Mid-Winter Update from South Texas

We arrived in South Texas on October 19. Since we left here last March, we visited 14 states and one province, British Colombia, pulling our fifth wheel almost 7,000 miles. Of course our small car traveled more than twice that with all our side trips and touring.  All in all, it was an amazing summer.

 

It was good to get back home here at Marinoff, site number 10. We are continuing with our same volunteer jobs working for The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. There was plenty of work waiting for us, fence to fix/build, signs to replace and many roads to clear. It is nice to be needed and appreciated.

 

The week of February 3rd we took a week off and traveled 360 miles north to stay at Peregrine Townhouses at San Luis Pass, an island just southwest of Galveston. We had beautiful weather and a relaxing week.

Peregrine Townhouses at San Luis Pass

The toll bridge to Galveston Island was just three miles up the beach from our condo. Galveston is chuck full of things to do, most of them we have done in the past, so we concentrated on attractions we hadn't done before.
 
Along the Strand is The Grand 1894 Opera House. This beautiful 1,000 seat opera house survived the great Hurricane of 1900 along with Hurricane Ike in 2008. Both of these leaving eight feet of water in the theater. This theater still has many performances and plays. Some big name entertainers include: Loretta Lynn, The Oak Ridge Boys, Sophia Loren, Arlo Guthrie.

View from the Orchastra Floor

 

We took the Texas free ferry to the Bolivar Peninsula
and back just for fun.

We visited Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge and San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge to do some bird watching. One of the major attractions is the 20,000 snow geese that winter here. We also saw a fair number of Sandhill Cranes, ducks, grebes and shore birds. We spent a day exploring each of these refuges.

The San Bernard Oak Tree is the largest
live oak tree in the state.

The Sam Houston, a Houston Port Authority vessel, inspects the ship channel twice daily and allows visitors to ride free for the 90 minute trip. We took this trip over 20 years ago and found it very interesting, so we thought we would revisit this adventure.

Freighter Leaving Port