Texas Gulf Coast

We spent two nights at the Trade Winds Resort in Harlingen, Texas. It was a good place. The sites were wide and there were no train whistles during the night. The day we planned to leave was windy but the winds were from the south and we were headed north so we left anyway. We figured it was time for the winds to be in our favor.

We stopped at another WalMart for Dave to pick up a prescription and buy groceries. Just in case you don’t know what a SuperCenter WalMart looks like here’s today’s.

We traveled north on Hwy 77 which was a hurricane evacuation route which, as I mentioned before, didn’t make sense to me. When we got to Raymondville the evacuation route turned west–finally. I guess their goal was to keep everyone from the Brownsville area from heading west into the mob already in Mission/McAllen. At least I hope that was their goal.

Just south of Sarita, Texas, we stopped at what we think will be our last Border Patrol checkpoint. [Begin rant.] The only value I see in these checkpoints is that they provide jobs. They certainly don’t protect our borders. They are permanent structures so illegals know where not to go. Today they asked if we were both citizens but they didn’t even say US citizens so we could have honestly answered yes if we were citizens of some other country. They asked if anyone was traveling with us and we said no. But they didn’t check our passports nor look to see if anyone was in the back of the RV. I think we looked too relaxed to alert them but good con men do look relaxed. They did have a drug dog on duty but they didn’t even walk him around our RV. Like I said, I think all they do is provide jobs. Which does have some value in this economy but I’d rather see those people actually patrolling the borders or repairing roads or picking up litter or something that provides value for the money they get. [End rant.]

Dave has been craving a Belgian waffle from iHop for several days now. Except every time we find an iHop it’s the wrong time. Today we actually saw one at lunch time so we went there. Their waffle iron is broken! So, Dave had to settle for his second favorite breakfast. He says we are about to reenter Waffle House territory, though, and their waffles are acceptable substitutes. Not as good as iHop but acceptable.

At Robstown we turned east towards Padre Island. Those south winds that have been pushing us north are now cross winds that make it hard to stay in our lane. It’s a good things we don’t have far to go this direction.

We pulled into Padre Island National Seashore late afternoon and found a recently vacated spot at their Malaquite Campground. There are no hookups but our discount get us this view from my side of the table for $4 a night.

That’s the Gulf of Mexico. Not bad, huh? It gets quite warm here during the day but we just open the windows to get nature’s air conditioning.

We had no internet signal so decided we’d only register for two nights. About three hours later Dave plugged in our antenna/booster system and voila! Internet. So today we drove over to the dump and fill area then registered for two more nights. This strikes me as a case of you can’t get too much of a good thing.

TTYL,

Linda