Month: March 2014

March Break for the Carters, (well the Carter girls, Rob still worked this week) started with the arrival of Colleen & Wes on Saturday.
We were able to keep it a secret from the girls and went to the airport to pick up ‘something that Dad needs for the solar panels’ and they fell for it! They were really excited to see them, we even had a couple teary girls.
We left Bird Island and moved over to the Malaquite Campground which was separated from the beach by a dune!

We spent the week hanging out at the beach, we spent one day at the USS Lexington a decommissioned aircraft carrier, no usually my thing but it was interesting to see, we went to the Aquarium the one day and ate some yummy food!

Beach Time! It was a wee chilly some days but not -20C so we were NOT complaining!

some shopping in the shark while laundry was doing it’s thing….

 
Texas State Aquarium! Very nice and had both indoor & outdoor areas. Perfect for a sunny day.


 
We even went on a wee hike.

It was windy. Windy was the theme of the week.

And of course there was food. Lots of good food.

 
One of the highlights of the week were the ghost crabs. If you go down to the beach at night they are EVERYWHERE. All sizes.
Ava hated it.
Every minute her feet were on the ground was torture.
For all of us.
But we got smart the second night we went out looking and sat on a picnic table and saw some AWESOME crabs cleaning out their homes.  Super super fun.

All in all a great week was had by everyone AND our solar panel are AWESOME. We stayed at Bird Island until a spot opened up at the other site and moved over on Monday. We were able to keep our battery juiced and stay off the grid that whole time (with one dump in the middle). Now the boondocking options are endless!

You know when you drive up to a place and immeadiataely you think – ‘this is one cool spot’, that is exactly what was going through my mind as we drove to this park.
Firstly it is remote, like about 20 miles to the nearest anything. Secondly it is untouched. No random highrises on the horizon, just open-ness as far as the eye can see.

We arrived during Spring Break. We knew that it was going to be busy so we arrived a day earlier hoping to secure a spot prior to our guests arriving on Saturday.
The whole campground is non-reservable. We went to the first spot where we hoped to camp.
FULL.
Try the south beach they said. So we drove to the South Beach, apparently you can usually drive a 2 wheel drive vehicle down the first 5 miles of beach and find a site. We drove our mother huge self down onto the beach and it was PACKED.
I got out and looked down the beach for options and saw a 4w drive truck stuck in the sand up to its bumpers. Nope. No way, not going to do it. It was so tight in there we couldn’t turn around.
Back up the bus baby, all the way up the hill.
le sigh.
So we had one option left, Bird Island Basin. This is a strip of hypersaline water between Padre Island and the mainland, famouse for its fishing and windsurfing. And super tight campsites. BUT there was a site there, one of 2 left in the entire place and beggers can’t be choosers so we parked and set up!
 
Turns out there was another family two sites down with 5 kids. Insta-playmeates and quiet times for both mamas means super happy mamas!

The girls did a bit of ‘snorkelling’ the water was too cold for actual swimming, so they improvised.

 

so up until this point we have been camping at places that have hook-ups. most have at least water and electricity and others have full hook-ups which means we can dump our tanks right at our site.
we have done a lot of research and can camp for a lot cheaper and in some really cool places if we can ‘dry camp’. this means that we have to be able to live off the battery that we have for electricity, be able to deal with water that we can carry in our tank and keep within the capacity of our grey (kitchen and bathroom water) and black tanks (sewer). in addition to electricity that we need to live, lights, some charging of devices etc, we also NEED to be able to put our slides in and to use the power tongue to get the trailer hooked onto the truck. we’ve decided to buy a solar charger that we will be meeting in Corpus Christi but are going to try our hand at a couple nights of dry camping.
enter Sea Rim State Park.
we ended up staying at Bayou Sengette a night longer, firstly the weather was better in New Orleans AND the kids begged to stay to play with their friends on more day. a family ‘moved in’ across the way from us with 4 kids and are on a similar adventure & they all have scooters. match made in heaven! we spent the day at the park, the kids scootered and we went on a few hikes or kikes as Bella calls them.

we arrived to Sea Rim and there was no one in sight, no one in sight for the next 24 or so hours. this park was destroyed by Hurricaine Rita and is just getting back on its feet.

 

we had a blustery day off the grid, schooling and flying kites,

then the wind died and the mosquitos came.
there were swarms. I
have seen a lot of days of bad mosquitos and these ones were intense and they found a spot to get into the girls room, just above the slide for their closet and they were STREAMING in.
it went from ‘Mom, there is a mosquito in here’ to all lights on, shoving clothes in the cracks and a 20 minute killing spree by myself and the girls while Rob ran into town to get some spray (and gas for travel the next day), they were intense!
we got everything hooked up and survived our first ‘off the grid’ camping! now off to Corpus Christi for our March Break visitors!
oh and things I love about Texas.  Grapefruit – 8kg for $2.97.  I might never go home.

so we got suckered – 100%.
well maybe not 100% but we had kinda decided before we got to Louisiana that we probably wouldn’t do a swamp tour, we are trying to be smart with our money and we’ve been able to do a lot of walking in the swamp.
But then Sydney got in her head she wanted to go on a swamp tour.
She begged and pleaded.
That’s not a norm for her and she REALLY wanted to go, so we relented. And then told them we were going to Walmart for the afternoon.  Bahaha – the small joys you get as tormenting your kids.
I had found a Group-on and we saved a tonne of money.
Problem solved. I have this knack of ‘saving’ money while spending money. I think I inherited it from my mom!
In the end the tour was awesome! We all had so much fun.
It was about 30 minutes from where we are camped and the tour company is called Cajun Pride Swamp Tours.

Our boat ‘captain’ was my uncle Derry.
True story.
Well not ACTUALLY my uncle Derry, a Cajun version but reminded me a lot of him.

Not only did we get to take a nice ride in the swamp, we got to see some alligators, turtles, birds, racoons and a snake.
But we also got to learn about the Cajun culture and learnt lots of historical information in addition to all the things we learned about the main attraction, the alligators.

 
And we got to hold an alligator – she was about 3 years old.
There was NO way we could convince Ava to even touch it but the rest of us got a chance, even Bella petted her leg!

We would definitely recommend doing a swamp tour with this company. Very informative and fun. Apparently we saw only about a 1/10th of the alligators they have during the warmer seasons, that’s when the BIG ones come out to play!
 

We took an afternoon to go downtown & do some sight seeing.  We took the ferry from Algiers Point over to the downtown core to avoid having to drive/park in the craziness that was the post-Mardi Gras & Spring Break New Orleans.

We had a nice time walking around the French Quarter, watching some street performers, we had a beignets from the famous Cafe du Monde then made our way home!

 

The kids were generally unenthused about the city sightseeing – they often compared things to ‘well in Istanbul…’, very funny but a good afternoon was had by all!