Though we’re now in a nice air conditioned home with a beautiful wooded area out back, settled in for maybe a week or two so I can finish the book, we’ve had a few crazy days since we last wrote.
Leaving West Galveston
By the time we packed, washed the sheets and towels, made in the beds in the condo, and said our good-byes to Claire, it was after 9:30 in the morning before we hit the road. The good news was that we had a strong tailwind, a wind that actually felt cool, so the riding was easy.
We loved the scenery; the Gulf waters stretched out into the distance on our left, and mile after mile of wildflowers stretched out on our right. Back beyond the wildflowers, in the far distance past another stretch of water called West Bay, we could see the remote skyline showing the outline of oil refineries.
The shoulders were barely okay during the day; we had enough to get partly off the road. The traffic was surprisingly heavy, so we often had cars or trucks waiting a bit behind us. We never enjoy that kind of riding. We made time quickly, not stopping for our first break for at least fifteen miles.
West Galveston is really pretty, filled with any number of subdivisions, housing gorgeous large and expensive homes along the water. It didn’t appear to be hit as hard by Ike as Galveston was. We’d been told that the homes built to stricter specifications survived the storms, whereas older or more cheaply built homes did not. Nearly all of the homes we passed during the day were new.
We knew we were headed into a toll bridge, but we had no idea how high it would be (meaning how hard would we have to work). Claire had also warned us that the tollbooth keeper was a real character, as in certifiably nuts, lawsuits against him, and so on. We considered ourselves warned, but unfortunately she didn’t tell us how to deal with the guy. I entertained myself for part of the miles trying to figure out how I would deal with him, especially since the tolls are about $2 per vehicle and we had only $1.18 with us, total.
When we finally approached the bridge, we paused while a large truck was waved on through, coming through on our side of the road. When it passed, we looked up to see a young guy waving us forward, with an older man behind him. I put on a big smile, and hesitantly rode forward, with Chelsea following me. The older guy gave us a huge arm wave, motioning us to keep going across the bridge, with a big smile on his face.
I was delighted! How could it be that easy? He hollered out to Chelsea, “Where are y’all headed?” The look on his face was priceless when Chelsea called back, “South America!”
The bridge was very pretty. Lasting just under a mile, we had a gradual rise, and nearly the entire distance was over the water. It really reminded us of parts of the Florida Keys. We had our first food break on the other side of the bridge, chatting with the new owner of the store. She’s only been open two and half weeks, after Ike damage, but it looks like business is picking up nicely.
Approaching Surfside
The other side of the bridge wasn’t nearly as interesting. As Joey from Island Cycle Repair in Galveston said, it was a whole lotta nothin’. We were making good time, though, so we didn’t really care, until we suddenly rode into swarms of mosquitoes. By this time it was nearly noon, the air temps were getting really hot, there was no shade anywhere, we were getting tired, and the mosquitoes were pushing us over the edge into crankiness.
It was another one of those scenes, like leaving Johnson’s Bayou in Louisiana, where we couldn’t slap or brush fast enough to get the mosquitoes all off, and meanwhile we had to deal with traffic coming uncomfortably close to us.
After a miserable half hour of this, we finally got to a house where workmen were finishing up a project. We pulled off the road with the intent of asking if anyone knew where we could stay. Explaining our situation, we asked if the mosquitoes would be as bad in Surfside, and finally asked if we could rest in the shade under the house (it was up on stilts).
Dave, from Brannan Real Estate, was checking with the crew doing the work on the house – Brannan Real Estate has a contract with the owner. They are in the process of rehabbing the house after Ike damage and will be renting it out. He agreed immediately to let us rest in the shade, and after some discussion, indicated that we’d likely be able to put up our tent under the house.
He also told us that we could camp anywhere on the beaches in Surfside, and even called City Hall for us to see if a recent ordinance preventing camping in Surfside had really been enacted. He was told no, it hadn’t been, and then told us where to go in Surfside. Dave suggested that we ride past the bridge heading out to Freeport, and keep going straight till we find the Jetties.
Meanwhile the head of the work crew had gone to his truck and returned to us holding out a can of Off! We were so desperate that we sprayed ourselves up and down with the Off!, just to get a respite from the mosquitoes.
After everyone left, we talked over our choices, and even though we had shade and relative quiet under the house, we’d be right on the main highway, with no water and no bathroom facilities. We opted to head out down the road.
The Jetties
The last seven miles seemed interminable. We passed the bridge, and the last mile or two seemed even longer. We finally found a small park with a bit of shade and some wooden seats under a thatched roof, and sat down to eat a snack and figure out what to do.
Originally intending to spend only a few minutes there, we ended up staying several hours. We met Gary Seachrist, a football coach and athletic director at a high school in Arkansas, and we had great fun chatting with him for a long time. We watched some of the huge ships heading out the Freeport Harbor Channel, and we watched the dolphins feeding in the Channel. One dolphin “guided” a huge ship up the Channel out to the point of the jetty.
We saw our first frigate birds since the Florida Keys, which thrilled us, and we talked with the fisherman who happened by where we were sitting. We finally were too tired and too hot and too hungry to wait any longer, so we headed out over to the Jetties, hoping to find a camping place on the beach.
After checking again with a local, who assured us that yes we could camp on the beach, we scoped out the situation. It was less than ideal. The small shelters were broken, tilting into the sand; there would be very little shade for the rest of the day, and there was zero privacy.
We finally decided on a shelter closest to the walkway, but we still had to unhitch our trailers, and carry all our gear, bikes, and trailers down a set of broken slabs of rock, across the sand to the small picnic shelter. We were even hotter and more tired after struggling through all that.
Hunger finally roused us, so we got the stove out and managed to heat up some macaroni and cheese. We had no water available, so we couldn’t wash our pot and meal cups. We did have a porta-potty right next to us, so we at least had toilet facilities. Chelsea kept wanting to put up the tent, but I kept hesitating, noticing that there were no other tents within sight.
We’d been watching a group of three guys who’d gone out in kayaks to fish in the Gulf, and upon their return, we spotted a large fish one of them had caught. We wandered over to say hi and see the fish. After talking to them awhile, we discovered much to our horror that no camping was allowed on that beach, that we’d have to head down to the public beach, back the way we had come.
Finding a place to stay for the night
We had to go through the process in reverse – dragging all our gear, bikes, and trailers back over the sand and up those rocks, get hitched up, and ride off down the road. We headed down nearly every small side street we saw, with each one clearly posted “no camping”, as twilight fell and the sky got darker and darker.
Then the mosquitoes started in again; at the same time we found out we had another four miles to go to get to the public beach! We were both nearly in tears at yet another small beach access road where we saw the “no camping” sign. Ready to lose my emotional cool, I glanced up and saw a man and a woman sitting on stairs in front of a house, watching us.
I called out to them, asking where the public beach was, and got the same answer, “four miles down the road”. Then the woman called back to me, “Where are you headed?” We explained our situation, and told her what had happened during the day, and how discouraged we were. She responded, “Just put up your tent right here!”
It took us about a minute to think it over and say yes. We worked as fast as we’ve ever worked getting our tent set up, getting our sleeping things in the tent, and getting the bikes and trailers tarped. Just as we finished, they invited us up to use the bathroom, take a shower, and have a drink with them.
We sat on the stairs with them, rum and Coke in hand, so glad to have a place to stay, with a bathroom accessible, the ability to do our laundry, and even to take a shower.
Signing off from Surfside TX