Well here we are, Monday morning the 30th day 0f October, in a Cracker Barrel Restaurant parking lot in Legion City Texas, which is somewhere between Houston and Galveston Island and that cold front that has been making its way from the northwest has finally caught up with us, here at the Gulf of Mexico’s western shore. We went to bed last night, with a temperature at 80ºF (27ºC) and woke up this morning to 55ºF (13ºC) which has been a bit of a shock, as I had just nicely settled back into my T-shirts and shorts wardrobe, so this has been a bit of an unwanted set back to say the very least, but this was the cold front that had been setting our pace of travel over the last week. So now we will have some time to explore the area and enjoy the warm weather, oh well, at least there is still the exploration part.
We ordered a takeout breakfast from Cracker Barrel this morning to enjoy in the coach, Miss Laurie tried a dish that came with a piece of “cinnamon roll pie” and I had bacon and eggs with a side order of biscuits and gravy. While watching some morning television, I realized that its going to be a tough battery day with no travel time and no solar to replenish our batteries, there is going to have to be some generator run time today for sure. We have a “Harvest Host” boondocking spot booked for this evening, at a Winery just a few miles down the road but until then we are headed to a local outlet mall to spend the day, with this chill in the air I’m not expecting this outdoor mall to be busy. We fired up Thunder around eleven o’clock and pulled out of the Cracker Barrel and headed down the south bound service road toward the outlet mall where we will try to get parked on the extreme outside of the parking lot.
Just eight miles south of the Cracker Barrel we found the outlet mall and worked our way to the outside edge of the lot where we just settled in for a down day. Our toad has been low on fuel since we left Canada but I have been waiting for some better fuel pricing of the southern states. Many of you may never have heard of a growing chain of Texas fuel stations called “Buc-ees country stores“, they are famous for a number of things, like having a hundred gas pumps at each location. They also have stores that are so large they offer full size shopping carts at the entrance just like a Walmart, and the “Buc-ee’s” logo is on everything, clothing, preserves, snacks and the like. The stores are also famous for their smoked brisket sandwich as well as their own line of jerky, they use a beaver as their mascot and is also part of their logo. The reason for the hundred fuel pumps is to allow people time to go shopping after fueling their vehicles without worrying about rushing back to their car, and with some of the best fuel prices they are usually a busy spot, today their fuel price was $2.65 US per gallon which is equivalent to 91¢ CDN per liter over fifty cents less that the current Canadian price which was $1.42 when we left a week ago. So we unhitched our toad and headed to “Buc-ee’s” to top off our fuel tank and wander around the store.
Next we headed off to find the closest Costco to pick up some items, and although we still to have get through Halloween, Christmas was on full display at both Costco & Buc-ee’s and as usual Costco remains our go to for many of our liquor purchases while in the States, although here in Texas they do not carry any of the Kirkland brand liquors so still there is no Kirkland’s Irish Cream for us yet oh well we really haven’t have had time to enjoy a coffee with a little Irish blessing yet, but I’m thinking there will be time in the near future. So after our little excursion we headed back to the coach to have some lunch (roasted chicken wings that we picked up at Costco).
As the afternoon rolls by we reattach the toad and head to our Harvest Host spot for the night a Winery here near the gulf coast, not a location that I expected to find a winery, but the winery has a nice big parking lot with lots of room to turn our rig around, so no need to disconnect the toad for the evening. And again I’m finding that it might have been cheaper for us to just pay for a campground, then staying at a vineyard and letting me enjoy a wine tasting, but I have picked a nice bottle of red that I’m sure Mister Anderson may enjoy with me this winter in Arizona. So it’s the “Haak Winery” in Santa Fe Texas for the win, a beautiful spot in the country, a quiet parking lot, some good wine, this has been a great boondocking night.
Tuesday October 31st Halloween and we are waking up, still in the winery parking lot in Santa Fe Texas, we had watched “The Voice” before turning in for the night again streaming television over our cellular based internet provider, because it was a chilly night and we both used our mattress warmers to take the chill off of the bed last night. But I woke to 45ºF (7ºC) and the threat of todays high only being 61ºF (16ºC) which while that will be better than yesterdays high it’s still not anywhere near the temperature that we were hoping for. And yes I know that you folks back up home in Ontario are bordering on the freezing point this morning, and that must seem really cold compared to our southern cold, and although it will be a slow warm up at least we will see some serious warmth within the next week. Miss Laurie made us toasted western sandwiches for breakfast this morning, I’m on my second cup of coffee blogging as our travel distance today will barely reach double digits and because we are moving into an actual campground today we will have a late start as we wait until check in time before making the move.
We have booked a week at a campground just a few miles from Galveston Island, we first visited Galveston Island on our first winter south, way back in 2017, when we spent a couple of nights in the State park on the island, but as with most State Parks I was unable to book a site for seven nights. But this campground we found is close by and is a bargain at only $175 for a week with full hookups, it appears to be a park that is reasonably new and has a lot of expansion happening right now and they expect to double in the amount of sites over the next year. Now you may be wondering why are we in the Galveston area? And that would be a very good question, and there are a few reasons, some of which will become very obvious soon.
So lets take a little trip back in time to early November of 2017, and the Buchanan’s were on their first winter adventure. They landed in the welcome center of the State of Texas on interstate 10, and had some time to kill as it was mid November and our next reservation wasn’t till December the 1st in Why Arizona. The attendant at the Welcome center suggested a drive down the gulf of Mexico to explore Galveston Island which would be assessable to us by a free ferry ride across Galveston Bay, so we were introduced to Galveston Island and we spent a couple of nights at the State park on the Island. We were impressed enough to think it would be worth another visit later on. But that is not the real reason we are here now. The main reason will show up in the next blog until then just enjoy our little adventure for now.
We started Thunder and prepared to leave the winery around noon, we are travelling less than ten miles today, I have scouted our route on Google maps, and there appears to be some construction to deal with but we have all day to get there. My plan was to just stay on the southbound service road, but that failed because of the construction, so we had to enter onto the interstate highway at one interchange then jumped back off at the next interchange, to a secondary road that would lead us to the campground. As we are making our way to the campground we pass through flood gates, because this area of Texas sits at just a couple of feet above sea level much of this area floods during hurricanes. These gates have not been used for sometime as they now have guardrails blocking their operation but I’m thinking we are now going to be staying on the flooding side of the berm.
Well our campground in not nearly as pretty as it was shown on their website, but it has everything that we will need for the next week, it is obvious that many of the people in the park are fulltime working residents. This is not uncommon in the States as people are finding regular housing options either too hard to find or too expensive, so many workers find a campground near their work location and settle in, being close to their jobs and also being able to change locations as their jobs demand, because many of these works are in construction. We first discovered this reality when we started to find southern Arizona campgrounds hard to book sites and their prices jumping up. This was when construction workers were moving to the Mexican border to build “the wall” a few years ago, now those campgrounds are struggling as the workers have moved on and many of these campgrounds have lost their regular snowbird clients. As you can see from the photos above that we also had some noisy neighbors across the street that serenaded us most evenings. I even got a photo of some smoke but we never discovered where it was from, although I suspect it was on or near the interstate highway.
The balance of today was just spent kicking back and relaxing, it is nice to be plugged in, and having unlimited water for those longer showers and unlimited power for electric appliances. This is a strange stop so we are not unpacking a lot of items, in fact I’m just unpacking the toad enough to do some island exploring that we have planned for tomorrow. It is still cold enough that we have the electric space heater running to take the chill off of the coach as soon as the sun sets. Again we are getting good internet from our Maple Wi-Fi, and we have caught up on some YouTube videos that we had been putting off.
November 1st, and it’s still cool here in Texas, although I’m still wearing shorts, the space heater is running in the coach, we’re watching some morning television and I’m catching up on the blog as we have a day of exploration planned on Galveston Island. We have not been on the island since 2017 and we have good memories of the area, but first a nice breakfast before this adventure starts.
We are heading onto Galveston Island today, we will be taking the interstate highway across the causeway and heading toward the seawall that we last seen six years ago, it is surprising how different things look from the toad as compared to the coach. And the beach area seems abandoned, I suspect mainly because of the chill in the air, but we drove the coast all the way to the State park, making note of all the new construction of homes, resorts and even some RV resorts. Today is not a good representation of the area although things are getting busy because of a bike event that is planned for this weekend. We were not aware of this event, but I don’t think it will effect our plans, but it could explain the difficulty of trying to get into the State park.
After cruising the coastal drive we ended up at the Walmart, we needed to pick up a couple items for tomorrows adventure, before we headed back to the coach. Again tonight we are just kicking back and relaxing with full hookups and good internet, we are trying to eat up some of our leftovers from our refrigerator. We ended up having a busy evening as we are getting packed for a little get away from the coach!
We woke this morning November 2nd, with anticipation of an adventure that will be totally new to us, we have developed an ability to approach most adventures with an open mind and a positive outlook. But we have no reference to compare this one to, so as we do our final little bit of packing and prepare to leave our coach (home) as well as Mister Sam for an extended weekend away, I have to admit to a wee bit of anxiety.
Some breakfast, some coach preparation, rechecking our luggage, our passports & boarding passes, our Uber ride to the terminal and I guess we are ready.
And the Adventure continues!
Blog 491
Day 2219
The Buchanan's Rolling Down The Road 