Mexican Riviera Cruise

We went on a cruise at the end of November to the southern "Mexican Riviera." The excuse to take this cruise is that our 25th wedding anniversary is in March, 2008 but it was much cheaper to go now than to wait until then. We went on the Carnival Spirit out of San Diego and had the following itinerary:

Day 1 - San Diego, CA
Day 2 - At Sea
Day 3 - At Sea
Day 4 - Acapulco, Mexico
Day 5 - Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa, Mexico
Day 6 - Manzanillo, Mexico
Day 7 - At Sea
Day 8 - At Sea
Day 9 - San Diego, CA

On this cruise we had a balcony room. The weather was pretty awful in San Diego but we had hot, mostly sunny conditions in all our Mexican ports of call.

Acapulco is a big tourist town. We decided to walk around town but were accosted by people trying to sell us stuff every step of the way. They never took "no" for an answer! So our walk, as well as our desire to return here, ended quickly.

Zihuatanejo was our favorite port of call. It's a small fishing village and hasn't become totally commercialized. Walking around town there were a lot of small shops with tourist stuff but they are mixed in with restaurants, banks, grocery stores, etc. Movie buffs may remember that Zihuatanejo was the final destinations for the main characters in the excellent movie The Shawshank Redemption. We found a nice public circle under a banyan tree right on the beach in which to hang out. Locals mixed with the tourists. There were people selling their wares but they left you alone when you said "no." Quite a refreshing change from Acapulco! In case you're wondering, Ixtapa is a much larger city several miles from Zihuatanejo.

Manzanillo was a bit of a surprise. The cruise ships dock at a working port like in Mazatlan. A shuttle bus takes you to the downtown area. We were amazed how heavy the car traffic is in this town! There is a shopping district which caters to the tourists but it also offers the locals places to shop so you couldn't really call Manzanillo a "tourist town" - yet. Next to the shopping district is a very nice park where you can watch the hustle and bustle of this busy town.

Of our 3 ports of call we'd definitely go back to Zihuatanejo, maybe go back to Manzanillo and would not go back to Acapulco.

We had one last adventure in store for the ride home. Returning to San Diego we were greeted by more rain. (Note: we've been in San Diego, a town famous for sunshine, 3 times now and it's rained each of those times!) On the drive out of town we ran into a snow storm in the mountains! Luckily the roads had been treated with sand and the snow wasn't accumulating much. We made it home just fine.

	Karen at the mandatory lifeboat drill. You can't get out of it so you might as well have fun at it!
	Quiet street in Zihuatanejo just outside of the tendering pier.
	An interesting Coke truck in Manzanillo.
	Sunset over the Pacific Ocean.

Gold Prospecting - Dry Washing

After several trips out to the gold fields with our metal detector we still hadn't found any gold. Unfortunately that's not really all that unusual. Finding gold is part skill and part luck. So far, no luck.

One day we were metal detecting on a RRPC claim near Morristown and came across 3 other club members who were dry washing. We had learned a little about dry washing from Steve at A&B Prospecting while he gave us a lesson in gold prospecting, but we had never seen one in action. One of the guys was nice enough to take some time and show us how it worked. The main attraction of dry washing is that while the gold you find is usually very small, you have a much better chance of finding some gold. The more we thought about it the more it seemed like a good idea. After a day in the field it would be nice to have something to show for it!

Before jumping in and buying a dry washer we tried a manual version: we bought several sifting screens and a shovel. It's a cheap way to do it but it's very inefficient. The amount of material you can process manually in 30 minutes would take about 3 minutes with a dry washer. But doing it manually paid off - we finally found some gold! It was only a couple of tiny, tiny flecks but it was gold. Buying a dry washer now seemed to be the way to go. All it took was a trip to A&B Prospecting, a credit card and we were the proud owners of a dry washer!

How it works: The dry washer's basic function is to capture gold and discharge other material. It does this using the principle that gold is going to be heavier than the other material. The dry washer has a fan in the lower box that blows air through a finely perforated screen. A leaf blower (sold separately!) provides the air to run the fan. The lighter material is blown upwards while the gold settles. The fan has an offset counter weight that causes the lower box to shake. This causes the material to move downward. The gold is caught in the "riffles" while the dirt, small stones, etc. (called "tailings") drops off the end. It's noisy, dirty and back breaking work but you can process a lot of dirt this way! There's a lot more involved with actually getting the gold (clean up, classification, panning, etc.) but that's the basic idea.

We've been out with our dry washer several times now and have come back with gold each time. Keep in mind that we're talking about VERY SMALL amounts. All the gold we've found so far would fit on the top of a pencil eraser. We know we aren't going to get rich, but coming back with something to show for our efforts makes it a whole lot more fun!

Below are a couple of pictures showing Karen working the dry washer. Please note that Ross usually does most of the shoveling - Karen is doing it here because she is much more photogenic than he is.

	The dirt is shoveled into the top box. A "grizzly" (metal screen) keeps the bigger rocks from going into the lower box. Notice the material moving down the lower box and the tailings pile at the bottom.
	In this shot you can see the leaf blower behind the white bucket and the hose that provides the air to run the dry washer. Covered in dust and shoveling dirt into a noisy machine - doesn't Karen look like she's having fun?

Comet Holmes

In late October the Astronomical Community was surprised and delighted by the unexpected brightening of Comet Holmes. It very quickly increased several million times in brightness and became a naked eye object in the constellation of Perseus near the star Mirfak. Even under the bright city lights here in Mesa it was clearly visible. I spent some time observing it through my telescope and then took some pictures of it. One was posted to the Sky & Telescope website. That one is presented below. I also got a decent shot of Albireo, one of the most beautiful "binary" stars. It too is shown below.

	Comet Holmes
	Albireo

Gold Prospecting - Metal Detecting

One of the most popular methods of prospecting for gold is using a metal detector. As the name implies a metal detector will alert you when you pass the coil (flat piece at the end) over something metallic on or in the ground. It normally make a high pitched whine sort of like a mosquito but when it detects metal it shrieks. We usually use headphones with it to pick up some of the softer "returns" that could indicate a more deeply buried object.

Armed with our metal detector, RRPC membership and maps we headed out to our first prospecting adventure. We chose the "Lucky Strike" claim (all claims have names, some descriptive, some cute) north of Phoenix. Nobody else was out there when we arrived. We learned very quickly that almost all of the targets you find are going to be worthless. If you're lucky they will be at or near the surface so you won't waste too much time on them. Several times we ended up digging quite deep only to find a bullet or shell. Our effort that first day didn't produce anything of value but we did have fun!

Since then we've been out "nugget shooting" (as metal detecting for gold is called) quite a few times. So far, no luck. But if bullets, shells and beer can pull tabs ever become valuable we'll be rich! We'll keep trying and we've also branched out into another method of gold prospecting - dry washing. More on that later.

Karen metal detecting for gold at the "Lucky Strike" claim. We didn't find any gold but we had fun and the scenery sure is nice!

Gold Prospecting - Getting Started

OK, so you've decided you want to become a gold prospector. Where do you begin? You turn to the internet, of course! We found a pretty good site about gold prospecting in Arizona: www.arizonagoldprospectors.com. Even though it gave us some good information it didn't really answer our questions of what kind of equipment we would need, where to go and basically how to get started. A little more searching yielded a gold prospecting store right here in Mesa, A&B Prospecting. We went there and were given a great introduction to gold prospecting in general and one method of looking for gold, metal detecting, in particular. Steve Robertson at A&B was wonderful in sharing his time and knowledge with us. Steve has been gold prospecting for over 50 years and really knows his stuff! We ended up buying a Tesoro Lobo Super TRAQ metal detector and other basic prospecting equipment like a good digging tool, jeweler's loop and collection vials. The other basic requirement we learned was that we needed to join a prospecting club.

A very brief description of how gold mining claims work: someone finds a likely place that gold may exist and then spends some time looking for gold there (more on other gold mining techniques later.) Once they think they've got a winner it's time to register their claim. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) controls access to mineral claims on public lands. You file your claim with them, pay a small fee of $25 initially and $125 per year maintenance fee and you've got your claim! Claims are generally 20 acres in size. You now have the exclusive right to prospect for gold on that land. Anyone else who tries to prospect there is a "claim jumper" and while it's not like the old days where people were shot for such illegal activities, violence has and does occur. Don't do it! As you might imagine most of the productive areas have long since been claimed and many of them are owned by prospecting clubs. There are many clubs, but Steve recommended one of the largest to us, the Roadrunner Prospector's Club. Once you join the RRPC (or any of the clubs) you get the right to work any of their claims. So we drove down to the RRPC's office in Phoenix the next day after buying our metal detector and joined the club. It's possible to prospect for gold without joining a club but you'll have to be willing to do a lot of searching in very inaccessible areas. Some people do and are successful but it's far easier to buy into a club and get access to claims that are proven to contain gold.

A Quick Update

Yes, we know we've been bad keeping this blog up to date lately! But we do have (a pretty lame) excuse. We've been doing some new things so we can report on them to you, dear reader. So what new activity could we be involved with now? Want a hint? We're doing something that was VERY popular back in 1848 and 1897. No, we're not living without electricity nor are we using horses to get around. We are (drum roll) gold prospecting! In case you're wondering, 1848 was the start of the California gold rush and 1897 was the start of the Yukon gold rush.

It all began with a TV show we saw while in Maine this past summer. The Travel Channel was showing a program about different kinds of treasure hunting. One of the segments dealt with gold mining and talked about panning in California and metal detecting in Arizona. It was quite intriguing! They showed a guy walking around, waving a metal detector over the ground and then coming up with a nugget of gold! It looked so easy! We can do that, we said (you probably know where this is going, don't you?) So we decided to pursue it once we got to Arizona. More to come...

OH OH - Another Cute Cat Picture!

We bought Jake a kitty bed yesterday. It's a tight squeeze (he's a big kitty!) but he seems to like it.

Update From Maine

Here we are just past the 4th of July and we've been in Maine almost 2 months now. The weather hasn't been all we had hoped for. Lots of cloudy, cool weather and enough rain to keep us off the hiking and biking trails. Most of the hikes around here involve travel over exposed granite rock which gets VERY slippery when wet. We've only hiked 5 times so far this season! Twice up Gorham Mt., twice up Flying Mt. and once at Cutler. The 2 mountains are here on MDI (Mount Desert Island) and Cutler is an almost 3 hour drive "down east." It's one of Maine's "public reserve" lands, areas set aside for recreational use like a park. Cutler is unique in that it has a few miles of Maine sea coast. A hike of about 1.5 miles takes you to cliffs overlooking the ocean. The view is spectacular and you don't have to share it with lots of other people. On our July 3rd trip there we saw a total of 8 other people. We think it's well worth the long drive!

Shortly after arriving here we went into Bar Harbor and bought 2 used bikes from Acadia Bike, one of the bike rental companies around here. Last year we also bought 2 used bikes from them. We left those bikes in Arizona, so now we have bikes in both locations and we don't have to drag bikes across the country. We do most of our biking here on the carriage road system. Built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., this approx 50 mile system is open to pedestrians, bikes and horses but no motorized traffic is allowed. It's some of the best biking we've found so for!

	Taking a break on the carriage road at Bubble Pond.
	Part of the Cutler coast.

Quick Update: Southwest Harbor, ME

We're now in Southwest Harbor, ME for the summer. Our RV arrived on schedule much to our relief and, honestly, our surprise (see posting "The Unexpected New Toyota Corolla".) The weather here in Maine hasn't been the greatest. Mostly it's been cold and rainy. It's still pretty early in the season so things are bound to get better.

Our trip from Mesa, AZ to Detroit wasn't very pleasant. Ross got sick the second day out and Karen got it the day before we arrived in Detroit. We didn't get a chance to see everyone we wanted to see because we spend the first several days recovering from whatever it was we had. We were in Detroit for about a week and then left to meet the RV when it arrived in Maine.

We've started our summer jobs working at the West Marine in Southwest Harbor.

More to come, just wanted to let everyone know where we are now!

New (Old) Hobby

For those who have known me (Ross) for a long time, you may remember that I used to be quite involved with the hobby of astronomy. Now that we're going to be spending a lot of time in Arizona, some of the best weather for astronomy, I decided to buy a telescope and get back into the hobby. I bought a Celestron NexStar 5 SE, a 5" telescope (click here to see a picture). It's small enough to be very portable but the optics are better than the 8" telescope I used to have at about half the cost. And it's fully computerized. In the old days we used to have to find things in the sky by finding bright objects and then "hopping" to the (usually) dim objects we wanted to see. It was slow, sometimes frustrating and often unsuccessful. Now you just tell the control pad what you want to see and the telescope automatically moves to it! I can now see in an hour what used to take all night to see! I'm really quite impressed with how far things have advanced.

I also recently bought a Meade DSI (deep sky imager), basically a digital camera for the telescope. For the technically interested it's a CCD camera. 20 years ago CCD cameras had just come out. If you wanted one it would cost at least $10,000! This camera was a tiny fraction of that and performs circles around the old ones. The software compensates for may of the tracking and exposure errors. Here's a couple of the pictures I've taken after just a few minutes of experimenting. As I learn how to use the camera better the pictures should get better too.

	A section of the moon.
	Saturn.
	Polaris, the North Star, is actually a "binary" or double star. Here you can see the bright primary star and, to its immediate left, the dimmer bluish secondary star. Click on the picture to see the 2 stars more clearly.

The Unexpected New Toyota Corolla

Since we now have a place to go to in the winter and we still want to be in the RV in Maine in the summer, we decided that once we got back to Maine we really didn't need our truck anymore. Our RV park in Maine lets you store your RV there for free during the winter. Our Toyota Corolla, which we left in Maine for the winter, is 9 years old with almost 150,000 miles on it. We decided we would trade it and the truck in on a new Corolla once we got back to Maine. One Saturday a couple of weeks ago we stopped in at Superstition Springs (SS) Toyota here in Mesa to see what a new Corolla would cost. We explained our situation to our salesman, Roger Cary, before we did any looking. He still showed us the car and had us take a test drive. Then he wanted to know what we need in order to "make the deal happen." We explained that since we were going to trade in our truck on any new car that we bought what we would need is for them to move our 5th wheel from here in Mesa to Southwest Harbor, Maine for us. We were sure that that would end the conversation. To make a very long story a little shorter, and to our eternal surprise, they finally agreed to our terms! We still can't really believe it! We drew up an agreement which they signed, moved our junk from the truck into the new Corolla and drove home in it!

So now the plan is to drive the Corolla from Mesa to Detroit for a visit and then wait to hear when the 5th wheel is to be delivered (our agreement specifies a time frame for delivery). We'll then drive to Maine and meet our 5th wheel there to make sure it gets placed in the correct site and is set level. Of course we're staying on top of the situation to make sure our 5th wheel actually ends up in Maine, but the general sales manager, Brad Johnson, seems to have everything on track so far. We'll let you know how it plays out.

Our new Toyota Corolla.

Our New Home In Mesa, AZ

When we first arrived here in Mesa, AZ, it was with the intention of staying for 1 week. We enjoyed it here so much that we extended our stay to 1 month. Then we extended it another month. One source of our enjoyment is the park that we're in. The park, Sun Life, has about 750 sites, about a medium sized place by the standards of the many parks in Mesa. There are lots and lots of activities if you choose to participate. The club house has a large computer room, exercise room, library, billiards hall and more. There's a beautiful heated pool with a very large hot tub next to it. There are tennis courts (we recently took up the game!), basketball courts and shuffleboard courts. There's even a restaurant and bakery on site. Sun Life is an "RV Resort" but it's mostly populated with small mobile homes called "park models." Some are brand new and some go back to the 1970's. We kept find ourselves looking around in the new models and checking out the "for sale" board for the used homes. Eventually we looked at one of the used homes listed for sale. We really liked it and the price was right. After checking out several of the other parks in the area to make sure we wanted to buy here at Sun Life we made an offer on the home. After a little negotiating we settled on a price. There were renters in the home so we had to wait a few weeks to close on it. On Monday, April 2 we handed over a bank check, signed a few papers and had ourselves our first non-moving home in several years! OK, so it did have wheels at one time and COULD move. At least it doesn't bounce when you walk in it like our 5th wheel. We're really excited to have a home base. We're still going to spend our summers in Maine in the RV and we'll come down here for the winters.

The place was in really good shape. Since moving in all we've had to do was fix a leaky p&t ("overflow") value on the water heater and replace the bathtub faucet because the diverter value wasn't diverting much. We also added a new hand held shower head. And just today we bought a new mattress to replace the funky "air bed" mattress that was one of the most uncomfortable things we've ever slept on!

	Our new home at Sun Life in Mesa, AZ. There's a covered carport/patio area and a shed. Our "garden" has a palm tree (like all of the lots here have), a couple of aloe plants and some other desert flora.
	Living room. The place came completely furnished except for the cat on the chair. We had to supply our own.
	The kitchen and dining area. For us the dining area is actually our computer room. We really like the hardwood floors. They were a major selling point for us.
	The bedroom.
	The bathroom.

Goatheads

It's always amazing to us to discover things that are "common knowledge" in one part of the country that are totally unknown in other parts of the country. One of these things are goatheads here in Mesa. We ride our bikes a lot around the area. After a few rides we started pulling these nasty little seeds with stingers on them out of our tires. The guy in the site next to us here at Sun Life told us they were goatheads. Turns out there are all over the place! Since "discovering" them we've fixed flats on all of our tires, sometimes several times per tire! We talked to the owner of a nearby bike shop about what to do. He said most people around here "desert-proof" their tires. This involves installing a tough, plastic liner between the inside of the tire and the tube and using tubes that are filled with "slime", a green substance that coagulates when exposed to air. "Slime" really works! Before we knew about the plastic liners we had just "slime tubes" on a couple of tires. After pulling out a goathead from these tires air and a little "slime" hissed out of the hole and then it's sealed. We've now completely desert-proofed all of our tires and, so far, no more flats!

Click here for an official US Government picture of the little beasties!

Mexican Riviera Cruise

At the end of February we took a week long cruise on the Diamond Princess to the "Mexican Riviera." The cruise left from Los Angeles and made stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. Getting onboard the ship proved to be an exercise in logistics for us. We decided to get a hotel room near the port of Los Angeles the night before the cruise left since it's about 400 miles from Mesa to LA. After factoring in gas mileage on our truck and parking costs we decided it would be easier to get 2 one-way rental cars, so that's what we did. It worked out well! We spent the night before the cruise at the Crowne Plaza at the Port of Los Angeles. The next morning we took a taxi to the terminal. Turns out we could have walked since it's less than a mile. No problem checking in but Princess doesn't let anyone board until all the cabins are ready. Most cruise lines let you get onboard before the rooms are ready and feed you lunch. Our cabin had the largest balcony we've ever seen! The cabin itself was very nice too. This was one of the few cabins we've had that had a refrigerator. That came in handy as we would buy soft drinks in port and have cold drinks in our cabin.

As on most ships we played trivia whenever we got the chance. We ended up on a team of really good players! We kept winning and winning. In all we won something like 7 of 9 or 10 games that we played. Go team! We think our team cleaned out the gift shop of all their luggage straps, luggage tags, etc. If only they gave free cruises as prizes!

We found the ports quite similar to each other and have to admit that we didn't find them very exciting. In Puerto Vallarta we just walked from the ship towards downtown. Because of the distance (something like 4 miles) and the heat we didn't make it all the way to downtown. Along the way all we saw were hotels, restaurants and shops. We passed a new mall that featured Starbucks, Chili's, Subway, Baskin Robbins, etc. In Mazatlan we took a cab into the Golden Zone - the shopping district. At least in Mazatlan we saw a little of the real city. In Cabo San Lucas we walked and walked and never got out of the tourist area. The best scenery was in Cabo San Lucas - Land's End and Lover's Beach were beautiful.

As frequent readers of our blog know we do like to play a little video poker now and then. On our last trip to the casino Karen got a royal flush on a 25 cent video poker machine! Her 25 cents returned $62.50! So we probably broke even in the casino for the whole cruise.

	Our balcony on the Diamond Princess. They even varnished the wood just for us!
	View of Puerto Vallarta from our balcony. Notice anything familiar? ;)
	Artsy picture of the Diamond Princess in Puerto Vallarta.
	Want prescription drugs but don't have a prescription? No problem! This was one of MANY such signs we saw in Mazatlan and the other ports we visited.
	Land's End at Cabo San Lucas taken from our balcony. The near side is the Sea of Cortez, the far side is the Pacific Ocean.
	Our winning trivia team was (left to right) Dave, Steve, Karen, Jim, Pat and Bev. Oh, and Ross who took the picture. Can't forget him :)
	Karen's royal flush - way to go!!!

Mesa, AZ

Sorry about the delay in getting something new up on the blog. We've been here in Mesa, AZ for a couple of weeks now. We've been so busy with biking and hiking and trying not to get too much sun (gotta rub it in!) that we haven't had a chance until now. OK, that's not 100% true - we're just lazy.


After so much time in fairly rural areas it's nice to have the amenities of a large city. We've discovered 3 (count 'em, 3!) Super WalMarts within a 10 mile radius of us! And they even have a WalMart grocery store across the street from our RV park. Mesa is the land of large RV parks and ours is no exception. There are some 700 sites here and we've heard that this place is considered "small" by local standards! Unlike most RV parks we've visited this (and the others in the area) are populated mostly with "park model" units. Basically "single wide" mobile homes. OK, it's a mobile home park! But it's a VERY NICE mobile home park. The streets are lined with palm trees, we have a large heated pool with a large hot tub next to it, a computer room with at least 20 computers and high speed internet hookups for laptops, a restaurant and tons of activities. It's not your father's RV park! We do like it here.


So far we've done several good desert hikes here. We've also ridden our bikes all over the immediate area. There's a good amount of traffic here so we're constantly on guard when crossing streets and driveways. They do have bike lanes on the roads but neither of us want to be organ donors just yet.


Ross's aunt and uncle, Shari and Chuck, live just a couple of miles down the road. We all took a side trip to Las Vegas last week for a couple of days. Fun times! We figure we lost somewhere between $10 and $20 in all. It's tough to lose a lot when you mainly play the nickel video poker machines!


Next up is a week long cruise down to Mexico out of Los Angeles. Check back here in a few weeks for an entry on that! Until then, take care and have fun!

	Shari and Chuck at Hoover Dam overlook. A new bridge across the canyon is being built so traffic over the dam can be rerouted for security purposes. This bridge will not be for those with a fear of heights!
	View from the top of the Wind Cave Trail. Note the small parking lot - that's the trail head! This hike was only a 10 minute drive from our RV park. Lots of great hiking around here!
	Karen coming down from the top of the Treasure Loop Trail. Incredible scenery! This hike also was just a few minutes drive from our RV park.
	A longer drive to reach, the Hieroglyphic Trail is well worth the drive. After a 2 mile uphill hike you come to this set of petroglyphs dating back over 1000 years that were made by the Hohokam, people that originally inhabited this area. A spring exists above the rocks - that's a pond below the rocks. Standing water in the desert is a rare sight indeed!
	Karen and a giant Saguaro cactus on the Hieroglyphic Trail. Saguaro cactus take 65 to 75 years to start growing arms. Average lifespan is about 150 to 175 years but some live longer. This one is probably at least 125 years old.

Rockport, TX

We've been in Rockport since the middle of December. We had planned on leaving over a week ago but the weather kept us here. The travel conditions along I-10 were pretty bleak last week. Even here we had a stretch of several days where the high temperature barely reached 40 degrees. Not too bad if you live up north, but around here it was very unusual and harsh. Heck, there are palm trees all over the place here and that just doesn't go with 40 degrees! But things are finally getting better so tomorrow we should be on the road.

Just to be official we're actually in Fulton, TX. The area is refered to as Rockport/Fulton. We've enjoyed our stay here. The people are very friendly for the most part. There are a lot of folks from up north here. In other places they (and us, I guess) are refered to as "snowbirds." Here they are called "Winter Texans." It's basically a small town but it does have everything one needs - gas stations, restaurants and even a Super WalMart. And for the big city experience Corpus Christi is only about 30 minutes away. We've spent a lot of time riding our bikes around here. Once you get about a mile south (towards Rockport) there are sidewalks that take you all the way to the downtown area. It's in that area that we found a real gem. The Rockport Beach Park is a peninsula about 1 mile long. There is a beach that runs almost the entire length of the southern shore. There are lots of picnic tables, fixed shade umbrellas on the beach, a boat launch and many birds. It's just a really nice place to spend some time! The annual pass we purchased was only $10. Things around here are pretty inexpensive for the most part. That's probably one reason there are so many RV parks in the area. Dozens of them! In parking lots you often see more out of state license plates than Texas plates. We stayed at the Driftwood RV Haven. People here are very friendly and made us immediately feel at home. We had community meals in the club house on Christmas eve, Christmas day, new year's eve and at a couple of pot luck dinners. Rockport/Fulton is somewhere we'd definitely visit again!

	Entrance sign at the Rockport Beach Park. Note the lovely palm trees - not exactly a scene we picture when we think of Texas!
	Pelicans at the Rockport Beach Park. Dixon Lanire Merrith wrote a poem called "The Pelican" (1910): "A wonderful bird is the pelican His bill will hold more that his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I'm damned if I can see how the helican."
	The local movie theater. We saw several movies here during some not so nice weather. Like most things around here it's pretty cheap. First run movies for only $4 for a matinee!
	Regional hamburger chain - Whataburger. The food was good but the name was even better.
	We took a day trip down to Padre Island National Seashore. The beach runs about 60 miles down the island. After the first 5 miles it's for 4X4 vehicles only. We rode our bikes down the beach about 4 miles before turning back.