Travel Day to Galveston

Friday (5/1/15):

Connie and I got up early this morning to get The Duchess ready for the 123 mile trip from the Rainbow's End Park in Livingston to the Dellanera RV Park in Galveston. Since it was Friday, the Escapee's Care Center was having their Big Breakfast Special for $5 per person. We took advantage of the meal which allowed us to eat without having to clean up anything. We left Livingston around 9:30 AM for the drive down Hwy 59 to I-45. We did not know how bad the traffic would be in Houston, so we wanted to get an early start but also wait until the morning rush hour had passed. We also needed to get some diesel for The Duchess. We stopped at the Love's Truck Stop in Cleveland to fill up The Duchess: our first time at a truck stop. You have to tell them the dollar amount of diesel fuel you want (rather than just filling up as we do with the Jeep), so we will have to learn to match the fuel gauge with the amount needed to fill the tank. The Duchess holds 150 gallons of diesel and we will try to fill up once we get below 1/2 full. The traffic all the way through Houston was very light and the route we took had almost no construction projects along the way. The only time we had heavy traffic was once we were south of Houston on I-45 where there about 5 miles of stop and go. We arrived at the Dellanera RV Park around 12: 30 and were assigned Site 49. This is a small RV park with only 65 spaces. They have a combination of pull through and back-in sites, most of which can handle a big RV. The site we are in is a back in site. Connie and I had watched a video on-line about to back into a RV site and we followed the directions that we learned. It takes two people to handle this method, but it does work. We backed in as if we had been doing this for a long time.

The sites in this RV park are close together and our site backs up to the beach. If we were in a 5th wheel with a rear window, we would look out on the Gulf of Mexico. With a motorhome, we have to look out our side windows to see the Gulf.

Connie and I went into Galveston to eat lunch and pick up a few items at the grocery store. We ate at Fish Tales (fried shrimp which was not very good) and then drove over to find the cruise ship terminal which is located on the other side of the island. We also stopped in at a local credit union to pick up some cash. Our credit union (A+ Federal in Austin) is part of a national association where you can go to over 5000 locations and do banking as if you at an A+ Federal branch. This feature allows us to remain with the credit union instead of having to go with one of large megabanks.

The Pleasure Pier across Sea Wall Drive from
the Fish Tales restaurant. Connie remember when this pier
was the home of the Flagship Hotel. This hotel was destroyed in
one of the hurricanes that have hit Galveston over the years.

The Duchess all set up for the week.

We returned to the RV park, took a walk along the beach and then had a couple of individual frozen pizzas with wine for dinner. As usual on our travel days, we were both tired and called it an early night.

Our Site 49. You can see how close the sites are to one another.

View from the rear of The Duchess. I don't think there is
much of a sea wall at this location.