DAY 8 – Sun Jan 9 – Trip to Mustang Island 2011

Saturday night / Sunday morning (actually around 3:30 in the morning) we had wind. Now I’m not talking a little gulf breeze, but WIND and a lot of it. It lasted for about 30 minutes and then it started raining (reminded JW of the monsoons in SE Asia). The park manager said, “I’ve been here for 23 years and that is the worst wind we’ve ever had, outside of a hurricane”. JW said he was really glad when it was over, “strongest wind I’ve ever experienced since we’ve been in the MH”. Sunday morning dawned clear, sunny and 45.

On the Beach RV Resort is really “On the Beach” right outside our front window. The Gulf waters are really rolling in and lots of whitecaps.

We have an excellent site facing the Gulf with a lot of room on both sides of our rig. WIFI is not working right so talked to the manager and he said “We’re working on it”. JW thinks he has heard that tune before. Blog updates may be sporadic BUT It’s gonna be a great two months, we're on the Gulf of Mexico, sun, sand, surf and it's warm. Now, if only we can get to feeling better, we’ll enjoy it a lot more. Stay tuned . . . it may be a day or so . . .

DAY 7 – Sat Jan 8 – Trip to Mustang Island 2011

The Austin Lone Star RV Resort was a really nice place to camp It is a gated RV park with lots of trees and plenty of room for the slides. Roads appeared to be a little narrow but two RV’s were able to pass each other. JW seems to be getting a little tired and Wanda is still not feeling well.

Up at 8:00 am. Broke camp and headed for Mustang Island (Port Aransas). GPS said it is 4 hrs 13 min. We thought it was 7 hrs and something so glad to hear that it will be a good easy day. Believe it or not, JW made all the right turns at San Antonio, he was running co-pilotless as Wanda is still under the weather and keeping the couch company. Just south of San Antonio, we started running into a lot of wind which made for difficult driving. (What was that about an easy day?).

JW handled the coach just fine, even in all the Corpus Christi traffic. Made one wrong turn at Aransas Pass (actually, missed our turn because the sign was missing). A mile down the road we got it straightened out though. We did get to put the rig & the toad on the Port Aransas ferry. That was pretty cool, took 2 ½ minutes to cross the bay and we were in Port Aransas, on Mustang Island.

Now, all JW had to do was follow SH 361 down the Island for about 3 miles and we would be at the RV Park. Would you believe that he missed the only Hwy on the Island ! Somehow he went right past Hwy 361 and wound up on the Beach Road.

I bet we looked pretty strange driving a 34ft Class A Motor home pulling a PT Cruiser down the beach. Guess he was anxious to get to the Gulf waters. Sooo, we drove down the beach for 2 miles and found a road back to the Hwy and there we were, at “On the Beach RV Resort”. 68 degrees and windy. Journey completed, motorhome is setup and watchin’ the Saints and Sea Hawks. JW is really tired and needs a day or so to rest before we start exploring. Stay tuned .

DAY 6 – Fri Jan 7 – Trip to Mustang Island 2011

Up at 8:00 am. Plans are to visit the Texas State Capitol in Austin. We’ll see how the day progresses. It’s 41 right now with a projected high in Austin of 71. Gotta love it. First stop this morning was for propane, $2.08 gal. pretty cheap compared to what we have been paying. Arrived in Austin at 1:30 pm. High today was 76.

We are camping at the Austin Lone Star RV Resort 6 miles south of Austin on I-35. We setup the motorhome and hot footed it to the capitol just in time to catch the last tour of the day.

Pretty impressive capital bldg. Lots of history, ie; the many battles fought in Texas, Sam Houston, Austin, Travis, Bowie and Crockett, just to name a few.

Looked for and found pictures and a bronze bust of James E. “Pete” Laney (speaker of the House 1993 – 2003). We believe he is some relation of Wandas. Gotta look into that. Lotsa pictures.

Supper was next on the agenda (seems like that’s about all we do). We drove waaaaay south of Austin (actually about 6 miles or so) and found a “Texas Roadhouse”. Too noisey for me but the food was good.

That’s about it for this day. Relaxin’ and watchin’ the Cotton Bowl. (Gotta say this quietly cuz we’re in Texas, but, “GO LSU”. Have a good night y’all.

DAY 5 – Thur Jan 6 – Trip to Mustang Island 2011

Up a little earlier today. Wanda still not feeling any better. I have a headache and body aches also. Lounged around a bit then headed to iHop for breakfast. No WIFI at McClains RV Center so took the laptop with us in hopes of finding a McD’s As luck would have it, right next door to the iHop was a McD’s and they had really good WIFI. Took care of some internet business, downloaded about 300 emails (295 of them junk) and updated the travel Blog http://we3brvn.blogspot.com/ JW received a call from a friend of his, Jim Elkins, (the lead for the Frisco Silver Dollar Line Steam Train at SDC), he was in Rockport, Tx and wanted to have supper with us. JW told him that would be a little impossible as we were still 400 miles from Corpus Christi. He was leaving Rockport for Florida early on Friday morning. “See ya later Jim.” Returned to the Motorhome and awaited a call from the service dept. At 2:00 pm, the service man called and said to bring the coach over cuz the part was in. An hour and a half later after spending $825 to get a new motor installed so the jacks and slides will work, we were on the road once again at 3:50 pm. It seems to be becoming a habit of having the privilege to pay double the price quoted on RV repairs. Whatever?! We were just glad to be on the road again. We were headed to Austin and if we are feeling better tomorrow, we will visit the Texas State Capitol. Oh yeah, I think I mentioned earlier in the blog, that we were in need of fuel. No Wal-Marts were to be found (even using JW’s handy dandy Murphy app for the iPhone). Sooo, a few miles down the road, JW pulls into an Exxon station, $2.95 gal. WOW ! ! ! Gotta have fuel, so fill ‘er up. $150.00 later and we’re on the road again only to find a Wal-Mart Murphy down the road about 3 miles and $2.80 gal. JW just shook his head in disgust. Speaking of Murphy, all this must have something to do with Murphy’s Law, that’s all I can figure. 5:00 pm came and we found the first RV park available, Waco North KOA, a welcome sight indeed. Setup for the night (with jacks down and slides out), boy we got a lotta room. As sick as Wanda is, she still managed to fix our first meal on this trip. We’ll get an early ???? start in the morning. G’night all.

DAY 4 – Wed Jan 5 – Trip to Mustang Island 2011

Both of us slept in. No reason to get up early as the parts for the slide system won’t be in until sometime on Thursday. Wanda is really under the weather (seems she got some bug along the way). Finally got around and went to breakfast (lunch?) at 11:30 at Cracker Barrel (Our favorite place to eat).

We’ll be needing to get fuel for the Motorhome when we leave so scouted out the nearest Wal-Mart (Murphys Gas). We found it fairly close to McClains RV Center, but is not negotiable for the Motorhome. Sooo, the next closest Wal-Mart is about 50 miles down the road and way off the Interstate. Guess we’ll use a regular gas station then.

Needed to do some shopping for a few things then Wanda decided to cut JW’s long “grandpa” hair.

Decided to meet with Dustyn for the 5:30 showing of “True Grit”. It was a really good movie (more like the book). Afterwards, we all went to Logans Roadhouse. Very good food and the conversation was great. (For those of you who don’t know Dustyn, he is married to Wanda’s Grand-daughter, Kara, and is a super nice young guy). 9:00 pm, Time to head for the Motorhome and see what tomorrow brings.

DAY 3 – Tue Jan 4 -- Trip to Mustang Island 2011

We left Hidden Lakes at 10:45 a.m., crossed the Texas border at 11:10 and arrived in Fort Worth at 12:45. We are currently at McClain’s at Camping World and have gotten an estimate of a little over $600 for a new motor to fix the slides and jacks. They are not sure if the solenoids are good or not. If the whole system has to be replaced we are looking at approximately $2000. We told them to replace the motor, because it will be here Thursday and we can get back on the road. The only good thing we are getting out of this ordeal is free camping. However, in the long run I think it would have been cheaper to pay for camping spaces. We do have electric and water hook ups here; no cable, WIFI, or sewer. We are able to get 13 digital “air” channels without cable, so we are not totally without entertainment.

Wanda woke up with a sore throat, stuffed up nose, and cough this morning. She has been fairly puny today but is looking forward to a better tomorrow. We did enjoy an all you can eat soup, salad and bread meal at Applebee’s this afternoon. We just found out that our grandson, from Lubbock, is here in Fort Worth, so we are planning to have dinner with him tomorrow night and then will all go see “True Grit.”

DAY 2 – Mon. Jan 3 -- Trip to Mustang Island 2011

We left Down Stream at 10:15 a.m., skipped breakfast, but ate lunch at McDonald’s in the Walmart store at Sapulpa. We went there because we had to get gas at Walmart, (they had a very good price, $2.72.9 with $.03 discount). We also needed to look for a wireless backup camera (the $55.00 repair job on our monitor only lasted about a week, so we are once again without a backup camera). They had just sold their last discounted camera and were not going to stock them any longer.

We had planned another free night of camping at the Casino at Norman, OK, but when we got there we found they did not have any hookups, and because we have not been able to get our generator to work, decided to go on to the Hidden Lakes RV Park in Ardmore. We stayed there twice last year. Once on our way to California and again on our way back. We stopped in Pauls Valley and ate at Braums on our way to Ardmore. We arrived at Hidden Lakes RV Park at 6:40 p.m.

The trip was pretty much uneventful, except for JW’s two wrong turns, which added only a few minutes to the time of our trip. Also, we will not be visiting the Capitol at Oklahoma City because it is too far back. I told JW it is going to be interesting to find at the end of our Quest, that Oklahoma’s will be the only Capitol we never did visit. I pray we are more successful with the Capitol in Austin. Tomorrow we will head to Fort Worth. We are planning on some more free camping. We will be visiting Camping World in an effort to get the jacks, slides and backup camera fixed. Good night all, we’ll keep you posted.

DAY 1 – Sunday Jan 2 -- Trip to Mustang Island 2011

Well Howdy Folks.

Our "New" adventure has begun. This year (2011) we're heading to Mustang Island (N. Padre) down by Corpus Christi, Tx. It's gonna be a fun time. Come ride along with us as we venture along the way. We'll be passing through Joplin, Mo; Tulsa, Ok; OKC, Ok; Ft. Worth, Tx; Austin, Tx; San Antonio, Tx; Corpus Christi, Tx; and our final destination of Port Aransas, Tx.

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We wanted to leave, for Mustang Island, at noon today. We left Branson View at 1:12 p.m. We stopped in Branson West to fill up with gas, then headed out to Joplin. We arrived at the Down Stream Casino (where we decided to take advantage of a free night’s camping) at 4:15 p.m. We had made arrangements to meet our friends (John & Peggy Danner) at the Casino for supper. We had about an hour before John got off work so we spent some time in the Hotel Lobby, enjoying the lovely Fireplace. John and Peggy used to work at Silver Dollar City (John, in the parking lot with JW, & Peggy, in Finance with Wanda.) We enjoyed good food and fellowship with them. Peggy was very gracious and brought us some drinking water because we found that the water in our “fresh water tank” was rusty, so could not be used for drinking. Peggy took us back to our Motor Home about 9:30 and we turned in early for a good night’s sleep before continuing our journey to Oklahoma City for a visit to the Capitol.

WE3BRVn is now on FaceBook

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See ya down the road . . .

Hello Friends . . .

Just a note to let ALL our friends (who are following this Blog) know, that we will probably NOT be adding anything to this Blog until our next adventure. Check back once in a while though, just to be sure. Thanks for traveling along with us.

PS: Our next big adventure will probably be in January 2011 to South Padre Island, TX for a two month stay.

Later . . .
JW & Wanda