Day 8: Jamaica Beach, TX: Lazy trip on the river

3 AM, I feel zen. Imagine it is 0342 (that’s 3:42 a.m.) and it’s muggy and hot. You are plugged into electricity and have this massive rarely used air conditioner on your roof. Who wouldn’t wake up their spouse and turn on the A/C? We all would, it’s just fair game! We joined the chorus of A/Cs running backed by the sound of the persistent breeze and the constant buzzing of the mosquitos.

But wait, I jumped ahead. Post retiring to the van last night we noticed a few mosquitos had joined us. Screw you mosquitos. So we started playing a game often called “shooting fish in a barrel”. Except, in this case, we were in the barrel with the mosquitos and they wanted to eat. Mrs Milddogs was the best. She could out kill me 10 to 1. And usually, only about 25% revealed they had snacked on one of us. The crime lab will have fun with the Luminol patterns in here. We deduced they were not getting into the van any longer, there were just a lot in the van. The main culprit seems to have been the screen on the sliding door. Every time we went in our out, they came in. There were hundreds between the screen and the door. Mrs Milddogs went to town and squished hundreds of them. Maybe, just maybe, I should not have left the van windows open a bit when we went to the beach earlier.

After the A/C was powered up, we had a lovely night sleep but awoke fairly early. I went on a walk down the beach and wore my sandals. I went a few km down and then turned back. No exciting stuff to be seen.

On my route back, I noticed this outside the dumpster. It was weird, looks like some crawdads were trying to escape. Spicy cajun ones. Clearly a coincidence. We had double bagged our garbage from the night before and deposited appropriately. Don’t know if it was the Boat-tail Grackles that tried to get in on the action at dinner or perhaps a happy possum. Happy, probably not, they will have a spicy mouth!

We hit the road fairly early as we headed towards Jamaica Beach, TX. Just 100km as the crow flies or 240km as the Texas highways route you. We made a few strategic stops along the way near Houston. Costco and, drum role please. Nope, not Buc-ees, but we did pass our first one. Yes, Verizon. All fixed up!

We arrived at our campground / RV Resort 5 minutes before checkin, got our site and parked! Mrs Milddogs headed to the pool, the lazy river pool. Not the Crazy River Robbie Robertson sang about, the lazy river. Amy and I hung out in the van doing stuff like a light lunch, peeing on the lawn and popping blisters since one of us wore our sandals on the morning walk.

This campground is not our usual thing, but once in a while it is nice to have a few luxuries even at the cost of having RV neighbours. Heck, they hide inside most of the day anyway. There are 3 pools and the lazy river pool is the best. I even went for a lap and a half while Amy stayed back for a nap in luxurious air conditioning.

I stopped by the office and promised to never pee on the lawn again. Amy just shook her head in disgust.

For dinner we picked up some Philly Cheesesteaks at the on-premise food truck. Not the healthiest choice. Tomorrow we will have the funnel cakes instead.

We went for a walk down to the bay side and saw some nice scenes. There were some swinging chairs our by the bay. A nice touch. There is a distinct difference between a swinging chair and swinger’s chair. We were on a swinging chair.

Post dinner, post walk it was shower time. I hit the campground showers while Mrs Milddogs used the van. I give these showers a 5. There was nothing special, nothing scary.

I did a few “repairs” on the van. Properly secured our LevelMate Pro. It tells us if we are level, but can’t really do that if it keeps drooping in its temporary mount. Also had to re-attach the magnets we use to hold the scissors on the wall. Hoping you never have to read “heavy braking, scissors left their mount, I have hole in back of head”.

This RV Resort is a bit dated and could use some refreshing. But for what it is, it’s fully acceptable. Tomorrow we stay here but move sites. We will be slightly further from the lazy river and the indoor pool. We shall have to make do! I’ll venture over to the ocean side for my morning walk.

It’s like being in love.