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Our site at Mustang Island. The Gulf of Mexico is behind the trailer, just beyond the dunes.

We hitched up under a clear blue sky, packed a cooler with clementines, smokehouse almonds, wasabi peas and peanut butter crackers, then crossed the straight, flat miles to Corpus Christi. We are staying at Mustang Island State Park, which is just north of Padre Island (where we will stay next). Our plan is to be here for Christmas — Christmas morning will be a little easier with water and electric hook-ups. Padre Island has no hook-ups — that’s a lot of fun too!

The one catch is the water in the park is on the fritz. Something is wrong along the pipeline into the park. Since we’re essentially on a big sandbar, the ground is never very stable and rigid pipes and such don’t do well here. They had the water hooked up till 10:00pm tonight, so we took showers and filled our freshwater tank. That’ll last us for several days, by which time they’ll have fixed it I’m sure.

Danine mentioned in the last post how she forgot her keys again. Well, Elise and I forgot the other item we insist on losing. It’s Elise’s brown sweatshirt. We left it at the campground in Savannah, GA, and someone there kindly mailed it to Danine’s parents who, in turn, mailed it to Danine’s brother where we collected it at Thanksgiving. Elise took it off while she and I went down the Largest Playground Slide We Have Yet Encountered. It was an old school playground made of iron bars and heavy timber. Elise said it reminded her of the Swiss Family Robinson. The slide would never be built today. It’s too steep, too tall, and too fast — one of the old stainless steel sheet metal types. It was awesome! Anyway we left the sweatshirt right there on the playground and didn’t notice until we were 150 miles away. Dang. Not sure we’ll recover it this time…

One problem with visiting Mark is that he always makes me want to buy more books. We spend half our time talking about various books and exchanging/expanding reading lists. The problem is we are on a budget (I use the term loosely here) and we live in a small space. However, too many books has always been for me (and Danine too) a good problem. One of the cool things Mark told me about is the American Guide Series. It’s a collection of guide books written as part of the WPA. Writers needed employment too, so the government created a federal writers’ program. Lots of famous writers took part: Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Zora Neal Hurston, etc. You can find used copies and I want to get the New Mexico book, since we’re headed that way.