First full Jamaica Beach day

We took a little walk around the park this morning to check out all the rigs here... We definitely don't have the smallest unit in the park like we did last year!  It's fun to see all the different types and ages of fifth wheels, class A's, class C's, and travel trailers.  It would be interesting to take a tour through everyone's.  

We took a 4-mile beach walk this afternoon with Budger.  He was so funny when Brad let him off his leash for a bit... He kept running up to us, like he was saying, "Look at meeeeeeeee!  I'm freeeeee!"  He also likes chasing the birds.  One of the things we like about Galveston is that you are welcome to walk your dogs on all the beaches.  You can't do that on most of the Florida beaches.  You're supposed to keep them leashed, but everyone lets their dogs run free for a bit.

We can be lazy, lazy, lazy in a lot of places... But when we get to the beach, we're ready to get back in the exercise mode... Which is good, because I've been pretty lazy this fall!

I saw my beach house again... It's right across from our park.  I think it needs to be mine.

This one is right next door, if any of our friends want to buy it.

No super-cool shells today, but I did pick up this "butterfly".

I could stare out at the water forever.

This is the view of our park, from the beach.

Somebody was busy today!

Brad ended up with a job today... Figure out why our washing machine suddenly quit working.  It worked fine a couple of days ago... He keeps thinking he'll get bored with this life on the road, but so far, little jobs keep springing up.

The only really important thing I'm doing this afternoon is getting my toes flip-flop ready.  I've ignored the pedicure since we've been in winter weather for a bit, but it'll be warm enough soon for barefoot walking!

I discovered today, as we sat down to lunch, that we actually do have a water view of the beach.... A very tiny sliver of water view, but a view, none-the-less.

We took a sunset walk on the beach with Budger.

And back at our RV.

Life is good.

Jamaica Beach RV Resort, Jamaica Beach (Galveston Island) TX

We arrived here about 2:00 today.  I love the drive down, because we take some back roads to avoid driving through Houston, and see some nice scenery.

Love the Spanish moss!

We always know we are getting close when we start seeing palm trees.

Our first peek at the gulf when we come over the bridge in Surfside Beach.

Love the Gulf!

When we arrived, there were several other people checking in just before us.  The lady at the desk said it had been a busy Sunday.  When we made our reservations, we had been given a site that was on the back row, farthest from the gulf, but a view of the fields behind the park, and the intercostal waterway.  It was the second to last spot on the back row.  But when I checked in, I was told they had moved us over to the end spot, so we have fields on two sides of us.  Nice!

Back view

Side view

Way over there is the gulf

Our palm tree 

We get a big Palm on this side of the park (rather than the side we were on last year) because this is the original section of the park, so the palm trees are bigger.

We didn't wait too long before we had to go take our first beach walk, so that means 1st beach walk selfie.

We saw this bird as we were coming back to the park.

We took stock of our travel adventures at the end of our first three months... We have stayed at 17 different places (including Sean's and Jordan's) over the 92 days, which makes about 5-1/2 days per spot on average.  That average will go up for the next 3 months, because we are here for about 6 weeks, and then are at just 3 more places by the end of March.

Heading to the spa now to enjoy the warm water... 

Last day before the beach

Today is just a lazy day for us.  We are meeting an old army buddy of Brad's tonight, and then will head to Jamaica Beach tomorrow.  When we arrived yesterday, the office here was closed for New Year's Day.  They had e-mailed us all our information, including our site number, when we called for reservations, so we just drove right to our site and hooked up and settled in.  I needed to go pay and finish our registration this morning.  When I walked up to the office this morning, it was still closed, but I saw they had taped an info folder to the front door, for us to find when we arrived yesterday, but we hadn't even looked!  Now we have the wifi login information!  We've had other parks do that... Leave our information for us outside the office when we were arriving outside of office hours, but it was usually at a place we had paid for ahead of time, and they had specifically told us they'd leave info for us.  Now we know to always look if we arrive when the office is closed.

I finally caught up with the office staff when the office opened at 10:00 and got all squared away with them.  In front of the office is this:

Cute!

Budger continues to be our lookout, although there is not much for him to protect us from here... No random stray cats wandering around, no trees in the park, so no vicious squirrels to quiver at... He keeps looking, though.

We did have to go check out the neighbor, though.

Looking forward to this view tomorrow.

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We met up with Brad's old army buddy, Dave, tonight, just down the road from where we're staying.  It was a lot of fun to listen to them recall old stories from their days in Korea.  I hope we get to hang out with him again, and hopefully his wife, next time.

Same pose, a few years ago...

Some awesome food also... Fried pickle chips, ribs, fried okra, mashed tators, and some pie to have for breakfast tomorrow.

I may have sat on the pie containers when I got in the truck... I'm sure the banana cream will still taste good.

Brad's apple pie was safe, though.

Oh, and the random hippo at the bar...

East View RV Ranch, Georgetown, TX

We left Kerrville a little later than we normally hit the road, but we had a shorter drive, and we weren't supposed to check in here until 1:00, so we had a little extra time to just relax and drink coffee this morning.

One thing we have to watch out for when traveling is that we don't end up on tiny roads that may have low bridge clearances or weight restrictions, but that is sometimes hard to judge on google maps... Brad chose our route today to avoid driving through Kerrville again, which had some tight turns, which we also try to avoid.

We ended up on some of those tiny, winding roads by doing that though...

This one was better than the first one we were on... The first one wasn't even wide enough to have a center line.  Lots of low-water bridges too, and they all had flood measurement stakes beside them that extended above the roadway... A little concerning!  Glad we weren't driving through any of the flood areas!

Here's the road I navigated us onto... Note the 4 lanes!

We did see some nice scenery.  Well, I did anyway.  Brad pretty much had his eyes glued to the road

I was a little worried about checking into this RV park, the East View RV Ranch.  When I called, they had all kinds of questions, including the make, model, and year of our truck and RV.  When I told the lady our RV is a 1998, she said they had a 10-year rule on RV's... Is ours in good shape?  Does it look nice?  I told her I thought it looked pretty good on the outside, and we had completely redone the inside, so she decided to let us in anyway, since we're only staying 2 nights.

I looked on the website later, and saw where it said that, about the 10-year thing, but it also said you could send in pics for approval.  So I was just hoping we weren't going to stick out like a sore thumb when we got here.

Once we pulled in, I quit worrying.  There are several that are at least as old as ours is.

And there's even this tiny one that is probably about the size of our truck camper was.

There are a lot of shiny newer ones, too... But about the same as most of the parks we've stayed at.

I wouldn't necessarily call this a "ranch" either, but it does have a nice view toward the east... Hence the name "East View".

We're settling in to watch football now, and have a quiet evening.

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We bought some salmon yesterday at the store when we were stocking up (never know what the grocery shopping scene is at the next place) and we decided to cook it up today.  Brad got the smoker going, and I improvised on a marinade I looked up online.  You were supposed to use onion powder and garlic powder, but I used finely diced onions and garlic, because that's what I had on hand.  That was mixed with cayenne pepper and Cajun seasoning, and then some brown sugar, and olive oil.  Sooooo yummy!  The only thing that might have made it better would have been to marinate the salmon for a few hours, or overnight, instead of just a few minutes, before cooking, but it was pretty dang amazing the way it was.  Just the right amount of sweet and spicy.

Salmon

Mixing up the marinade.

Ready to go!

The Royals grill tools came in handy!

So yummy!