Saturday May 31We looked around for something to do in Houston before heading to Corpus Christi. We headed towards the bay along the east side of the city. The close proximity of the ocean to Houston surprised us. There's Galveston less than an hour from the southern part of the city, but the ocean comes way up on the east side of Houston as well. Again, we tried to find things that were specific to the area, rather than the usual children's museums, etc. We decided on the Battleship Texas and San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Sites.
The battleship was neat in that it was the only battleship to be active in both World War I and World War II. It didn't look as tough as the USS Alabama we saw in Mobile, but it must have been one tough ship for WWI. Having already toured the USS Alabama, we didn't actually take an on board tour.
The San Jacinto Battleground site was just across the street. We really enjoyed learning about the area and the history. San Jacinto was the site of the 1836 battle where the Mexican Dictator\General, Santa Anna, was defeated and signed over independence to Texas. Santa Anna had recently overrun "The Alamo" mission in San Antonio and was in the process of hunting down the remaining Texas independence fighters. But, "The Alamo" fighters delayed Santa Anna long enough for Sam Houston's army to set up an ambush for Santa Anna at San Jacinto.
There were many influential Mexican families that sided with the Texans for freedom against Santa Anna. The "Republic of Texas" was annexed by the United States in 1845 and eventually split into the states of Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Wyoming. The annexation led to the Mexican-American War the following year - I guess Mexico planned on getting that land back.
We stopped by a Kroger for supplies and had a quick lunch at Subway before driving along the bay and heading south towards Corpus Christi. We stopped in Alvin to see the Nolan Ryan Museum, but we were too late, as usual, and it was closed.
We passed through a number of cute towns. There were fields of maze that went on forever. It seems that corn is too expensive now, so maze is grown as the primary agricultural feed. And what's up with all the RV parks? We saw RV parks all over the place - many times in the middle of nowhere. There didn't seem to be any attractions nearby or anything special in the RV parks, but they were usually packed? Another misconception we had is that we would see Texas Longhorns everywhere, but we saw very few - and the few we did see were only in touristy settings.
It was dark by the time we took the ferry to Port Aransas and Mustang Island. We were tired and it was almost 10 pm when we drove into Mustang Island State Park to see about camping for the night. The sign at the entrance said that the gates were locked at 10 and by the time we drove out onto the beach looking for a campsite we were pretty sure the gates were closed. The sand was soft and we were concerned about getting stuck.
The wind was whipping and Helen and the kids were not happy about the situation including the fact that they had not eaten since the lunch at Subway. I positioned the van so that the headlights gave us some light to setup our tent. The wind was blowing so hard that we weren't sure we were going to get it up. We also didn't have any nice neighbors that came to our rescue this time with some heavy duty tent stakes, so we were stuck with our short stakes. Helen was beyond even complaining - she was like a zombie on cruise control. Derek complained that this was the worst experience of his life. Somehow, we got the tent up.
I pulled the van in front of the tent to try to shield it from some of the wind. I guy came by - not to help us, but to kind of enjoy our struggle. He told us that most of the tents had blown down the previous night. We left the rain shield off of the tent and opened the tent flaps in order to let as much wind as possible blow through the tent netting to keep the tent from blowing away like a kite.
We ate some breakfast bars for dinner and piled into the tent and tried to get as comfortable as we could with all the sand that had blown in and covered every possible surface. Somehow, Derek rolled right over and went to sleep. Adam, Helen, and I laid on our backs staring up at the incredible star filled sky. The sand was only a problem if you moved. Eventually, we all fell asleep, but Helen and I were awaken at various times during the night by the violent flapping of the tent in the wind. The boys didn't seem to be bothered. We woke to a beautiful sunrise.
The beach campsites were primitive camping only, which means outhouses and no showers. Helen chose to hold it. In the morning, we drove to the RV sites where there were restrooms with showers, but there were 2 other women in line so we went to find some other showers. The other showers were closed. When we went back, there were 6 other women in line. In a show of solidarity, we all settled for a sponge bath in the sink.
Sure, parts of the experience sucked, but looking up at the star filled sky and watching the sunrise over the ocean were wonderful. We will always remember the night we camped on Mustang Island.
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