Dude!!! The fam is in Port Aransas and, since
Jennifer wanted me to write a travelogue last year and, um, I didn’t, I guess
I’d better write one this year. The
Trevornator is taking a nap, I have the house to myself and I’m so serious
about getting this blog going I’ve disabled my internet so I won’t check
Facebook. Take that Mark
Zuckerberg!
I won’t disable iTunes
though so let’s have a listen to Trevor’s new favorite song while I’m writing
this
If I Ever Stray – Frank Turner (looked up AFTER writing this)
If I Ever Stray – Frank Turner (looked up AFTER writing this)
Port Aransas, or Port
A, as most people seem to refer to it, is in my opinion the best place in Texas
to hit the beach. It’s not as chaotic as
Galveston (and you don’t have to drive through Houston to get to it), you can
park on the beach, there’s plenty of parking, there’s not tons of people and it
never feels crowded, either on the beach or in the town. It even has a cute ferry to get you over from
Aransas Pass if you don’t want to drive through Corpus (a big city but nowhere
near as crazy as Houston). Last year
Jennifer, Graham, my father-, mother- and brother-in-law and two dogs rented
one of those houses on stilts in a neighborhood not far from the beach
(actually, I don’t think there are any neighborhoods that aren’t far from the
beach) and had a nice four day weekend.
We liked it so much that we’re back for another round, this time with
the Trevi Trevs and my brother-in-law’s wife (why isn’t she my sister-in-law? I don’t get it). And you know what it means when you do
something twice: you have a Tradition!
Or maybe a Routine...whatever.
As has become a bad
habit, I stayed up late the night before, even though I was going to have to
drive at least four hours the next day.
My excuse was good though: I needed to finish a particularly excellent
book. I’m always trying to have my cake
and eat it too in those types of situations.
Well, Trevor showed me by waking up at three and not going back to sleep
until four, giving me five hours of interrupted sleep. And since I hadn’t done any personal packing
or loading of the minivan the night before, we left at 9:25, a full 25 minutes
later than we’d hoped. That’s a fault of
mine of never being in a hurry to leave on trips unless there’s a plane flight
involved while Jennifer, who is the better detail planner, would always have us
leaving at least ten minutes early. I
sort of still had cake as Trevor was still able to take a nap, despite us
leaving a little after his normal morning naptime.
Actually, we weren’t
sure how well the Tike was going to do on this trip sleeping wise. One time we came back from Houston and not
only did he only sleep thirty minutes on the whole trip, he cried for about an
hour and a half. If he starts to get
bad, poor Jennifer has to hop back into the middle row, squish herself in
between two oversized carseats and attempt to humor Trevor enough so that he
doesn’t cry. By the way, an underrated
feature of minivans is the ability for the person riding shotgun to be able to
get into the middle row without exiting the vehicle. Consumer Reports, get on it!
We took the new 130
Toll Road south of Austin-Bergstrom Airport for the first time just to see
whether it was worth it. I’d read that
Cintra-Zachary, the private company that runs it, is losing money and I can see
why. First of all, the feeder roads have
speed limits of 60 mph but no traffic lights; it’s like they left the old
Highway 183 right there with the addition of a few blinking yellow lights. Second, the speed limit on the toll road is
85 mph! 85 mph! We’re talking autobahn speeds now and you can
bet there are people speeding past that.
Well, that’s great for you Jimmie Johnsons out there but for those of us
who don’t like driving faster than 70 or 75 (I usually drive 68 myself), you’re
constantly looking in your rearview mirror watching for the F1 drivers to make
sure they change lanes and avoid rear-ending you. Speed limit increases don’t have a big effect
on the number of accidents as long as everyone continues to go around the same
speed; it’s the difference in speeds that makes thing dangerous. Well, and of course the severity of crashes
increases the higher the speed. Anyway,
on the way back I’ll save our three bucks and stick with the feeder, even if
Trevor is crying.
Speaking of Trevor, he
slept for about an hour which was pretty good.
Luckily for him he slept through the pleas for votes for the Luling
Watermelon Queen. Oh yeah, part of the
tradition is driving through Luling (no boring Interstate for us, thank you!)
just before their annual Watermelon Thump during which it is apparently vitally
important to vote for the Watermelon Queen.
This year’s candidates that we saw were Carina, Addie and Katelyn. We haven’t yet stopped to inquire whether
we’re eligible to vote since we don’t live in the area. However, if we had a choice we wouldn’t vote
for Katelyn simply because her signs were small, narrow and yellow with green
letters, making them very hard to see when you’re driving by. We decided that Katelyn needs a new Marketing
Department.
Sometime after Luling
Trevor woke up but was content to giggle at Graham making faces at him. It’s a great thing to be a parent and see
your kids getting along; at these ages this is one of the ways we see it with
our two. Let’s hope they’re having 3-D
videoconferences with each other in thirty years, eh. Jennifer didn’t get into the backseat until
we stopped in Nixon, a small crossroads town in the hinterlands. It was also a good excuse for a potty break
for the Graham-a-lam seeing as you can’t always trust that he’ll tell you when
he needs to go and, worse, he might fall asleep and go accidently in his
pants. So hello Nixon Dairy Queen, great
to see you again!
Getting everything done
at the Nixon Dairy Queen was like a special dance. Here’s how it went:
Act 1: Daddy (me) gets
out of the car, attempts to convince Graham to come in and go potty, then goes
in by himself after Graham refuses to do so.
I had to go myself and thought, well, better I help him when I’ve got my
own business taken care of.
Act 2: Daddy returns to the minivan, parked
discreetly away from the building in case Jennifer needs to feed Trevor.
Act 3: Daddy returns to
Dairy Queen with Graham in tow, protesting he doesn’t need to go to the
bathroom but enticed with the promise of a treat. Graham’s entrance into the Dairy Queen
elicits one of those ‘I know what you’re going through but aren’t little kids
cute’ remark from an older gentleman dressed like my late grandfather John
would have dressed (and actually, Granpa would have said something like that
too...I love small town restaurants sometimes).
Graham: (looking up at menu) I want some ice cream!
Old
Farmer/Rancher: They always want a
treat don’t they?
Daddy: Yeah, I was hoping the menu wouldn’t have
pictures.
In the bathroom, Daddy successfully
gets Graham to pee. Daddy wonders if
Graham had been a girl if he would still have had bathroom duty.
Act 4: Daddy and Graham
go to the counter to decide what to get.
While being watched by the two young women behind the counter, who
clearly had nothing better to do in the Nixon Dairy Queen at 10:45 in the
morning, Graham once again declares he wants ice cream. Daddy, miffed there are no little treats like
a cheesestick or something, orders a cheese sandwich instead.
Act 5: Daddy and Graham return to the minivan with a
full kid’s meal (Daddy didn’t realize that was what he had ordered) and a
medium coke for Daddy and Mommy to split.
Graham gets buckled in, Mommy stays in the middle row and Daddy pulls
out of the parking lot.
The next item on the
agenda was to have lunch. Last year, on
our drive south down Highway 183 through Luling, Goliad and Cuero, we tried
finding a good local place to eat but quickly learned that there are only three
kinds of restaurants in small south Texas towns: fast food joints, barbecue
joints and Tex-Mex restaurants. That’s
it. We like places we can easily run in
and out of, preferring in particular sandwich joints, so that’s means we’re
stuck. Barbecue joints usually fit this
bill as well but we wanted to eat a little healthier this year.
So anyway, we’d made
sandwiches in advance and decided to have a picnic lunch instead. I had spent probably fifteen minutes with
Google Maps trying to find the city parks in the towns we’d be driving
through. I then made little maps on a
sheet of paper for a reference sheet. No
GPS for us as I love the thrill of trying to find someplace with an actual map. Well, Google Maps failed us in the next town,
Kenedy, as the park on the map was just a natural area in town with no access
at all. Reaching the southern end of
town, we turned around resolving to find some big parking lot to picnic in the
corner of. Luckily, while stuck at a
traffic light, I happened to glance to the left and saw one of those brown
official ‘City Park ->’ signs.
Bingo! We took a right, pulled a
u-turn, crossed the intersection and then pulled into Joe Gulley Park.
Ah, South Texas
parks. The park was fairly wide open
with a couple of baseball fields, a little hike and bike trail, a pavilion,
several picnic tables and a playground.
Being South Texas, the pavilion was occupied by a group of mostly
Hispanic people playing Tejano music or something similar on large speakers. It wasn’t like there was an official party going
on or anything; it was just maybe twenty people eating and chilling out while
having these two speakers set up playing the music. It wasn’t loud enough that we could hear the
words but it was definitely a South Texas experience eating our lunch in the
shade of our minivan while listening to the beat of the bass. Dum, dum-dum-dum, dum, dum-dum-dum. Love it.
Graham was content to play with three Cars (Lightning McQueen, Chick
Hicks [still his favorite] and Clutch-Aid) on and behind the large rocks placed
by the parking spots to keep people from offroading onto the grass. The sky was clear, there was a nice breeze
and thus even though it was hot we had a nice little picnic in the shade. Still wouldn’t want to live in Kenedy but it
was nice.
After Kenedy we headed
south on Highway 181. The terrain became
quite flat, we passed out of the fracking zone with all the big 18-wheelers
carrying natural gas and drilling equipment and we got to where the road became
four lanes instead of two. Driving the
two lane roads is always more scenic and interesting but the downside is that
occasionally you get stuck behind someone you just can’t pass. For whatever reason, on two separate
occasions a slow person with multiple vehicles trailing them turned on their
hazard lights, pulled onto the shoulder and almost came to a stop to let
everyone pass. I’d never seen that
before. For my part, I flew past one
extremely slow 18-wheeler (and gave Graham his first thrill for speed) and
later a truck (I got a bit overexuberant and passed him on a bridge, a definite
no-no) and pulled onto the shoulder to let one pick-up truck pass. Actually, the pick-up truck didn’t pass which
meant one of three things: 1) the driver didn’t know the rules of the road, 2)
he was going to turn soon anyway (he didn’t) or 3) he was not driving in the
best of conditions.
Anyway, we also hit our
first bypass in Beeville. Why Beeville
decided a bypass was a good idea, I don’t know.
Seems they’d want to draw as much business through town as they could. Anyway, we stopped at the Stripes truck stop
(Stripes is the big gas station chain down here, apparently) and was thrilled
to see a man with a big star tattooed into the back of his head. It really made his fade haircut look even
cooler. It was snacktime for Graham and,
since it was our vacation for the year, I treated him to an M&M cookie ice
cream sandwich. I got my usual driving
drink of a Starbucks Frappuccino since I like the taste, the caffeine helps and
drinking most sodas now gives me acid reflux (which is a great way to stop
drinking unhealthy soda, let me tell you).
We were going to go
into Port A from the north and take the ferry across the Gulf Intracoastal
Waterway but saw an electronic message board after Sinton that said that the
ferry wait was one hour. Should we stick
with the plan or take the longer route through Corpus and to Port A from the
south over the 385 bridge? Well, Trevor
had fallen asleep again (yes!) and it was likely he’d sleep longer in a moving
car than a stopped one waiting for a ferry.
Corpus, here we come!
We drove through Corpus
without incident and turned onto Highway 358 to head into Port A. After picking up the keys from the property
manager, we found the house we’d be staying in.
We’d decided last year to rent a house rather than mess with hotel
rooms, particularly with little children who would be needing to nap during the
day and go to bed early at night.
Perhaps you can get suites in hotels to help with that sort of thing but
we became enamored with the idea of having one of those houses on stilts to ourselves. This one has three bedrooms, two baths, a
full kitchen with silverware, plates and bowls, a shaded deck and, quite
importantly, a yard for the dogs. We
haven’t ever asked anybody to watch after Maisy the Psycho Pooch and the $100
pet deposit is still much cheaper than boarding her for 3.5 days (and much less
stressful for her). Plus my
brother-in-law and his wife have their dog so the house works best. Last year’s house was slightly on the
decrepit side with a heavily creaking bed and a tiny third bedroom but this one
is pretty swank. It has hardwood floors,
stainless steel appliances in the kitchen and a deluxe master bath with a
shower that has two showerheads and two nozzles that spray you from the
side. Holy smokes.
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