Friday, August 19, 2011
We set out at 6 AM with the car loaded up. I had gotten most of it loaded the night before. We stopped first at Braums so that I could get a bite to eat, then we filled the car up. The road was disappearing pretty quickly and for a car with no a/c it was pretty cool. Oklahoma has been known to stay over 100 degrees all summer. We avoided most of the usual traffic on the drive down. It was cool to see some of the places that I have previous fond memories of, such as Salado where I have vacationed numerous times for the Scottish games, and San Antonio where I took my 2003, High School Spring Break at. We arrived at Corpus Christi around 3:30PM and could feel the ocean breeze already, which was a godsend for a car with no A/C. It was there that we got stuck in traffic for the first time in 10 hours. With Bob Marley on my radio, and palm trees in view, we were filled with the anticipation of plunging into the briny ocean to cool us off. (And rum)
We arrived at Mustang Island State Park, where we asked for directions to a campsite that permitted alcohol. We were informed to get a parking permit for the beach and the overnight stay was free. We secured the permit at a “stripes” gas station, along with a bag of ice and Imperial beer. We parked and went immediately for a dip in the waves. Just after, we set up camp and a make-shift tarp shade. Then, we started on our buzz, and dinner under the shade, while the comforting sound of crashing waves where all around us. We observed the comings and goings of groups of people, while jokes and laughter rolled as constant as the waves of the Gulf. We giggled ourselves into tears many times.
We walked the beach after dark to see if we could spot any scuttling crabs, with no luck. We did discover many other random things though, that could not be placed into a pot and boiled for consumption. I slept a broken slumber that night due to passing cars and a very bright moon that shown through the mesh in the roof of our tent.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
I awoke at 5 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. I recalled going to bed the previous night just before 10PM, so I got out of bed and took a makeshift shower with a water bottle and camp soap. The beach was dark and unpopulated, so I stripped down with no fear of being spotted, and cleaned the Gulf’s salty residue of my body and bearded face. I sat in my car after changing my clothes and tried to resume sleep, with no luck. Eventually my comrades woke up and we walked the beach to wake up. We witnessed the sun rising on the ocean’s horizon, which is indescribable. Frank & Brad took a morning swim while I prepared breakfast, which was maple and brown sugar porridge.
We decided to make plans to go into town and find a Starbucks so that we could get directions to the U.S.S. Lexington that I had remembered seeing on my trip to Corpus in 2004, though I didn’t go aboard to see the museum. Before we left, I went to the giant sandbox behind the dunes, and then we packed the car, washed the dishes, and headed into town. Instead of a Starbucks, we decided to use the Wi-Fi in a Barnes and Noble and got coffee there too. After we all read a bit, used the restroom, and wrote in our respective journals, we figuratively set sail for the Lexington.
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| Across the street from Pier 99 |
We parked under an elevated surf shop upon arrival and went inside to find a sling bag for me. We had no luck in doing so, so we decide lunch would be nice, though it was more like brunch. Lunch, or brunch if you fancy, was held at Pier 99. We ate on the patio. Frank and Brad both got a seafood gumbo, and I got a Seafood platter that consisted of fish, hushpuppies, shrimp, oysters, and toast. We filled our bellies, and then proceeded to the naval ship.
At the bottom of the long cement gangplank, we got shuttled up to the top. Frank and Brad were a little disheartened at the price of admission (just under 14 dollars), but I felt that I had to see what I had missed the first go round. I had, in fact, drove along way to get there. I felt like a jerk letting my intentions be known to the pair, but I had to see it. We were running pretty low on funds due to the expensive meal at Pier 99, but the way I saw it, was that we were going to spend the rest of the trip on the beach anyway, with nothing provoking us to spend anymore.
We came aboard the good ship Lexington and I immediately went to the restrooms. It was really cool because the ships restrooms were still the World War II style restrooms. You even had to descend down old ship stairs and hulls to get to it. I felt like I had transported to 1943. We journeyed on throughout each “tour” of the ship. Some paid tribute to ships that went down in Pearl Harbor; one was even a tribute to the movie “Pearl Harbor” which was partially filmed on the vessel. Others were things like the captain’s quarters, dental office, medical, and control room. On the main deck there were several aircraft to look at as well. Very cool museum.
The next thing we thought to do was to go swim by the Lexington. We walked by some of the hotels on the strip and passed The Radisson, where I saw some pretty good looking women in the hotel pool, which had an open bar they could swim up to. We stepped off the sidewalk to the painfully hot sand, and then set our things on my OU chair. There were lots of jellyfish in the water, which supplied me with plenty of entertainment watching Frank irrationally cower in fear of them.
We packed up everything and drove towards Mustang Island again, only to meet traffic, so we went to Wal-Mart to get some food for further camping. While Brad and I waited on Frank, he came back with unexpected news. He informed us that his mom wanted to get us a hotel. So, we got all of our groceries and some more beer and went back to the Radisson that we had passed earlier. His Grandma had called, and booked our room, but the hotel required that we have the card and the I.D. with us, which we didn’t. Another method, they explained, was to have a copy of the card faxed with a copy of the I.D. and a paper filled out. Frank’s grandma had no way to do all of that, so Frank, while on the phone gave a sideways head nod indicating for us to check out a different hotel. However, in my experience with hotels I can confidently say that we would have confronted the same problem with every hotel we inquired about. So, I suggested that Frank use his own money and his Granny could reimburse him. So, that’s what we did. It worked splendidly. We rolled a luggage rack to my car and loaded the ice chest and all of our camping gear that we needed to survive and headed to room 626 with smiles on our faces.
Frank slid the room key in the slot until we heard a gratifying “BEEP”, followed by a small green light. We unloaded and spirits were soaring. We started dinner, homemade meatless chili , which turned out delicious. Cooking on sterno heat in the hotel made us feel like we were doing it up like Hunter S. Thompson. I stirred and stirred until we were pouring our bowls full of steamy chili, with rum being occasionally being poured down our gullet. We were feeling pretty good. We started watching “Anchorman” when after a time, we heard the phone ring. It was the hotel informing Frank that the card had declined. SHIT. After asking Frank more details of the check that was deposited in his account, I discovered that it was a physical check deposited on Saturday. Having worked in two banks, I knew that those funds were going to be unavailable until Monday, so we had to find a way to come up with money. I came to a solution: Brad would pay for that night’s stay, and we would see if Frank’s grandma could go to Staples to send in the appropriate faxes for the weekend stay, then Brad could get reimbursed.
We took to the hotel pool and snuck some Coronas down there to keep the buzz alive. Then, we swam in the ocean until we had got our fill.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
I woke up around 9, and while everyone lay sleeping I began cleaning up after the children a bit. After everyone got up and around, I pressed the importance of getting the hotel taken care of to Frank. I was appreciative of the Hotel stay, but we had to get this secured so that we weren’t scrambling to get things packed up at 15 til checkout. About 10:30 we got word that the appropriate paper was filled out and faxed, but not the I.D. and the card, so Frank talked to the hotel and they extended our check out to see if what we needed would come through once Frank’s Grandmother returned to her local Staples to fax it. Eventually, it was all said and done and Brad got his money back. We all relaxed a bit and we went on the hunt for some cheap eats in celebration. We found a 50’s style ice cream shop and I got a foot long hotdog, Frank got pizza, and Brad got two hamburgers, I was not impressed by their microwave food. I hate microwaves, but at least the ice cream was pretty tasty. I was officially out of wampum at this point in the game, so it was now “Survival: Corpus Christi” for yours truly. After we ate, it was pool time for the trio, our hotel pool was closed, so we were directed to the pool next to us at the “Quality Inn”. It was nice too! We swam there for a bit, then in the ocean.
There were lots of jelly fish lying dead on the shore. We were making our way to the shore after the swim, when Frank pointed at a large object under the water. It was the size of a manta ray, but a bright blue color. I didn’t grow up by an ocean, but I knew they weren’t that color. I doubted that knowledge though. A tail! I saw a tail, so it had to be a ray. I got a stick and started poking it to see if it would move. Brad finally reached down to touch it and pulled it out! Shorts. It was a pair of gym shorts.
We got back and changed, then watched some of the original “Fright Night” That was on the tele, and then decided to go to Blackbeard’s. I was anxious to go see it because I went there in 2004 with my family. I had no money though, so I just had water while they chomped on some burgers. The rest of the evening we ran around all the surf shops and I picked up a red bull along the way. When we got back I made some food (cheese and broccoli soup).
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| In a surf shop |
I really wanted to catch some crab and have a boil, so we went to a quickstop and got some chicken. We had a good pisser going too. We got back and continued our rum soaked adventure. I tied rope to the chicken and grabbed a bucket. We spend a fair amount of time on the beach with no luck, as I kept tossing the chicken in the water and checking it. So, when we got back, we continued drinking some “Lone Star”, while I boiled the rest of the chicken. Once I got the chicken mostly boiled, I used the broth and a can of “cream of chicken soup”, and got it cooking while I pulled meat from the chicken and tossed it in. We had a delicious chicken soup after some time had passed. “Batman Returns” was on the tele. We roamed the hotel hallways, and private elevators that room service uses. We came back up to the room and I passed out with “Batman & Robin” on T.V.
Monday, 8-22-2011
I got to sleep in a bit, and I felt pretty lazy. I was up at 6 writing in my journal, reading, checking my things on my iPod, and eating some porridge. I started coffee, and then Frank woke up. We decided to go to the lobby café and see if they had better coffee. (They didn’t) We did get a cheap breakfast though. However, we waited for over 30 minutes to get it. It turns out that our adorable waitress was stuck in the hotel’s elevator. We had decided to tell her that she looked as if she belonged in the Ravenclaw house (from the Harry Potter universe) because Frank sensed she was a troublemaker. Brad joined us after we finished our plates, and he got one of his own. I took a nap after we got back in. So did Brad. Frank went out to get a souvenir (small shark in formaldehyde) for his grandmother. When I woke up, Frank had comeback from the gift shopping and Brad woke up to shower. Growing restless, I decided to go to Blackbeard’s and buy a pina colada. Frank came along with me, and we split some nachos. I ordered what Blackbeard’s calls “Grog”, which consists of this:
White Rum
Meyer’s Rum
Parrot Bay
Pineapple Juice
And garnished with lime, a cherry, and some ground nutmeg
While drinking I read about their ghost story:
We came back to the hotel afterwards and swam for a while. We relaxed by the pool, and read our books respectively, until I decided to go up to the room and retrieve the rest of my Merlot. I sat and had a dram or two, until we up to the room. On the way, I stopped by the downstairs Café and asked for some butter spread. With the butter we made some grilled cheese sandwiches. We finished off the Merlot, and then we watched the tele a bit. I decided to cook chili beans for dinner, and then we three went swimming once again at the Radisson, and the Quality Inn. We had the idea of ordering pizza, and Frank treated us to some Dominoes.
Tuesday, 8-23-2011
Alas, our vacation had come to an end. We woke up, loaded, and hit the road by 6:30 AM. As usual, I felt pretty alone on the road as the driver, because the other two were sleeping or reading. Not to mention, its hard to talk with the windows down. I was really tired, so after we passed San Antonio I stopped for Starbucks and refueled for energy. We drove for an hour and a half until we got to a neat roadside attraction: Inner Space Cavern.
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| in the cave |
Inside we saw many cave phalluses, and bats. Jokes were non-stop, yet we remained in awe. Frank and Brad had never been in a cave before, so Brad got to have two “firsts” on this trip: A cave, and an ocean. There was even a display of fossils in the cave from animals that were found in excavations. I really enjoyed this break from the road.
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| My food |
After the cave, we did lunch at a Greek restaurant, and it was delicious.
The rest of the trip was hot, sweaty, and monotonous. I was very glad to finally be home, but we all really enjoyed ourselves despite small discrepancies in the flow of gainful inheritance (the hotel).
