A Clean Car and Clean Sheets

Monday, April 18th – Padre Island to San Antonio, Texas – Day 67 

 When they say everything is bigger in Texas, they are right about open spaces and oil refineries. Also, speed limits. Country roads, like the one I grew up on, have speed limits of 70 or 75 miles per hour (equivalent to 112 to 120 kilometres per hour). On the highways it was great, you’d swear when they reduced the limit to 60 mph (96 kph). But it must mean that head on collisions and accident fatalities are bigger too judging from the lax distracted driving rules in the state. A very noticeable number of people are looking at their cell phones on the highway. On a side note, they do an excellent job of letting people know that “Bridges may become icy in cold weather” which is on every bridge (even one in the Chihuahuan desert where it rarely snows) or “Hitchhikers may be escaped felons” which is useful to know. Lane endings and merge notices I keep finding a lack of signage. 

 John pissed the bed in the middle of the night, somehow directly below where Aisling was sleeping. We needed to do laundry. We woke up, packed up, one last swim, and said goodbye to Melissa. It took us a while to clean the sand out of the trailer. Before we left, we drove a mile or two down the beach to see all the places that we could have camped. When I was packing up, I could notice the additional rust on everything. 

Portuguese Man'o'War Jellyfish

 We stopped at the local jetty to see Green Sea Turtles. It took too long by the time we got out and walked down the sea wall and out onto the jetty. The turtles would come up then disappear for ages so some of us saw them, some of us didn’t. We need to work on our ability to be patient. They reminded me of the green sea turtle from Finding Nemo. 

 Next was the three-hour drive to San Antonio. Our plan was to go see the San Antonio Missions, but we were worried that by the time we arrived we would have 30 minutes to look around and then they would close. We also wanted to see the Alamo so we would have to go back anyway. We decided to make our way to our harvest host instead to ensure we weren’t disturbing them too late. 

 On the way we found a car wash and laundry. Gen took Aisling to do the laundry and Aisling, John and I went 70 m down the street to wash the car. We really wanted to get all the salt off the body of the car and trailer, and to remove the incredible amounts of sand from the car. Between the three of us (and Aisling arrived to help) we did a thorough cleaning of the car. Final stops for grocery, ice and water were needed to top up our supplies. 

 We arrived at Southwest Cattle Ranch and we set-up under their hay shed. I love the smell of hay. It reminded me of working at Huntington Stud Farms without the odour of horse poo. To pay for our stay, Southwest offers home grown ground beef and farm fresh eggs for sale. I’ve been craving burgers for ages and look forward to making homemade burgers sometime soon. 

 We met Sheila when Aisling and Charlotte went to make friends with her son who was playing soccer. A Queensland Aussie, we talked a bit about footy and went back to our trailer. Later in the evening, Lee, the border patrol officer turned rancher, came over to ask if the kids wanted to see some chicks. The girls went over while I had a battle of wills to get John to eat some of his dinner, I prevailed, then John quickly followed. The kids loved picking up the chicks, they were obsessed. Charlotte wants to get a pet baby chick now and we have to explain to her why it's not practical. Lee also had a baby bull that he recently inherited when its mother was ill. He was trying to get it to eat. Charlotte in her haste to go see the bull tripped over an electric fence that they had warned us about profusely. She was fine and then went to pet the Bull. Gen had a fantastic time talking parasites and farm animals with Sheila. We received our eggs for breakfast in the morning. 

 I think Aisling had a bit of a crush on their son Jake. When Lee said we could stay as long as we wanted (as long as we kept buying ground beed), Aisling wanted to stay another day. I would have stayed longer. The temperature was great, a cool breeze was blowing, and a fresh smell was in the air; it was very peaceful. Gen and I discussed how we needed to stay on more farms. We really enjoy them.