Westbound Way Stop – Luling TX

We left Tampa last Sunday, having been at Bay Bayou for 2 months. It was a pleasant stay but longer than we had really wanted to be there, so we were raring to go by that time.

We spent the first night on the road at Beaver Lake Campground in Quincy Florida.

For those who have asked how we find our overnight stops, I have a number of RV travel related aps on my phone. First I check Passport America, which is a discount membership that we have found to be indispensable. The membership is only around $40 per year and the card gets us 50% off on every affiliated campground. There are enough parks on the program that we rarely have to stay elsewhere while on the road, so that a typical $30 fee turns into $15, which adds up to a huge savings over time. We have paid as little as $12 for a site. There are restrictions which differ from park to park – some allow the discount for only up to 3 days, other disallow it on holiday weekends etc. But for traveling, it is by far the best discount program out there. If I can't find a Passport America affiliated park, I next check Good Sam – this is another membership that most RVers have since it also provides roadside assistance. Good Sam affiliated parks give us 10% off. I generally check the RV Park Reviews site to make sure there are no glaring issues before selecting a park, but as always when reading reviews you have to take them with a grain of salt. As a last resort I go to the KOA (Kampgrounds of America) site. The reason this is a last resort is that KOA parks are generally much more expensive and our discount is only 10%. While we don't mind paying more for value when we're going to be in a place long enough to use the amenities, it doesn't make sense to pay $40, $50 or more for an overnight stop. They generally do have shiny clean facilities which we don't use since we are totally self contained and even have our own on-board laundry – we just need a place to park and can almost always find it at a better price. Many parks are affiliated with more than one membership program so we can go with the one that gives us the best value, which invariably is Passport America. On the other hand KOA parks are just that – dedicated KOA parks with no other affiliations or discounts other than their own membership. In any case, it has never been a problem for us to easily find a stopover with easy access.

Gulfport, MS:

The second day of travel brought us to Gulport MS where we stayed at Campground of the South. This was a nice park and we decided to break up the trip by staying for a couple of extra days. We didn't exactly have a smooth landing there, since the first site we pulled in to had an unfortunately spaced tree that would have prevented us from opening our slide. Lesson learned – check the site FIRST, then pull in. There were plenty of other empty sites so we simply chose another one BUT...all the roads in the park are one way so we had to go all the way out in order to get into the site next to us. That's all good, except for the fact that we had to make a big circle onto a grassy field...and it had recently rained a lot...oops. The good news is that we didn't need to be towed out – whew! The bad news is that it will probably take years for the ruts we left to disappear. 

There is a lot to see and do in the Gulport/Biloxi area so it was a good place to stop for a while. On Tuesday morning we took our bikes out to ride the 15 mile Gulf Islands Live Oaks bike trail.

This route winds along the beach for a while and then through some neighborhoods with real old southern charm and we really enjoyed it. We stopped in downtown Ocean Shores for lunch and then hopped back on our bikes and proceeded to get hopelessly lost. The downside to this trail is that they must have run out of trail markers so that the only way to know which way to turn when you come to a crossing is to consult the map. Well, it's tough to ride with a map in your hand, right? But we didn't see any skeletons next to bikes along the way, so we figured we'd get back to our car eventually and we did, but only after much circling and stopping to check Google maps. It was a great ride – and incidentally we don't call getting lost a mistake. We like to refer to it as an Adventure. Ha! We have a lot of Adventures. 

On the way home we stopped at the Biloxi Margaritaville for a drink. We can't pass by a Margaritaville!

On Wednesday we took the ferry from Gulfport out to Ship Island where we spent the day. The hour long ferry ride over is one of the best parts of this particular excursion, especially on a sunny day such as we had. 

We started by touring the civil war era fort on the island and then spent the rest of the day on the beautiful beach. 

                                                                       Inside the fort

Oh, Bill.

There is no development other than a small snack bar and restroom facilities on the island. No one lives there, although a couple of rangers sometimes stay out there. The two guys who work at the snack bar traveled with us on the ferry. Since ours was the only boat there that day, the only people on the island were with our group. 

This is Minnesota Steve's "office" - Steve rents beach chairs and came over with us on the ferry.

The term that sticks in my mind is magnificent isolation. I would definitely recommend a trip out to Ship Island to anyone visiting the gulf coast.

Back on the road:

Thursday morning we got off to a late start due to an accident just outside our campground that closed the road to traffic. After the accident was cleared, of course the emphasis was on clearing the traffic backup rather than letting us out and onto the street. Can't blame anyone for that decision since we weren't trying to make it to work like those other drivers were. So we sat at the campground driveway for about 30 minutes but then got on our way. Our stop that night was Hidden Lake RV Park in Beaumont TX, another very nice little park. Friday we had a relatively short driving day since we arrived here in Luling in the early afternoon. The only issue we had was the hassle of getting around Houston – we usually take bypass routes rather than plowing through major cities but in this case it didn't help much since the traffic ended up being bad even on the bypass. And taking the tollway around the city cost us $14 in tolls for about 20 miles! Maybe we shouldn't complain about Illinois tollways quite so much...

We are now at Riverbend Campground here in Luling, just outside of San Antonio. It's a very small town, so yesterday we drove out to the neighboring town of Sequin to do a little shopping. Today we are doing laundry and catching up on some maintenance chores while getting ready for our planned trip to Chicago. We are leaving the moho here on our campsite and flying out of the San Antonio airport on Tuesday morning. We are looking forward to spending 9 days with friends and family and attending Party in Parrotdise, which is our Chicago Parrot Head Club's major charity fund raising event of the year and incidentally SO much fun. We'll be at the Holiday Inn in Carol Stream next weekend for the event, but the rest of the time we're staying with various friends. We had many kind offers of guest rooms and we're following the rule that states house guests and fish should not be kept more than 3 days, so we'll be moving around a bit. So get ready Chicago – we're on our way!