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Travelogue: Texas and More
May 2002

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Friday May 10

This day started out like any other workday.  But unlike any other workday, it would be my last for three weeks, for I would begin a vacation to Texas.  When I woke up that morning, I wasn’t sure if I would leave that night or wait until morning.  During the workday, I didn’t know.  I suspected I’d get some sleep then leave in the middle of the night before daybreak.  It was only after packing the car that I knew:  I would head out that evening.  Everything was packed, the dishes washed, the VCR’s ready to record the programs I would miss while I was away.  And I did not feel sleepy.  Why not head out?  So I called my uncle Lloyd and aunt Marie and said I was heading out, and they wished me well.

It was 6:35 PM.  I started the car, backed out of the garage, closed the door, and set off.  After gassing up at the nearby Amoco station, I set off for I-275.  Traffic wasn’t bad at all – it shouldn’t have been, not at that time of the day.  The western sun was an irritant, but I managed to cope.  It wasn’t long before I found myself on I-94 heading west, not knowing where I would stop for the night.  My traveling companion of sorts was not regular radio but XM Satellite Radio, to which I’d recently subscribed.  I was listening to the “50’s on 5” channel, a channel devoted to the music of the 1950s.  One of the programs tonight was “Harlem”, which covered early-to-mid ‘50s R&B.  It was very enjoyable.  One of the songs I recall hearing was “A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues” by Arthur Alexander.  I was familiar with the Beatles’ version of the song (found on the “Live On the BBC” CD set) but had not heard the original.

After some three hours of driving, I decided it was time to call it a night.  I was nearing Benton Harbor – around 170 miles from the house.  There were many hotel choices along I-94, but my choice that night would be the Motel 6.  They left the light on for me (as the slogan goes), but just barely: I got the next-to-last room.  It was a Spartan room (and not in the Michigan State sense, either), but that wouldn’t matter to me, or so I thought.  I turned on the TV and caught the last seconds of the Ottawa-Toronto hockey playoff series (Ottawa won, 4-2).  I then turned on the ABC station and saw what looked like a newscast.  9:55 PM was an unusual time for a network newscast.  The explanation came a few minutes later: this ABC station was KABC Los Angeles, coming in via satellite.  6:30 PM Pacific time was a normal time for a newscast.  However, WGN was coming in directly from Chicago and not via the satellite. You’d think the hotel would be carrying ABC out of Chicago, but they weren’t.   But I didn’t watch too long, for I decided to go to sleep.

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Saturday May 11

I was not very happy that morning.  During the night, the toilet clogged on me, making it difficult for me.  I coped, but I’ll leave the details to the reader’s imagination.  I checked out of the motel and went to the nearby Sophia’s House of Pancakes for breakfast.  The building had been a Shoney’s restaurant at one time, but Shoney’s pulled out of the Midwest a few years back.  I had a skillet breakfast consisting of pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon and sausage links.  It was good, but it was probably not that good for me.  While eating, I was reading a copy of the Saturday Free Press (actually a combined edition with the News).  It was an outstate edition, though, with no late scores or stories.

After breakfast, I got back onto I-94 and headed towards Chicago.  I stopped for gas in Portage, Indiana, then proceeded westward.  My goal was to drive route 66, which started in downtown Chicago.  I didn’t want to start all the way downtown, so I took the freeways to Laramie Avenue (the closest exit to Cicero Avenue), where I backtracked to Cicero, which I took south to Ogden Avenue.  Ogden was old route 66.  Actually, many streets were old route 66, but in this part of town, Ogden was the one.  The route was well marked with “Historic Route 66” signs, and I had no problem following them out of town.  I did have to contend with a detour on Joliet Road, but it was only a minor diversion.  Before long, I was heading out of Chicagoland and towards Joliet.

Once I got out of Joliet, I picked up another traveling companion of sorts: rain.  It would rain off and on throughout most of Illinois.  Sometimes it would be light, and at others it would be heavy.  I could see drops of water at the base of the passenger door; those were coming down along the satellite radio antenna cable.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was soaking the carpet in the passenger footwell.  But the programming was so good, I wouldn’t dream of pulling the antenna down.

The drive down 66 was very enjoyable, aside from the rain.  The old road paralleled I-55 for much of its route.  In some places, you could still see traces of the other two lanes of 66, back when it was a 4-lane divided highway.  You could not drive on the old lanes, though, for the highway department had put up barricades in several places.  Along the way, I took some pictures of a historic Standard gas station (in Odell) and a barn painted with a Meramec Caverns sign (south of Odell).  I also shot some video en route.  The video would have the sounds of heavy rain on it, but that couldn’t be helped.  I stopped for lunch at the Dixie Truck Stop in McLean, where I bought a guidebook to route 66 in Illinois.  I read through it while I ate my lunch (a patty melt).

Eventually, the rain ended and the skies cleared.  It also got warmer, for I had to have crossed a frontal boundary.  I’d gotten ahead of a cold front, it seemed.  As I got closer to St. Louis, I started searching for the Detroit vs. St. Louis hockey game on the radio.  I found it, and for the next few hours, I would listen to that as I continued my drive.  If Detroit won today, they would clinch the series and move to the next round.

Onward I went.  By the time of the third period, I was near St. Louis.  There were a number of options I had for taking 66 into St. Louis.  I chose the marked one, which put me on I-270 for the crossing of the Mississippi River.  Once I crossed into Missouri, I immediately got off I-270 and turned left.  That put me at the parking lot for the old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which used to carry Route 66 over the Mississippi.  It was closed to motor vehicle traffic, but pedestrians and cyclists could use it on weekends.  I decided I was going to walk on it, and I did.  I went halfway across, then turned around and walked back.  I had walked out to the portion where the bridge made a sharp curve.  Now why did it curve?  Apparently, Missouri finished its portion of the bridge before Illinois had completed its geological surveys.  When the surveys were completed, there was no bedrock in direct line with the Missouri portion.  The only way to build it on bedrock and connect it with the Missouri portion was to build it so that there was a curve in the middle.  Clearly, one would not drive that bridge at high speeds!  I wouldn’t drive fast on that bridge in the straight sections, either, for the lanes were narrow and left little room for error.

After visiting the tourist information center across the freeway, I got back on the freeway and put on the closing minutes of the hockey game.  The seconds ticked down, and the St. Louis Blues’ season was over.  Detroit had beaten them to advance to the conference finals.  The fans calling in after the game were not happy.  But being a Detroit fan, I was happy.  Back to the drive:  I wanted to get to Ted Drewes Custard Stand along Route 66 in St. Louis, so I drove around town to get to I-44, which I took into town.  After a wrong turn or two, I found myself on Chippewa Street, and the custard stand was right there.  It was a warm and sunny day, so there was quite a crowd.  However, there were 14-15 windows open, so I didn’t have to wait long to get a large banana concrete (a thick shake).  While I was there, a wedding party pulled up.  The bride, groom, bridesmaids and groomsmen all got out, and each ordered a cup of frozen custard.  Before long, a bus carrying a second wedding party pulled up.  It must be a beloved St. Louis tradition.  And if/when I go to St. Louis in the summertime, I’ll make it a tradition as well.

There was no way I could eat the concrete on the road; it needed a spoon, not a straw.  Once I finished it, I could set back down 66.  The rest break was welcome.  I aimed to stop in Cuba for the night, thanks to a flyer for the Wagon Wheel Inn.  Unfortunately, when I passed through Cuba, there was no room at the inn.  I decided to diverge from Route 66 and take I-44 to look for a hotel for the night.  I found it at the Hampton Inn in Rolla, home of the University of Missouri (or one of its campuses, at least).  I considered going to the nearby Steak & Shake for dinner, but I just wasn’t hungry enough, not after the concrete I had eaten earlier.  Later on, I checked my e-mail via a cell phone connection to my laptop (love that free nationwide long distance!).

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Sunday May 12

One nice feature of several hotel chains nowadays is a complimentary breakfast bar for guests.  The Hampton Inn was one of the chains that had a breakfast bar, so I took advantage of it.  The TV was carrying VH1 – it was a video countdown program, as I recall.  Other guests turned it to one of the St. Louis channels; I had no problem with that.  As soon as I finished breakfast, I returned to my room and packed up.  It was time to hit the road.

Route 66 went through town.  I crossed the freeway to pick up the highway again, but first I stopped for gas.  Rolla was a nice little town.  I got to see more of it than I intended, though.  Route 66 turned, but there was no sign that said so, and I didn’t turn.  I found myself on US 63 heading south.  After 5 minutes, I began to suspect that I had gone astray, so I turned around and retraced my tracks.  I consulted one of several Route 66 maps I had, and it indicated where I should have turned – more or less.  After picking up the road again, I thought, and not for the first time, that a navigator would be very useful on this trip.

I found myself paralleling the interstate, for the most part.  Sometimes I was on the south side, other times on the north.  On occasion, we diverged from the interstate.  On one of those diversions, I found myself on a section of old four-lane highway, paved in pinkish concrete.  The road was rather rough, but paving it was not much of a priority, for it was not seeing the traffic it saw in its heyday.

As I neared Springfield, I decided to bypass it on I-44.  I could do it on a future trip, I said to myself.  I would pick up 66 again on the other side of town, at exit 72.  This highway was a long and nearly straight shot to Joplin.  North of Joplin, the route markings became confusing again.  I thought I had lost the route, so I decided to pull over and consult the maps.  I pulled into a McDonald’s, which was very convenient for lunch, as it was after 11 o’clock.  Not wanting to check the maps on an empty stomach, I went inside and had lunch.  A true Roadie would not have gone into McDonald’s, but it was lunchtime and I was hungry.  After lunch, I checked the maps.  It turned out that I was on the corner where 66 turned south.  I guess I hadn’t lost the road after all.

The next stretch of road put me on Missouri 66, which took me into Kansas and Kansas 66 (cleverly numbered highways, huh?).  Where the historic route diverged from the modern highway, I followed the historic route, which happened to be well marked.  In fact, it was marked with several road signs – literally.  Route 66 signs had been painted onto the highway.  I stopped to take pictures of one of them.  One was a close-up, one showed the area, and a third showed my car parked near the sign.  I had to be alert for traffic; one or two cars passed by, but that was all.  A mile or so down the road was a historic rainbow bridge, the last surviving such bridge on the highway.  The dedication plaque said it had been built in 1923.  It was shiny white, but there were two or three graffiti writings on it, which spoiled the appearance slightly.  I got out to take some pictures, but I had to hurry.  What had been a light mist when I arrived began to get harder and harder, finally turning into a downpour after I returned to my car.

Down 66 I went, passing through Baxter Springs and crossing the Oklahoma state line.  It was here that I decided to abandon my drive of Route 66.  The road followed US 69 in this area, and 69 was the shortest route to Dallas.  I could have gone to Tulsa and picked up US 75, or I could have proceeded to Oklahoma City and taken I-35.  But the weather forecast was unfavorable, so I decided it was time to leave 66 and turn towards the south.  Also, time pressures were beginning to be a factor, for I had to be in Corpus Christi by Tuesday.  Now 69 was a good road through Oklahoma, almost a freeway in spots.  In fact, there were places where it was a freeway.  It took me through Muskogee.  It would have been appropriate for Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” to be playing on the radio, but unfortunately it wasn’t.  I still had good music and good news from XM Radio.

The trip across Oklahoma was long and uneventful.  After several hours, I found myself on US 75 crossing the Red River.  Texas at last!  I’d never entered the state at that crossing before.  Most of the time, I’d enter via I-30 in Texarkana or I-10 near Orange.  It was suppertime, and I was trying to decide where to eat.  I also had to decide where to spend the night.  First, the supper: the answer came when I saw the sign for Luby’s in Sherman.  I had their prime rib, which in retrospect was a mistake.  I’d had prime rib a week earlier, and Luby’s compared unfavorably with it.  The side dishes that came along with it were very good, though, especially the sautéed mushrooms.  One question answered, one left.  The answer would not come in Sherman, for I wanted to get closer to Dallas.  I drove down to Plano before deciding to call it a night.  I stayed at the Sun Suites, an extended stay hotel.  That meant it was light on amenities.  That’s not a problem if you’re there on an extended stay, but it does complicate things for the single night traveler.  Still, I managed.

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Monday May 13

When I awoke, I put on the news.  I wondered if I should have pressed on a bit farther yesterday and made the other side of Dallas.  That would have enabled me to avoid rush hour.  As it was, I was on the north side, and I would have to contend with the traffic or delay my departure until it had subsided.  My first instinct was to delay leaving, so I passed the time by getting and reading a Dallas newspaper.  I should say “the Dallas newspaper”, for it was now a one-paper town (Fort Worth has its own paper, but that doesn’t count).  I saw a big ad for Fry’s, the electronics superstore.  I knew about its Arlington store, but I didn’t know where its northeast Dallas store was located until I saw a map in the ad.  It wasn’t that far from where I was located, so I decided to make that my first stop of the day.

After checking out shortly after 8, I got on the Central Expressway heading south.  Traffic was heavy, but it moved fairly well until we reached I-635, Dallas’s loop.  I got on the loop heading east, which was fortunate because the traffic heading west was quite heavy.  I had little trouble finding the store, which was on the Northwest Highway quite close to the loop. Fortunately, it had opened at 8 AM; otherwise, I would have either waited longer to check out or gone to the other store. I spent about an hour there, looking at all they had to offer.  And they had a lot to offer.  In the end, though, I only got one book, one with advanced tips for iMovie (the video-editing program on the iMac).  I re-entered the loop, but not for long; I needed to look for a gas station.  I found one not too far from the intersection with I-30, and I filled up the tank.  I also got a can of garlic-flavored peanuts and a bottle of strawberry Yoohoo to help fill my stomach (I had not had breakfast, and lunchtime was approaching).  I took I-30 into town and I-35E out of town.  I could have stayed on the loop, but I felt like going through downtown.  At various times, my radio was tuned to news station KRLD, the Mesquite Schools station that played all ‘70s all the time, and the XM radio.  But as I left town, I kept it on XM and the “Sixties on 6” channel.  They had just begun a special promotion, playing all 1800+ songs in their library in chronological order.  They had begun at 7 AM that morning with January 1960 and would wrap up later in the week.

Down I-35 I went.  Before long, I found myself in Waco.  It seemed like a good place to stop for lunch, so that’s what I did.  I went to the local mall, which was some 2-3 miles northwest of I-35 on Highway 6.  At first, I went to the Red Lobster.  However, service was slow.  Once I was served, I was told I had been given an incorrect menu, that the dish I’d selected was not available.  At that point, I decided I really didn’t feel like Red Lobster, so I walked out.  I went over to the Marie Callender’s next door and had a mushroom-Swiss burger with some root beer and key lime pie.  Since I was in Waco, the home of Dr. Pepper, I suppose it would have been appropriate to have a Dr. Pepper, but I don’t think it was on the menu.  It may have been, but not in a caffeine-free version.  The burger was a bit messy, but it was good.  There was a cafeteria at the mall, but I’d just eaten at one the night before, so I didn’t consider it.  I vaguely recall eating at that cafeteria in 1980 or 1981 on the way to Arlington for the state forensics tournament.  As I left the restaurant, I saw what appeared to be a 1936 Ford.  It had historic 1936 Texas license plates, which were stamped with the word “CENTENNIAL”.  It was a bright sunny day, and I could not let this picture-taking opportunity go to waste.  I got out my camera and took three pictures.

Back onto I-35 I went.  I passed through Temple and Georgetown and Round Rock on the way to Austin.  I saw the state capitol and the UT tower from the roadway.  I’d never spent much time in Austin, and that wouldn’t change today.  That would have to wait for another trip.  Before long, I found myself in San Marcos, feeling the effects of several days of long driving.  My feet were sore, my legs were cramping.  When I saw the signs for whirlpool suites at the Amerihost Inn, I was tempted.  I was very tempted.  I could have driven farther, but I decided to pull over and ask about a whirlpool suite.  Yes, there was one available, I was told.  Apparently, they were generally used by couples looking for a romantic interlude.  You could tell by the his-and-hers bathrobes and amenities (combs, toothbrushes, razors, etc.).  But I didn’t care; I wanted to rest and relieve some stress.  I took my first soak that afternoon, after first tightening the drain plug so that it didn’t leak.  Later, I went across the freeway to the outlet shopping center, where I visited the Sony store and had a barbecue baked potato for supper.  Perhaps I should have stayed with my first impulse and had pizza, for that potato was rather blah compared to a potato from Joe’s BBQ in Alvin.  In fact, I didn’t finish it.  I drove into town for a bit, spending some time at the local Hastings’s books, music and video store.  Then I returned to the hotel for another soak.  I listened to the Astros on the radio for a while, until the signal faded out on me.  I then realized that Ally McBeal was on; it was the next-to-last episode.  So I put that on and followed it with the Mary Tyler Moore reunion special and a PBS program on women in rockabilly.  After the rockabilly program ended, I turned on the San Jose-Colorado hockey game, but I fell asleep to it.

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Tuesday May 14

Today, I had a definite destination in mind: Corpus Christi.  I had reservations for two nights at a Holiday Inn there.  Fortunately, it wasn’t too far away from San Marcos, which meant that my drive time would be fairly short.  My journey would take me through San Antonio, which was not a problem because I wanted to take a specific picture there.

On my visit to San Antonio last June, I was riding a tour bus, and it took me past a street named King Roger Street.  I thought that very funny, so I vowed to take a picture of it.  I missed doing so last year, but I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity this year.  My first attempt was thwarted by a Road Closed sign; the road on which I’d seen the sign was closed for construction.  Fortunately, the street picked up again on the other side of I-10, making for a better picture opportunity.  Unfortunately, the neighborhood was not a very good one.  I did not want to leave my car, so I ended up taking the pictures with a long zoom lens.  Now I could proceed to my next destination, the Quarry Market north of downtown.  There was a Wolf Camera store there, which gave me a good opportunity to have a roll of film developed.  While it was being developed, I went to the Whole Foods Market and picked up some food items, the Borders bookstore for a paper and the Zoopa restaurant for lunch.  Lunch turned out just fine, and so did the pictures.  Now it was time to get back onto the freeway, find I-37 and take it to Corpus Christi.

The land between San Antonio and Corpus Christi is rolling and sparsely populated.  There’s not much happening out there.  Once again, my XM radio kept me company.  The ‘60s countdown transitioned from 1963 to 1964, and the Beatles made their first appearance.  I was traveling well under the 70 mph speed limit, for I didn’t want to arrive in Corpus too early (hotel check-in time was 4).  As it was, I arrived around 3 PM and stopped at the tourist center for a map and some literature.  I-37 in Corpus has a lot of refineries and petrochemical plants, making the highway reminiscent of the Pasadena Freeway in Pasadena (where else?).  But before long, I was taking South Padre Island Drive, the freeway that appeared to be the main commercial strip in town.  It could easily have been a Houston freeway.  But eventually, the commercialization ended, and I took the bridge over to north Padre Island.  That reminded me of Galveston.

The Holiday Inn on North Padre Island is right on the Gulf beach, the only full-service hotel so situated. A few rooms had beach and surf views, but mine was not one of them.  My main view was of the condos next door.  Well, if I turned my head to the far right, I could see the surf from my window.  If I turned my head to the left, and if my room had transparent walls, I would see the elevator shaft.  That meant that room 401 had the potential to be a little noisy, and it was.  Then again, I could not complain too much.  Thanks to having enough Priority Club points in my account, these two nights weren’t costing me anything.  I would only have to pay for items charged to my room, such as phone calls and meals.  Internet access was a local call.  In fact, I thought I saw a connection for a high-speed line.  If I had a network card with me, I probably could have used it.  But my network card was at home, so I had to resort to the phone line.  Of course, the signal-to-noise ratio of good e-mail to junk mail was extremely low.  I can remember returning from a two-week trip to Europe and receiving 75 pieces of mail and being amazed at that.  This was before the spam and junk mail explosion.  Now I could get that in a single day, easily, and most of it would be junk.

I was finished driving for the day; I had no desire to go out for dinner.  The hotel restaurant would suffice.  The shrimp scampi was pretty decent.  Afterwards, I went for a walk along the beach and the seawall.  The seawall on this part of Padre Island was only about half as high as the one on Galveston, but the beaches seemed wider.  They also did not have heavy vehicle traffic, for there was no Seawall Boulevard on top.  The beaches were also covered in places with seaweed that had washed ashore.  An article in next morning’s paper would explain that the seaweed was sargassum, originally found in the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic.  Apparently, a colony broke from there and re-established itself in the Gulf.

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Wednesday May 15

Today was the first day in close to a week that I would awake in one bed in the morning and go to sleep in the same bed that night.  All my travels today would be local.  My first trip would be down Padre Island to the National Seashore.  But before I did that, I would pay some bills that were going to come due in the next week or so.  Today was my normal payday, and my paycheck would be directly deposited to my checking account, as was normal.  These could not wait until I returned home, for if I waited, they’d be late.  After the bills were paid, I showered and went downstairs to have breakfast.  I had pancakes, sausage, an English muffin, and a glass of apple juice.  I wonder what English muffins are called in England?  I never noticed when I was over there.  Then again, I wasn’t looking for them over there.  But I digress…

The National Seashore began some ten miles south of the developed area of Padre Island.  It was like driving through the middle of nowhere, with very few signs of humanity to be seen.  Eventually, I came upon the entrance to the National Seashore, took a picture, and proceeded onward.  Admission was $10 for 7 days or $20 for a year.  I went with the 7 days approach, for this would be my only visit, at least on this trip.  Just inside the front gate was a ¾-mile nature trail, where you could observe the dunes and the wildlife.  I parked and took my cameras, still and video, for the walk.  It was a very quiet experience, broken by occasional sounds of airplanes and human voices in the distance.  Halfway through my trip, I noticed that some school buses had parked near the trail’s beginning.  No doubt the students were on the trail, but they were some distance behind me, for I never saw them.  Indeed, I think I only heard the teachers calling out loudly to the students as they entered the trail.  As for the trail itself, I got to see some of the dunes up close.  Some were bare of vegetation and were migrating toward the mainland.  The cause? People running up and down the dunes, damaging the grasses.  On occasion, I found some lizards or chameleons scampering in front of me.  I could hear them making noises in the grass whenever they left the path.  There were signs warning of rattlesnakes, but I never heard or saw any.

The next stop in the National Seashore was Malaquite Beach, some four miles south of the dune trail.  There was a nice visitor center there, with some exhibits, literature, an observation area, a ramp down to the beach, and a small convenience store.  I went up to the observation deck and did some observing.  I went to the store and got a bottle of water and two postcards, and then I walked down to the beach.  There were several student groups at the visitor center and on the beach.  One of the beach groups was receiving a tour from one of the park rangers.  I also saw them collect some of the trash that had washed ashore.  But they weren’t touching the sargassum, which was just as prevalent here as on the beach by the hotel.  The surf was fairly high, but nobody was surfing, for surfing was prohibited.  I didn’t go into the water, though I think there were a few who did.

Once I left the beach, I decided to drive the road to its end.  That came some two miles south, at the beginning of South Beach.  For the next five miles, any car could drive along the beach.  For fifty miles beyond that, only 4-wheel-drive vehicles could go.  I drove along the beach for a short distance before turning around.  That turnaround represented the farthest south I had ever been in my life.  Compared to my birthplace, I have been quite far to the north and east (Rovaniemi, Finland, on the Arctic Circle) and pretty far to the west (the Pacific coast south of San Francisco).  But I haven’t been that far south.  For many years, I’d been no farther south than San Luis Pass.  Then one year, I drove through Surfside.  In 2000, I was in Orlando visiting Disney World.  And now, I was on North Padre Island.

I had spent a couple of hours at the National Seashore, and it was time for me to leave.  I began to think about lunch.  I decided I would eat at Pancho’s Mexican Restaurant, a chain featuring a buffet.  I followed the directions in the visitor’s guide.  Unfortunately, I misread the map; what I thought was the restaurant was actually a hospital south of downtown.  But driving up Ocean Drive along the bayshore was worth it.  I could see the Lexington and the Texas State Aquarium in the distance, but I was hungry.  I studied the map in the guide more closely and saw where the restaurant actually was, and it wasn’t that far away.  So I went to the restaurant and enjoyed myself.  It wasn’t a fancy place, but it was decent enough.  At one time, I’d been a stockholder of Pancho’s, but the chain went private the year before.

Lunch was done, so it was time for my next attraction.  I was going to visit the USS Lexington, a World War II aircraft carrier that had been decommissioned and was permanently moored in Corpus Christi Bay.  There were some four or five separate self-guided tours on board, and I took them all.  They required a lot of climbing up steep stairways/ladders, something that’s not easy to do with a camera bag on your shoulder.  But I managed.  I went onto the flight deck, which had several aircraft on it.

After the Lexington, I figured I’d unwind by spending time at some stores that I like – Best Buy, Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, CompUSA, etc.  All of those were located along SPID (South Padre Island Drive, the freeway that was the commercial strip in town).  The Best Buy had some hardware for Sirius Satellite Radio, the first time I’d ever seen any of its hardware in person.  I picked up a couple of science-fiction paperbacks at the Barnes & Noble, then proceeded back to the island.  I wasn’t terribly hungry, so I stopped at a nearby convenience store for a Lunchables pack and some Gatorade.  That would be my supper that night.

The beach seemed dirtier today than yesterday.  There seemed to be more seaweed onshore.  I also noticed two large plastic crates.  They had fallen overboard from some vessel, but where and when?  There were also some coconut husks on the beach.  I sat on the seawall and walked the beach for a while, then went back to my room and turned on the Astros game.  They seemed to have the game in hand, so I put on the hockey game (San Jose vs. Colorado game 7).

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Thursday May 16

It turned out that I fell asleep to the games, for I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that everything was still on.  I turned off the TV and the lights but turned the radio to WWL New Orleans and their truckers’ radio show and put the volume low.  The station was coming in well across the Gulf.

When I woke up around 5, I read for a while, checked e-mail for a while, and watched the Weather Channel for a while.  It was time to pack up, and I did so, albeit slowly. I didn’t want to get ready too quickly.  I went downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast and had their Western Skillet, which I asked to be prepared with Egg Beaters instead of real eggs.  It was still good, and it may have been slightly better for me.  Then I took a walk down the seawall but stayed off the beach.  More seaweed had washed ashore overnight, covering the plastic crates that were still on the beach.

By 9 o’clock, I had loaded my car and checked out of the hotel.  It was time to head out of Corpus and up to Nassau Bay.  I thought I’d taken everything with me, but as I passed over the Harbor Bridge out of town, I realized I’d left a white cap in my room.  It was a cap from Chuy’s Mexican restaurant in Houston; I’d acquired it five years ago.  I called the hotel on my cell phone and asked them to mail the cap to me in Michigan, as I was too far away to turn around and go back for it. They promised to do so, and when I returned home, the cap was indeed waiting for me.  But I still had another cap, my red Lansing Lugnuts cap.

My trip out of Corpus Christi put me on Highway 35, which would take me right to Alvin.  I’d pass through several towns whose names were familiar to me but which I had never visited: Aransas Pass, Port Lavaca, Palacios, Bay City, etc.  I stopped for lunch at a KFC in Bay City; I had hoped to make it to Joe’s BBQ in Alvin, but my stomach couldn’t wait.  I made good time on Highway 35, but I had to slow down at the Brazoria County line.  The speed limit in most of Texas is 70, but it had been reduced to 55 in the Houston area in order to reduce pollution.  Some 5 hours out of Corpus, I was in Alvin and on very familiar ground.  I was home; I knew my way around.  But it was too soon to check into the hotel, so I hung out at the Best Buy, CompUSA and Barnes & Noble in Webster for a while, getting a TV Guide, a Chronicle and a Texas Monthly.  The clock turned 3, and I could now check into my hotel.  It was the Extended Stay America in Nassau Bay, where I had stayed for a week last June.

My room on the third floor (room 305) had a southern view.  In fact, I insisted on it.  Now it wasn’t that exciting to look at – several office buildings and the Nassau Bay water tower – but it was important for the satellite radio antenna.  It could easily see the satellites that carried the XM radio programming.  I was going to be here long enough that I would want some of the amenities of home, and that included the satellite radio, my newest amenity.  I had brought my Bose Wave Radio with me so that I’d be assured of having a wonderful sounding radio.  It was a good thing I did that, for the room had an alarm clock but no radio.  Even if it had had a clock radio, it would not have had auxiliary audio inputs.  But there was still a problem: there were not enough plugs in the right places.  I’d have to get a 1-to-3 outlet bar.  I did that at the nearby Kroger Signature store on El Camino, along with getting some groceries for the beginning of my 2-week stay.

When I got back to the hotel and hooked everything up, I could not get the satellite signal to come in.  I should have had an excellent view of the satellites, but nothing was coming in.  I tried moving the antenna around, moving it higher.  Suddenly, the radio sprang to life!  I deduced that the screen in the window was interfering with the satellite signals.  I’d have to mount the antenna above the screen if I had any hope of receiving anything.  Fortunately, I was able to do so, enabling me to fully enjoy my XM radio.  I had a TV dinner (Night Hawk) and pieces of a baguette for supper; the TV dinner was OK, but not the baguette.  I then read the paper and the Texas Monthly I’d bought earlier.  The magazine had a large section on Texas road trips, one of which was one I’d just taken (Highway 35 down to Corpus Christi).  When 10 PM rolled around, I put on channel 13 Eyewitness News and saw that Dave Ward and Marvin Zindler were still around.  I have vague childhood memories of a channel 13 anchorman before Dave Ward; he’s been around for at least 35 years.

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