Texas - Road trip home

 Heading Home

Before I mention that we returned home to winter, I want to tell you about a couple of highlights on the road trip home.

Poteet Country Winery

Just a few hours up the road from Port Aransas, we stopped for night at a Harvest Host, the Poteet Country Winery. Poteet region is famous for strawberry growing, and they take it seriously with a strawberry festival and competitions for best strawberries. This business specialized into turning the strawberries into wine, along with other fruit wines, including White Mustang Wine made from Texas wild grapes. These grapes really are wild and are harvested from the fence lines, not grown in vineyards.

Jim, the owner of the property, is also an avid windmill collector and restores and rebuilds them. As a result, it looked like quite a chaotic place, but it was a great spot to stay the night.

The Total Solar Eclipse

When we came to Texas at the beginning of March, we had no idea that we would find ourselves so close to the path of a total solar eclipse. Even though we now were homeward bound, we dawdled a bit in order to pass through the path at the appropriate time with no set viewing plan in place. Maybe we could find a place to pull over and watch the eclipse. Maybe the weather would be agreeable. Maybe we could avoid all the predicted traffic congestion.

As it turned out, it was a beautiful experience. Some places were charging a fee to park in their open field. Other places were charging double to camp. We saw a sign for a BBQ and thought, this might be the place. And it was wonderful.

We stopped at the Riverbend on the Frio campground and they offered pulled pork on a bun and a beautiful spot to watch the eclipse. The skies were cloudy and it was a bit of a hide and seek with the sun leading up to totality, but when it happened, the sky cleared enough that we could see and watch the world grow dark around us. What an incredible experience. For about four minutes (around 1:30 p.m.) one could look at the sun covered by the moon and when looking around, it was almost as dark as night. 

As much as they tried to entice us to stay the night, we carried on down the road a bit further, as there were still many more miles to cover and it was only 2:30 in the afternoon. 

Highway 83

We didn’t expect to make it a ‘thing’ but as we studied the map and asked advice in Facebook Land, following US Route 83 might be something interesting to consider. Pulling a trailer means we’re not going 70 or 80 miles an hour as freeways allow so a two-lane highway is just fine. U.S. Route 83 is a north/south highway that runs 1885 miles from Brownsville, Texas to Westhope, North Dakota.  We jumped on at about Concan, Texas and continued until it crossed the I90 in South Dakota when we turned west.   It was interesting to watch the changes from brush country, to hill country, to dry country, to flat land; past prairie fire burnt land in northern Texas. We faced a north headwind a lot of the time, travelling from Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas before stopping for the night in Nebraska. We stayed at a Harvest Host, Pals Brewing Company, in North Platte.  It's boondocking (no services), but it's much nicer than a truck stop.  

Near Canadian, Texas

Beautiful sunrise in Nebraska

Mount Rushmore

As we were passing through the Black Hills again, stopped for two nights. One day doesn’t do the area justice as you can easily spend a week exploring the hills and the various ‘tourist traps’.

Mount Rushmore is an amazing sculpture on the mountain. The skill and talent of Gutzon Borglum and his team was incredible. It took about 16 years until completion in 1941.  The sculpture's roughly 60 ft. high depicting the faces of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.   

This is in the museum to illustrate how they worked on the sculpture.

We spent a good part of the day driving around the area, enjoying the Black Hills and the various vistas, ending with a swim in Hot Springs at Evan's Plunge, a natural mineral pool. 

How can this tree even grow here?

And the miles continued on. It was wonderful to again stop in with our friends in Coaldale and join in their family dinner. We'd come full circle and the next day arrived home safely.

But there were warnings of winter returning and here we are.

April 17, 2024

Next time we’ll have to stay away until July!

Texas - Port Aransas

 After our time of volunteering at the ILC center, we were ready to get away from the city and find some other parts of Texas. 

Pictures don't do it justice.  The former first lady, Ladybird Johnson, started a campaign to beautify the highways by planting native wildflowers like bluebonnets and more.  It was the perfect season to enjoy all the blooms driving through the countryside.  

The joy of not travelling on the freeway is the ease with which one can stop at random small towns to poke around in the shops a bit, find some good photo ops and enjoy a delicious lunch. Hico fit the bill for such a stop.

We had booked a night with Harvest Hosts at Longhorn Cellars near Fredericksburg.  Somehow these kind of boondocking sites aren't exactly free as you end up shopping too!

The site itself was quite adequate and the evening began nicely with a chance to eat outside.  Those clouds though turned into the loudest hailstorm we'd ever experienced in the trailer.  I thought for sure a window would break!  After it was over, the bedroom vent and side mirror of the truck suffered damage.

The next morning we went into Fredericksburg for breakfast and to walk the main street.  We were too early to do any shopping.  Fredericksburg has an interesting history.  It was established in 1846 by a large group of German immigrants and it plays up its German heritage in the names of streets and businesses.  We easily could of stayed longer, but we had other places on our mind.

Summer has arrived.  It's time for a picnic lunch.  Sometimes the freeway (yes, we had to return to the freeway again), has some lovely rest areas after all. 

Continuing down the road, the landscape changed from the wine-growing hill country, to brush country to the flat lands approaching the Gulf of Mexico.  Then, it was through Corpus Christi, along the causeways and over the bridges to Mustang Island to I. B. Magee Park Campground at Port Aransas.  What a beautiful place to relax and enjoy the sea and salt air.  I never in a million years imagined I'd be in this lovely spot on my birthday! The weather was warm.  The wind was crazy, but the Gulf was amazing and it was wonderful.  It felt like the middle of July.

It does look like a camping parking lot, but with sand dunes and no trees, what can you do?

Beyond that camp office building is the Gulf of Mexico with all the wind and the waves. 

Going fishing wasn't going to break the bank so Dave had a chance to give it a go, fishing off the jetty both at Mustang Island State Park and right by the Pass where the ships came and went to Corpus Christi. 

To learn a bit about Port Aransas we visited the Chapel on the Dunes. It's as if it's hidden in plain sight, on one of the highest dunes in the town. It was built in the 1930s by Ailene Carter as a place to share her faith with the children of the island.  Then in 1972, John Cobb painted the whitewashed walls with murals depicting stories from the Old and New Testament.  It's all a very intriguing story.

The University of Texas Marine Science Institute has a education center for the public to enjoy.  Mustang Island is one of a string of islands along the coast of Texas that creates estuaries for a fascinating array of marine life.  We saw dolphins following the ships in and out of the Pass, and we also saw sea turtles swimming along the jetty.  The Center had several aquariums to view some of the other sea creatures from the area. 

Port Aransas was a real gem of a holiday destination.  It was relaxing and yet there was lots to see and do. Maybe there'll be a next time.