Texas Spring Wild Flowers

Just because I love the spring flowers….

Texas Bluebonnet

Aloe

Pink Evening Primrose

Verbena

White Prickly Poppy

Indian Paintbrush

Dayflower

Spiderwort

Where the Cardinals Go in the Winter

We all know that cardinals go south in the winter. Apparently they go to Texas. We’ve seen flocks of cardinals at Lake Corpus Christi and even more here at Goliad State Park. It’s relaxing to sit outside the RV and count the cardinals. They also have a bird station with feeders and water that attract the birds. This picture shows 5 male cardinals though you need to click on the picture to make it large enough to see them.

Goliad State Park is a good park to stay in. There is a restored mission within the park. The restoration was done in the 1930’s by the CCC. It looks similar to the nearby missions such as San Jose mission in San Antonio.

There are a few hiking trails along with hike/bike trails into town. The area is also big for geocaches in cemeteries. We biked or drove to several and found most of the geocaches.

In town is a “hanging tree”. Court decisions were handled quickly. Plus, apparently not all hangings went through the courts.

General Zaragoza was born near the park. He led a Mexican force against the French. His victory on May 5, 1862 is celebrated as Cinco de Mayo!

Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

I knew about the Alamo, but I didn’t know the story about Goliad or that it was part of the phrase used during the Texas Revolution. A month after the Alamo occurred (Mexico’s President General Santa Anna killing all the Texas fighters at the Alamo), another battle was fought at Goliad. The Texas side was losing the battle and decided to surrender to the Mexican forces to become prisoners of war. General Santa Anna (who wasn’t in the battle) refused to accept this and sent instructions to kill all the prisoners. The Mexican forces marched 3 groups of the prisoners out to separate fields and executed over 300 people in this massacre. The next month the Texans under Sam Houston rallied and defeated General Santa Anna. Mexico forces retreated leaving Texas to become independent.

This monument is where most of the soldiers are buried.

Some soldiers were saved by the “Angel of Goliad”.

Presidio La Bahia or Fort Defiance also has a church.

I thought Pensacola had a lot of flags over time (5), but there have been 9 different flags that flew over this fort over the years (3 different Texas revolutions, Texas, France, Spain, Mexico, US, Confederate).

Thor Problems, Again! (Thor Freedom Elite 2016)

The RV has been in the shop for five days now and now we are waiting for our 6^th day (1, 2). Which means we have to hang out in the Camping World waiting room. Now our microwave has failed. One would think that would be a quick fix, but apparently not. It’s going to take a month for it to be replaced. I’m not sure if that means they are building a microwave from scratch.  Do I sound bitter? Try living in an RV for a month without a microwave!

Plus, in making the last repair the San Antonio Camping World drilled a hole right through the side making for another potential leak. This is after they had to redrill a bunch of holes for screws that broke. While they sealed the old holes, they are all potential future leaks. 

We had problems with Camping World repairs already. Some items they fixed half-way. Some items they fixed but broke other items while making the first fix. Everything takes a LONG time. Though, it’s better than the Camper Clinic in Rockport. We called there hoping to get better repairs. It was 3 months before they had an open appointment. What?!

Another issue is the overall quality of the RV. The mattress is extremely uncomfortable (along with already collapsing again). We bought a pad for the top. John had to buy and install better vents on the top. The Thor ones were flimsy and it rained inside when it rained outside.

We’re not happy with the quality of the Thor RV or Camping World repairs!

Goose Island vs Mustang Island State Parks

Over the last few weeks we’ve visited both of these state parks. They aren’t far from each other, but a big difference in our opinions of them for camping.

The campsites at Goose Island are big and private. Mustang Island is basically a parking lot with every two campsites connected to each other so when you step out your front door you see your neighbor’s front door. If you have a small enough RV and are brave enough, you can stay on the beach. You have to be brave because there are all kinds of warnings that if you get stuck, the park doesn’t help. You have to pay big bucks to be towed. There were a group of small VW vans staying there while we were there.

You can walk the beach at Mustang Island, but right now it’s really windy. We biked to the geocaches in the park. But they are on a busy street with cars whizzing by. Not very fun.

The birds are varied at Goose Island with both birds in the tree areas (cardinals, warblers, titmouse (titmice??), and white-winged doves) and  seashore birds like roseate spoonbills, herons, egrets, ibis, and whooping cranes. The volunteers give several classes on birding. They are enthusiastic (2 hours per session looking at birds!). There are birds at Mustang, but they are mostly the noisy type (grackles and mockingbirds). 

Goose Island has different hiking trails and places to bike. There are geocaches in the park plus ones just outside that included a tennis ball geocache and one at a local cemetery. Of course, I always like stopping at cemeteries, especially older ones like this one. 

The class they have at Mustang wasn’t very impressive. One of the parts including touching sea anemones over and over for the fun of it. According to what I read on the internet (yes, I know not everything is true), oils on your hand hurt sea anemones.

Even though we don’t plan to return, sunrise is nice at Mustang Island.

Lake Corpus Christi State Park

Mostly people come to Lake Corpus Christi State Park for the lake and fishing. Not our thing. The birds are fascinating though. The first morning I step out thinking that a breeze was blowing through leaves when I looked up to see a flock of birds (swallows ?) fly past. Several of these flocks flew past over the next few minutes. Actually, they looked like large waves of birds. I’ve seen a lot of cardinals in my time. But instead of a pair, here they seem to come in groups of four to ten. Lots of these groups but difficult to get a good picture.

The coolest thing we’ve seen is a couple of gray foxes. I saw one on a morning walk while John saw one while on a bike ride. Actually, I knew about the normal red fox, but not the gray fox so I had no idea what I was seeing.

The park has been taken over by a certain type of grass. The grass is everywhere and choking out the native plants. I don’t know what they are planning to do to stop it, but they might be too late already.

This grass is just tall!

The ‘castle’ was built by the CCC in the 1930’s.

Quick story…I was on a walk and saw a deer looking into the bushes and not towards me. It turned and saw me. It was so startled it jumped and tried to turn quickly and fell to the ground on its side. Dust flew in the air as it spent several seconds on the ground trying to scramble up and run away. Finally it ran away into the bushes where it snorted for a while. Another deer was watching the whole thing. I just tried not to laugh, to be polite.

LA Trip

I had a business trip to Los Angeles. Dinner one night was at the dock (the others were late and at the hotel!).

This is the LAX Theme Building. It’s supposed to look like a space ship on large legs. I still can’t figure out how to get to it.

The car rental place is near Randy’s Doughnuts. I  can’t see it without looking for Iron Man.

My hotel is near the Armenian Genocide Martyrs Memorial. Quite a mouthful, but gorgeous.