the owner’s manual and wrote out the steps for setting up the car, put the instructions in a plastic sleeve and attached them to the valet key that we keep in the console. I dutifully look at each step and complete it each time we hook up the car. The instructions attached to the key will hopefully prevent me from ever completing this task without thinking about it. I still kind of catch my breath when I think about doing something so courageous.

Oil change--- On April 6 before we left Corpus Christi, we took the bus into Freightliner to get the oil changed. That took up the better part of the day. By the time we left, we were good friends with the service technician and he cleaned off the oil pan to see if he could see where there was a small leak. Eventually we will need to get a new gasket but not before next year when we get our next oil change. He was helpful and friendly and talked about his plans to retire in 57 days. When we left Corpus, the main bridge across the bay was closed because of a big tanker fire earlier in the day so we had to go back through the town across the bridge to Mustang Island passing the place where we burned up the car last year and took the ferry at Aransas Pass. We stayed in a pull through in Rockport, TX and took off the next morning toward Galveston. I noticed that the car was spattered with mud and that seemed strange because I couldn’t remember any mud. When we arrived at San Luis County Park we went to unhook the car. I noticed that things seemed kind of oily and on checking the “mud” spatters I realized it was oil. Then we turned our attention to the back of the RV and noticed that it was covered with oil spatters. We got the bikes off the back and lifted up the grille. Oil was dripping off the grill on our heads. Our friendly technician had forgotten to put the oil cap on. We still had plenty of oil in the engine but we spent a couple of hours and a bunch of Dawn dish soap cleaning the back of the camper and the car. Some things are still greasy. What a mess.

So it’s been a long time since I wrote anything. I guess my excuse about not having a good work station really doesn’t hold water since I did set up a work space that is at least adequate. Since I last wrote, we said good-bye to our friends, I took a trip to Minnesota to see Edie before we left Palmdale, bought a new residential refrigerator to replace the old Dometic RV refrigerator that shot craps after I defrosted it, put Sparky in Ray’s storage shed again and hit the road. We went deep-sea fishing with friend Gary and caught a couple of nice red snapper.

We finally got out of Palmdale on April 4 and here’s where we’ve been since then

4/4-4/5 Richard M. Borchard Fairgrounds in Robstown, TX (Just north of Corpus Christi.)

4/6 -Ancient Oaks RV Park in Rockport, TX

4/7-9 San Luis Pass County Park

4/10-11 Galveston Island State Park

4/12 Golden Nugget Casino in Lake Charles, LA.

4/13-15 Vermillionville Living History and Folk Life, Lafayette, LA. (A Harvest Host site.)

4/16-17  Southern Oaks Mobile Home and RV Community, Gulfport, MS (need plumbing to do laundry)

4/18-19 - Eagle’s Landing RV Park, Holt, FL (near Pensacola)

4/20-23 Leon County Fairgrounds, Tallahassee FL

4/24 – 26 Kelly’s Countryside RV Resort, Hilliard, FL

4/27       Fort Clinch State Park, Fernandina Beach, FL

We made it to the Atlantic Ocean and if I go across the dunes I can walk right into the ocean. We’ve made it from sea to shining sea. Now we can start heading north and that’s a good thing because it’s getting pretty hot where we are.

Some of our highlights besides the oil splatter…

At San Luis Pass we spent 3 nights near the ocean and since we have Texas fishing licenses we went fishing and learned how to catch the blue crab. I caught a small but legal black drum and we caught 3 blue crab and made a meal out of it.

At Galveston we parked on the ocean side. We took a day to drive into Houston to do some shopping and go to the Space Center for a tour. Then we had a rainy day at the beach and I made a batch of granola. We spent a night boondocking at the casino in Lake George.

A highlight of our trip was the Harvest Host venue in Lafayette, LA where we stayed at a historical village and learned about the history of the people who settled this part of Louisiana. We ate some good Cajun food and listened to a jam session of Cajun Music. On the tour of the village we met an Accadian woman about our age who remembered speaking only French as a child but going to school where she could only use English. In this part of the country the local people are bi-lingual. In spite of the best efforts of the dominant culture, the continue to speak their language. I could spend more time in this part of the world.

We spent a couple of days on the Gulf coast of Mississippi. We’ve been here before a couple of times but it is changed a lot. Still some of the most beautiful white sandy beaches but those dreadful casinos dominating the shore in Biloxi and a lot of vacant spaces where there were houses before the hurricane.

At Pensacola we toured the Naval Air Museum and listened to the stories of an old vet talking about the history of naval warfare since WWI. We saw some of the aircraft that were involved in important battles including the one that Bush 1 flew in combat during WWII. He survived some pretty harrowing experiences. Gets you thinking about how one individual’s survival can make a difference in history but that’s always the case.

At Hilliard, we were just down the road from the Okefenokee Swamp and our hopes for going on a swamp tour were dashed because the swamp is on fire. One day the wind was in our direction and we were breathing the smoke and ask from the fire. We decided to drive up and see for ourselves and talked to one firefighter who was involved in clearing out some brush to prevent the fire from spreading. Firefighting involves keeping the fire contained to the refuge so it doesn’t spread to the communities around the swamp. They expect that it might burn till November when they can count on getting some good rain. At the time we left the area they had 70,000 acres of the swamp burned. We got some pictures of alligators.

So yesterday we came here where we were able to get one night near the ocean. We’ll head up toward Savannah today. I’m finding that if I want to get good campsites I need to plan ahead and make reservations so I’ll be doing more of that.