We started our next trip by leaving Milton, Ontario where we
spent the summer just relaxing and living, so no big adventures after we came
back from down east – Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, great trip.
The park we are
staying at is close to the city (Mississauga and family) and is one of the few
open all year round in Ontario. Nice setting, good sites, a few pictures
attached for fall as we know it.
We had our friends John and Judy and brother Jim and Mary out in September for the long weekend. it was great as J & J were newbies to RV`ing and am pleased they really enjoyed it. We may have more winter travellers soon!!
Houston
Christmas Tree
After
these were taken, it just kept getting colder and we decided to leave on
December 19th after doing Christmas with our kids and grandkids.
We headed south through Windsor and did a long drive down
right to Louisville, Ky and just stayed overnight as we really, REALLY, don’t
like the cold any more (such wooses)
After Louisville, we drove straight through to Little Rock,
AK and again just stayed overnight and no sightseeing, would have like to go to
the Bill Clinton museum but did not, as again a long day.
We stayed in Houston as this is one of the places I really
wanted to see as I actually remember James Lovell’s statement “Hey Houston, we
have had a problem here” and I wanted to get the Houston space centre. We did the tour around the Center with stops
at the Space Center, saw the area where mock-up of where the moon walk was, and
actually can remember where I was at the time.
A little side note, when the actual moon walk was on, in July we were at
our cottage on Cotnam’s Island outside of Pembroke, Ontario, Canada and I
remember my Mom saying – “Wow once they get out there, they see Heaven” then of course she realized what she said,
but is that not what all of us where really thinking? The people at the Space
Center really get it.
We went to Mission Control because that is the main place I
wanted to get (me the Geek...) and they took us to the Mission Control Center
that was set up for the Mars program. It
is state of the art and they are doing all of the work to get it set up. They will not get there until 2035 and when
the guide was telling us this, we had Goosebumps just thinking about what we
were hearing – WOW.
Here are a few pictures of the spaces center – rockets,
mission control, and space center logo.
Old
mission control center set up
New mission control set up
Star
Trek shuttlecraft
Actual footage from Space station
Rockets
There is an area where they have planted trees for astronauts that have passed away, the last one was by natural causes, the newest ones were for the 7 from the Challenger
San Antonio
We finally did do a stop for a while in San Antonio – still
cold but at least in the day time 50F/10C so we did go down to the Alamo and
the River Walk. We went down on
Thanksgiving Day as the people at the park told us everything was open, but unfortunately,
they were not. The Alamo was open so
that was a bonus as it was not really busy so we could go through the whole
thing without any congestion but the Market Square was not. There was a Mexican
restaurant that is open year round Mi
Tierra that we tried and was really
good, probably would not have stopped there if other restaurants were open, so
that was a bonus – it is a bakery, café and restaurant, quite a few locals and
really big.
Very historical area, I did not realize it would be right in
the downtown area and surrounded by high rises and stores. I t hought it would be similar to the National/Federal
parks we have at home as in Louisburg or Fort Henri where it would be on the
outskirts. We only have a few pictures as there are not pictures allowed in the
actual Alamo long buildings or the shrine. The history is really amazing as to
what happened at the Alamo and not being American, there were parts of the
story as in names of people like David (Davy) Crocket and Jim Bowie (sic) that
were only names in movies when I was growing up; I really did not know that
these were real people at the time.
Entrance
to the Alamo
Fountain on grounds
150 year old tree, was planted as a live tree at the time, they actually have some of its branches propped up
We went for a walk down the River Walk area, everything was
closed, so it was very empty and nothing really to see as people watching and
watching activities in the area is the best part.
From here we headed down to Corpus Christie TX and the
weather was finally warm so we set up at an RV park Sea Breeze RV Resort in
Portland, Tx and went to do some sightseeing but unfortunately they have a lot of construction
happening and we just kept wandering around and finally found a nice restaurant
on the water so stopped and had a drink and lunch and enjoyed the weather and
the water.
Some of the residents
View from the bay
Desert and water, really neat to
see.
Since the cold weather kept
chasing us all the way, we decided to head to our winter home ahead of time as
there was supposed to be even more cold weather coming.
We arrived at our park, Tropic
Winds RV Resort in Harlingen, Tx Wednesday, December 4th and it was
in the 80’s and we sat out and caught up with friends then went out to dinner. Thursday
temperature was the same and we went to get some pickle ball lessons at 6:30 at
night and it was still in the high 70’s.
Woke up this morning and it was only 40 and we have wind chill warnings
and possible freezing for the next few days, we are as far south in Texas as we
can be without being in Mexico. This weather is nothing like we had our first
year of travelling, this past month has been really challenging. I know it is better than snow and sleet, but
so far Florida has had better weather consistently, may need to look at that
again.
Well we are set up here, will be
doing some checking out of the area and things to do in the next few days and getting
settle in down here. The park seems to
have quite a few activities so once we do get settled, will check out what we
want to get into.
We apparently have a quite a few
jack rabbits (we saw at least 8 on lot beside us when we arrived) but also coyotes
as well so will need to keep an eye open from them as well
