2022-07-13 Headed to Rockport Texas

Time for another Texas Ramblin' Roses Rally. My sister-in-law Elaine drove down to meet up with me in Schertz TX. This is her first time out in her travel trailer and her first rally. The trailer has been in storage for about three years due to covid so she was very smart and replaced the tires before leaving Abilene. She came to our house for dinner and then spent the night in a nearby RV park to get a feel for RVing on her own. We met up at a nearby Walmart parking lot and headed out together. We didn't have to go through San Antonio at all because we took back roads which is actually the shortest distance. Unfortunately, we ran into about 3 different road construction sites. Other than Texans hard at work repairing/replacing roads, the trip was uneventful.

This time the Roses are meeting in Rockport Texas at Wilderness Oaks RV Resort. I'm hosting and this is my fourth or fifth rally here. It's a great park and they treat us really well. We arrived to see this sign on the front of the office. We checked in and, while I was unhooking my toad, a camphost escorted Elaine to her site and spotted her while she backed in. He came back to escort me and Elaine was already unhooking her trailer. We both hooked up electric right away for A/C to cool things down and left the water and cable for later in the evening.

We took a little drive to see a few sites nearby once we were settled in.

Wednesday morning, four of us arrivals headed out along the coast. We took the ferry between Aransas Pass and Port Aransas. A lot of people don't realize that this is actually part of the highway system. I have taken my last RV, a 31' fifth wheel across several times and it isn't unusual to see semi-trucks on the ferries. We had a little wait to get on but it wasn't too bad. We headed over to the channel first.

A ship was on the way into the bay and on to Corpus Christi.

Elaine and Mary couldn;t wait to get their feet into the ocean.

That ship was coming in faster than you would expect.

Next we headed on down the island past the Mustang Island State Park and on to Padre Island National Seashore. Both Elaine and Barb got their one year America the Beautiful Senior pass. If you buy an annual senior pass for 3 years, the fourth year you will get the lifetime senior pass. It is a great deal which allows you to spread the cost of the lifetime pass over a four year period.

I think it was a first visit to the national seashore for everyone but me but I always enjoy it. I thought there used to be a place to get something to eat here but there isn't now. 

We had to take a couple tourist shots.

The beach looked so inviting but it was really, really hot and we were short on time so we had to settle for taking some pictures.

We checked out some exhibits inside the center. Almost looks like live doesn't it?

This is a ridley turtle nest. They were having a turtle release the next morning at 6:30AM which would have been wonderful to see but we were staying too far away to make it there on time.

We had a great day but we had to hustle back so a late lunch ended up being a Whataburger because we had 3 dogs waiting for us at home. Harley is a seasoned RVer and used to staying on his own for a reasonable amount of time. The other two dogs are new to staying alone and their "moms" are new to leaving them for very long. They were all just fine when we got back.