though i walk through the shadow of the boatyard i shall fear no large object shall follow us home to nuevo mexico

Apologies for the long interval between posts. But, we have been busy and will be catching up. We are in Houston, not far from what is said to be the third largest concentration of sailboats in the United States. Soon we'll be looking at lots of boats. Fortunately, most of them don't have trailers and I can't afford them. We might also be chartering, visiting chandleries, etc.


We also had a nice trip up the Texas coast, visiting very briefly South Padre Island and Corpus Christi. At South Padre, we had lunch at the SPI Brewing Co. and dipped our toes in the Gulf of Mexico. Also, we buzzed by the Laguna Yacht Club in Port Isabel just in case someone might have been around. In Corpus, we tried to find someone at the chandlery / sailing school at the base of the Cooper's Alley pier, and did manage to stop for lunch nearby at Landry's Seafood. The Corpus Christi location of Landry's is the only one that's actually afloat; it's a two-deck barge that was built in the 1930s as floating barracks for the US Army, then served as a home for wayward boys. Supposedly, it also has a ghost of one of the boys. The food there was great and we've done a fine job of finding seafood in our year-end travels.


We also caught up with my dad's friend, Mel, in Rockport, for a bit. We hadn't realized that, years ago during WWII, his bomber crew had made an emergency landing on the Adriatic island of Vis, and then been rescued by Tito's partisans. Later, as we were driving north and driving through a construction zone near the Port Aransas wildlife refuge, we got to see a creative solution by a couple of Texas construction workers for dealing with "down" time. Instead of leaning on their shovels, they were fishing off a bridge in the construction zone.


Earlier during the week, we were remembered at our favorite motel in Kerrville even though it had been a few years since our last stay. We also enjoyed a good meal at the Lake House restaurant down on the river.


In McAllen, we helped my dad with a minor tragedy - - the big tv in his den had failed leaving him with only a tiny screen tv in his bedroom for watching football games. So, we made an emergency run to an electronics store to get a replacement set to get him back in action.