Monday Meanderings - July 12

Meanderings is an apt description for the past week. We meandered down to Port A with Rob, Jana, Luke and Grace and played the role of beach bums with great enthusiasm. Even the trip down there was filled with meandering; first a stop at Black's BBQ in Lockhart to check off another Texas Monthly Best BBQ in Texas spot, then Barb and I checked out the City Park while Rob and family drove into and out of Lockhart State Park to check another Texas State Park off his list. You will notice that only BBQ joints are on my list.

And yes, we were in two cars. Barb and I haul a pretty good load of stuff when we go to the beach; Rob and Jana haul a pretty good load of stuff just to get as far as Austin. Add all the stuff we decided would be good to have on this trip and we were lucky not to have to rent a U-Haul to boot. And we didn't take all the things we talked about.

Apart from one BBQ place and one State Park we didn't have any other stops, except for... well, I'll blog about that part later... and then we got to the ferry. Barb and I have waited as long as 15 minutes for a ferry before. This trip was a 45 minute wait. Going to the beach in mid-summer is a lot different than in the Fall, or even mid-April (not Spring Break mid-April). But we got across and got situated and hit the beach. Any oil on our beach? Nope. Any jelly-fish? Maybe one. Any seaweed? Tons, and I mean literally. They were scrapping it up with a front-end loader and hauling it off in dump trucks almost the entire time we were there.

We ate sea food and watched the Tour and we ate hot dogs and we watched boats come in and out of the channel from an open-air restaurant, and the kids swam in the Condo swimming pool when they weren't on the beach. Rob et. al. went to Corpus one day to do the Lexington (hot and claustrophobic) and the aquarium (cool - and wet - if you sit in the "blue rows" at the Dolphin show).

And on Thursday, Tropical Depression "Bonnie" made her presence felt. You've seen the "rain bands" on the TV weather. A "rain band" in actuality means torrential downpour for a half-hour or so, then sunshine for a half hour or so. Repeat as needed. We sure felt sorry for the people who had to stand out in the rain to direct traffic onto the ferry boats.

And it made a huge difference at the beach. Here's a photo of the beach on Wednesday evening. To the far right, out of sight, is a line of posts marking where the beach ends and the road begins:

And this is Thursday morning - standing in the road:

There is no drainage in South Texas. The bar ditches (yes, I know they are "borrow" ditches - but I'm from Texas) and medians were overflowing and it was a bit of nervous driving for a while. We stayed in rain until Kenedy and then it cleared up and we got home in time for...rain.