Goodbye to San Antonio until the Fall

Our last night in San Antonio was a beautiful one! We spent the afternoon checking out possible campgrounds for next year when we will visit again. We also went downtown to the Alamo to purchase some gifts we had seen when we were here in December. This photo is Doug talking on the phone in the shade while I (Nada) shopped the different stores for souvenir gifts.

The weather was hot - 89 degrees in the afternoon (the reason why Doug was sitting in the shade) and still 80 degrees when we met our friends Ruth and Gavino at 7:30 PM on the Riverwalk for dinner at Texas Land and Cattle.





Both the Downtown and the Riverwalk were alive with people. We had to wait about 25 minutes for a table. That is Doug sitting by the river on a bench cut from a very old tree.

Slowly heading north

Hi! and thanks for stopping by....
No pictures to post this time – just a text update. It is February 25th and at 8 PM it was 79 degrees outside. We had a lovely balmy dinner outside at Panera Bread with Homer laying under our table. He loves to go along and is so good just blending into the concrete under the table – At least until someone stops to pet him!

Once we had several days of over 90 degrees down in the Rio Grande Valley, we said it was time to move a little north. 90 is too warm for us. So we are now in San Antonio for a few days. Then we will make a beeline to Red Bay, AL to the Tiffen factory. There we will have some servicing done on the motorhome and also some remodeling done so we anticipate being in cold northwest "hills" of Alabama for at least two weeks while the work is done. After that we are not sure where we will go to wait out the springtime warm up.

Check back again and we'll keep you updated on what we are up to.

Blessings on your day!

South Padre Island

We took a drive to South Padre Island at the very southern tip of Texas. As we were going across the causeway to the island, we spied a wind surfer – He is the little dot in the sky in the center of the photo (you can click on the photo to get it to enlarge).


I zoomed in on this photo so you could see him closer. We later saw parachute wind surfers. Since it was a super windy day, they were having a hard time keeping their boards on the water.



Well, we figured out Homer is not a beach dog! Today he got sand in his eye and did not like that at all!

We, also, figured out we aren't beach lovers either. Short visits are fine. We have been scouting a place where we might want to stay for the dead of winter next year. We decide this year that Yuma, AZ might be nice and warm, but it is so windy and dusty from all the agriculture going on there. Tucson, AZ gets too cold at night for us. San Antonio, the same as Tucson. Mostly warm days but 40's at night. We love Port Aransas and Corpus Christi but after spending a whole month there, we decided the shore is nice to visit for a week or two but it is too humid to stay there all winter. So we have spent the last two weeks in the Rio Grande Valley relaxing in the sunshine, the warmth (80's & 90's), and search for the ideal location for us for the dead of winter next year.

We have a couple more days here before we slowly make our way north. We'll stop a few days in San Antonio and then head to Red Bay, AL to have some work done on the motorhome. Not sure what we will do after that until it gets warmer in PA but that is the fun of fulltiming!

Thanks for stopping by – check back again!

Corpus Christi - Wind Surfing & the Nina

On one of our days over to Corpus Christi for lunch, we saw this wind surfer. As you can see it was a very windy day and he had quite a hard time staying on the board.

We also discovered that Corpus Christi has the only replicas of all three of Columbus' ships. This one is the Nina which is docked in the marina. The Pinta and Santa Maria are at the science museum in town. If you click on the photo, it will enlarge.



Seeing our Lexus right beside the ship shows you how small these ships were.

Dolphins

We love watching the dolphins in the shipping channel at Port Aransas. Do you know how hard it is to get a photo of them??? Doug bought a special camera for me for Christmas so I could get photos of the dolphins and birds I love so much! The camera takes one photo after another as long as you hold the shutter down so it only took about 15 photos of plain water to get these 2 photos of the dolphins breathing!

We're soon leaving Corpus Christi and heading down to the Rio Grande Valley. We'll search for a campground to be our winter residence next year. Stay tuned to hear about what we decide. Thanks for stopping by.

Sunday lunch at Pelican Club, Port Aransas

We had a lovely brunch after church at Pelican Club in the heart of the marina at Port Aransas. This ship is weaving its way around the multiple jetties out to the shipping channel.

This Pelican settled down to eat lunch with us – He was just 5' from us and watched us the whole time we ate lunch!

Doug's work at the USS Lexington

Doug enjoyed his time volunteering at the USS Lexington. Sometimes he worked in the library and then they put him to work doing some painting in preparation for their yearly fundraising banquet.




This gun at the entrance to the ship/museum was one of the items that Doug painted the day before their fundraiser.


This is the view from the Lexington's access ramp looking across to downtown Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi is the 4th largest port in the US. It has a narrow manmade ship channel that goes about 12 miles to the right of this photo. The ocean going ships are escorted by tugs through the ship channel to their dock. This photo is of an ocean tanker leaving the ship channel and barge ready to enter the channel. In the photo below, I caught the tank in the background of the Lexington as the tanker started across the bay heading through the pass at Port Aransas.

Super Bowl

Thanks for stopping by.... We went to church today at the Baptist Church here in Port Aransas, had lunch at the local Mexican restaurant, and took a ride on our bikes before we settled down to watch the Super Bowl. It was such a beautiful day - Not a cloud in the sky and in the 70's. Here is a photo of Doug watching the Super Bowl on our outside TV that he just installed yesterday. As the sun went down it got chilly in the seabreeze so he had to finish the game indoors.

Have a great day!