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1 to 15 March 2017 16 to 31 March 2017

Thursday March 16, 2017

A light drizzle is coming down this morning.
We are going back to Blanco to visit and to look for more caches.
Another tree in the middle of the road.

Blanco has another distillery.
It is the Andalusia Whiskey Co.

Really nice tasting room.

Me and my whiskey.

This is Henry, he is the one telling us all about the different whiskey made here.

This is the three whiskey made here, the White Pearl, Stryker and the Revenant Oak.

It costs $8 for the tasting of all three of them.

Here are the description of the three whiskey.

Michele took a Bloody Mary made with the White Pearl Whiskey.
It was very good.

Once back home, we settle in for some reading...

Friday March 17, 2017

Time to move, we are leaving Blanco to go to Victoria. A short drive of 240 km.

Weird way to advertise your skydiving school...

Always nice to see!

New RVs?

A Yucca with its flower.

Victoria, Texas.

WOW! The gasoline is cheap here!

Our new home for a week, the Lazy Longhorn.

This is the Lazy Longhorn...

It is +28°C right now.
The forecast for the next 10 days, the same temperature.

Saturday March 18, 2017

The price for a week is $125 plus electricity, not bad at all!

I like those reminders...

Every road in the RV Park are made of cement.

The pool area with the hot tub in the corner.

Every site is on a cement pad.

It is a very nice looking RV Park.

We have met 2 couples from Québec and they are really nice people

Sunday March 19,2017

A day for reading in the shade.
While we were reading, we could hear some bird under and on the other side of the MH.
I went to check it out, nothing.
Later I went for a walk and on my way back I saw a bird going under the slide.

I'll be darned, the birds have built a nest under the slide. I take it down and place some rags to block the holes.

The remnant of the nest.

All afternoon we could hear the birds trying to get back in the hole. They finally gave up and took the grass from the nest and went to build another one somewhere else.

It is so nice to have more then one day of hot weather...

Monday March 20, 2015

A quiet day at home.
I cannot go in the pool anymore. My rash has come back, but Michele can and she does, good for her.

We do a lot of reading in the shade.

Tuesday March 21, 2017

We treat ourselves to lunch at the local Chinese buffet.
This is a very nice place. We got there at 11:30h, but the food was just warm, not hot.
By the time we were done the food was hot.

I forgot to mention, they had crawfish on the buffet line. I ate a lot of them. The only downside is that they were the first crop of the season and some of them tasted muddy. It is normal for the first crop.

I guess girls do!

We love these kinds of advertisement.

Victoria is a bigger city than we expected. It has a population of over 62,000 people.

Wednesday March 22, 2017

We are geocaching in Victoria this morning.

Dodge must be the best selling truck in Victoria!

As I was getting closer to a cache, I had to wait for a car to go by before I could take the cache out to sign the log.

A nice street in Victoria.

Most, if not all of the waterways, have muddy water.

Once we are back home, I decide to "clean" the front headlight. It has yellowed and not allowing much light to go out.

I park the car on the next empty site, in the shade, to work on the headlight. A few minutes later, one of the work camper comes out and tells me I cannot park on empty sites. I tried to explain to him I would not be very long.
No can do!
I have to move the car to our site, in the bright sunshine. It is very sunny with a +28°C. That kind of make me go a little faster on the cleaning up of the headlight.
The headlight I "fixed" is the driver side headlight. It did not come out as clear as I wanted, but the heat was too much for me. It is already 200% better.

With me moving in the sun, I got a sunburn on my head in about 20 minutes.

Denis the Chef.

The worst part in this is that many other campers have parked on other empty sites with no problems!!!

Thursday March 23, 2017

Our last day in Victoria.
We are visiting "The Texas Zoo".

It is a small, not for profit zoo.
The gift shop and entrance.

Two beautiful macaw.
They looked at us for a bit and one turned around.

What a surprise! They started to clean each other's rear-end feathers!!!

OK!

We enter in the world of snakes and other creatures.
This one is trying to impress us by standing tall.

When you see a photo of a snake, sometimes you wonder why this type of patterns and colors on the skin.
Now you see why...

You want snakes, they have snakes...

I do not like big hairy spiders.

Next, the animals outdoor.
We saw many different type/variety of foxes/coyotes.

Hitting on the girls.

The emus are not pretty birds.

Next are the monkeys...

That is something I did not know, some monkeys have no thumbs!

We saw some eagles and some kinds of wild pigs.

That is one mean looking otter!

Sunbathing.

A different type of macaw.

One of those pink flamingos.

No sun for this tiger.

Three new residents, they are barn owls.

It took us a little over an hour to visit the zoo. It is small, but nice.

So what do we do after the zoo? Look for caches!

We had lunch at Whataburger.

First time we see a pedestrian crossing like this one.

We had a good day, we visited a zoo and found 10 caches today.

Friday March 24, 2017

We are leaving Victoria to go to our next destination, Magnolia Beach. It is about 60 km south of here.

They sure have beautiful roads around here. We have a strong headwind, but we do not have to drive too long into it.

A V.F.W. "Veteran of Foreign War" post with a cobra helicopter in front.

Maybe I will go for a beer in there!

You know you are getting close to the coast when you start to see house on stilts.

Magnolia Beach, is a small village on Matagorda Bay.
The beach is made up of broken down seashells. You can camp for free on the beach. This is for dry camping only.
We camped here in December 2011.

The buildings are all glasses!

This going to be home for the next few days. We are lucky, we got a spot with a shelter.

A little bit of grass and then the beach.

I put together photos to give you an idea of the view we have from the MH.

We went out for a drive in Magnolia Beach. It is not very big, 8 streets by 8 streets.
As we were driving home, we saw this man fishing with a net. We stopped to watch him work the net.
He is getting ready to throw the net.

Out goes the net.

He pulls on the rope to close the net and bring it back the catch to shore.

He got three fish this time, but he put them all back in the water.

His son is practicing too, he is not too bad...

Back at home, we spent the rest of the day reading in the shade with a cool beverage.
The wind is blew very hard all day, not fun.

Saturday March 25, 2017

Today the wind is coming the opposite way from yesterday.
It is a light wind.
We sit outside and look at the ships as they go by.
We watched the bow of the ship to see the dolphin jumping ahead.

This is really nice.

You can see many different fishing techniques here in Magnolia Beach. This one guy is in the water to throw his bait as far as possible.

And then, you have the high tech fisherman.

This guy is using a pneumatic cannon to send his bait very very far...

Denis as the cook!

Life is good!

Today was a very good day for us.

Sunday March 26, 2017

I spent the morning reading and watching ships go by.

Michele suggested that we go to Port Lavaca and do a little groceries shopping. We are leaving tomorrow and we do not know what kind of groceries stores will be available at our destination.

We are back home in a little over an hour.
We take that time to look for the only cache nearby.

Another section of Magnolia Beach.

The chairs are screwed to the dock...

We are getting closer to home. Many Quebecers are camped here. They are traveling back home after spending the winter in southern Texas.

A pretty photo of my lovely wife Michele...

We are doing some preparation for tomorrow's traveling day.

One last look before darkness...

I forgot, we had a nice conversation with a couple from Quebec, nice people.
We also met a couple from Nova-Scotia, very nice people. We talked a lot about traveling in the south.
Nice meeting you Greg and.... Shoot, I forgot his wife's name!!!

Monday March 27, 2015

It is time to move.
We had no problem boondoking or dry camping, for 4 nights.
For people who do not know what is dry camping, it simply means to camp with no services. Like no city water, no electricity and no sewer.
The car is now hooked up to the MH, last check being carried out and we will be leaving very soon.

Goodbye Magnolia Beach.

We have to go in Port Lavaca and make a quick stop.

The municipal park has a dump station and it only costs $10 to dump. Time go get rid of all that used water and weight.

It is bridge country when you are next to the Gulf of Mexico.
Here is and old one left to rot.

This is low land and it is good for farming.

No one freaks out about oil industry, next to farmland, next to the gulf!

Being so close to the coast, many business have a maritime theme.

We drive through many cute little towns.

Our Rand McNally RV GPS is confused and it is not very user-friendly when you want to change the road you want to take. Basically, I do not like it at all. I will put it back in its box and sell it.

We are now coming up to the beach. We will be driving by the beach until we get to Bolivar Peninsula and our RV Park.

There is always a post in the way!
We are starting our "beach travel" at Surfside Beach.

We will be on the peninsula until we get to our RV Park.
This is Beach Country.

One of the bridge we have to cross cost a big $2.
A lot of people are fishing today.

It sure looks narrow, but we made it no problems.

From the little cottage to the big house to the condo.

We are in Galveston, a touristy town, but also a busy port.

You can find anything in Galveston.

We are not staying in Galveston. We are taking the ferry to get to the Bolivar Peninsula.

Our ferry, the Gibb Gilchrist. Gibb was a boss in the Department of transportation of Texas many years ago.

The ferry is free. You can have up to 5 ferries going during rush hours.

All lined up!

I wonder, was it from a storm or on purpose?

I am being driven, the ferry is not following what the GPS is saying. This is the GPS I will be selling...

We are lucky, just as we got to the ferry, we got on the ferry!
We are now on the Bolivar Peninsula.

Some times you just wonder "why?"

We made it to our new home for the next four nights.

A view of the RV park. This is not the only space, you have as many more sites on the right.

It is nice and warm outside (+28°C), but the wind is blowing hard.

Today's travel, we started at the green square and stopped at the red square.

The roads were nice, but I am so disappointed in our GPS. When you want to change route on the fly, it is not easy, even impossible. I am going back to our old, small, but easy to use Garmin GPS.

Tuesday March 28, 2017

It is nice and warm again, but hardly any winds.
We went to the beach, but is was not nice. So what do we do? Geocaching!
What a nice house.

We love this sign!

After finding a cache near the pier, we took a walk on the pier.

Close to our RV Park, there is a store selling kites. This one is a giant one.

A nice camouflaged cache.

Another view of our site.

When we hooked up the car to the MH and connected the lights, we had problems with the connection.
Time to use the dremel tool and clean up the connectors.

I guess we will see if it works better the next time.

Wednesday March 29, 2017

The forecast for today is not nice. The morning is OK, but the wind is blowing hard again.
Here I am checking the local traffic!

A few days ago I bought some frozen crawfish at the Walmart, today is the day I eat them.
This is a 3 pounds bag I bought for $10.00. I warm them up in the microwave and enjoyed them.

They were OK, but next time I will steam them.
We had some rains in the afternoon with some very strong winds. We are also under a tornado watch and flood watch.
It turns out with nothing other than strong winds.
We did go to the beach.

I do not think we will be driving on the beach today!

The end of another day.

Thursday March 30, 2017

I am having a conversation with a neighbor.

With the beautiful sunny day we are having, we head to the beach for some beach driving.
It sure did not take long to clean up the beach!

This is an old house, but it looks like it will be renovated soon.

Not too many people on the beach today!

After 12 km on the beach, time to head back home.

Another day relaxing at home.

Friday March 31, 2017

Time to move again. We leave Crystal Beach under this beautiful blue sky, but the wind does blow hard.

The end of hwy 87 is very near the water.

Once again, pumping oil near the Gulf and nobody freaks out!

We are barely 3 feet above sea level.
We are coming up to the bridge going over the "Intracoastal Waterway".

The intracoastal is busy here. We are on the highest point for many miles around!

This is a neat way to advertise your school!

After about 60 km, we get on the I-10 east.
Right away we have construction. This is a narrow lane...

All along the I-10 in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, rice is king.

We enter in Louisiana one hour and half after we left Bolivar Peninsula.

Another big bridge, this one is in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

We are in "Cajun" country.
I guess so is the radio station!

We leave I-10 to head north to Eunice.

It is lunch time and we stopped at a local church parking lot to have our lunch.
I am coming back from the main street, I was just checking it out for when we go out.

This is rice and crawfish country. The small dot you see on the water are the top of the cages used to harvest the crawfish. Next photo shows another field in rice mode.

There is not much water in the pond. This is the type of contraption used to harvest the Crawfish.

At times, it looks like the water is above the street level or even the house!

Eunice! Too many advertisement when you are coming the town...

Our new home is a little to the east of Eunice.
We are at the L'Acadie Inn & RV Park.

Here is a map of the route we took today. We left from the green square and arrived at the red square, a little over 300 km.
Very nice roads except when we were in town and cities. Than the roads were terrible. Even our blinds came off from the windows!!!
Louisiana does not have nice roads in cities.

Once we were all done setting up, we headed to town and the information center.
A little story on how the town got its name.

The lady at the information center was very good. She told us all about the activities happening this weekend in Eunice.

Everything takes place on the weekend. From Friday evening with a "no red meat" meal (they are very Christians) to the jam session, cooking class and concert taking place Saturday. Sunday every touristy stuff is shut down!
So, we started with the museum next to the information center.