Breezy Day at the Gulf

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 -- Drifters RV Resort near Rockport, TX

There's a broad coastal plain that follows the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico stretching all the way from New Orleans, through Texas, to Mexico. This long arc of land is about the flattest land I've ever seen -- flatness that rivals parts of Illinois, Indiana, and the Canadian Great Plains. It's said that raindrops develop a severe case of indecisiveness when they don't know which direction to flow after hitting the ground. So they just sit there, evaporate, and make the air humid.

All this flatness can also make breezy days a challenge for driving an RV... like today. When the wind blows off the Gulf, there's nothing to stop it or slow it down. The last few days there's a big storm system in the central part of the country that's sucking humid air out of the Gulf. Since we've been in Victoria on Sunday, the winds have been howling.

The owner of the coach and I had a little "safety meeting" this morning, prior to leaving Victoria. It seems the owner, who's also the safety director, was concerned that the wind, blowing at 15 to 20mph and gusting higher, may be reason to stay in Victoria another day and take our chances with the higher probability of rain predicted for tomorrow. All I could think of was the safety meetings they have before every space shuttle launch -- and how decisions can come back to haunt. I listened to her concerns and went quietly outside to check out conditions... took the trash to the dumpster... watched trucks and other RV's going by out on the highway... wetted my finger and stuck it up in the air... tried to remember if we had any O-rings that could cause us a problem. I held my breath and threw the dice. And the decision was made to "go". We drove boldly into the stiff headwind.

(An aside: There's something that happens that when you're traveling in your RV -- the wind is almost always a headwind; it's rarely pushing you. I don't know why, but others I've talked to about this agree. More study is needed on this.)

So we arrived at the Drifters RV Resort just South of Rockport just after 2pm. Registering, parking, and completely setting up house took a half-hour. Meeting all the neighbors took much longer. We then drove into town, got some local touristy information at the Chamber of Commerce, and checked out the town. There's a large fishing fleet based here and the town, in general, feels like a lot of beach towns I've been to in the past -- very laid back, casual, everyone very friendly. It's great.

We'll be here for three nights and will move on Friday over to the place we plan to spend the holidays, just a few miles away. In both places, this one and the one we're moving to later in the week, we're within sight of Aransas Bay and the Gulf. We're a little over a hundred miles from the southern tip of Texas so this should "take the edge off" winter as we'd planned.

T