Texas: Staying in Brownsville for the winter

You might have seen me mention that we’re in Brownsville for a while. We left Elgin, TX (near Bastrop, TX) in mid-August to come to the Brownsville area.

We had quite the trip to Brownsville.

Visiting Rockport

Yes, we could have driven through/around San Antonio and arrived in Brownsville in one long day of driving, but that’s not our style. Instead, we decided to overnight in Rockport at the state park, and leisurely continue on our way to Brownsville the next day.

We arrived at the state park in the early afternoon. Right away, it was apparent that we were not going to be able to stay in the campsite (Site 35) we had reserved. We had already unhooked the Jeep from the RV to head to our site, so Bob stayed with the RV, while I drove back to the state park office.

Fortunately, the state park had ONE unreserved campsite left that could fit our RV length, so we switched sites and got settled in.

The next morning

Well, a rainstorm had come in overnight, and was still continuing when we woke up. Despite the fact that we had until 11 a.m. to checkout, we ended up leaving shortly after we showered and dressed. Our campsite was down at the end of a gentle slope, which meant all the rain had gathered around and under our RV.

This is right outside our RV door. You can clearly see the rain pooling.
The puddle in front of the RV. You can see that we’re on a rocky, sandy area.

We needed to get out of the campsite if we didn’t want to get stuck.

As you can tell, we made it safely out of the campsite, but look at all that water in our campsite.

Here’s a closer look at the rain battering against the sea wall area and the bayfront.

Because the road is really narrow, we waited until we got to the overflow parking area to hook back up for the drive to Brownsville.

Ready to hook up the Jeep in the overflow parking area.

Driving to Brownsville

Unfortunately, the rainstorm was following us all the way to Brownsville, so driving was not fun.

Visibility was pretty low for most of the drive.

Once we got to the Brownsville area, we ended up in a severe weather storm. This was quite scary, especially in an RV. At one point, a driver ahead of us attempted to pull over to a safe area. Unfortunately, they did not fully get the back end of their vehicle out of the driving lane.

Fortunately, about 3-4 minutes after I stopped this video, the driver realized that we were not moving because they weren’t out of the driving lane. It was a tense few minutes though, because we kept expecting to get rear ended.

We finally made it to the RV park, but we weren’t done with trouble yet.

The RV Park

We liked the look of this RV park because it was fairly new and there is a lot of space between sites.

However, the original RV site we picked was not suitable for us. Because we selected a “pull-in” site, we didn’t realize that the width of our RV would mean that we would be walking on the grass to get to our vehicle.

Bob ended up getting rain boots so his shoes didn’t get destroyed by mud.

The drainage on the RV site was not optimal. So we called the next morning and asked to be moved to a different site. Although we ended up paying more, the pull-through site we’re at now works better. We can easily exit the RV and go straight to the Jeep without needing rain boots.

Our Jeep is now in front of the RV, which leaves plenty of space to get from the RV to the Jeep without issue.

We still need them if we’re working around the RV and it has been heavily raining, though.

You can see that there is no room to walk on the concrete – and Bob has his rain boots on.
Same situation on the passenger side of the RV. There is really no room to walk on the concrete pad when the slideout is out.

 

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