TEXAS

Written by Emily

Bolivar Peninsula, TX

March 31 – April 7, 2024

After leaving Meaher State Park in Alabama we blew through Mississippi and Louisiana into Texas. We didn’t plan to spend time in these states partly because we had visited New Orleans previously, but mostly because we were now racing the sun to get through Texas and start heading north before it got too hot. Oh, and because there was a total solar eclipse coming on April 8th and we wanted to be underneath the path of totality in the Texas hill country when it arrived.

We took two days to get from Alabama to the Bolivar Peninsula, mostly on the Interstate-10, and stopped overnight at the Atchafalaya Welcome Center in Louisiana. By pure coincidence, Betty and Doug (friends we had met down in the Florida Keys) were heading the same way. They had passed our campsite at Meaher State Park on the morning of March 30th as they were heading from Florida through to Texas (also for the solar eclipse). So we met up and boondocked with them at the welcome center on the Atchafalaya Basin for the night. Great to see Betty and Doug, and a great spot for a free overnighter in the middle of the elevated Atchafalaya Basin Bridge!

The Bolivar Peninsula is next door to the more well known Galveston in Texas. There is a free car ferry service from Galveston over to Bolivar, or you can come in on the road from the north east (from Beaumont) via a few bridges. We came in through Beaumont and it was an interesting drive through some very industrial areas of Texas – what seemed like dozens of oil refineries were scattered amongst grassy wetlands with a few cows hanging around. It looked like a very tough sub-tropical environment and not how I had imagined Texas at all.

Camp Margaritaville on the Bolivar Peninsula was a ton of fun for the week. It’s a beautiful RV resort – one of the best we’ve stayed at – and has beautiful facilities and grounds, spacious sites and walking access to the “beach” (more on that below).

The Bolivar Peninsula is a very unique little stretch of land. I wish I got better photos of it, but it has a very remote, almost frontier feeling to it. There are no strip malls or Hilton hotels (thank goodness!), only one supermarket (in a shed), a gas station, a few RV parks and small groups of houses built on 15-foot stilts. And lots of Texans in large pickup trucks!

Writing this now that we’ve finished the whole Texas coast… no offense Texas, your beaches are awful! (South Padre Island was an exception.) And the Bolivar Peninsula was no exception to the brown/black sand and water that looked like a chocolate milkshake, which we came to understand was just how the beaches are in Texas.

The beaches in Texas have two things going for them: you can take your dogs, and you can drive your car / truck / RV and setup camp with as much stuff as you like! Justin took a drive one day while I was at work and got chatting to a couple of people fishing. They kindly let him reel in the fish – it was a big one!

We took a day trip over to Galveston to have a look around. It has a nice, older downtown center with plenty of places to eat and drink. We also took a walk up the seawall which is mainly tourist haunts lining the beach including a fun park on the pier.

Leaving the Bolivar Peninsula we took the free car ferry to Galveston with the trailer in tow! Very weird to have your house float on a boat across the sea!

San Antonio, TX

April 7 – 21, 2024

It was a good six hour journey from the Bolivar Peninsular to San Antonio, but we dug in and did it in one day because we wanted to be in the area for the solar eclipse that was happening on April 8.

We stayed at Sun Retreats San Antonio West. It is a longer-term residential RV park – nothing special – but we had everything we needed and it was well positioned on the outskirts of San Antonio to go exploring the hill country.

On eclipse day we drove up through Kerrville and further out into the hills to watch the solar eclipse and I am so glad we made the effort to hoof it over to this part of Texas for this event. We were right under the path of totality. We found a spot on the side of the road where some other people were pulled over and which had a good view across the paddock. We had never seen a total eclipse before and we were absolutely astounded at what an intense experience it is. The day literally turned to night and it was awesome.

After the eclipse we came back home through Fredericksburg for a bit of a look. The hill country area of Texas was settled by a lot of Germans so Fredericksburg is famous for its good food, beer and old European-style buildings. Unfortunately we got there so late, and because every man in his dog was there to see the eclipse, there was not much food left to try!

The next weekend we spent a day in downtown San Antonio. I clearly didn’t do any research on San Antonio as I thought it was a relatively small regional city. It’s actually an enormous city with 2.4 million people in the greater San Antonio area. The freeways in this city are something else – those crazy fly-over highways that are hundreds of feet in the air and I was legitimately frightened towing the trailer over them. The downtown area of San Antonio has a lovely riverwalk lined with bars and restaurants, and the walking trail continues along the river out of the city which we enjoyed for a couple of hours with the dogs. You have probably heard of “The Alamo” where the Texan army was defeated by the Mexicans in 1836. It was a former mission but is now a museum and memorial to that battle loss, located in downtown San Antonio .

We got chatting to Mike who was staying in the RV next door at Sun Retreats. He gave us a heap of recommendations for things to do around town and suggested that we try the Quihi Gun Club and Dance Hall. He described it as good clean fun and one of the most authentic San Antonio experiences around. He was absolutely right! We drove about 45 min west of San Antonio to what seemed like the middle of nowhere. We were one of the first to arrive at the ‘dance hall’ (which was a shed) and we were a bit suspicious we had been had. But shortly after, truck after truck arrived with whole families piling out and into the hall – grandparents, mum, dad, teenagers, little kids.

When we got inside the bar tender immediately recognized us out-of-towners and kindly introduced us to her mother and father in law. An older couple, they took us under their wing, introducing us around to everyone else (who all clearly knew each other) and when the music started, insisted we get up to dance with them. There was a live band with guitar and fiddle, and everyone knew how to dance properly. Polker, waltz, line dancing – young and old – everyone danced. It was absolutely one of the best nights out and we will never forget this unique Texan experience!

We really enjoyed the food in Texas. Being so close to Mexico, there is no shortage of delicious authentic Mexican food and the diversity in population means the grocery stores have great fresh food that is not so common in Michigan – like the six-box display of peppers below. Yum! We also had the best BBQ we have ever eaten at 2M Smoke House. I am a BBQ snob and this meal was simply outstanding. FIVE STARS!

Port Aransas, TX

April 21 – 28, 2024

We headed back to the gulf coast for a week at Port Aransas, a little spit of land on the coast of Corpus Christi. As we were pulling out of our campsite in San Antonio we found we had a flat tire on the trailer. Of course. Fully loaded and with four hours on the road in front of us. Justin got it changed and we made to Port Aransas without needing another spare… thank goodness!

Sorry if I’m offending any Port Aransas locals with this post, but we didn’t think much of this area. We stayed at Aloha Beach Resort which was fine although probably not worth the price they charged.

The beach was similar to the Bolivar Peninsula – dirty and definitely not fit for swimming – and there nothing much to the town itself. We met Jimmy in the RV next door and he was good company and very kind to take us for a tour of town on his golf cart.

Brownsville, TX

April 28 – May 12, 2024

Justin is a die-hard SpaceX fan so our next stop was Brownsville for a couple of weeks, staying at Jetstream Tropical Trails. We enjoyed it here – very large, spaced out sites and the park was only half-occupied while we were there so we had a lot of space and quiet to ourselves.

We both really loved Brownsville – between SpaceX and South Padre Island and a very laid back atmosphere – this is definitely somewhere we would come back to and spend more time over the winter or spring. April to May was already very warm and we spent every afternoon after work in the pool and got a fair bit of beach time in as well.

Justin spent a lot of time during the week hanging around the SpaceX facility. It is its own tourist attraction with a bunch of SpaceX fanatics from all over the world that camp out along the perimeter, watching and filming everything that is going on, handing out kids space education books, hoping to score a seat on the first rocket to Mars, etc etc. It’s pretty crazy the number of cars setup with cameras on their roofs just filming for YouTube channels. So Justin had plenty of people to talk to.

SpaceX is right on the beach at Boca Chica where the USA meets Mexico on the Gulf coast. The boarder is the Rio Grande river and we drove right down the beach to where the Rio Grande spills out into the ocean. If you wanted to walk across the boarder here you absolutely could – the water is only waste deep and there were some Mexicans fishing in the middle – we could have high-fived them. Except there was one US boarder patrol vehicle sitting on the beach there so we thought we’d better stay on the US side. On the drive back to camp we did have to get our green cards out at a US border patrol check point.

We did go for a swim right in the mouth of the Rio Grande here (as it turns out, probably the only part of the Rio Grande you would ever consider sticking your big toe in)!

The sand on Boca Chica beach was brown and dirty just like other Texas beaches we had seen, but the water was beautiful and clear. Across the spit on the northern end of Boca Chica there is South Padre Island and for some reason the sand on South Padre is white and clean! It might have something to do with the garbage collection initiative – you have to pay an extra $5 when you take your vehicle on the beach and they hand you a garbage bag – if you bring it back full of garbage you get your $5 back. We spent a couple of Saturdays up here getting too much sun.

Laredo, TX

May 12 – 17, 2024

We are on our way to Big Bend National Park along the Texas-Mexico boarder. This was going to be a few very long days to get across the rest of this very big state! First stop was Laredo TX. We stayed at Lake Case Blanca International State Park – nice quiet little hidey-hole for the week.

We pulled into the park and were checking-in when we found we had another flat on the trailer. Different flat to the one we changed in San Antonio. Luckily it seemed to have given up the ghost not far from the entrance to the park so we made it to our site without having to stop and change it.

I barely left camp this week as we were only in Laredo Sunday through Saturday and work was brutal. But I loved walking around the park in the mornings and evenings and it was so quiet the dogs got a fair bit of off-leash time.

This was the first part of our journey where we started to see lots of cactus and I’m obsessed. I had no idea that cactus had such beautiful flowers or that the prickly pear offered up a purple fruit once it finished flowering in summer. The flowers were hard to get a good photo of because it was too hot during the day, they all wilted soon after flowering! But you get the idea.

Lajitas, TX

May 19 – June 1, 2024

We took two days to get from Laredo to Lajitas, overnighting at Canyons RV Park in Sanderson on the way. This drive from Laredo to Sanderson was definitely the most remote part of the USA we had ever seen. I think we encountered about six other vehicles that day and the road tracked along some stretches of Trump’s infamous boarder wall – so half of those other vehicles were US boarder patrol. The RV park at Sanderson does not have a website or anyone that even answers the phone. You just roll up, put your money in the piggy and grab a spot. I had of course tried to call a dozen times to see if they had space…. silly me, of course they have space!

The day temperatures in this part of Texas were getting well above 110 F (43 C) after midday, so we were *thrilled* when, on the final stretch into Lajitas, we got another flat on the trailer. Seems all our cheap Chinese-made tires were deciding to give up the ghost all at once. Poor old Justin sweated it out and got it changed and we again crossed our fingers that we would make it to camp without needing another spare.

We made it to camp at Lajitas and were very pleasantly surprised by the campground – Maverick Ranch RV Park. We almost had the entire campground to ourselves (probably something to do with the 43 C temperatures) and the campground had the most beautiful pool. Our site even had a little grass area! So we setup camp, turned the air conditioning on for the animals and jumped straight in the pool!

The first morning at Lajitas I woke to the sound of something rummaging through our campsite and caught these guys helping themselves to the garbage, the dogs water and the grill! They are javelinas (not pigs!) although they are a type of peccary related to pigs found mainly in Central and South America and some southern parts of the USA. We also saw our first road runner here – he was cute and cheeky!

Lajitas is a small town home to 75 people on the Texas – Mexico big bend boarder and the town primarily exists to service the golf resort that some east-coaster has built here. Yes, you read right – there is a golf resort here in the middle of nowhere in the Texan desert. I have no idea where they get the water to keep the grass green but there is a resort here with all the trimmings. So we are not exactly roughing it in the desert here for two weeks – there are actually a bunch of people wandering around in corporate golf gear and staying in the swish accommodation up on the hill.

You may have heard of a town in the USA that has a goat for a mayor. Well that town is Lajitas and the mayor is Clay Henry (III or IV) – a beer drinking goat who has been elected mayor since the 1980s.

The heat was pretty intense during the day in this part of the world and it was the first time in our trailer travels that we had trouble with the breaker on the main electrical line flicking off – it was too hot! Justin got creative with some towels and an old piece of fabric he found in the dumpster to make a skirt for the trailer and try to keep the facilities out of the sun.

The main attraction in this part of the world is of course Big Bend National Park. It is an enormous national park encompassing the Chisos Mountain Range and a large expanse of the Chihuahuan Desert. It’s southern boarder is the Rio Grande and the boarder with Mexico.

For sure, a weekend is not long enough to see this enormous park. And of course it was too hot for serious hiking (we were actually there on the Memorial Day weekend which is the last weekend you can visit before the park closes for summer). It would be better to come earlier in late March or early April to get some hiking in safely and see the wildflowers. But we enjoyed this unique and diverse wilderness, despite the heat!

The nearby town of Terlingua is worth an afternoon to explore. It was originally a mercury mining town and a lot of the original miners homes are still there on the side of the hill, abandoned and now a ghost town. It is interesting to have a poke around and imagine what life would have been like as a miner in this part of the world one hundred years ago. Pretty hard I reckon.

I was sad to leave Lajitas after two weeks – it was exactly the kind of peace and quiet that I enjoy and I could have planted myself for another two weeks – but Justin was pretty keen to get out of the desert. We tracked back up through the Chihuahuan desert and headed west on the I-10, staying overnight in Van Horn TX, before heading out towards El Paso and taking a north turn into New Mexico.

We really enjoyed our time in Texas, although recognize we only saw a fraction of this very enormous state! It’s a diverse state in lots of senses and we particularly appreciated the friendly and laid back atmosphere that we encountered everywhere we went (we didn’t see any of the snootiness that comes with having too much money and which was a pretty common feature of Florida).

There’s always so much hoo-ha on the news about the boarder between Mexico and Texas and I wanted to see what this part of the world was like. Everyone told us not to go near Brownsville or anywhere along the boarder because it was dangerous etc etc. We didn’t see anything of the sort. In fact, there appeared to be two US boarder patrol agents for every civilian in the area (of course this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea). We saw a bunch of people living their lives, working hard, some doing it tough. Just typical USA really. Maybe we got lucky.

The most unusual part of our boarder journey was having to present our green cards at multiple check points inside the USA. We did get a chuckle out of the patrol agents who were always genuinely surprised to see two Australians, a cat and two kelpies driving through their desolate work space in western Texas.