Arrived

We arrived at Aransas, finally.

Not without a final meteorological challenge—fog. It was fairly warm when we awoke in the Wharton, TX Walmart parking lot, but it was foggy. Not a bad fog, just enough to make things damp. Once we got underway it was a different story.

Aransas was only about 100 miles further, so we expected to be there before lunch time, even with a grocery stop on the way. As we drove down the highway, the fog just got thicker and thicker until the cars whizzing past would just disappear with in a hundred feet or so. And they did whizz past. The speed limit on the main road was mostly 75 and, for or no fog, those Texas drivers did the limit.

After about 30 minutes, we got off onto county roads to swing down to the coast and on to Port Lavaca. It is on of the two major towns near Aransas (if you call 35 miles away "near"). By major, we mean "has a supermarket". It is actually a fair size town with a number of oil refineries nearby, so it is busy. It has a few small malls, with an H-E-B supermarket, a Walmart, all the major fast food chains and a fair number of Mexican and Seafood restaurants, but no Starbucks.

We stopped at the H-E-B and restocked our food supplies, lots of fruits and veggies, enough to hold us a week. With a 70 mile round trip, we won't be popping out to the store on a daily basis.

After a stop in Tivoli (pronounced Tavola) for a late, not so great, breakfast (how does one mess up scrambled eggs?), we arrived at Aransas around 11:30. Tonya, the volunteer coordinator, brought us over to our site, the last available (also the smallest). We met several of the other volunteers, including a woman, Teri, in another Roadtrek. There are six volunteer sites here, all have couples, except for Teri. We are the only Biological Volunteers, the others are either doing refuge maintenance or working at the visitor center. They all seem pretty friendly.

We originally squeezed the trailer and Speedy onto our site side-by-side, as it wasn't really deep enough to just back it all in. If we'd come with a big fifth-wheel, we'd have had a problem. It was quickly clear that side-by-side was way too tight, so we eventually moved the trailer to a storage spot next to another trailer, abot 50 yards away. As we have a lot of gear stored in the trailer, I'm not sure how this is going to work out. We have usually used the trailer as overflow for Speedy, hanging our motorcycle gear and other outdoor stuff in it and were in and out of it all the time.

The volunteer area is pretty compact with a community building across from the RV sites. It has a kitchen, with several refrigerators and freezers we can use along with a stove, dishwasher and sinks for our use. There are toilets, showers, washers and dryers and even a sitting area with a TV.

Beyond the volunteer area is housing for visiting reseachers and work sheds and parking sheds for the refuge maintenance staff.

We don't actually start until Tuesday, so it should be good to have a weekend to get settled, look around and figure out where things are on the refuge.

Got a look at a few birds this evening, just around the Visitor Center, including Sandhill Cranes flying by, Great Egrets nesting in a tree, several White Ibis, Yellow-rumped Warblers, a huge flock of grackles and an unidentified woodpecker. The bird-of-the-day, however, was the American Kestrel that flew over us as we got ot of Speedy on arriving at the refuge.

We won't get access to WiFi until next monday as only one person knows the password and she doesn't give it out, just sets up your system.