The Gulf Coast Challenge

Traveling in Speedy is always exciting. As I write, we are resting up at the Davis Bayou Campground of Gulf Islands National Seashore in Ocean Springs, MS. We've been here before, but it was a challenge to get here this time.

We spent a pleasant Friday night at the very nice Lake Texana Park and Campground in Edna, Texas. From there, we took the secondary roads to Galveston, only getting on I-45 to go over the bridge to the island. We were taking this route to bypass the horrible traffic of Houston. We had decided to go along the bay side of Galveston Island to the ferry at the east end. This ran through an area of industrial docks so we expected that the road would not be as crowded as the beachfront road where we were caught in heavy traffic last time through. What we didn't expect was cruise ships.

The bayside docks include a cruise ship terminal and, being Saturday, there were two huge cruise ships in port and boarding. It didn't seem to be a typical cruise of the middle-aged and older, but a spring break cruise, judging from the age of the people heading towards the ships. It was a bit of a zoo with the traffic and the spring breakers dragging their luggage across the streets, but we got past it fairly quickly and were soon at Ferry Street.

The last time we came this way, the line to the ferry ran up the street about a mile, but there was nothing today. We drove right to the terminal and onto the ferry. This is a free ferry from Galveston Island to the Bolivar Peninsula because it is actually part of a state highway. Soon we were on the Bolivar Peninsula. With a stop for lunch at Fort Travis State Park, just beyond the ferry terminal, we continued east to High Island, a birding mecca during the migration.

We'd originally planned to overnight there. Probably because of the number of birders wanting to be there for sunrise, Texas Audubon provides free camping (with a three-night limit) at the Smith Oaks Sanctuary. As I've mentioned, we are at least a couple of weeks early for the beginning of the spring migration and Ellen's sprained ankle would make birding difficult for her, so we decided to continue on and stop at the town of Winnie, about 20 miles north to do laundry, then decide where to spend the night.

We finished up in late afternoon and decided that, rather than return to High Island, we'd press on to Sea Rim State Park, near Sabine Pass. It was 21 miles away as the crow flies but about 60 miles by road. The coast road up the Bolivar Peninsula used to continue past High Island all the way to Sabine Pass, but was washed away in a hurricane in the 1990s and after several attempts to rebuild and several more hurricanes, the state finally abandoned the effort. It is still listed as a road by Texas DOT, but its status is "closed".

So we took the long route, Winnie to Port Arthur, Port Arthur to Sabine Pass, then west along the remaining section of the coast road to Sea Rim State Park, getting there just before sunset. It is in a beautiful location, right on the beach, so it's very popular. Also, it's small and, did I mention, it's now Saturday night. No surprise, it was full. There was some primitive camping available on the beach, but Speedy doesn't do beaches (and its problems in the soft stuff would soon be well-known) and even the ranger said tides had been high recently and he wouldn't recommend it. I tried but the ranger wouldn't make any exception to staying just overnight in the day-use area (something that Florida State Parks often allow as "overflow" camping).

The ranger suggested a couple of "RV Parks" in Sabine Pass. We were appalled at what they were, $50/night parking spaces (very tight parking spaces) with hookups only, but no other amenities, like restrooms or showers. We briefly considered trying to stay in the parking lot of Texas Point NWR, which was just a small grass lot on the way back from the state park (turns out we probably should have).

We headed back to Port Arthur, which is a gritty industrial city that seems to be one giant oil refinery. The road from Sabine Pass actually goes right through a refinery, with giant pipes passing over the road. By now it was dark and we were deep into dense city neighborhoods as we tried to find our way around. The next thought was a local Walmart, out by the regional airport. We drove the 10 miles to it, only to find that it was part of a giant mall of big box stores. There really wasn't a place to overnight.

What to do? I'd remembered that there was a county park at Winnie that allowed free overnight camping, if you didn't use any hook-ups. So we drove all the way back there. Found the park, saw a Class A RV parked, found a spot near it that looked like a camping site and basically crashed. PB and J for dinner.

We woke before dawn the next morning and decided to get an early start to get out of Texas and across Lousiana. It was still pretty dim when we started to pull out. It looked like the road was right in front of us, so rather than backing out of the site we drove forward only to get about 40 feet before seeing the ditch between us and the road. I brought Speedy to a stop, put it reverse ... and nothing happened. I put it back in drive...and nothing happened. My first thought was the transmission and my reaction wasn't good, but Ellen calmed me down. She got out of the van to see that we'd driven into the only soft spot in the campground and were up to our axles in mud.

The rear wheels just sat there and spun, sinking a bit more with every revolution. We tried getting out the long boards we use to level the van and putting them fore and aft of the rear wheels, hoping the wheel would grab and drive up on a board and give us enough momentum to get out of the mud. This didn't work, the tires just used the edge of the board to wipe off mud into big gooey piles on top of the board.

We tried wedging the wheel chocks under the tire, hoping the ridges on the chocks would have enough grip to pop the tires out and up on the boards. This didn't work either. We tried using our carpet door mat ... no luck. Finally, after about an hour of trying, we called AAA. Thirty minutes later the tow truck showed up and winched Speedy out of the mudhole. It wasn't much of an early start any more.

By this time it was late and we needed to do some shopping, so we decided to drive east to Beaumont, about 25 miles on I-10, which passed right by Winnie, then continue on it through Lousiana. This trip through Winnie definitely felt like Ground Hog Day. We did the drive to Beaumont, stopped at the H-E-B there and stocked up. We'd forgotten how good a supermarket H-E-B is; it was our weekly market when we were at Aransas.

We then got back on I-10 with the plan to drive to Mississippi and Davis Bayou campground. The interstate part of the plan lasted about 60 miles, by the time we were approaching Lake Charles, we'd planned a detour. We took the I-210 by-pass then got onto Lousiana Rt 14, mostly a two-lane back road byway that we followed for about 100 miles, with a detour onto the Lacassine NWR (which was closed on Sunday), to US-90. It passed through a flat lowland rice growing area, with lots of flooded paddies.

US-90 at that point is a four-lane divided highway and we took it all the way to New Orleans. It was almost like a parkway road as there were virtually no trucks and the traffic was fairly light. All the trucks, I guessed, were taking I-10. We got off US-90 onto I-310 and then I-10, getting back onto US-90 on the east side of the city. It was a city surface road for a bit, but soon turned into a two-lane byway again going across the bayous at the east end of Lake Pontchartrain where it empties into Mississippi Sound.

We crossed the Pearl River and were in Mississippi. We had decided to just continue on to Mississippi, then quickly move on to Florida and connect up with our friends, Harry and Sally, who were heading west on the Gulf Coast as we headed east. So our goal was to get to Davis Bayou, spend a couple of days resting and making a plan to meet them, before our trek north.

US-90 returned to four lanes about 10 miles outside of Bay St. Louis and it stayed that way as a surface road all along the beach from Bay St. Louis, through Pass Christian, Gulfport and Biloxi. It was mostly a sedate drive until we got to Biloxi with its row of high-rise casinos right on the beach. The traffic here was pretty heavy, but once were were over the bridge across the Bay of Biloxi and into Ocean Springs, the road went inland a bit and it was only a few miles to Davis Bayou.

We arrived near sunset and as we entered the National Seashore, the sign said "Closed after Sunset". This was a bit disconcerting, but we drove on to find the campground gate still open. We drove up to the campground to find it ... full. Shut out two nights in a row! We attempted to reason with the campground host as there were several sites marked as "emergency" sites, but he wasn't at all convinced and pointed us back to Biloxi where we could boondock in a casino parking lot or stay at a commercial RV park there. That wasn't going to happen; we were exhausted and the thought of casino camping did not appeal.

We decided to opt for the local Walmart parking lot. It turned out that it was only a mile away, had a relatively dark area and a few places to get something for dinner right there.
We parked in the dark spot (which was dark, but being the route to the delivery area not  quiet), got take-out from Hibachi J, right next door, took a turn around the Walmart for a few more food items and settled in to figure out where to go from here.

We checked on Harry and Sally's plans and managed to reserve one night at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park that overlaps with their reservations. Working back from there, we figured that a day or two at Fort Pickens in the Gulf Islands NS would be a good stop on the way. The campground was closed until Tuesday due to flooding, but we were able to reserve two nights there. That left only Monday.

We found that there is a Mississippi State Park only 10 miles east of Ocean Springs (how the Davis Bayou campground host didn't know about it is beyond us) and checked availability. It seemed that there was plenty of room for Monday. We figured that we'd first try Davis Bayou in the morning and if it was still full, go to the state park.

The first thing we did when we got up this morning (not including getting coffee from the local MacDonald's) was to go over to the Walmart for an oil change. Speedy was a little overdue. That took about an hour in total and we went off to Davis Bayou again. They had a spot available, several in fact. Hot showers at last.

We took a nice site for the night. Ellen's ankle was feeling a bit better, so she took a short birdwalk. We had lunch, showered (they have a new restroom and shower building here with lots of hot water) and I attempted to clean the mud off Speedy in the afternoon. She looked like a vehicle Robin (and his off-roading) would love.

It was finally a restful day after a couple of long challenging ones. Tomorrow it is is on to Florida.

A Bad Day's worth of photos.