Mission, TEXAS November

We made it!  and just in time to sign up for the big Thanksgiving dinner event.  We've met some people and everyone seems really nice.  This place is spacious and what it lacks in a fancy clubhouse is made up by the park itself.  Here's our rv on our lot.  We will be on this site until Jan. 1 and then we  move closer to the clubhouse and dog park.  There are  many birds and butterflies.  There is a National Butterfly Center just about a mile from us and Bentsen State Park, part of the Texas Birding Trail, is about 1/8 of a mile down our dead end street. We can walk there, but we usually ride our bikes.

 

Lots of flowering shrubs attract hummingbirds and butterflies.

This is the first warm Thanksgiving I've ever had!  Some days are in the mid 90's

Picnic/craft area in front of our RV.

RV's are parked faced in around a huge circle.  In the centers are picnic areas, pool tables, activities and more.

Have to keep the sun out of the rv or we roast!  

The clubhouse is not air conditioned, but the breeze keeps it nice all day long.

Each street is neat and clean.  Everyone waves when you walk or bike by.

In the center of some of the circles are casitas which you can rent.  They have pretty little courtyards behind them.

We like it so much here that we have already booked another month.  We may stay til it just gets to hot to stand!

These Brahmas are in the field right behind the dog park.

 Some are cuter than others.

King Ranch

 The King Ranch.   Cowboy town....quarter horse quarters and grazing land for lots of cows and rattlesnakes.

Tried to write this with some unique cowboy font, but couldn't find one.  Will have settle for this cow.... brown stuff.  Once you leave Corpus Christi...goodbye civilization.  While this part of Texas is a little more populated, it's still a LONG way to the next McDonalds.

Would have loved to saddle up and ride out to see the place, but they kept us locked up on a tour bus.

We saw Santa Gertrudis cows and quarter horses, dry grass and only one or two people.

T

Nice little ranch house, but the bus can't slow down or stop by it even though no one is in it.

This guy is 83 and was one of the first people to ride the triple crown winner, Assault.  Look it up.  The King Ranch raised and trained thoroughbreds for a short period of time.   

We had a great time but we still had to make it to Mission, TX the same day so off we went with the pups to find our new home for the next few months. 

Corpus Christi

We arrive at Sea Breeze RV park in Corpus Christi and Dale leaps from the RV to set  up the dish while I set out to check out the world's largest Canadian geese.  They were huge, they never moved either.  Decoys!   The park advertised wildlife but 90% of the birds on the water were decoys.  The live ones were still winging their way from Michigan down to TX to join us.

 

Just north of us was the aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington so off we went to explore

On board there are many hands on activities that I tried, such as landing a plane on an aircraft carrier.  I dropped mine in the ocean 5 times so be glad I am not guarding our country.

USS Lexington

My boating experience helped in my captain duties! This is a piece of cake...where are all those ropy things you have to pull on a sailboat?

Cindy watching for enemy aircraft.

You may have to zoom up a little but there's a lot of work in this picture and all of it was knot hard to do!




Now where's that bowline knot???

After the USS Lexington, we moved across the street to the Texas State Aquarium.  I volunteered to be part of the hawk show and had one of them rush from the side of the pavilion and fly within inches of my head.  I could feel his feathers on my head and was glad he had already made his trip to the bathroom that morning.   Dale was also very eager to be part of the show....not..... but he did get a few laughs from my lack of a performance.  Here's the pic I caught of the hawk going back to the trainer.

Note the thick leather glove which I was NOT wearing when I was on stage.   Hmmmmm????

Took this pic for my friend Margaret.  She's a shark lover.

This one is more my size.

 This spoonbill was at the aquarium, but we also had one at the RV park.

My favorite part was watching these dolphins play with floating toys, swim on their backs, jump and generally have a good time.  Still, I would rather see them in the ocean where they belong.

 We were able to pet these guys and were surprised at how gentle they are.  I think they were wrongly charged in the death of that crocodile guy.

You could pet the sting rays, but couldn't drive them!

Dale making new friends.

Looking south on Padre Island by Corpus C.

Here's Dale enjoying petting the sting rays.

We drove on to north Padre Island. (and I mean ON the beach.)   As you can see from the pic, this beach is very crowded.



After some driving around exploring (found a pet store and a Kohls!), we started our drive to the King Ranch in Kingsville, TX.

Texas, Livingston/Escapees

We made it to Texas.

We checked in and found our site at the E.scapees Park in Livingston.  Nice place, very nice people.  The town of Livingston is small and quaint.  Not much shopping except WalMart.  But who needs shopping when you can have so much fun right in the park with the interesting people who stay there?

April does some serious thinking.

Mr. T and April

After sporting our brand new Texas license plates from MI to TX, we decided to was time to "tie the knot" and get our official Texas driver's license.  But....nothing is easy.  If I had it to do again, and this is looking back on the experience a few days later.... hmmmm I am not sure I would do it.   We both really studied for several evenings to prepare for the Class B endorsement for our driver's license and I will say that it was NOT an easy test.  We both thought the questions were obscure and had little to do with facts we needed to know to be safe drivers of our 39 ft motor home.

After taking the written test, we were really unsure as to what they would expect of us on the driving test.  Would we have to show that we could do a full CDL 7 point inspection? Would we have to show that we could crawl under the rig and test the slack adjusters?  The pre trip inspection is about 6 pages long.  But we made it to the testing day, the examiner was very nice and relieved our stress right away.  We did have to drive the rig around town, on the highway, on some very small side roads, several left hand and right hand turns and back it up in a straight line.  We did not have to parallel park, but some people do.  But when my test was over, the examiner told us we both passed.  On to the office to get the license and jump in the rv and head out of town.  We walk in, get up to the counter and the computers all over the State of TX went down.  So we left, went back to the park and waited.  Then the computers were up again so we jumped in the car and took off for the licensing office.  Got there, made it up through the line to the counter, and....yep...they went down again.    We finally got them and departed for Shrimp Boat Manny's to celebrate.

We met some great friends at the SPCA benefit we attended on Halloween weekend.

Louisiana

We lingered at Percy Quin State Park in Mississippi so long that we could not do justice to the State of Louisiana, but we visited long enough to see a rebuilt Cajun village in Lafayette.   While there we were able to sit in and listen to a group of Danish musicians learning to play Cajun music from a local artist.  If you search Polewach2 on YouTube, you can listen to a short clip of their music.

Tornado!

The village had a great little science museum which concentrated on Earth science topics.  Not only did they have many working models of various stream tables, they had  nice tornado simulator too.  I enjoyed sitting back down at the old lab table for a few minutes.

Dale looks for retirement home

Then we were off to find some award winning Cajun food!  Yum.  The place had a 14 foot stuff alligator and a 210 lb Gar Fish.  YIKES