Month: March 2014

After leaving Guadalupe River State Park we headed down the highway on what we thought was going to be a 5 or so hour trek down the highway.
We learned something new.
Google Maps does NOT take into consideration that we are hauling a big massive trailer, the headwind OR the big hills.
So the speed limit was 80mph.
The Carters were hitting a top speed of 60mph.  On the downslopes.
So what was supposed to be about 5.5 hours turned into about 8. oops.
We made it to the park, (Google Maps also tried to kill us by sending us down a road that didn’t exist) and it was dark.   But Praise the Lord, there was a site and it was a pull through!  We unhooked, pitched the kids in bed and woke up to this.



Sand sand sand.  Super fun.  We will carry it with us, close to our hearts and in our trailer for the duration of our journey.
We had a lazy Saturday morning, then went up to the visitor’s centre to rent some sleds and a snowboard.

It was a pretty short walk to “Mount Everest”.

 
But we were not taking off down the hills as we thought we might be.  We tried making trails but still was a bit sluggish.

We saw some other people with wax that they were rubbing on the bottom of their sleds, much better. We didn’t have wax so I asked good ol Google what to do and it said WD-40.  So Rob went and got ours and sliding was SUPER fun from then on.

 
It was great fun minus the crazy blowing sand but what do you expect in the land of sand and wind?
On Sunday we went to a really nice church and got taken out to lunch by an older lady & her husband! Super nice. The rest of the day was pretty windy and hot so we played some games & hung out inside.
Just before bedtime I thought it would be a good idea to have a little walk around the circle to blow off some energy. Rob was sceptical of my idea because of my track record with before bedtime walks but this one turned out well.
The walking around the camping circle was a bit like being shot at by tiny shards of glass at high speed. But once we got up on the dunes we were able to play & watch the sunset!


We had a great time at this park but three nights was a good amount of time to stay.
So. much. sand.
On to New Mexico!

So we were sitting at our campsite the other day and noticed a flurry of activity at the campsite across the way.

(And yes I am a total stalker and I was TOTALLY taking pictures from the door and windows, Sydney was mortified.)
Photographers and models dressed (or mostly undressed) to the nines.
For the rest of the afternoon, all around us they were doing a photoshoot on the dunes.


 
It was like watching America’s Next Top Model.
It was crazy.  Some of the poses were so funny, I’m sure the pictures turned out beautiful but the girls and I had a fun time watching the ‘production’.
 
The next night the girls and I had our own dunes ANTM moment.
TOO hilarious for words.

These kids have a great sense of humour.
Probably not a future in modelling but a good sense of humour!

Great Wolf Lodge has nothing on this place!
We stayed at Guadalupe River State Park for 4 nights, we had a great site and the park was really quiet.

 

 
The river where we went was calm, shallow and perfect for some lazy river action.  The water was COLD though.  Apparently they do get some really high water here but this river does not look anything like the mighty Moose.  Kinda looks more like a creek.  🙂

you can see where the water does get higher and I suppose at times gets all the way up, hard to imagine.

 
throwing rocks, trying to reach the other side. this is a wild and dangerous activity with these kids, I couldn’t figure out if closer together or further apart was safer.
we had a few near misses and not for hitting the bank on the other side!

 
There was a “bird blind” where you could get close to the feeders, we were able to see some hummingbirds, cardinals, lesser goldfinch, carolina chickadee and some others.  Our bird book is well worn already on this trip!


 
We were able to do a geocache on the afternoon that we were leaving – after the cache the kids and I decided to head down to the river where we were and Rob would get the trailer and meet us at the ‘beach’.

We could see the river and headed down a path.
Turned out it was a bit steep down to the water.

But the girls did great helping each other along and we were awarded with a beautiful walk by the river.

 
This was the hottest day yet, about 30 degrees Celcius and humid.  We did a little lazy river fun before getting on down the highway.

 
Great time at Guadalupe River State Park – highly recommended!

 
 
 

We had a rainy rainy day at the San Antonio Zoo.
I checked the weather, it said 50% of chance of rain in the morning.  It did not mention anything about torrential downpours, rivers in the streets.
Our campsite was about 40 minutes from the zoo, Rob planned to work for most of the day while I took the kids into the zoo.
I packed the kids raincoats just in case. Rainpants, rubber boots did not get packed.  Apparently my brain was not turned on, or I was terribly optimistic that day.
Regardless we drove to the zoo, no rain.
We got to the zoo. Torrential downpour.
For about 3 hours off and on. Mostly on.
BUT we made the best of it.  We had rain coats and I rented a stroller so Bella and someone else could be out of the rain.

Turns out that no one goes to the zoo when its pouring rain so we had most of the place to ourselves and then also when it stopped raining all of the animals came out to sit in the sunshine so we got to see everything!


All in all it was a great day.  The San Antonio Zoo is an older one, celebrating its 100 year anniversary this year, so it has lots of character, good variety of everything, you can get close to lots of things, some of the enclosures were smaller than I’ve seen at the Toronto Zoo but overall it was a really good day.
Rain and all.
According to Trip Advisor (I spend a LOT of time on Trip Advisor these last months) THE thing to do in San Antonio is the Riverwalk.  So we hemmed and hawed (is that how you spell that?) – but decided that we likely were not going to be downtown again so we should go for it.
It turned out to be really cool, after we found it, that’s another story.


 
We planned to have a snack and head on home.  We stopped at a restaurant, ordered a couple appetizers to share.


Turns out Nachos Supreme with chicken consists of 12 nachos.  For 12 dollars. Not a lie.
Anyhoos, we each had a few bites to eat.
Sydney dropped a knife in the San Antonio River.

We had a good laugh & headed on home!

one would think that since we’ve been ‘on the road’ for about six weeks now and have hooked and unhooked the trailer a lot that we could plan to hook up and go and there would be no kinks. that leaving a campsite and driving to another one about 3 hours away should take about 3 hours. not 7. if only.
so we left Padre National Seashore.

 
it was hard to leave the Gulf of Mexico, I’m not going to lie. We have been very close to it for the last six weeks and I don’t know when we are going to see her again. So many things to explore, I feel like we just scratched the surface. But as I look at the map and see all the other places we’d like to see we knew we had to move on. Plus it was rainy and cold and expected to be for the next week. So see ya later Gulf of Mexico!

 
Before we left the big girls and myself went for one last walk on the beach, we saw some Portugese Man o’war, which was cool, we hadn’t seen those yet,

Jade saved a Monarch butterfly from certain death.

she brought it up from the beach and put it on a flower…

and Ava found a dead sea star which she wanted to bring home. Super duper.

We hooked up the trailer, so proud of ourselves to get going at a decent hour. We pulled over to turn off the propane (which we had forgot to do) about 10 minutes down the road and realized that the left blinker on the trailer wasn’t working.
Boo.
Not super smart to drive with a bulb out. So we decided to find a place to pull this big rig into somewhere to get a bulb.
No prob, got a place, the Good year gave us a few bulbs for free.
Awesome.
Then realized that not only was the left blinker not working, the brake lights on the trailer weren’t working either.
Big Sigh.
We check them regularly before we tow so we knew this was a new development.
So we are in a random parking lot, in the middle of Corpus Christi, calling every RV shop we can find, googling every possible solution, trying every possible solution.
Then the sea star. It revives. Moves its leg. Ava is having a FREAK out.
And Bella has to poop.
Shoot me now.
All is well that ends well, I convinced Rob to pop the hood of the truck (even though there was nothing wrong with the engine, hoping a good Samaritian with random trailer knowledge would stop by) and after a lot of free advice from about 5 RV shops that were too busy to have us come in, a lot of prayer, a lot of google and the help of an angel named Larry who stopped by we figured out that we had a ‘ground’ problem.
whatever that is.
they fixed it while I took the kids for a walk to Walgreen to recify the bathroom situation and get them a treat cause they were being troopers.
we then doubled back a bit until we could see the Gulf, we passed over a bridge and threw the now almost armless sea star back in. he made it, he totally did.
right in the water.
he will live a long full life now.     true story.

We got on the road, ended up sitting in a lot more traffic than anticipate in San Antonio but got to our destination Guadaloupe River State Park in one piece. The kids travelled like pros and its really nice here, we might stay longer than the couple days we had planned!