Mustang Island SP - TXSP

Monday - We will miss our friends as they begin their summer road trips. I believe that they are roughly traveling together for a while until mid-summer. Last night, I had dinner with the Marx’s at a seafood place in Port Aransas. I was finally able to get a decent amount of oysters which is one of my favorites seafood items.

There was wind and showers this morning again. One thing to remember about the coast, it’s always windy. Since we didn’t need any more water, I went ahead and repacked the hose, regulator, filter, and water softener. We arrived with the SeeLevel fresh water level at 51%. I’m guessing that this is about 70 gallons. We are still at 20% which is around 30 gallons. We even ran a load of laundry this morning. 

By noon we had new neighbors on both sides of us. The site on our passenger side is a primo site due to all the extra space from the electrical boxes. Unfortunately, they have yappy, small dogs but we are leaving tomorrow morning heading back to Hondo.

We had dinner at Grumble’s Seafood Co., the same place I had dinner yesterday with the Marx’s. Oyster po’ boy. Delicious!!

Tuesday - Today was a travel day back to the SKP park in Hondo/D’Hanis. It was just under 200 miles. We arrived back around 1pm and within an hour we were all set back up. The RV ran great.

I went into Hondo today to pick up my birthday freebies from Starbucks and Whataburger. Not a lot but the price is right. There are still a few more freebies but they don’t need to be collected today.

Mustang Island State Park - TXSP

Saturday - Most of our group is spending at least part of the day at Sandfest, a sand sculpture event in Port Aransas, which is around 10 miles south. I opted not to go as they only had a full event ticket and no one-day option. It's windy, and sprinkling so I think I like the "stay-at-home" option. The pano is the view from the back of our RV site. These are the dunes between the RV sites and the ocean.

I signed up for the afternoon test session and just got off the phone with the candidate. This will be an easy one. (famous last words!) The Starlink connection has been consistent. 

I took advantage of the time, and bandwidth, to fix an error on the ESP32 microprocessor. It has been reporting a potential problem with my choice of GPIO input I selected a couple of years ago. I switched to GPIO4 from GPIO5 as I was using a pull-up resister on the temperature/humidity sensor. The error message no longer comes up and I'm curious if it fixes some other instabilities.

I was digging through photos and noticed that I had some from the D'Hanis brickworks. It's an interesting site with several dome-shaped kilns which are shown in the next photo. I like the contrast of the red bricks with the dark blue sky. And the blue Ural.

Sunday - A much cooler day today. It was windy all night with some occasional showers. Today's high is only 70°F. Still humid at 92% but it didn't feel muggy. The others in our group are leaving tomorrow beginning their summer travels. We will be heading back to the SKP park on Tuesday.

Mustang Island SP - TXSP

Tuesday - This was a travel day from Hondo to just past Corpus Christi. Most of the drive was hot and humid in the mid-80s (°F). We arrived here around 1:30pm and found our reserved spot with water and electricity (50amp!). It was overcast and windy for most of the afternoon.

I'm told that there was a pretty strong headwind and, I'm pleased to say, I didn't even notice it. No problem maintaining 63mph and even speeding up to pass vehicles. 

Wednesday - The highlight of the morning was going to the H-E-B+. The store was huge with a very nice produce section. The temperature and the high humidity make me want to sleep all day. Or stay inside the A/C...

The RVs on each side of us are friends. Bridget has been planning this trip with them for a while.

I tried participating in a test session and the Internet was so flaky that it was almost unusable. At one point, the upload throughput was only 20kbps. Dialup speeds. I dropped out of the session.

Thursday - RMarx let me attach to his Starlink router. I'm in the Zoom session right now and it is working much better. No freezing video, no disconnect and reconnect, and the video is nice and smooth. 

Friday - After making coffee, I finally walked to the beach. There was a nice breeze from offshore so the temperature was pretty nice. 

We then drove south to the Padre Island National Seashore. They had a visitor center so I could get a stamp in our national park book. The beach was almost deserted and was also windy. I'm finding the humidity makes me really tired...

Getting Ready - SKP

Sunday - Another warm, muggy day. We need to get the RV ready to travel again. I noticed that the air intake hose had come loose again. It is a large, flex hose from the air cleaner intake to a large air box built into the rear fiberglass cap. This allows cooler, air from outside the engine compartment to be brought into the engine. Cooler air, higher density, slightly more power. I don’t know when the hose came off as I usually don’t look up when checking the engine oil. It went back on with less hassle than the last time I needed to put it back on. 

I also put my most of my tools back into the RV. I feel more comfortable having them with me while traveling. Overall, we probably lightened the RV by at least 500 lbs due to stuff being left in the shed. We are only going to be gone for a week. Most of our basement storage is about a third full. I still have a few more chores to do before we can take off. 

Monday - More “getting ready” tasks. Added air to the front RV tires to 110psi. Disconnected the bulk propane line. Put the TPMS sensors on the Jeep. Installed a 20A/40A switch to the DC-DC charger (I’ve only run it on 20A as we rarely need charging from the engine). Brought in the two potentially problematic slides (no problems). Switched the basement freezer to run off of DC. Filled the fresh water tank about half full. Rolled up the window awnings. Removed the ladder extension from the back. Removed tire covers. Pack the folding chairs and tables. Move the dash cam to the RV. Clean and pack up the Blackstone.

All that’s left is dumping the tanks, windshield sun screen and driver side Reflectix, disconnecting water and power, and pulling in the last two slides. 

I’m sure we are forgetting something. But that’s why we are starting early.