Thursday, 24 through Saturday 26 December 2020
I'd say this Christmas period could be divided into 3 different parcels. There's the section where David and Anna and I and the dogs, and sometimes the cat, were all together at the little house they rented. There's the much shorter section where Anna and I left David in charge of the critters and drove into town to check out antique shops and sightsee. And there's the section where the critters and I were alone in the state park.
Section one: It was nice to have family to share Christmas with. Anna was amazingly well organized, even bringing a little decorated Christmas tree to put presents under. She and David had this whole Christmas dinner planned and brought with them not only all the ingredients for appetizers and multiple dishes for dinner and dessert, but also storage dishes to put the leftovers in. Incredible. I only organized Momma's coffee cake, and that didn't even turn out very well so my contribution fell flat (in a way).
I'd asked that we all wear masks for this visit. I'd listened to all the top scientists who said don't visit family, and if you do at least wear a mask and socially distance. On top of that I'd recently sat for an hour with my mouth hanging open in the dentist's office, knowing the staff believed themselves to be free of the virus but also knowing you don't have to have symptoms (such as a fever) to transmit the virus. I felt terribly vulnerable and didn't want to risk infecting my family. So this Christmas will stand out in my memory, at least, for that reason. When it came to actual eating, they sat at one end of the dining area and I sat at the other, and we replaced our masks after each bite. (And that's sure one way of noticing how much you're eating.)
They were both nice to help me walk the dogs, which is always a bit of relief to only have one dog to rein in. Though I hadn't seen any unusual number of stickers back at the camping area, the grassy yard around the little house they'd rented was packed with them. Which of course both dogs immediately started to find every time we set foot outside. That made walking not nearly as much fun as we'd hoped, but stickers are after all a part of life in Texas.
We had one bit of excitement with Lily. For much of the time, I left her in the RV to sleep in the peace and quiet due to the dogs being elsewhere. But one time, I brought her over to the house so she could have a larger space to explore and roam around in. The critters all seem to appreciate having more room than our little 24' x 8' space provides. Even though Lily spent a lot of time looking out the windows, I wasn't worried about her trying to get out because she's never made any serious efforts before. Well, this time I was wrong.
She managed to slip out the door and dodged immediately under the RV where we couldn't get to her. Like an idiot I raced off the porch after her and right away confronted the sticker problem. David kindly went to get my sandals and Anna heroically cut off one side of Lily's possible escape routes. It took quite a while but I was able to distract her while Anna got in behind her and grabbed her. Absolutely not what I expected of Lily, but you just never know with cats.
Section two: Anna had found online an antique shop she wanted to visit, and I always enjoy these trips and went with her. The first place she'd found turned out to not be open on Christmas Eve, but the 2nd place was. It's just as well I'm severely constrained by the non-existent extra space I have in the RV, or I'd end up buying stuff I like but don't really need. Anna made up for my non-buying by finding several things she'd been looking for. After that we found 2 more places that weren't open on Christmas Eve and called it good.
In town I noticed a new building that was for lease with a sign saying, "Can Finish to Suite" and wondered if that was intentional or if they just didn't know how to spell.
 |
| Fulton Mansion |
When the home was built in 1877, it was the only one in the area with gas lighting, central heating, and indoor hot and cold running water. The Texas Historical Commission operates it now, but their tours don't include Christmas Eve, we learned.
Section three: We had some really nice sunrises and sunsets while I stayed there. I have trouble taking photos of them because my camera needs me to hold still for as long as the shutter says to, which I can't always do. But here's one I got.
 |
| a sunset |
The waterfront campsites at this state park consisted of the utility hookups and picnic table being housed in what the park called a cabana.
 |
| our cabana |
Pretty basic, but then so was the structure they called a cabana that my family stayed in on Padre Island many years ago - 3 concrete block walls with a partitioned shower area and a tin roof.
Only a few feet beyond this cabana photo is a seawall that's only a few feet above the water level at high tide. Early in the mornings, large numbers of ducks gathered in front of our cabana, apparently feeding. My guess is that there's some sort of outfall - maybe for sewage, though I didn't see or smell anything untoward - that produced the food that drew these ducks there. Here's a video I took one morning.
Okay, the video's not there. I spent 4 hours and 15 minutes - all of yesterday afternoon - waiting for a less-than-2-minute video to download. And when I was finally able to click "Select" to stick it on this page, it disappeared. Imagine to yourself what my feeling was to have waited waited waited for so long, only to have it vanish into thin air.
So this morning I've decided to wait until I have a stronger internet signal and try again. I've posted a couple of videos to this blog before and it never took longer than 10 or 15 minutes, so I'm hoping the problem was just the signal being too weak.
Instead, here are a couple of photos I took at the same time as the video.
One disappointment was that while I was here I finally had conditions where I could see that conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn - lack of clouds and lack of trees. But just too much time had passed since the actual conjunction, and by the time I saw them they were obviously separate stars. Because a full moon lasts much longer, I'd hoped to see what others had seen. Such a shame, but oh well. I'll have another chance in 2040.
Still, the critters and I liked staying here. The dogs got sand, which they love, without also getting the roar of ocean waves, which terrify Gracie. I'm sure we'll try to come back sometime.
No comments:
Post a Comment