Last night’s rain lasted longer than they predicted, but around 8:00 PM, the rain subsided a little so I donned my raincoat and Auggie and I took a short walk….and I do mean short. The wind was still howling, blowing Auggie’s ears out like wings, so he did his business a couple of times and made for the door in a hurry. He was more concerned about getting his after-walk treat anyhow. The wind was so gusty at times that it shook the bus a little and that’s no easy feat. I checked our weather app and it was blowing 18-23 mph. Luckily, it didn’t affect our sleeping conditions. We got up this morning to winds still blowing 18 but from a slightly different direction so it seemed calmer in the bus. The skies were cloudy and the temp was a cool 66. We hung out and did our morning routine before heading out around 11:30. By then, the temp had risen to 70, but the skies remained partly cloudy. We explored the east (north) half of the island yesterday, but today we want to check out the west (south) half. The west half is supposedly less commercialized and less visited. Our drive down Highway 3005 is lined with stilt homes of all different shapes and sizes, single family or multi-family, in large and small beach communities.
The Galveston Island State Park is also on this end of the island and we took a drive in to check it out. The beach-side entrance was closed for construction.
There are very few shops, stores, or businesses on this end. We stopped at one of the two gas stations in Jamaica Beach. which is the largest town on the west end. Regular gas was $3.56/gal. We continued west and came upon the Galveston Island KOA, so we popped in there to take a look. We are KOA members. The campground was very nice with spacious, landscaped sites, but it wasn’t very full either. There are a lot of developed beach accesses for people to use along this highway. We finished driving the 18 miles to the end of the island and came upon this toll bridge. The toll bridge takes you across the San Luis Pass to the town on the other side, Surfside Beach, which is on the mainland.
We didn’t want to leave Galveston Island, so we took the dirt road along the bridge and followed it under the bridge to the HUGE beach at the tip of the island.
The beach is Galveston Beach and it encompasses the western tip of the island.
To reach the shoreline, we followed tire tracks in the sand which opened up to a spacious beach at San Luis Pass. Some of the sand was deep, so we put the Jeep in 4-wheel drive high and did some “off-roading” in the sand.
We parked near the water and decided to enjoy our lunch while we watched the fishermen.
We could see a long shoal, or bar, just a short distance from the opening to the pass which was causing the water to break and create large waves coming into the Pass.
From where we stopped on the beach, we could see the waves breaking on the shoreline across the way and roll along the breakwater in front of these homes.
The beach was not very busy today. There were only 3 other vehicles that we could see. Two of them were the fishermen trying their luck at surf fishing. The third vehicle was a family enjoying the beach.
We drove east along the beach and for as far as we could see there was beach, but no other vehicles or people. We disturbed this flock of seagulls who took to the air as we drove by.
We discovered another exit from the beach and ended up back on the highway to head back to the campground. We got back to the campground around 1:30. We noticed this A-Liner Sport in a nearby campsite that was being pulled by a Tesla. Bob wondered where in the heck he was able to charge up his car.
We are moving on to Port Aransas tomorrow, so we decided to do some needed cleaning and vacuuming in the bus. I did a couple loads of wash while we were hooked up to sewer here and then we will be all set for another week or two. Bob cooked chicken on the grill and with some baby yellow potatoes and fresh corn we had a great meal. The sun finally showed its face around dinnertime which was an added treat. We took our evening walk and enjoyed our last night in Galveston. We have had an enjoyable time here.