Nov 22nd
Before we left this morning, we hiked one of the trails. Claiborne West park is beautiful. It’s a lot like Ragle, but much bigger. This was a great stopover right off of Interstate 10. We didn’t have to drive very far today. Our plan was to stay in the Galveston area near the beach. I found free beach camping in Port Bolivar, which is across the channel from Galveston. It is amazing! We are parked on the beach. There is about a mile of free access beach, and there are only twelve campers. The sand is compacted like cement, so there is no danger of getting stuck. At high tide, we are about 15 yards from the water and at low tide we are about 40 yards from it. It is amazing! Did I say that already? We are far enough away from anyone, that we leave Oreo off the leash. We can see the Galveston skyline in the distance, and this evening we watched several cruise ships leave port. I think we will stay here through Thanksgiving.
Nov 23rd
Kathy watched the sunrise over the water from her “office” window this morning. We are still in awe of this camping spot. After morning school, we got out our bikes. The sand is compacted enough that we can ride the bikes down the beach. In fact, everyone drives their cars on the beach. We headed east down the beach. A couple of miles down, the beach is lined with houses on stilts. They are stilts because of all the storms, but they are gorgeous beach houses. The houses stretch as far as you can see down the beach. Under each house is the garage, and any house that is occupied has a golf cart. Noooo! Luckily, we are here in the off season. I can only imagine how crowded with people and golf carts the beach must be in the summer. After a few miles of biking, Mia told us she wanted ice cream. I looked up the nearest store, and we still had several miles before we would get there. She insisted. It was not hard biking on the sand, but we had a bad head wind. We finally turned off the beach and headed through one of the neighborhoods to the store. We had ridden 7 miles to get here, and were a little tired. Mia got her ice cream (so did the parents), and we bought some groceries. Now we just had to bike 7 miles back. It was actually a lot easier with the tail wind. 14 miles, and two bike crashes later (both Mia and Kathy rode through some soft sand and fell, no major injuries though), we finally made it home. Everyone should sleep really well tonight.
Nov 24th
Another beautiful day on the beach. We are staying on this great beach for free, so we decided to “pay” by picking up trash. I don’t think I mentioned this earlier, but there is trash everywhere. It gets washed up from the Gulf of Mexico. There are big garbage cans every 100 yds on the beach and people seem to use them, but every high tide more trash shows up. We cleaned up almost everything we could see in our immediate area, and 100yds to either side. By the time we were done, we had picked up over 60 pounds of trash. It felt good to sit outside later and not see any garbage. I know that after high tide tonight, there will be more. At the end of the public beach to our west, is a wildlife sanctuary, where dogs and vehicle are not allowed. This afternoon we took a walk through it. Just before we reached it, we came across a dead sea turtle tangled in fishing line. We were disheartened, but it got worse as we walked in the sanctuary. There is trash everywhere. The public beach where we are camping, is 100 times cleaner. That’s when we realized that we weren’t the only ones cleaning the public beach, otherwise it would look like the animal sanctuary. No one goes into the sanctuary to clean up the trash, and it has piled up. The three of us picked up handfuls and brought it back to the garbage cans, but we didn’t make a dent. Looking at the garbage, it really felt hopeless. We (everyone) really need to stop using less, especially plastic. Enough of my soapbox.
Nov 25th
Happy Thanksgiving! It’s raining and cold today. We spent most of the day inside reading and playing games. I made a small Thanksgiving dinner with a turkey tenderloin, Stovetop dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy and a peach cobbler. We watched football and ate too much. The wind really started picking up tonight.
Nov 26th
It was sad to leave the beach this morning. I think this was Oreo’s favorite stop. We will have to come back. Mia’s half sister Mary is in Buda, Tx visiting friends, so we drove up to meet her. All of the campgrounds and RV parks in the area are full for the Thanksgiving weekend, so we just pulled into the local Cabela’s parking lot. Mary’s guardians came and dropped her off with us. Mia and Mary played for a while, and then we walked to a restaurant for dinner. We came back to the trailer, and the girls watched a movie together until it was time for her to be picked up.
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