1/5 thru 1/9/2014 - Galveston State Park

For all our friends and family who are stuck "up north"

Good bye Winchell's - We had so much fun with you all!!

Sunday morning, we left Fairview State Park around 9:45 after a final (surprise) visit from Becky, Hope, and Meredith - they brought us beignets!  Who knows when we'll have those again?   We are really going to miss them (the Winchell's not the beignets).

It was 350 miles and 6 1/2 hours (according to our RV GPS) to Galveston so we were happy to make it there right after 5:00, that gave us 1/2 hour to set up before sunset.   The park office was closed but a sign indicated which sites were available so we just headed in and picked one.   The sites are all

Cold Monday Morning

basically the same, we chose one close to the bathrooms and to the path thru the dunes to the Gulf of Mexico.   We would prefer setting up with a little more light but we did fine.






We woke up Monday morning to a frozen water spigot - that's how cold it was down here in Texas!   With the wind chill, the temps were in the 20's, we definitely need to go further south.   Luckily, it warmed up and we had no further water problems.    No matter how cold it gets down here I know how much worse it is in Illinois and am very grateful to be here out of that mess.

We drove into the historic part of Galveston (The Strand) and I found the store that I shopped at 5 years ago when I was here with my mom and sister, Sue.    It's called "Yesterday's Best" and all they sell is FiestaWare!   When we were starting out putting things in our rig I had a very hard time deciding what kind of dishes to bring.   I really wanted to bring some of my FiestaWare but was afraid it would break and didn't want to take that chance.   After being on the road these past few months and talking to other full timers I was regretting that decision - so I just bought 4 square plates and they are much nicer to eat off of than the plastic ones I bought at Target for .99.   When we travel, I will just have to make sure the plates are protected but I'm sure it will be fine.  Can you tell that  FiestaWare makes me happy!

Look who we found hanging out in Galveston

The other store we went into was right next door, an antique store.  Both stores were hit hard by the hurricane in 2008, the antique store lost 95% of their merchandise.    We were there in July of 2008, two months before the hurricane and I bought a vintage sock monkey which Sarah now has - it's nice to know I saved it's life :).  

Once we got back in the truck we drove over to the Chevy dealership for an oil change and tire rotation.   We've driven the truck 10,000 miles since we purchased it back in June, 5800 of those miles since we started our travels in October.   It's hard to believe we already have that many miles!

On Tuesday morning we drove up and down the main beach highway looking for real estate offices where we could drop off some fliers to offer Marty's photography services while we're here.   We are only planning to be here until Sunday but if anyone calls we can always extend our time here - that's the beauty of being full-timers.   

We also went into town looking for an office supply store so we could buy more photo paper but Office Depot didn't have any and we haven't seen any other places to try.   While Marty went to Office Depot I saw a beauty salon and decided to get a hair cut.   I hated the thought of going to anyone besides my stylist, Michelle, but I really needed a hair cut!   Everything went fine and I'm glad I don't have to worry about that for a while.

I've started working with Mint.com to keep our finances in order.   I like it but it has taken a lot of time to get set up, I've worked on it a little bit every day and finally feel like it's done.   This satisfies my need to do some bookkeeping work - shhhhh don't tell the school but I guess I do miss my old job a little bit.  

Wednesday and Thursday were quiet days, we did laundry Wednesday and then we took our bikes down to the beach for a photo op.   We did actually ride about a mile on the hard sand and then got on the road for the return ride - 2 miles on our bikes is better than none.

Since our bikes did so well on the hard sand why not take a ride in the truck on the beach for another photo op - oh the joy of being married to a photographer!    There were actually quite a few vehicles out there although we were the closest to the water. 

Yikes - look how close we are to the water

Around 4:00 we went for a hour long walk on the beach and watched the sunset, doesn't that sound romantic?  When we came back we sat around the fire and roasted a few marshmallows.   We bought the giant marshmallows and they are really BIG (maybe that's why they're called giant?).   We each had three and were stuffed - it's a good thing we went for that looooooongwalk.