Easin’ On Down The Road..

  Our week here at Lake Corpus Christi State Park is up tomorrow, and we are movin’ on a little farther East to Mustang Island State Park…Here I go again with some history…”Mustang Island State Park is a state park located south of the city of Port Aransas, Texas, United States on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico that covers 3,954 acres (1,600 ha) and has a 5-mile (8.0 km) beachfront. The land was acquired from private owners in 1972 and opened to the public in 1979. The earliest known inhabitants of Mustang Island were Karankawa Indians. The Karankawas were a hunter-gatherer people, and lived off the shellfish and mussels they caught in the Gulf.

The first historical record of Mustang Island was by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, a Spanish Explorer, who charted the island in 1519. In 1747. Padre Island was part of a Spanish land grant to Padre Nicholas Balli about 1800, and the Balli family established a ranch that lasted for several decades. Records show that an Englishman named Robert A. Mercer and one H. L. Kinney both ran cattle on Mustang Island in the 1850s. A fort was built on Mustang Island during the Mexican-American War, 1846–48, to guard the entrance to Aransas Bay. During the Civil War, the coastal area was blockaded by the Union Navy, but the conflict ended with no major battles occurring in the area.”

Ok, that is the boring part of Mustang Island’s history…Now for the exciting stuff….( I love a good “legend”)…

“The island was first called Wild Horse Island, and then Mustang Island because of the wild horses called "mesterios" brought to the island by the Spaniards in the 1800's. 
Jean Lafitte and his band of buccaneers spent a lot of time on neighboring islands as well as Mustang Island in the 1820's. Legend has it that somewhere on the island is a Spanish dagger with a silver spike driven through the hilt marking the spot where Lafitte buried a chest of gold and jewels.”

WOOT! WOOT!…Those 3 little words “legend has it” are an open invitation for me to do some day dreaming of just WHERE that treasure chest could be buried…MacGyver already hinted that he wouldn’t be surprised to find me digging my way to China, via Mustang beach with a plastic pail and shovel…ah, yes, the man knows me well after 44 years.

So, today we did some “clean up “ on the GMC…In most of the campgrounds here you can’t wash your vehicle, but I have ways around that.  Hey, I just filled a bucked with water and enlisted Den’s help. (My back is better but NOT 100%  yet).  Dennis washed the GMC off with the long handled brush and I came behind him with my 2 towels and wiped ‘er down…Black trucks-grrrrrrr. Never again black. Usually it’s MOI who washes the vehicles in this family. I have this obsession about driving a clean truck, and a clean rig. Washing the black truck is bad enough, but washing the Hiker is akin to diapering a dinosaur. ;-)

This last weekend we were invaded by families with tents. The long weekend with Monday being a holiday brought out lots of kids with fishing poles and bikes.  They were all well behaved and I loved watching the kids fishing in the backwater right by our campsite…They all left on Monday..AND…they left a good supply of campfire wood behind…SCORE!!! We aren’t allowed to “gather” wood in the park, but they didn’t say anything about taking it from a vacated campsite…Yes, Dennis and I are “firewood whores”…we will do anything for campfire wood..almost!

 

 

Look closely here and you will see MacGyver and the GMC coming to the aid of a camper whose car wouldn’t start when he and  his family of 4 went to leave.  We must look like we carry everything here at the Cave Dweller’s campsite..This man wondered if we carried jumper cables…OF COURSE WE DO! WE ARE MR. AND MRS. MACGYVER!!…

Then, yesterday, one of the campers came up to me while I was sunning myself and asked if we had any WD40…He couldn’t get into the compartments of his camper where his fishing poles were located..oh dread! I jumped up and hollered at Dennis who was inside the Hiker, “Hey Den, do we have any WD something?”…I knew the answer…OF COURSE WE DO!!  I married MacGyver who carries everything from paper clips to tow straps…Ladies, you don’t have to say it..I KNOW just how lucky I am.

The town of Mathis doesn’t have a lot in the way of “cocktail lounges, bars, taverns or joints”.  In fact the only one we could find was about 4 miles out of town…a place called “Vick’s”. To say it looked a  little sketchy is an understatement.  In fact, we did a drive by first..turned around and went back to town making sure there were no other options..Nope..Vick’s it was to be..So, we turned back around and road the 4 miles back out to Vick’s..

Needless to say, when we walked in, every one of the 7 heads at the bar turned around..Yep, we look, walk, talk and act like Yankees.. We ordered 2 bottles of beer (beer and set-ups only), and no one moved off their bar stool to make room, so we sat at a huge round table all by our lonesomes..No one spoke to us, and basically we were invisible. OK, we get the hint.  Most of our experiences are NOT like this in the Texas “lounge” scene. Another couple came in (a guy and gal on a Harley).  They obviously were strangers too, because they got the same treatment and were exiled to our table.  Actually, they WERE strangers in the area and we 4 “outcasts” had us some great conversation at the big round table for losers.

All in all, we have had a great time here at the park.  It is very pretty and the weather has been great.  FYI, they do have a full hook-up camping area, but in my humble opinion it isn’t near as nice as the W & E camp area we are in…Tomorrow we are on our way to Mustang Island.  It is only a 60 mile drive so we can take our time.  Oh, yes…an update on a couple of our “broken” things occuring on this trip. The good news is that Dennis ordered a new power source he needed to fix our TV antennae, and now we have the local channels!   JSoooo..we can watch the Broncos beat the Seahawks on Superbowl Sunday…The bad news is that the portable ice maker ended up being “terminal”, and we will be picking up a replacement at the Aransas Pass Wally Mart, where Dennis ordered one online and had it shipped for free “site to store”…Yes, life is good here in the Cave.

I rest my case….