Christmas and New Years in Rockport Texas

Rockport/Fulton Texas are thriving communities, populations of 8700 and 1300 with an elevation of 6.  The economy seems strong here, driven by fishing and tourists,  you see very few empty storefronts.  They remodeled a quiet street of historic old buildings and turned them into shops and art galleries away from the "business" part of the cities.  Unlike our Oregon coastal cities that are just one tourist trap after another. The area is known for the twice yearly bird migrations and artist colonies. If you know of a traffic engineer, they could use one down here.  You usually hit every light red on your way through the town, the side traffic triggers the change.  Arggghhh!!!
  HEB is the only grocery store chain we have seen since Buffalo Gap.  There are no Safeway, Albertsons or anything else.  You can pick up a few things at the gas station convenience stores.  Of course there is a Wal-Mart everywhere but I don't usually think of them as grocery stores.

One thing that has intrigued us since we have been here is a sign "Belt Sander Races" the 1st and third Saturday of each month.  We recently found out they really do race belt sanders.  Tomorrow we will be going to our first belt sander contest.  Who Knew?

Christmas eve at the club house we had a appetizer potluck happy hour followed by the steal and grab gift exchange with a $10.00 limit unisex gift.  I took a bottle of my favorite wine, full intending to steal it back (in the true spirit of Christmas), would you believe someone took it from me? Christmas morning we drove into town to make phone calls to our kids.  We ended up in a cemetery, a little weird but good cell service.  Christmas dinner was another potluck with the RV park supplying the ham.  There are a lot of good cooks down here.  After dinner our little "group" played Pegs and Jokers again, the girls winning hands down.  The day after Christmas I spent 4 hours in Urgent Care with what turned out to be an ear infection, haven't had one of those since I was a kids.  People all around me were coughing, sneezing and spreading germs everywhere.  So far so good, I haven't come down with the nasty stuff they were spewing.

The fun thing about geo caching is you end up in places you more than likely wouldn't go.  We were out by the southern end of Copano Bay, big  fancy houses seemingly built in a wetland.  I cannot imagine during a hurricane or storm surge that they wouldn't flood.  Cheaper homes in low lying areas are built on stilts with the living area upstairs. Sounds like more money than brains.

New years eve there was another appetizer potluck with live music and dancing.  We were surprised we made it to midnight, first time in quite a while.  On New Years day we had  dinner at the clubhouse.  Followed by a couple games of Pegs and Jokers, the girls are whomping the guys.
Sunday after the Ice Cream Social we played a few more games, women again triumphant.
It's a good thing we are leaving here Wednesday, we'd have to buy a few wardrobe.

We had to go to Corpus Christi again, we desperately needed vacuum cleaner bags, Rockport isn't big enough to have a Miele dealer in town.  After we took care of business we went to the "shoreline" area.  There's about a mile of beaches with continual steps (or benches) we aren't sure what to call them.  There are 3 "T's" with marinas and high end restaurants. We got a bite to eat in a little pub right on the marina.  Corpus is really a pretty little city.

TTFN  Gary and Pam

Photos top to bottom:  Sign that caught our eye; Christmas eve gift exchange; singing Christmas Carols; Pegs and Jokers buddies, Bob and Sharon & Gail and RJ; photo Gary took on a bike ride down Fulton Beach Road; Rockport pier and beach; and a boat coming in from the gulf, note expensive homes across the way built on canals.