Corpus Christie

It is sorta like on the boat--you analyze the winds and the temps and decide the best day to go to the gulf side resort towns and the beaches.  This week, the best day for the Corpus Christie field trip was Tuesday.  It is a 2 hour drive from La Feria and so you want it to be worth it.  It was.  Corpus Christie/Mustang National Seashore/Port Aransas  is a very pretty tourist area but hit very hard by Hurricane Harvey this summer.  We found a really nice waterfront  RV Park--they said that most of the RV owners had driven out of the park during the hurricane but about 6 remained.  They were mainly totaled out because of the surge of the gulf. We had a good lunch at Landry's on the Waterfront in downtown Corpus Christie overlooking the downtown marina (reminded us of DuSable Marina in Chicago).


Aransas--a lot of the shrimp boats we saw in Ft. Myers had Aransas as their port of call

Ride from Padre Island through Aransas Pass was aboard the ferry Dingwall
 

Lunch at Landry's overlooking a neat marina and their downtown (and this was the best pic we got?!)

A huge oil rig in for repairs



 Leeton lost her front upper tooth!

Settling into Texas

The weather is not cooperating for us to settle into Texas.  First we come back from San Antonio pretty sick but mainly the weather is overcast and cold.  Now mind you, it is much colder in Tennessee and even just as cold in Naples. Florida.   But here we find ourselves in a new place and ready to settle in for a warm 3 months in a new environment.  After a couple of days, Fitz felt well enough and the seas had settled enough to go fishing with a bunch of guys from the RV Park over on the Gulf.  He brought home some delicious red snapper and some new friends.  The trip took place on honestly the only warm sunny day of the week but he still kept on his winter coat—not good.  We have met many nice people—the only illness that has hung on has been a cough when we laugh or talk so we aren’t quite as sociable as normal. 

Cute houses and restaurants line the 2 main streets of South Padre Island

Brown hard sand and condos line the beach

There had been some people there but mainly deserted

We visited South Padre Island on the next nice day and found it pretty dead.  You can see that during Spring Break and the summertime it would be a great place to party and the brown sanded beach looked like a good place to walk but for now –no people. 

Louie's was suggested for lunch by a local

 

Pretty water

 The highlight of the first few weeks in Texas has been a visit to the Iwo Jima Memorial in Harlingen.  WWII was fought on 2 different fronts.  First came the European Campaign which was over in 1944, afterward the Pacific Campaign (with the Japanese) drew 100% of the armed forces attention.  Iwo Jima was a strategic island about 70 miles from Tokyo that held a lot of communications that warned the Japanese when our planes were near to their mainland ready to drop bombs.  The taking of Iwo Jima is considered one of the most important events that has saved Americans from eating sushi with chopsticks for the last 70 years. The bronze statue commemorating this event is the American flag being place on the peak of Mt. Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima by 6 American soldiers. This bronze statue stands in Washington DC at Arlington National Cemetery, the artist (Felix de Weldon) donated the plaster model to a Marine Academy here in Harlingen for caretaking.  It is very impressive.

 

Nice Museum

 

Remember this from Marina Jack in Sarasota

 

Really big!

 

Notice the jacket

 

Pearl Brewery



Historic Brewery--the XXX in the logo demarked the BEST beer in town
when the kings tasters come through to preview a stop 

On Jan. 4^th we returned to San Antonio to pick up the car and head 4 hours south to our winter home.  This only took 2 days but it seemed like it took a MONTH.  About half way to San Antonio Fitz said s***.  This is not good—he does not use this word often and when he does it does not connote good news.  We had left the Honda keys in Nashville.  Sooooo we got Nick to go over to the house and overnight them to us to the hotel.  We rented a car for a couple of days.  Long, boring story is that we did not leave San Antonio for 2 days and we practically had to take a loan out when we finally broke her out of the Airport Parking Garage.  We did go to an RV show at their convention center and then we went to the Pearl Brewery area that has a wonderful farmers market every Saturday and Sunday. The Culinary Institute has several gourmet restaurants there  and we took a short tour of the 1883 brewery (which is now a special event venue).   So we had some fun but it was just hard to consider it fun as Fitz was beating himself up the entire time for forgetting the keys.  On Saturday afternoon we drove back to La Feria listening to the Titans beat KC in the NFL playoffs.  Both of us came back with the mother of all colds (maybe a little flu mixed in) so we may take a while to settle back into La Feria life. 

Lots of tasty treats at the Culinary Institute Farmers Market

 

Will definitely return with a healthy appetite

 

Been trying to go to the CIA since we were in Hyde Park, NY (there are 3 of these in the US)

 

Part of the historic buildings of the Brewery

  

Happy New Year! 2018

Happy New Year!

There were no football games on New Years Eve for the first time in my memory so we lingered over dinner and talked old times. 

Robin got out old letters and mementos from Thailand

Steve shared his fathers' WWII story

 It was a hectic 3 weeks but we got to go to dinner with many of our family and friends, we lost our neighbors (the Trescotts moved but we have new neighbors, the Greenlee’s on the other side). We got to keep the grandkids for 2 days after the new year and we played with every new game they got for Christmas---last on our list is the Kinetic Rocks whose tiny rocks got all over the house (and that is saying a lot because they also got Pie in the Face!) Most notable---the cold weather set in.  When we left town temps had dipped to zero and the high that day was 27.  It was time to head south.

Did we have fun with the Grandkids or what?!?

Christmas 2017 in Nashville

We hit the ground running in Nashville.  Nick was kind enough to do airport duty for us.  We are very lucky that he does not seem to mind all that much fighting rush hour traffic to pick us up and the crack of dawn to take us back in Jan. The first weekend we had both the Leeton and the Fitzpatrick Christmas’s.  The Leeton’s was pretty sad but we are determined to keep the gang together and celebrate the traditions.  Tommy was sorely missed. 

All the Leetons piled into Nancy's on the 15th

 

Cards were played (of course)

 

The little kids wore us old folks out

 

Leeton loved her apron

 

The young adults were out in force--bless them

At the Fitzpatrick Christmas, Leeton, Holden and Greer had to give a little entertainment

Bruce and Carolyn (Ellie has grown up!) opened their home to the Fitzpatrick Clan

Gracey and Emily are all grown up!

The Fitzpatrick gathering about wore the family out on Christmas and it was still a week away

Leeton had a speaking role in their school Christmas program and she was a star! Holden’s Cub Scouts had their awards night and got presented with their boxwood derby car kit.

Oh my they were so cute!

And many admired the show
 

  Christmas Eve and New Years Eve at the Barksdales with old and new friends—what a wonderful tradition that we will never give up.  The piñata line for the little ones was reminiscent of 30 years ago when their parents made up this same line.

Leeton and Holden love the piñata but Rylan had to hit it down

 

Such wonderful friends

 


The kids friends are there too

Christmas morning we always have the same brunch--eggs benedict and grits

 

Lots of science experiments from Santa

 

LaFeria, Texas

 Abbie and Walter Coffman are friends of Steve Spencer who sold us our RV, and now they are our friends.  They come to La Feria every winter and are set to come December 1^st and will stay until mid-March –like us. La Feria is 4 hours south of San Antonio and 7 miles from the Mexican border.  It is 5 minutes west of Harlingen,  40 minutes from S. Padre Island and an hour from Corpus Christie--about the same Latitude as Naples, Florida. The  Flea Market at Donna, TX  with Abbie and Walter was our first field trip here and it was really interesting.  They don’t have many Goodwill’s that I have seen but at the Flea Markets, they have food (particularly fruit--killer grapefruit), jewelry, clothes and used books –everything you can imagine.  It might be like the Flea Market in Nashville-- who knows we have never been.  Terry talked to a fella that makes wheel covers that we might want to consider since the RV will be sitting outside in the same spot for 4 months.

 

They have a wall at Nuevo Pueblo already.

Bring your passport and 75 cents

Most people walk across but you can take your car

Jessica's is where everyone goes for their prescriptions--OTC supplements are cheaper in the US

Next we had a couple of days in Mexico Progresso Nuevo which is about 30 minutes from La Feria and the thing to do is go, park at the border and walk across the bridge into Mexico.  It costs a quarter to go into Mexico and 50 cents to get back in along with your passport—Jessica’s for cheap drugs (all except narcotics), lunch came with a free margarita and you really had to push it to spend $5 apiece.  There are dentists, pharmacies and manicurists everywhere.  Steve says they are so cheap because they don’t worry about legal fees.  I chickened out on the manicure—communication was pretty spotty and I have had a bad experience before but they are only $10!

Main walkway in Progresso Nuevo-it is like walking through Opry Mills-venders on both sides of the sidewalk.  They start the kids out young--Children as young as Leeton and Holden were selling Chicklets and Christmas decorations

Main Street in Mexico

About 3 days before we went home for Christmas it snowed! It does get COLD in south Texas we had 3 frigid days and the snow was the first they had had in 15 years—not funny. 

We needed to get out of the RV and went to a local Bar/Restaurant in La Feria featuring a babbling Canadian lady, awful Mexican food, and good Travis Tritt music.  Nashville has them beat in food and music but at least the music was stuff we hadn’t heard in a while.  I read a really terrific book called Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck that had been recommended by my English Professor friend, Kate Daniels.  He and his dog cross America in 1960 when Steinbeck was 58 years old. They were in a 1960 version of an RV—how fun it was to read the 1960 version of what Fitz and I are doing now.  On Dec. 13^th we traveled to San Antonio to get on an airplane and go home for Christmas.  Pictures of this part of the trip are few and far between because my phone died and I lost the pictures, I should know better.

Hattiesburg, New Orleans and San Antonio

 Hattiesburg, MS was our first stop where we had dinner with sister-in-law Vivian Fitzpatrick, nephews KC, and Ray (and beautiful girlfriend, Shelley) who we had not seen in way too long.   On to Ponchatrain Landing outside New Orleans for 3 days.  We LOVE New Orleans so we went to our usual haunts—Jackson Square, Felix’s, Café DuMonde, Bourbon Street, Bombay Club in Hotel Conti.  Had dinner at Tujague’s and while out in the Garden district we found a new favorite –Superior Seafood (we had Profiteroles for dessert-yum). 

Had to have some oysters at Felix's

It rhymes!  Bourbon Street was torn up to put down new drainage but we managed

New Orleans and San Antonio are celebrating 300 years anniversary in 2018

Haven't managed to remove Andrew Jackson from Jackson Square yet.

Peyton's Childhood home in the Garden District
 

Café DuMonde is a must--yummy beignets

Superior Seafood in the Garden District--we will return

On Saturday after Thanksgiving we were on the road again toward San Antonio.  What a wonderful new-to-us destination.  We stayed at World Travelers RV, 3 miles from Riverwalk—we will go back.  Close to a good bike trail, the city bus and easy to get to. We had great margaritas, dinner at the top of the Towers of America space needle and walked the Riverwalk. 3 days later, we traveled down I-37 by Corpus Christi, to our winter home—VIP La Feria RV near Harlingen, Tx.  We are 7 miles from the Mexican border and assured that there are very few temps below 50 degrees.  There are a lot of mid-western “Winter Texans” here—mostly from Wisconsin and Missouri.

 



At the Alamo they had docents that explained the weaponry and details of the 1836 battle for Texas



The Riverwalk is very cool-a river like roads through downtown San Antonio.  They had decorated for Christmas and we took the boat trip throughout.

Will have to return for the Cinderella ride through town.

This is where the Alamo Bowl is played--hopefully Tennessee will return to bowl games some day. 

We had a fabulous dinner at the top of the Towers of America, this was built for the 1968 Worlds Fair and now Landry's has the revolving restaurant atop.



Sunny Days-RV liked the Travelers' World RV there--best we have seen since Florida last year.