Farewell, Airstream and farewell, friends

Taking small roads past tiny towns, ramshackle housing, shrimp trucks, fancy condos on stilts and the skeletons of older houses destroyed by Hurricane Ike, we arrived at Galveston Island State Park.
It was here that we would spend our final night in the Airstream, and our final evening with Dan and Marlene.
So we all had a farewell dinner of sorts.
With the wind picking up and evidence of weather destruction abounding, we selected a spot on the inner lagoon rather than on the blustery Gulf itself.
Gaping at the glorious orange and fuchsia pre-storm sunset, we started out with Daniel’s famous homemade margaritas (and apple juice for the older girls), before moving on to snacks and salads. Working by the light of the full moon and their trusty headlamps, Daniel and Dan worked hard over a tiny barbeque, returning with stacks of fat shrimp, steaks, bacon and tuna.
It was a fun night, so we went to bed reluctantly, knowing that we wouldn’t be back in the Airstream for months.
We awoke the next morning, taking extra time over breakfast before tackling the task of cleaning and packing up the Airstream for its voyage across the Atlantic. By that evening – after a late lunch with Dan and Marlene at IHOP across the street from a choppy Gulf – we had dropped off the trailer for shipping. We were no longer Trailer People.

Not invited to the hoedown

As soon as we pulled into Pioneer Resort RV Park in Port Aransas, Texas, it was clear we did not fall into the core demographic. Our first super-RV retirement resort had over 360 spots – all apart from ours filled with giant motorhomes - no shade, no barbeque (we had all been planning an outdoor food fest), and no refunds.

But worst of all, we were not invited to the Saturday night hoedown, one of many social events planned by the winter residents.
I was told as much by the party’s costumed ringleader, who stepped in my path as I searched for the laundry room: “Do you have tickets? We are having a hoedown, and there are no more tickets”.

It turns out that clique-i-ness continues long after high school, we had no idea. But, then again, families with young children probably don’t turn up that often at retirement villages.

So we spent dinner inside Dan and Marlene’s Airstream, peering out the window at the party directly across the narrow paved road. We watched couples and singles bedecked in overalls and red wigs with braids, brandishing hoes and rakes.
We hoped we were missing out on something scandalous (why else would we be left out of the party?!)– skinny-dipping in the small pool, partner-swapping, tequila shots, perhaps?

Unfortunately for us, we witnessed nothing salacious, and the party ended early and quietly.

So we watched the hilarious movie ‘RV’ starring Robin Williams as the head of a family who cancels a family trip to Hawaii to go on an RV adventure instead.
Well, we thought it was hilarious – it probably helps if you’ve spent time RV-ing yourself. So it was nice to watch the movie with fellow RV-ers, who also thought it was funny.

Addendum: The next day, once the party was over, everyone at the park turned nice. Someone in the laundry room folded my laundry, so that they could take over the dryer. The ladies on Sunday reception duty gave helpful advice on to how to spend our day in the local town (seafood, dolphins, a bird sanctuary and a playground – plus another friendly Texan bus driver).

Here are some photos of our afternoon out.

Padre Island National Seashore

Having spent much of our trip visiting vacation spots off-season, it’s always exciting to go somewhere at the right time.
Just over a big bridge from Corpus Christi in southern Texas is Padre Island National Seashore, a marshland area boasting fine white sands, warm weather – and a ton of wind.

We spent the night right on the Gulf of Mexico, paying our record low overnight fee: $8. There was no hook-up, but who cares when you can see every star unhindered by city lights, hear crashing waves all night long and wake up on the beach?

It was in fact one of our very few no hook-up nights where we didn’t freeze.

The next day, after a pancake breakfast, we walked about five steps to the beach: Sophia and Daniel built sandcastles – following the technical plans Sophia had drawn up the night before – while Lulu and I took a long walk down the straight shoreline, meeting all of two people.

After lunch, we were reunited with Dan, Marlene & co, who stopped to enjoy the beach before we all headed off further down the island towards Port Aransas.

Texas, still a Republic?

One hears that Texas still considers itself a republic, and it’s not hard to understand why: it is BIG.

Interstate 10 traverses Texas for a whopping 879 miles, and various diversions took us considerably further than that.
The western half of the Lone Star State is so empty that according to our atlas, Big Bend National Park is “near” El Paso, at a distance of over 300 miles. It’s true that the elevation is lower and it’s a tiny bit less dusty than in New Mexico, points of interest are few and far between. That said, the scenery is trance inducing: fort-like buttes, turrets, table-top mountains and minarets, punctuated only by yucca trees, saguaro cactus and yes, tumbleweed.

Gradually, grass starts to mix with sagebrush, and green trees with succulents, with the angular mountains softening into rolling hills. At the imaginary line dividing west Texas from east, trees gain the majority and rivers begin to appear.

From there, the land flattens out and farms appear. You can sense that the Atlantic is nearing.

Geographical differences aside, Texas takes itself very seriously. Cowboy hats, elaborate leather belts and mustaches are worn without irony, and the state flags decorate houses, cars and businesses.

Signs along the highway warn drivers: ‘Don’t mess with Texas!’, just in case they were thinking about littering.

Texas goes to great lengths to demonstrate its independent spirit, even boasting its own statewide fast food joint: Whataburger, a family-owned business that has given its name to the football stadium in Corpus Christi, its headquarters.

Dan, a great fan of his own state’s homegrown fast food chain: In-n-Out, was keen to sample Whataburger. So, one day, we all went for lunch. They had pretty much what you’d find at McDonalds: fishburgers, kids’ meals with toys, etc. The difference is that food ordered at the cash register is delivered by a (very enthusiastic, in our case) staff member, who comes bearing condiments. Dan wasn’t super-impressed, saying Whataburger didn’t compare at all to In-n-Out. We didn’t feel one way or another, but Daniel said the fries were good.

But the State of Texas and God are far more impressed (see photos of signs on store windows).

Texans are really hospitable, at least from what we saw. Especially on the bus: every time we got on a bus (which was about twice), the driver stopped in the middle of his route for about ten minutes to give us local history and directions…with a bus full of passengers. On the Gulf coast, at Port Aransas, the bus ride, which cost 25 cents, even came with free candy for kids! And in San Antonio, even fellow passengers got in on the game: striking up conversations, giving us helpful tourist suggestions, telling us about their estranged children and even calling the bus company to find out when our next bus was due.

Is Texas the only state that fashions food in its own shape? Dan and Marlene bought Texas-shaped tortilla chips at the supermarket, and our Houston suburbs motel had a Texas-shaped waffle iron that produced Texas-shaped waffles.

There must be more examples, I’m sure we only just scratched the surface.

Remember the Alamo!

After Sonora Caverns, Dan and Marlene decided to drive to Austin, the capital of Texas and increasingly, a center for music and art. One big draw for them was the Pecan Grove RV Park, which is smack-bam in the middle of the city and one of the country’s coolest trailer parks, according to many.

That all sounded great, but as we knew we’d soon be driving 1700 miles to New York and that our time in the trailer was quickly running out, we decided to go to San Antonio instead.

My friend Jesse is from there, and as we weren’t able to go to his wedding a couple of years ago, I wanted to see the place.

Also, San Antonio is home to…The Alamo, a place integral to two important things: American history and the movie ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’.

History students learn about how the former Spanish mission was the site of a standoff between some 160 soldiers led by James Bowie, William Travis and including the likes of American frontier legend Davy Crockett, and the Mexican Army, led by Mexican President and General Santa Ana, in 1836.

Texas – or Tejas – had long been part of Mexico, first under the Spaniards and then under Mexican rule, after independence.
Anglo-Texans including Crockett, Sam Houston and Stephen Austin, many of whom had emigrated from federalist America and owned large ranches, decided that the province would do better if it were independent of Mexico.

After scoring a surprise victor over Mexican troops quartered in San Antonio, an emboldened volunteer army occupied The Alamo, long a strategic stronghold for the region,

Unexpectedly, Santa Ana himself came to stem the rebellion. Barricading themselves inside The Alamo, the separatists waited for days for the Mexicans to arrive, and then fought to the death during a battle that lasted 13 days – the soldiers were all killed, although the women and children hidden in an adjoining room were spared.

This event was the spark that ignited the separatists, who went on to win independence for Texas. Texas was in fact its own republic for 10 years, before becoming America’s 28th state in 1846.

In ‘PeeWee’s Big Adventure’, man-boy Pee Wee Herman embarks on a cross-country adventure in search of his beloved bike, which has been stolen by a neighborhood bully. Having been told by a fortuneteller that his wheels are in the basement of The Alamo, he heads to San Antonio, only to find out that the building has no basement.

The weather was not on our side: most of southern Texas was enduring a cold front, and we got rain – both normal and freezing. So we spent most of our time there indoors – eating at a great little Mexican place with homemade tortillas just across from our trailer park, having tea with Dave the Englishman and then enjoying the décor at an old German deli right in town. It wasn’t the right time to do the Riverwalk – a two-mile pedestrian walkway and park area along the San Antonio River.

But The Alamo was great. There were more people in costume (well, we think they were, but you never know in the Southwest), dressed as Mexican soldiers, Spanish colonists, Crockett & co, mustachioed rangers with guns (those may have been real), etc.

In Spanish, ‘alamo’ means cottonwood tree, but the tree dominating the outside of the complex is a huge live oak..

Inside, in the mission’s main room – costumed historians tell the tale of what happened within its walls. Further on is a small museum telling the story of the native Americans, Spanish colonial life, the Mexican era and Texas’ own developing culture.

Tea with an Englishman

We arrived at our San Antonio RV park, which was on the wrong side of town, in the pouring rain.
Daniel always makes a point of arriving before dark, but today we did not achieve this. So we did not see a post on the side of the site, and crashed into it (at 5mph, so gently).
“HEY”, yelled a voice, which emerged from the window of a gigantic motorhome.
I hear the sound of an Englishman, I thought. So I asked the voice where it was from.
“Phoenix,” it answered, in a distinctly English accent.
“You don’t sound American,” I insisted.
“Do you know English geography?”, reluctantly asked the voice, which was coming into focus as hailing from the North.
Unfortunately, I did not know where Middlesborough was, but was told it was near the Scottish border.
The man, whose face I could eventually make out, didn’t seem that interested in our invitation to come in for a drink. So we left it at that.
When we emerged from the trailer into the next day’s hailstorm, he seemed friendlier: “Would you like to join us for a cup of tea?”, he called through a crack in the window, far above us.
But of course!
So into our first giant motorhome we went, satisfying our long held curiosity as to how proper RVers live.
We sat on two very comfortable opposing sofas, behind the plush driver and passenger seats. When I noted that this was the furthest Daniel and I had sat from each other in about nine months, the man – Dave – demonstrated his motorhome’s slide-outs. At the push of a button, a section of his $200,000 Monaco slid in and out with the barely a quiet whir. It was very exciting, so he demonstrated this a few times.
Sophia worked on her coloring, Lulu took advantage of all the space to crawl around, while Daniel and I drank Proper English Tea and heard about the life of Dave.
Dave, whose career in the merchant navy led to the private sector in the form of shipping and meteorology, is now retired. Spending nine months a year in his RV traveling around the US, he uses his professional knowledge to follow the sun – and the summer in England.
He was kind of confused as to why we would subject ourselves to such limited space, and such an old RV – and very worried about our shipping it to the UK – but was nice to us anyway.

Underworld

Staying overnight at Sonora Caverns RV Park cost $15 a night – water and electricity included – but the guided tour of caverns themselves cost $20 per adult and $16 for kids 4 and over. Still, it was 21 miles from the nearest town, so we made due with dinner from cans and managed to stay under our $80 daily budget.

The girls and I had never been in a cave before, but Daniel had. We saw stalactites and stalagmites, and columns, which are a joining of the two. We spent a lot of time learning about caves – one hour and 45 minutes, to be exact: chandeliers, rooms, crystals and something toothpaste-like that may hold the cure for cancer. We had to be careful not to touch ANYTHING, as contact with bodies can mess with the living crystals inside a cave.

Our tour guide was a keen caver – don’t even think of calling her a spelunker…these days that term is an insult to the serious caver (the correct term).

We didn’t emerge with a burning desire to become cavers ourselves, although our guide had alluded to some pretty racy goings-on underground – old hippy cavers are apparently into naked ramen noodle wrestling, but she didn’t specify what the younger generation gets up to.