We spent about a week in Boca Chica, the southernmost tip of Texas. We were routinely within a mile or so of the Mexican border as we drove around exploring the area, and passed through a couple of border control stations. Our first 'campsite' was at Magic Valley RV Park, conveniently located just off the main highway from the Corpus Christi area. The park was fairly vacant, and when I talked to one of the residents he said it was largely because so many of the Canadians didn't winter here this year due to COVID and the resulting travel restrictions. The park had a nice laundry room and overall was a decent stay, though this same resident had his complaints. Our second spot was at Park Place Estates. This was a nicer park with more and nicer facilities and more residents - but it was still pretty empty. Fortunately both of these places accepted discounts from our membership with Passport America - the Boca Chica area is full of high priced RV parks (by our standards), many of which are restricted to 55+. I think both of the parks were adults only, so we're lucky we didn't have kids or we may have had to find a place at a more expensive park. We saw signs saying "Welcome Winter Texans" all over the area - must be a popular snowbirding destination!
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| Magic Valley Park Site |
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| Park Place Estates Site |
The highlight of our trip here was a visit to the SpaceX test launch facility. This was super cool since Starship 10 was sitting on the launch pad and Starship 11 was visible inside the open hangar doors. Unfortunately the weather was a bit cloudy - our first sightings of Starship 10 showed it above the clouds - but it was still just really awe-inspiring to see. We budgeted six days in the Boca Chica area just in case a launch was forthcoming...but the incoming winter storm destroyed that opportunity.
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| In front of the launch facility |
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| Starship 10 |
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| Starship 11 |
The SpaceX facility is really pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Just past the launch pads, the road ends in Boca Chica Beach. We stopped and took a quick picture, but again it was too overcast to do much.
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| Boca Chica Beach |
Our other major outing here was to Palo Alto Battlefield Historic Park. This was the site of the first major battle of the US-Mexican War. Interestingly in terms of military history, it was also the first time mobile artillery (aka "flying artillery") was a large component in a battle - the Mexicans had expected a normal hand to hand (or hand to horse) battle, but the superior artillery of the US army and its agility made it a very different battle. The battlefield is well preserved, with flags outlining the positioning of the two armies. This made it easier to envision the activities of the day...although the full impact of the battle is just unimaginable. The Mexican forces suffered heavy casualties.
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| Sample artillery on the US side of the battlefield |
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Flags delineated the two front lines. It was hard to see the
American flags while standing at the Mexican flags, and
you can see from this picture how very far away even the next
flag in line is (it appears as a dot on the horizon). |
Unfortunately, the last days of our trip were hit by the
coldest weather Texas has seen in over a decade. The lady who lives next door to our campsite said she'd been coming to this park for 27 years and had never seen anything like this weather before. Just our luck! We looked longingly at the Orlando temperatures during this time... Fortunately we started out the cold spot at this most southern tip of Texas...as good as it could be. However, we were slated to move on before the weather improved. We had our next site booked just north of Corpus Christi, at a state park where we'd be farther from the coast in in the midst of trees (aka, much less wind), but further north so 7-10 degrees colder at night...we were looking at 18 and 10 degrees F. What to do?? At the last minute the forecast updated to include snow on our travel day, so we extended our stay in Park Place Estates by another two days and cut our next camping trip short. It ended up costing a bit of money but way less than causing an accident due to high winds and snow while driving 3 hours north.
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| Icicles hanging from our awning |
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| Ice-covered car |
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| Ice-covered RV |
The morning of our revised departure I tried to call the state park to check conditions...and no answer. Fearing the power was out at the state park (and seeing online that the headquarters and bathrooms were closed), we extended our stay at Park Place Estates AGAIN...later we found out the state park was out of power and even later we saw the whole park was closed (from the booking website it looked like it extended almost a week - they must have had damage), so we definitely made the right decision...again. Even so, starting that evening our park started participating in the rolling blackouts the rest of Texas was already enjoying. We'd lose power for 2-3 hours and then gain it back for 2-3 hours. The next day we heard that our NEXT state park destination was closed as well...and then we scrambled to find a couple of overnight stays en route to our final destination in Texas...a state park that has managed to remain open through all of this (though just as I was going to post this I looked and they're suddenly out of water...hopefully that will improve over the couple of days it takes to get there...).
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Aaron's solution to see if the power came back on while we were
running our generator...plugged into the power pole |
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| The milk aisle at the local WalMart |
At this point I'm feeling very grateful that we're in an RV right now...this has given us the flexibility to alter our travel plans to be where the ice isn't, and the RV is designed to be off the grid, so our propane heat and refrigerator kept going despite our loss of power. We were also able to disconnect our external water hoses and operate off our fresh water tank the couple of nights that the temperature dropped into the 20s...many people around town had burst pipes, as evidenced by a ridiculously crowded pipe/plumbing aisle at Home Depot! During the daytime blackouts we were able to enjoy solar power from our solar panels. I'm grateful for my handy husband who fixed both the heater and the refrigerator in the past few months and installed our solar panels a year ago!
Here's hoping we'll get the famed warm winter Texas weather moving forward!
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