Oil Refineries Galore!

Thursday, April 14th – Galveston to Padre Island, Texas – Day 64 

 We started with showers for everyone because we were going primitive again and we didn’t know when we’d be able to shower. We packed the trailer up and went to the ranger station to get Texas Junior ranger level one buttons for everyone. 

 The 4.5-hour drive to Padre Island featured lots of houses on stilts, wind turbines, and oil processing facilities. The oil processing facilities have pipes and cylindrical towers everywhere. If you want to learn more about how gasoline is made, check out my grade 10 science problem-based task. 

On the road we stopped at a park in whereabouts unknown. Gen went to a Dollar Tree to load up on essentials but to her shock found a Dollar Tree and Family Dollar combination. Gen was devastated. Dollar Tree was protection from inflation, everything was $1.25. Items like peanut butter, peanuts, wraps, mayo, tuna, jam, eggs, cheese, trail mix, bread, although smaller quantities, were great deals compared to Walmart. They started a dollar plus section which Gen stayed away from like the plague. She knew somehow prices would start going up. Family dollar was not a good deal and with the merger, items were now $3, $4, $5. 

 Back at the playground, the pirate ship play structure was disappointing. The pirate ship on the Florida panhandle, as Aisling noted, had a treasure map that provided pictures you could find elsewhere on the play structure and was bigger. We are really getting into the nuances of play structure design. 

 When we finally reached Padre Island, we stopped to ask a ranger about beach camping. He was very informative. We chose South Beach over North beach as the crowds were smaller and they had a washroom and dumpsters at the entrance to the beach. We reached the beach and had a great deal of debate about where to park so we don’t get stuck. We talked to another camper that said the water comes up high onto the beach in the middle of the night so we were very concerned about getting wet. After staying for a while, she exaggerated. Gen had read that this beach has five miles of beach camping before you need four-wheel drive and then you can keep going for another 18 miles. We stayed within the first kilometre. The weather was still overcast, and a strong wind was still blowing off the water. 

 Camping on the beach sounds like a romantic idea; the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, the dark night sky with stars shining above, waking up to lay in the sun and play in the surf. The other side is the garbage on beach, small pieces of plastic, that I’m constantly picking up, the dampness from the wind picking up the salt spray that invades your trailer and leaves you feeling salty and sticky, the loads of sand that your kids drag in (despite having a foot wash basin and a towel to clean off your legs and feet) which finds its way into your bed and everywhere else, the water that works its way onto the floor from children, the immense loads of sand in our car now with John’s sandy shoes walking over our seats, the rust spots popping up on the trailer. If the weather was sunny and the wind was calm it would be a much different experience. 

 The kids played on the beach and in the huge sand dunes that were directly behind our trailer. I made a chickpea stew that the kids weren’t huge fans of.