The RV Sabbatical Journal

Monday, December 31, 2007 — Sandollar Resort near Rockport, TX

It’s been a week since I last posted to this blog. Let’s just chalk up the break to the “pause” I referred to in my last post. To be honest there’s an element of laziness too. But it’s time to update the blog with some thoughts and the events of the past few days.

Time passes so quickly and it’s common to say “where’d the day go?” at this park. We have a great group of neighbors around us. I think I’ve written about this before, but most of them are here for the winter and most of them are from somewhere in the Midwest. Most of them have a home “up north” and are not fulltimers like us. Even though we’re only here for a few weeks — just passing through — they’ve made us feel at home, as part of the group. We often attend the 4pm “happy hour” and we’ve gone out to lunch or dinner with some. We had a big Christmas pot-luck dinner together. Because we’re all parked so close, it’s hard to go outside without getting involved in a conversation or, because it’s a lively group, shenanigans of some kind. The days just fly by.

Then there are the normal routine things: the laundry’s got to get done; the camper’s got to be cleaned; weekly or monthly system checks on the bus; small repairs that I can handle; our daily walk. I try to squeeze in some reading and writing. Of course, there are the places to tour or visit — museums, parks, beaches, mansions, restaurants, and the like. It can all chew up a lot of time.

As the New Year breaks, Dar and I have been fulltiming for 6 months — a half year. Neither of us feels we’ve even scratched the surface of the possibilities. If we were to ultimately do this for 5 years we would be 10% done. It doesn’t feel like we’re 10% done.

Over this time I’ve observed four broad classes of people who own an RV. This is only my observation and there are certainly variations and permutations of these four categories, but most RV owners fall cleanly into one of the four.

Vacationers: These are people who have jobs and homes and, often, kids. They use their RV during one long vacation during the summer and perhaps a few long weekends at other times of the year. For most of the year the old RV is in storage.

Snowbirds: This group usually has a regular house somewhere but they live in their RV for a portion of the year mostly to escape extreme weather. There are many of these people in South Texas during the winter (called “winter Texans”), but we’ve also run into the reverse — people who have their home in the South and take their RV north for the summer.

Bouncers: These are people that live in their RV all year long but it’s parked in one spot in the South all winter long, and one spot in the north all summer long. They just “bounce” from one spot to the next. They may take a few weeks moving from one spot to the other, but they’re mostly in one of two parking spots. There’s a variation of this group that has two RV’s, one in the north and one in the south, and they simply bounce by car or plane from one to the other depending on the season.

Fulltimers: These are people like us that live fulltime in their RV, but are rarely in one spot longer than a week or two. They’re almost always on the go. Some people in this group still have a house but they don’t live in it. (Purist would demand that real Fulltimers do not have a house at all.) Our objective is to see and experience the USA. We get itchy when grass starts to grow under our feet.

In our limited experience it seems that many Fulltimers, those in the fourth group, tend to migrate to “Bouncers”, the third group, after a few years. They find places they like and go back again and again. They grow tired of traveling so much and like the comfort of being in one spot for extended periods of time. As we grow tired to traveling so much, our objective is to ultimately move from “Fulltimer” to “Bouncer” to “Snowbird”. We do see a real house in our future again — at some point.

And after almost three weeks here at Sandollar we’re getting that itch again. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our stay here, but it’s time to move on, and see what awaits over the next hill, across the next bridge, in the next state.

——–

Other than fishing or going to the beach, there isn’t a great abundance of things to do in this part of the world. We did visit the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, which is now permanently parked in Corpus Christi. I just thoroughly enjoy big machinery like this, and the historic nature of the ship enriches the experience. This ship was started, “laid down”, in 1941 as the USS Cabot, but was renamed the USS Lexington (CV16) after the first USS Lexington (CV2) was lost in the battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. Commissioned in 1943, The Lex eventually became the longest active serving aircraft carrier in the world. Decommissioned in 1991, most of it’s later years were spent training and certifying Navy pilots in carrier operations. Large areas of the ship are open and set up as it was during WWII. From the Bridge, to the Captains Quarters, to the Engine Room, you can wander around and soak up the experience at your own pace. An IMAX Theatre has been installed on the forward hanger deck. There are a few pictures of our visit to The Lex in our online photo collection.

Paralleling the Gulf Coast of Texas, there’s a long string of barrier islands. A common coastal phenomenon, barrier islands are formed when the washing action of the ocean build sandbars that grow into long narrow islands just offshore from the coast. Along this part of Texas, we have Matagorda Island, St. Joseph Island, Mustang Island, and Padre Island. On the north end of Mustang Island is the beach town of Port Aransas. It’s at Port Aransas that the main shipping channel into Corpus Christi Bay opens to the sea. All large ships going in or out of the harbors in this area must go through this channel. It’s possible to drive out to Port Aransas, but the short distance across this main shipping channel must be crossed on a ferry system run by the State of Texas. Apparently it’s not practical to build a high enough bridge that would allow large ships to pass freely underneath. Once on the island, it’s possible to drive on the beach — right on the sand– for miles. Campers are permitted to park on the beach overnight in some areas. It’s a great uncongested place to get that “beach-fix”. We’ve got a few photos of this excursion online too.

Texas Highway 35 crosses the strait between Compano Bay and Aransas Bay on a 2 mile long bridge built in 1966. Most of the old bridge was left in place and now serves as a fishing pier. It’s an enjoyable walk too — the long segment on the north is 1-1/4 miles long one way. There were two small commercial clam boats fishing right along the pier one day we walked it. Between watching the clamming operation and talking to old grizzled fishermen we learned a lot about fishing in these waters.

We did visit the “Big Tree”. It’s the largest known Southern Live Oak in Texas. A friend of ours told us the biggest one in the USA is in Louisiana. These trees are just spectacular. It isn’t their height that’s interesting, but the spread of their crown. The branches are twisted and gnarly and often grow sideways much further than they grow high. This tree is only 44 feet high, but 89 feet across at the spread. It’s estimated to be about 1000 years old.

Many days, we drive down to Rockport beach for our walk. Shorebirds all over the place, each trying to eke out survival for as long as possible — just like us I guess. We almost always see some bottlenose dolphins having lunch.

I’m sure I forgot things, but that’s enough for today.

Happy New Year All!

Thom and Dar

December 19, 2007 — Sandollar Resort in Rockport, TX

The holidays just wouldn’t be complete without Christmas lights and Holiday Decorations — at least for Dar. For most of the years of our marriage, she was always the one who spent time, money, and personal effort (not to mention risking life and limb) to achieve the warm holiday look she wanted the house to have, both inside and out. She took great pleasure in doing most of it herself. It started years ago when she said something about putting up lights on the outside of our house, two stories up, and wondered if I’d do it. Perhaps I was in a bad mood that day… I certainly was not in the holiday spirit… or just preoccupied with another project — I don’t know. But I said something along the lines of “If you want lights on the roof, put ‘em up yourself.” To make a long story short, she did. And she did for many years thereafter. And she made sure ALL the neighbors saw her. She took great pride in making sure everyone knew she did the outside lighting at the Hoch’s house. For many years, I paid the price. I was shunned at Christmas parties, often chewed out by people I didn’t even know about sending my wife to the top of a 30′ ladder and onto an icy roof in the dead of winter. It was ugly, but I endured. You see, Dar’s a perfectionist, and if I were out on that roof stapling lights to the shingles, anything I did wouldn’t have been right anyway. It would have caused a lot of turmoil and pain in our marriage… not a good thing, especially during the holidays. In some ways, I feel I’ve actually saved our marriage by refusing to be part of the Christmas outdoor decorating thing, and letting her do it exactly the way she wanted it.

Eventually, the neighborhood guys started inviting me back to card games and such… and were actually jealous of what I’d achieved. Somehow, I’d gotten my dear wife to do all the outside decorating work. I’m sitting around the fireplace reading a book, having some warm holiday nog, listening to music while they’re out there slipping, sliding, falling, and freezing their fingers trying to figure out which dead bulb is responsible for the death of the entire tangled string of lights. They wanted to know how I did it. Inside, I wished I knew how I did it too.

But let’s fast-forward to this year. This was going to be a tough year for both of us — since we’d have NO family around us at all for the first time in many years. I truly wanted to help out, in my owned limited way, with making it a good holiday season for us. So I looked for small ways to assist the “pro” during these holiday preparations. There turned out to be two small things that made me look pretty good in the eyes of my sweetie.

First, on a shopping excursion to Corpus Christi, she sent me to Home Depot while she shopped at other stores — so I wouldn’t interfere with her mission. While in Home Depot I spotted a small — very small — 24 inch high — artificial Christmas tree. It was the last one they had. I knew that she had dreams of us walking out into the woods behind the bus to chop down a small seedling to use as our tree. But, alas, pine trees are not easy to find around here, and we’re not exactly out in the sticks. Any pine tree we did find would have to come from someone’s yard — and that just wasn’t going to happen. Until that day, it looked like we might not have a tree at all. But when I spotted this little Chinese-made fake tree I knew it was the right tree for us. Not only was it the right sized tree for us, it was fully decorated with lights, pine cones, and little fake berries of some kind. AND… it was 50% off the original price… just $4.99. AND I probably saved that little thing from the dumpster.

Dar fell in love immediately… with the tree. She called it our “Charlie Brown” Christmas Tree. It was bent and twisted from weeks of abuse at the hands of shoppers at the depot, but with Dar’s magic touch, and a few additional decorations, it turned into a marvelous little tree. We’ll make sure we get a photo of it online soon.

The second thing that kind-of shocked Dar was this: I found three boxes of Christmas lights that we’d brought along when we started this adventure back in June. Often people use strings of lights to brighten up dark campsites at any time of the year. Somehow I got the idea to put these lights up in the big live oak tree we’re parked under. It wouldn’t be a tough job as all I’d have to do is walk around the roof of the camper and string them from branch to branch — forming a sort of colorful halo of Christmas lights over the bus. I did just that and it looks darned good if I can say so myself. Dar was shocked that, at least this year, she didn’t have to do any outdoor decorating for Christmas.

But the real decorating is on the inside of the camper. Dar’s a magician when it comes to this decorating thing. At night, the bus really feels like the holidays on the inside and looks pretty darned good on the outside too. I think it’ll be a good Christmas for us.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Saturday, December 15, 2007 — Sandollar RV Park in Rockport, TX

A few weeks ago, on a recommendation from someone we trust, we booked the Sandollar Resort in Rockport for three weeks during Christmas and New Years. Not knowing how fast things book up over the holidays — or how booked they already might be — we rolled the dice, made reservations, and despite never having laid eyes on the place we hoped it’d be that perfect “homey” place to be for Christmas.

We arrived in Rockport a few days early. Even though it may have been possible to move in at Sandollar early, we thought it’d be good to try another place for the experience. Based mostly on internet research we decided to try Drifters Resort. We arrived there Tuesday and found it to be an excellent RV park, only three years old, small but very well done. With both cabins and RV sites, it’s a friendly place filled with genuine and outgoing people who didn’t even wait for us to back into our site before coming over and introducing themselves. Many of these people are from the midwest — Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan — and like almost everyone down here from the north at this time of the year, they’re looking to escape Winter. Many of them arrive in October or November and stay until April. You just can’t beat Midwesterners!

After three days at Drifters we felt like one of the gang. We knew most of the people on our end of the park on a first name basis and had long conversations with many of them. But, alas, it was time to go and get set up at Sandollar. So we said our good-byes. This is a place we could easily come back to and spend more time. Maybe next year?

At Sandollar Resort the bus is parked in a nice spot under a large live oak tree. “Live oak” is a general term for a number of different oaks throughout the southern U.S. that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage. While other oak trees have shed their leaves, live oaks are still full of green foliage. The gnarly, tough, resilient live oak wood was highly valued by shipbuilders of the 18th and 19th century because it was more resistant to cannon balls. I don’t think we have to worry about cannon fire here at Sandollar. I’ll get a picture up on the home page later today.

So here we are for the holidays. The neighbors here are as nice, and friendly, as the ones at at Drifters. They have a nightly “happy hour” that I attended last night… just a short get-together every night at 4 or 5pm to chat and tell stories. They’re also planning Christmas dinner for everyone in the park. Dar’s busy getting the bus decorated. She’s happy with the choice we made for Christmas this year.

T

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 — Drifters RV Resort near Rockport, TX

There’s a broad coastal plain that follows the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico stretching all the way from New Orleans, through Texas, to Mexico. This long arc of land is about the flattest land I’ve ever seen — flatness that rivals parts of Illinois, Indiana, and the Canadian Great Plains. It’s said that raindrops develop a severe case of indecisiveness when they don’t know which direction to flow after hitting the ground. So they just sit there, evaporate, and make the air humid.

All this flatness can also make breezy days a challenge for driving an RV… like today. When the wind blows off the Gulf, there’s nothing to stop it or slow it down. The last few days there’s a big storm system in the central part of the country that’s sucking humid air out of the Gulf. Since we’ve been in Victoria on Sunday, the winds have been howling.

The owner of the coach and I had a little “safety meeting” this morning, prior to leaving Victoria. It seems the owner, who’s also the safety director, was concerned that the wind, blowing at 15 to 20mph and gusting higher, may be reason to stay in Victoria another day and take our chances with the higher probability of rain predicted for tomorrow. All I could think of was the safety meetings they have before every space shuttle launch — and how decisions can come back to haunt. I listened to her concerns and went quietly outside to check out conditions… took the trash to the dumpster… watched trucks and other RV’s going by out on the highway… wetted my finger and stuck it up in the air… tried to remember if we had any O-rings that could cause us a problem. I held my breath and threw the dice. And the decision was made to “go”. We drove boldly into the stiff headwind.

(An aside: There’s something that happens that when you’re traveling in your RV — the wind is almost always a headwind; it’s rarely pushing you. I don’t know why, but others I’ve talked to about this agree. More study is needed on this.)

So we arrived at the Drifters RV Resort just South of Rockport just after 2pm. Registering, parking, and completely setting up house took a half-hour. Meeting all the neighbors took much longer. We then drove into town, got some local touristy information at the Chamber of Commerce, and checked out the town. There’s a large fishing fleet based here and the town, in general, feels like a lot of beach towns I’ve been to in the past — very laid back, casual, everyone very friendly. It’s great.

We’ll be here for three nights and will move on Friday over to the place we plan to spend the holidays, just a few miles away. In both places, this one and the one we’re moving to later in the week, we’re within sight of Aransas Bay and the Gulf. We’re a little over a hundred miles from the southern tip of Texas so this should “take the edge off” winter as we’d planned.

T