When we were making winter travel plans before leaving Oregon in October, I thought it would be nice to re-visit Texas.
When I was checking weather everywhere while we were bundled up in Arizona, it sounded like the southern tip of Texas was about the warmest weather we could get. But it was 18 hours away – which made it 36 hours away from our place in Coos Bay.
When I finally convinced Tom that Texas would be a good alternative to another couple of months in the familiar Sonoran desert, I wasn’t sure that winging our way through Texas would be that great an idea. So we decided to leave it up to chance:
Rather than have group convergences here and there as they did pre-covid, the Xscapers planned a few “home base” meet ups. More of a long-term commitment. They had one going on in Galveston Texas since the first of November, but they were full through the end of February. Tom put us on a waiting list in case there were any cancellations. And there were.
So we had until February 1st to make it to Galveston for a month-long home base hangout.
We left Quartzsite after a week of dry-camping – which was very wet and we had a river building beside our parking spot!
We had a great time hanging out with Rick and Janet and going in to the Big Tent show. We even met up in town with Mark and Patsi at the famous watering hole at Tyson Wells: Beer Belly’s Adult Day Care.
And even though we had to bid them all farewell, it felt really good to be “on the road again”.
Our first stop was in Tuscon again to see Jessica. Although our favorite casinos there were no longer allowing overnight camping. So Tom was able to get a spot at the coveted Catalina State Park – just before the last spot sold out. Two nights was just enough time. We had time to take Jessica out to dinner, but we weren’t able to take her up to Mount Lemmon because it was closed due to snow! We even got hailed on!
It made for some beautiful scenery, but I didn’t want to go hiking for fear of getting caught in the rain – or worse. We did take advantage of a dry spell and took a short hike in the campground. Saguaros (giant cactus) and snow. What a sight!
Leaving Arizona, we had another rare snow sighting at the rest stop in Dragoon. So we had to stop and get out and have an impromptu snowball fight!
Then on to overnight at a rest stop in El Paso, Texas. We didn’t even stop in New Mexico. The visitors center at the rest stop was covid-closed, but overnight parking was allowed. 24 hour overnight parking at any rest stop in Texas makes traveling though the giant state a bit easier.
A long sevn-hour-drive the next day left us short of our destination of an Elk’s Lodge in Kerrville. We found a city park off the I10 in Junction and it turned out to be a great spot right on the river. Dry camping allowed for up to three nights and we ended up staying all three, and taking short trips from there.
We took a drive into Fredericksburg, where we had a delicious German-food lunch and strolled around the quaint town. They even sold wine-to-go.
We did some window shopping and we had to stop at this eclectic store which had this bar-b-que that could only be found in Texas!
We also checked out the outdoor portion of the National Museum of the Pacific War, which had a lovely Japanese garden.
On leaving Fredericksburg, we swung by a re-visit to Luckenbach for a beer and some strummin’.
A full day of enjoying the Hill Country scenery. I would love to see what it looks like with everything greened up in spring.
We really liked staying in Junction. We had delicious hamburgers there and were tempted to try the highly rated BBQ joint in town. Tom caught us up on laundry, and cleaned the very dirty Jeep, and they even had a car wash big enough to pull the RV through. It was great to get all that desert dirt finally washed off.
Our last overnight after another long drive day on the way to Galveston was at a Harvest Host Brewery in Brenham. We camped in the parking lot of Brazos Valley Brewery and went in to enjoy craft beers and crab cakes.
Then it was a shortish drive through the busy freeways of Houston and out to Galveston and to the west end of the island to Galveston Island RV Park – our home for the next month.
Now we are parked and it’s time to get ready for a welcome meet and greet to see more friends – those we know and those we haven’t met yet.
It never fails to amaze me that RVing would have been the key to having so many friends.
Happy Travels,
Peace & Love, Joy
