Paul Alton MBA

We drove out to Boca Chica beach one day. It is as close to Mexico as you can get on the gulf coast. The Rio Grande River meets the sea there. Almost to the beach we came upon Elon Musk’s site for Space-X and took some pictures of the shiny object that looks like a rocket on the cover of a 1950’s science fiction magazine. A couple of weeks later a stiff wind came along and tipped it over. Oops.

At the beach we stared at the water and the sand and decided we didn’t want sand in our truck and turned around and headed back to Brownsville. Wusses.

On the way back we stopped and looked at an information sign about the Palmito Ranch Battlefield. This was the last land battle of the civil war. It happened weeks after the Confederate surrender and news had reached the armies, but their stupid officers (I repeat myself) insisted on fighting the battle anyway.

Also in the area was the site of a long gone Mexican-American War encampment. The marker is closer to the beach than I remembered so we missed it this year, but here is the inscription from online:

“In May 1846 when war was declared against Mexico, the U.S. Congress authorized the raising of 50,000 volunteer troops to supplement the regular U.S. Army. General Zachary Taylor was quickly inundated with volunteer soldiers arriving at Brazos Santiago, and was forced to place them in temporary encampments.

Camp Belknap, located on this site, was established in the summer of 1846. The camp was located on a long narrow rise of land, measuring about 2 miles in length and one-half mile at its widest point. It was the first high ground encountered after leaving the Gulf Coast.

Thought to be the largest encampment for volunteer soldiers, troop estimates total 7,000-8,000 men including several regiments from eight states. Soldiers suffered exposure to the elements, unsanitary living conditions, overcrowding, biting insects, thorny plants, and disease. Many died a premature death, often resulting in one to two funerals daily.

No enemy attacks took place despite one false alarm. During August and September most of the volunteers were moved upriver either to camps nearer Matamoros, or further to Camargo. The camp was completely empty by December” 

Sounds like a lovely place, doesn't it?. And it is, if you stay in your air-conditioned truck. You do have to roll down the windows to talk to the nice person at the immigration inspection station on the highway back to Brownsville, though.

We were at this project last month. In January we were joined by Marc and Lesley Cyrenne from Regina, Saskatchewan.

Fellow Canadians! Master Craft tools and Robertson screwdrivers! 

Marc and I got a lot done but I didn’t end up with very many pictures. We replaced some siding on the laundry room and redid the lighting circuit and it’s burnt wires that we discovered when we opened up the wall to do the siding. We replaced doors and frames and did some plumbing repairs in the outside restrooms. Fortunately Marc is small enough fit in the access alley between the two restrooms. Marc installed a number of door closers. Perhaps the dust will stay out of some of the buildings if the doors get closed. We stated busy doing a bunch of other repairs, as well.

The ladies hung curtains, and built hundreds of folios which are a home made substitute for the Evange Cubes.

They cooked for a group of volunteers from Iowa and cooked for the Medfest groups that passed through on their way to and from Mexico. This was the first time in several years that Juanita and I have not helped at Medfest. We started helping when it was in Mexico in the aughts and followed it to Nicaragua each year. This year it was moved to Mexico because of the troubles in Nicaragua.

The Jews celebrate Passover with the phrase “next year in Jerusalem”. Our phrase is “next year in Nicaragua.”

The lunar eclipse was visible from our location. I stayed up late and went outside to see it and take a pretty lame picture. Still it looked neat in the binoculars and I went back in to suggest to Juanita she should take a look. She had already gone to bed and was most pleased when I opened a vent and she could watch the eclipse from inside.

We left Way of the Cross on the Sunday and drove to Bay City. Two years ago we had done the same trip. On that trip when we arrived at Bay City I discovered a broken spring on the fifth wheel trailer and taking care of that structured our time until we arrived at the next project a little late.

This year everything looked fine when we arrived at the 60 North RV park in Bay City. Once the rig was set up we headed to Mata Gorda and across the intracoastal waterway to the beach at the mouth of the Colorado River. Just like we had planned to two years ago.

We had a few days of relaxation based in Bay City. We managed another trip back to the beach near Mata Gorda. On the highway to Mata Gorda we passed a settlement of park model RVs painted in bright colours. I stopped and asked about them and looked through a couple. Most were two bedrooms or one bedroom and a loft for the kids. They charge $139 a night or $500 a week. Seemed high to me, but what do I know about the cost of accommodations near the beach?

One day we took backroads down to and a different set of backroads back from Quintana Beach. One highway had million dollar houses. The highway running about five miles parallel had tumbledown single wides and I think if you stopped and rolled down the windows you might hear banjoes.

Several years ago we spent a week exploring Brazoria County while our rig was being repaired. The day we tried to go to the Brazoria County Museum in Angleton it was closed. This year we finally got to see its treasures. There was a bit on local history and artifacts from the 1800’s including a horned collar that they put on a runaway slave.

That same day we visited the Matagorda County Museum. They had some interesting displays about the failed French Colonial efforts in Texas and records of the excavation of a ship in Matagorda Bay. There were also some interesting Spanish artifacts. This museum is in a consortium with other museums in the region and the displays of French and Spanish artifacts are complementary to those in Corpus Christi and Victoria, Texas which we have visited other years on other journeys out of the valley.

The tail light that gave us trouble on the way south (worked on it in Glaslyn and Harlingen) gave trouble again on the way north. A trip to O'Reilly's in Bay City for a new lamp assembly solved the problem. For now. Nothing is permanent with things that bounce down the road and sit out in the weather.

Finally, on Thursday morning, we packed up our stuff, hooked up the fifth wheel and drove from Bay City, through Angleton to our next project at Alvin, Texas. This is probably our eighth time at Victory Camp. After saying Hi to everybody we set up the rig, went for lunch and then grocery shopping.