While I recap some of the highlights of our last year’s trip
south, I cannot somehow capture the moment of excitement, joy or
disappointments we experienced during our tour.
It’s different when I blog everyday and my frame of mind is transparent,
but I try anyway.
Whereas the goal last year had been to escape our Canadian
winter, I didn’t want to spend the whole time in one place. Although we liked
Arizona a lot, the nights were colder than I had envisioned before our
departure. A bit of research combined
with our love for the oceans and a promise of milder temperatures made us think
of checking out the area of the Texas’ Gulf coast. There are many RV parks in the vicinity of
Harlingen, which indicates it is a popular destination and that was where we
were heading. Texas is a huge state and I
wouldn’t mind to see more of it. The highways are in great shape and the
75mph/130km speed limit is an added bonus.
For our Canadian friends: that's mph!
Our planned route took us through St. Antonio where we
wanted to fill up with gasoline. We use GasBuddy to check who sells the cheapest fuel. Even back here in Canada we use GasBuddy all
the time. If you use a device with GPS
it tells you right away where all the nearest gas stations are and the current rate
or, you can just enter the location, i.e. town or city where you think you will
need fuel next. We all know fuel is much
cheaper in the USA than Canada, but we couldn’t believe the low price
advertised at the HEB gas station in St. Antonio. Sure enough, everybody in Texas must have
seen the advertisement judging by the traffic leading to the plaza. The lineup to the pumps wound around the
whole parking lot of the HEB supermarket with more and more cars trying to
squeeze in. To put it mildly, it was mayhem.
Just imagine our truck with travel trailer in tow blocking the bay. No way
would we attempt to do that. To our luck we spotted an empty parking lot next
to a bank under renovation on the other side of the street and that is where we
parked, unhooked the trailer, put the jacks down and then drove over to get in
line to participate in the frenzy.
An hour later, tank full including all jerry cans filled to
the brim and a quick trip into the supermarket for a few items we were on our
way again. By this time it was late
afternoon and we decided to keep on driving until we would be too tired to
continue. A rest area just before Corpus
Christi looked good to us. It turned out to be an ok spot for the night.
The following day, a Friday, we pulled into the Palm Garden
RV Park in Harlingen. It’s an older park right next to a highway overpass. The occupants here were for the most part
old-timers and called this place a home away from home. Our intentions were not to stay for very
long, rather to use this central spot for scouting out a RV park where we would
settle down for some weeks.
Our spot in Harlingen
Saturday and Sunday we drove around armed with notes and
coordinates of RV parks, spent a little time at the mall located around the
corner and more time at the BassPro Shop also situated nearby. I have to say, I fell in love with the area
of Port Isabel, about a 45 minutes drive from Harlingen. The town is located on
the western side of the south end of Laguna Madre, an estuary of the Gulf of
Mexico. At its very end of town we found
the Port Isabel RV Park Center and a block away is the Queen Isabella
Causeway, which takes you over to South Padre Island on the Gulf shore. South Padre Island is a resort town and is
apparently very popular at Spring break, so we were told. But we liked what we saw and booked a spot by
the water for a month starting the following Monday.
Did I mention the Port Isabel RV Park is large? It is a very sizeable park and just walking
around the perimeter will provide you with a good exercise. Before we left on the trip south we really
didn’t have an idea what kind of parking spots we might encounter and because
of that we had brought along our Parkit Power Dolly stored on the truck bed along with a lot of other
things we had not found a use for yet like our big 32 gallon poop tank, (portable waste tank on wheels) which we had no reason to unpack either, thank goodness!! It
had puzzled us why the spot right at the water was still free in such a tight
packed RV park where space is at a premium.
Well, the reason the spot was free was no one had been able to get in because a
flowerbed blocked two thirds of the driveway and you had to back in at an angle
which would have both neighbors with their big rigs make them hold their
breaths. I knew the dolly would come in handy someday which was now. Singlehandedly and with ease Benno maneuvered
our travel trailer, hooked up to the dolly (it pulls 9000 lbs.) into the
parking spot overlooking the canal.
View onto the canal
All settled into our spot we got talking to our neighbors to
the right when we discovered that they owned a full-grown Great Dane dog. Whoa,
he was friendly but I didn’t know dogs could grow as big as a pony and I was
sure glad they had a fence erected around their pad. By the way it was mentioned that their
previous Great Dane had passed away on a former trip to the RV Park and not
knowing what to do with it, they took it along and buried it at the RV Park,
but not before purchasing another Great Dane. Guess where they buried the
dog? Yep, the flowerbed!
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