Padre Island

After four long days of driving on interstates, we've landed on Padre Island in South Texas. The sun is shining and the weather is warm which is very nice indeed. We're at Malaquite Campground which is filled with giant RVs and a few small ones like us. During our drive here, we were struck with technology problems: the SIM card in my phone died (of course, there are several just sitting on the shelf at home) and Steve's MiFi wouldn't take a charge (therefore no Internet). For our first motorcycle outing, I asked Steve if we could please take a small ride since the last time I rode was at Thanksgiving (to pick-up our turkey in Duxbury). Off we went from the campground on miles of wide open and empty roads leaving the National Park and heading towards Corpus Christi. That open road soon turned to highway and a really high bridge with big cross winds. Finally we exited the highway because Steve's GPS died and our bike-to-bike communications weren't working properly. I was leading and I turned into what I thought was a parking lot. As luck would have it, it was a shopping mall and that shopping mall had both T-Mobile (my phone service) and Verizon (Steve's MiFi) shops. This gave us time to re-boot the GPS, adjust the radios and get a new SIM card. I called Robin from the parking lot to wish him safe travels as he's about to head to Florida trailering his motorcycle. We had to go to another Verizon store for the MiFi problem and that was a little tricky: lots of big roads and dicey intersections. As Verizon worked on the MiFi, we went to a nearby Starbucks for lunch and then back to Verizon. Did I mention that bit about going the wrong way through the Starbucks drive-thru? Well, after that all was uneventful (except for the even windier bridge crossing) and we made it back to the campground by early afternoon.

We were befriended by our campground neighbors, a nice couple from New Hampshire in a shiny Airstream trailer. They're about to head to Guadalupe Mountain National Park. He's volunteered there for a dozen years and specializes in carpentry for historic structures. The park saves up their most specialized repair work for his annual trip. He also knows a lot about hiking in the mountains so we're trying to find out all we can as that's our destination after Big Bend.

We have been amazed by the size of Texas. I know we've all heard about how big it is but it takes so much longer to get places than we anticipate. When we crossed into Texas from Louisiana, we were at Exit 880 (yes, that's mile 880 from the other side of the state) (yikes!). It will take us at least a day to get to Big Bend from here at Padre Island. We'll stay put for a few more days, riding our motorcycles and our mountain bikes, and then head inland through miles and miles and miles of flat grassland with lots of cows and oil rigs.

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