A little side note- an opportunity came our way through wordpress to buy a domain name for our blog on the cheap, so we did.

We are:

ourhomeisheretoday.com

easy peasy, so you can find us easily now, and your old link will continue to work, AND, feel free to pass the address on to anyone you think might be interested.

Feb. 24, 2018
Burns Pt., St. Mary’s Parish, LA
After traveling on the WORST 25 miles since we left Maine 12,000 miles ago- and it was on an Interstate- Rt. 90 in Louisianna- it was almost washboardy, but being a divided highway we had to go 60mph. It rattled our bones, tossed stuff in the camper, and poor Rhylee was like a piece of popcorn in a hot air popper!
Anyway, the point of that road was to get us to a little parish road down to Burns Point. A parish campground right on the Gulf of Mexico. We drove past swamp, oil rig companies, and rice fieds to get here. 20 campsites with full hookups for $14/night! And the manager Vic was quite the character! This is the closest we have ever camped to the ocean- 15 ft.
80 degreee temps, 80 percent humidity…can’t go swimming because of the alligators, oh, and the ocean water is brown and shallow.
Grand Isle State Park- about the most south we could go and find a campground- the Delta tempted us, but there doesn’t appear to be any campgrounds down that 150 mile delta road!

 

We are at 6 ft above sealevel on a barrier reef, backed by shallow waters for a hundred miles and then bayou.

This place gets a hurricane every 10 years or so, yet is a big tourist community. The mosquitos here are huge! Way bigger and meaner than Maine ones, if you can believe that. This warm weather has brought them out early!
On the road here, for about 40 miles we were on a causeway road over mostly water- in fact we estimate that it was 70% water and 25% marsh, and 5% dri-ish ground were people had built buildings- mostly for the oil industry.

Feb 19-22, 2018
Fog, fog and more fog…and then there was sun! Sea Rim State Park, TX. We are about 100yds from the beach, yet could not see it until this morning! And in our camper we sit above the beach!

We saw an alligator sunning itself aloong the nature boardwalk.

Some blue crabs and lots of water fowl. Oh, and lots of mosquitos! In February! Thankfully there has been a good breeze here.

And another GPS mistake…

Not really 🙂 This is….ahh….was…the road in the campground…

 
It is flat and swampy here…everywhere, with lots and lots of oil refineries, shipping, barges, oil storage and pipelines…all amongst the swampland and canals.
We’re moving into bayou country food- fried green tomatoes, hushpuppies, catfish and crawfish!
Rutherford Beach- just pull up and park! Good for a night.
Palmetto Island State Park- we think it is an island in the bayou/swamp. And they have free laundry! Got all caught up on that! Those birds are Spoonbills and they are bright pink!

So far, Louisianna has been bayou- swampy grasslands or wooded wetlands. Alligators, a rodent called a Nutria, black bear, too and lots of water fowl. And we expect things to continue this way as we head towards New Orleans- swinging way down into the bayou to Grand Isle State Park beforehand.

February ?, 2018
Lake Livingson State Park- we scored a primo site overlooking the lake. Things are starting to green up and it is a bit warmer, but still overcast. Keeping an eye out for armidillos! We’ve actually had some sunshine!

We are here, specifically to visit our “mailing address”. We belong to Escapees RV Club and have our mail service through them. Our mail comes here, they email us pics of each envelope and then we choose what to have forwarded to us when we are going to be stopped for a week or so.
Escapees RV Club started in the 70s with 16 families; now it has 30,000 family group members! And 10,000 family groups get mail service through them! An 18 wheeler delivers mail there every day! Meeting the folks that handle our mail was awesome- they are super friendly and really proud of the work they do for full-time RVers. There is an RV park here, a rec facility and a Care facility. Escapees is also the people that did the legal legwork which made it easy to register in South Dakota for a legal domicile resident (no income tax in SD 🙂

Feb. 12, 2018

We’re back on the road! Our stay at Padre Island National Seashore and Port Aransas was not quite what we expected- we rarely saw the sun more than 2 hours every few days, lots of wind, clouds, rain and fog, however we would daily remind ourselves that we were not shoveling snow 🙂 We both were starting to get antsy and so we are back on the road.
We moved east to a free campground on a bay- Magnolia Beach- for 5 days. It was lovely, except for the cold- highs in the 40s and wind and rain. We again reminded ourselves how lucky we are, as several of our neighbors were homeless living in tents!

 

 
Then to Brazos Bend State Park- they have alligators! however, they stay in the water when it is cold, and it was cold…This place is pretty much a swamp, so lots and lots of waterfowl. Hurricane Harvey did it’s thing here- dumping about 60inches of rain in 3 days. Look closely at these pictures- see how the lower portions of all the trees are dark brown? That’s the water level from the storm- the water was this high for several months! In places we estimated the water was 40 ft above the stream through the park and 6 ft. above the road! We met a woman whose home was flooded off it’s foundation- flood is not covered by home insurance…thousands of families are in this situation here.

Some of the trees here are HUGE! Tall but not super tall, but their “wingspan” is easily 100ft wide and where branches touch the ground they root!

January 2018

Not much happens here in Port Aransas- cold, cloudy weather for most of the time we’ve been here- not the norm, but still better than snow. We have both gotten itchy feet and are ready to start moving again.
Check out these pics of a HUGE oil rig being moved out to sea! The channel is only a few hundred feet wide and 45ft deep!

And here are a few more photos from the area:

 

January 2018
We’ve moved up the barrier reef to Port Aransas into an RV park called On The Beach- and it is! We have full hookups and will be here for 5 weeks. And the temps have just gotten even colder! Four mornings of below freezing which is rare here!
The sea turtles can not survive in water temps below 50 on the bayside of the islands; on the gulf side they can swim out to sea and find warmer water. Over 2000 turtles were rescued after getting “stunned”.
SUNSHINE! Finally, January third the sun came out…all day. We almost hit 50 degrees, not exactly beach weather, but getting better. (Blizzard back in Maine…we feel for you!)
It is a cold winter here, even the locals are complaining! However, we are grateful to not be shoveling snow! We walk the beach most every day, sometimes twice, find the sunny side of our camper to sit on. We’ve found a shooting range, Pickleball is here but no one plays- odd, no one is sailing because so many boats were damaged in the hurricane.
I have been thinking about how to write about the devastation from Hurricane Harvey which hit here in early Sept. from Port Aransas, Aransas Pass, Rockport and Fulton so much was destroyed or left needing to be demolished. Some observations from being here 5 months later:
Port Aransas is a barrier reef island 50-60 miles long that is separated from Padre Island by a very narrow inlet. In Port A, the other day, we were at a store that had marked the high water mark- now keep in mind, the tide swing here is only 1/2 to 2 ft. The high water mark was about 2 ft from the floor, the floor was 3ft. above the road and the road is a bout 5 feet above sea level- so the water was above 10 ft. deep!
The bay side from Port A to Corpus Christis has only Aransas Pass – about 1000 ft across and a few other small shallow channels for water to come and go. Once the water got into the bay from the storm and storm surge, it had very few places to go. And it is VERY flat here- for miles and miles. Water came up and over the 10-20 ft. dunes (there are access roads at slightly lower elevations) and rushed across everything into the bay, which then pushed into the shore towns. And then the rain came- this area had a lot of rain, but 200 miles NE, the Houston area, they got 20+ inches of rain in the days after the storm. And the storm surge brought 12 ft of water from the bay back over the island to the Gulf.
We still see many homes and businesses that need to be demolished, others with tarps on their roofs, some that have gotten just a band-aid. Some people are still displaced- 5 months later. Most hotels have not re-opened, as with half the restaurants and other small businesses. County, State and Federal sites have barely been touched.
An example of the ripple effect- we called a dentist to get our teeth cleaned- they got us right in- that was amazing…except for the reason- they were without phone service for SEVEN weeks and even with a cell phone could not contact many of their clients. Those they did reach had no home, no job, no money and/or no energy for their teeth.
Contractors and Power Crews are still working seven days a week here- no holidys for them.
The debris piles get picked up regulary and dumped in common sites to be sorted and separated- people sit in high lifts and watch all the work. In Rockport, the debris pile was put in the median of the highway- about 200ft wide and FIVE miles long. Remember, Harvey hit five months ago.
I (as well as many of you) have been through many a hurricane, ice storm and nor’easter. Two big differences- it looks like our buildings are built sturdier due to winter conditions, and not many of us live along the very flat shore.
Because of the damage, fewer “Winter Texans” showed up this year. Most of the RV Parks are close to full, however many, many hotels and rental units are not open. There is a very strong resilience here, as we have talked to locals—what else can you do? So we are here and spending our money locally.
End of January- we got a few sunny warm days and are back to the wind and overcast. We have done some interior decorating on our camper- to brighten the inside up. And Clare is working on some “energy” jobs- an inverter for DC power for the coffee pot and Magic Bullet and a converter to let the solar panels fully charge the Lithium Batteries.
We move out tomorrow, Feb 7- east along the Gulf Coast and eventually north up the Appalachian Mtns.

 

Just so you all know- we have opened our blog to the public to make it easier for anyone to find it, as some of you have struggled with wordpress and accessing our blog.
Feel free to share the URL with anyone that is interested:
https://ourhomeisheretoday.wordpress.com

 

Remember, if you comment on the blog, EVERYONE can read it, so personal info should be sent to us through our personal email addresses- we love to hear from our friends and family that way!
Clare, Linda
and Rhylee (he doesn’t have his own email, but we’ll pass messages on to him 🙂

A 6 month review- We left Maine in our Eagle Cap truckcamper on June 27, 2017, so as we finished the month of December we have been on the road for 6 months- a good time to look back, crunch some numbers and report out!

 

13,835 – total miles traveled
1212- number of gallons of diesel fuel
187- days on the road ( 6 months)
45 – the number of free nights- mostly lovely BLM and Forest Service Land, a few Walmarts and truck stops
24 states visited
11- the longest string of free nights- only one at a truck stop
10- Haircuts- 4 Clare, 3 for Linda, 3 for Rhylee
5- Number of times we have had our mail forwarded to us from Escapees RV Club Mail Service
2 – number of campers- Our beloved Eagle Cap truck camper and our new spacious Outdoors RV travel trailer
1 – doctor visit- Rhylee way back in New York

Padre Island Texas

Dec. 18- Jan. 1 2018
The ocean, sand dunes and warm temps- or so we hoped—what a way to spend Christmas!

We are at Malaquite Campground, right in the dunes on the Gulf side. We can watch the surf from our camper and we have 60 miles of beach to walk! We can only stay here 14 days and then have to be out for 14 more days and then can try to get back in…it is first come, first serve…there are no services here, so long as we have a sunny day every other day we are good! Plus we have a generator if we need it, but we so dislike hearing others’ generators that we try not to run ours.

Our View from our camper and Rhylee’s Christmas:

People here at the campground are friendly, but not too, and from all over the country- some here for vacation, some for the winter and some full-timers like us. Shopkeepers and park staff are super friendly, too! Finding businesses has been tricky for such a touristy area- many are not on the web, or the info is wrong. And the traffic and roads are busy enough, and a bit complicated with bridges and causeways onto the island at this section, that it is taking a while to get our bearings. We did finally find a fresh seafood place- gulf shrimp and drum- YUMMY! And a great bakery- brick over breads and pastries!
Just north of us, Port Aransas and Rockport took a beating from Hurricane Harvey- the two state park campgrounds are still closed, as other businesses. We did find a RV Park on the beach in Port Aransas to stay for January.
The cold snap all of you up north are suffering through? Well, we got it, too. Out of the past 14 days we saw the sun for small parts on only FOUR days. And the past few days have been highs in the 40s and very windy! So, although we are not laying in the sun on the beach, we are also not in the teens or below as much of the country is.