South Padre, Padre, Mustang and Galveston Islands on the Gulf of Mexico are beautiful sandy havens for vacationers and northern winter escapees. The islands run along the Gulf Coast of Texas with Intracoastal Waterway separating them from the mainland and there are lots of bridges and ferries along the way. The beaches are wide enough to be a road and traffic is constant.
We bought a 30 day permit for $25 on South Padre Island. That would allow us to camp right on the beach and we planned to do that for a week. The first night was great – listening to the surf and seeing endless ocean. But the wind was relentless and fierce and the next day brought in a tidal surge that made it necessary to move off the beach. The tide brought water to under the RV and it was a scary move as the RV is a tank in wet sand. The tide and wind prevented us from ever getting back to the beach.
We visited Sea Turtle Inc while we were there. It is a sea turtle rescue/hospital started in the 1960’s. Sea turtles cannot retract their heads and legs into their shells like land turtles. So they are subject to injury – by getting entangled in fishing tackle, predator attack and boat propellers. Also sea turtles aren’t very smart (they have more room in their cranial cavity for salt glands than for brain matter) and don’t know the difference between food and garbage. So they eat lots of stuff they shouldn’t (too much garbage on the beaches) and may not be able to get rid of it and end up deathly ill. Injured and sick turtles wash up on the beach and are rescued by the folks at the rescue centre.
The goal is to get them back to health so they can be released back into the wild. For those too far gone but still survive, they either remain at the rescue or are sent to a zoo for educational purposes. The rescue has 4 or 5 permanent resident turtles. Allison was found with only 1 flipper, a victim of an attack. She could only swim in circles. Someone at the rescue designed a prosthetic that allows her to swim right and that adjusts as she grows. Fred the Loggerhead turtle is another permanent resident. He lost a flipper as a result of entanglement and he is almost blind (he kept bumping into the walls of his holding tank).
We wanted to find some warm weather so decided to travel to Florida quicker than we planned. The Texas coast is littered with oil refineries and the waterways heavy with tanker traffic. We drove though Rockport where hurricane Harvey destroyed lots of property. Galveston is hit with lots of hurricanes too, is 7 feet above sea level and subject to flooding. The hurricane that hit in 1900 destroyed the city. It was decided to raise the city when it was rebuilt. Pretty nearly every structure from Rockport to Galveston are built on stilts (and all along the coast into Florida). Galveston also built a sea wall. Main Street runs on top of it and the beach is right beside.
In New Iberia Louisiana we visited “Shadows on the Teche”. It is the home of a sugar plantation owner, built in 1830’s. The house was built with the best technology of the day. There are no stairways inside the house and no doorways connecting rooms on the bottom floor so as to not hinder any breeze that would blow through the house. Each room on the bottom level has a front door and a back door, which were left open most of the time to allow the breeze to flow. Access to those rooms are only from the outside. The staircases to the second floor are on the outside. Each bed was surrounded with mosquito netting, as were all the beds in the slave houses. It was a necessity then, but now the area is sprayed to keep mosquito population down. Trees were planted on the property in such a way that by the time the breeze reached the house it would be 15 degrees cooler. The Weeks plantation had 300 slaves.
The tour guide (who has Acadian roots with the Saulniers of Nova Scotia) told us there was a law from France communicated through the Catholic Church stating the slaves were to be treated fairly – including given housing, food, clothing and medical care. I asked who policed it, she said “peer pressure” – plantation owners “held each other accountable”. My “Spidey Senses” are tingling! However, she said when the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery all the slaves agreed to stay. They were paid $8/month in addition to all they had before. To me, “fair treatment” should have been that anyways. Heads of households of 4 generations of Weeks are buried in crypts among the well groomed gardens. The last male had no children and gave the property to the National Historic Trust.
The Bayou is very wet. Cattle can be seen grazing in soggy fields. Nice of the British to drop off the Acadians in a huge swamp! Rice is grown in great amounts. Originally it was grown for human consumption but it was discovered that crayfish eat rice. So now lots of rice fields are planted and crayfish traps are set in them. The crayfish market is better than the rice market. The Tabasco factory is located not far from New Iberia. It is the only place in the world where Tabasco Sauce is made and they make so many different flavors – most we have not seen where we come from.
A trip to Louisiana wouldn’t be complete without a visit to New Orleans and the mighty Mississippi river. We parked the RV and took the trolley to the French Quarter. It was fascinating just to walk around. There were lots of restaurants, shops and street vendors. We had lunch at a cafe where a guy played the piano and sang jazz blues. The architecture down Canal Street is quite old and well cared for. We saw large cemeteries there that were full of huge ornate crypts. There must have been a sale on bridges because SW Texas and Louisiana have tons of them and in New Orleans they are stacked one upon another! On a long and high bridge leading east out of New Orleans, Doug hung on to the RV as the strong wind just wanted to push us over the edge. Wind and bridges are met with lots of prayer!
We zipped through Mississippi and Alabama. The beaches in the Florida panhandle are beautiful – we had to deal with drifts of white sand! Opulence and decadence characterize the homes. Hurricane Michael hit the coast last October and we witnessed the devastation it left, from Panama City to Mexico Beach (and 50 miles+ east) where it landed as a category 4 with 150mph wind and a storm surge as high as 14 feet. Just like the beauty of the desert, pictures cannot capture the sights – whole stands of trees snapped in two, parts of buildings missing, whole houses gone off foundations, garbage piled high, debris scattered all over the place and roads broken up. It will take years to rebuild and clean up.
The Lord has blessed us with safety on the roads and has kept our vehicle trouble free (and have seen zero snakes!). We look forward to spending the next month or so in Florida where there is some heat and where we will enjoy the company of some dear friends.
Let's Do The 180! 