Turning North

The kites were still flying once it got dark last night.  Only then they were all lit up from within, creating this cool lighted sculpture, slowly moving about in the wind.  We watched them from the window of the RV.  Lighted kites, who would have thought?

It was a rather warm and humid night so it was a little more difficult to sleep.  As we were laying there a little later on we could see shapes moving outside the window.  We initially thought they were dogs running around but later identified them as coyotes, several of them.  Deb looked it up this morning and that’s definitely a thing.  There are somewhere around 40 dens of coyotes on this island and they do roam around the beach at night.

It was an overcast day today, low 70’s and so humid that any glass fogged up, making eyeglasses rather hard to use.  It was also very windy.  And the combination of the high wind and every surface being a little moist meant the blowing sand stuck to everything.  There seems to be a grittiness to every surface.

We took a bike ride into town and managed to stop at the Farley Boat Works.  This time, it was open.  The one person there was friendly and happy to answer questions and show us around.  Perhaps the most interesting thing was his story.  He came from New York City, in the Bronx, and had an interest in boats since he was young.  He did some schooling in Maine, worked for a guy on his yacht, and ended up here, on Mustang Island, two years ago to manage the Farley Boat Works, which is mostly a museum, which was being rebuilt and relaunched after shutting its doors in the 1970’s.  He helps people build wooden boats, one at a time, and is restoring his own.  He claimed that Farley was the first to put a motor on a boat back in the ‘teens, a few years ahead of Chris Craft, but information found on the internet contradicts that.

We also stopped by the Chapel on the Dunes again, hoping there would be a Saturday tour, but there was an actual wedding going on there, and we were not in wedding clothing.

Back at the RV, we racked the bikes, had lunch and then took our last walk on the beach.  It was then time to start heading north.

250 miles later, here we are, at a Cracker Barrel just east of Houston.  We drove through a thunderstorm for the last hour, and my affection for Houston driving is about on par with driving through Atlanta, which is none at all. Forty miles of Houston concrete spaghetti, driven at night, in the pouring rain, in very heavy traffic, was not what I call fun.  Several sections of roadway do not have good lane markers, and they disappear in the rain, leaving me with two options: (1) blindly follow the tail lights in front of me, which is not a good idea because he is just as blind as I am, or (2) estimate the distance between the concrete barriers on each side, divide by the number of lanes that I think there are, and position myself in one of those imaginary corridors.  Both of these options are bad, since everyone is blind and has a different idea of imaginary corridors.

I white-knuckled it for the entire distance and managed to cross the entirety of Houston without connecting with a single vehicle.

We made one stop in Houston, at a H-E-B store, and picked up some more Wagyu beef patties and more grapefruit.  Much harder to find as we go north. We will continue to eat well for a little while yet.