Day 16 - Tuesday, December 19 - Corpus Christi to Harlingen

Last nights low was 59 degrees. Today’s high, as we travelled the 155 miles from Padre Balli in Corpus Christi to Encore Lakewood in Harlingen, TX, was a mostly sunny 73.

I finally remembered to take photos of a couple of interesting structures on our way out of Corpus Christi.

This is Island Joes Coffee and Gallery, built out of containers. http://www.islandjoescc.com/

I don't know what this building is, The front really looks like a large sand castle.

We thought that these might be rice storage barns when we drove by them but it turns out that they are barns for cottonseed processing. 

Google maps plan of the barns.

The article at the following link is interesting. I would love to tour the place but when I read about them using hexane to extract the oil I knew that would never be allowed. When I worked for Staley’s in Decatur, IL they used hexane to extract oil from soy beans and corn. Employees had to sign in just to get in the plant. Then, to get into the hexane extraction areas, which were fenced off with chain link, inside the plant, you had to check in with the area manager and be escorted. No ferrous metals, not even heels nailed on your shoes. NOTHING that might produce a spark. While I worked there one of the facilities has a “small” hexane explosion. It blew the top off a piece of equipment and blew most of the windows out of a 3 story building. A 25 hp that was on top of the machine where the explosion occurred was missing. Above where it had been there was a hole in the 5” thick concrete roof. On our way up the stairway access to the roof we notice light coming through the roof of the stairway enclosure. The motor had blown up through the roof and then come back down on the concrete roof of the stairway enclosure. It broke a hole in the concrete but the rebar caught it like a net.

https://myrgv.com/local-news/2022/08/27/valley-cottonseed-oil-mill-is-first-step-to-a-thousand-products/

Many more miles of road rebuilding for I69E. There were still two lanes open both directions so it didn’t slow traffic to much. We topped off our fuel tank in Kingsville, TX. 35 gallons @ $3.22/gallon. We saw several stations where fuel was less than $3/gallon but we didn't think we could get in and out of them.

We liked staying here at Lakewood last year but it gives off the vibe of being the ill-treated step sister of the Encore campgrounds in the area. We were assigned site 281, a back-in, grass site with a small, badly cracked, concrete patio; no fire ring, no picnic table. The standard rate is $53/night & $322/week. Our Thousand Trails membership allows us to stay up to 14 consecutive days for “free”, then you have to “be out of the system” for 7 days (pay for a week here or somewhere else). It appears that they don’t regularly use campsites in this area of our site. Our site and a couple either side were recently mowed. When I checked out the utility hook ups prior to having Kathy back in I couldn’t find a sewer connection. I saw a depressed area in the grass and after poking I found what looked like a cap on a 4” PVC pipe. The top of the cap was a couple of inches below the surrounding grade. Grass had grown completely over the cap. I plugged in our 50 amp electrical connection, turned on the breaker and found we had no power. I flipped the breaker off, pulled the plug out, re-inserted it, turned the breaker back on and still no power. I told Kathy I was going to walk up and talk to the check-in lady to tell her that we didn’t have power and that I needed a shovel to access the sewer. The lady, a nice lady who lives here and who I remembered from last year, told me that they didn’t have a maintenance person on site today. She said she would go home, get a shovel and come down to see what she could do. On my walk back Kathy sent me a text telling me that the power had come on. The lady came with her shovel, I dug up the top of the pipe and pried off the cap.

After all that I came in to set up my CPAP machine and had no power at the outlet. I had previously broken the outlet and had purchased a new one, I just had not installed it yet, it worked OK. I decided I would go ahead and change it. While getting ready to change it I realized that the outlet was not hot, so I started checking 120v circuit breakers. They all seemed fine. By this time I found that none of the 3 duplex outlets in the bedroom were hot, nor were the 2 in the bathroom area, which were GFCI protected. I unsuccessfully searched the outside bays for more 120v breakers. By this time Kathy had supper ready. While we were eating she asked me to set up our Winegard Razer antenna to see how many local channels we could get. Once it was done scanning I tried to turn on the TV so that so that it could link up to the channels the Razer had found. The TV would not come on. In the dark I went back to the campground electrical boxes with my meter and checked the 50 amp plug for the campsite next to ours. It had approx. 120v on each of the legs. I unplugged our cable and plugged it into the other box and all seems fine. AARGH!!!!

And that was the excitement for the afternoon.

God is good. I pray that He blesses you and yours as He has me (Today He blessed me with a lesson about perseverance/patience, and becoming more mature. James 1:3-4)