The Cycle of Life - T/S State of Maine

(I know I said I wouldn’t be back to the blog until after we’d been to the BVIs but things happen…)

The seventeen mile stretch of the Brownsville, TX shipping channel starts where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. South Padre Island (and its’ beaches) is on the north side of the channel and Boca Chica Beach is on the south side. Just three miles south of Boca Chica is the Mexican border. At the entrance, there are two long, man-made jetties that guide ships into the safety of the channel. When I take my morning walks, I often walk by the jetties. The channel has a 40’ draft and is home to plenty of activity – shrimp boats, dolphins, herons, commercial fishing boats of all shapes and sizes, oil rigs, pelicans and more shrimp boats – all of which you can see when standing on the jetty at the entrance to the channel.

It’s quite a distance inland to the Port of Brownsville – we took a boat tour there last winter. Besides the shrimpers, a number of companies operate there. Keppel-Amfels Offshore & Marine and the International Shipbreaking Ltd are but two of them. Keppel constructs, re-builds and repairs drill rigs and platforms and the International Shipbreaking Ltd. is in the business of ship disposal and the environmental recycling of ship materials. Essentially, they are contracted to take moth-balled, rusty ships and dismantle them. In doing so, they also remove the hazardous materials (asbestos, lead, PCBs and lots of other toxic stuff, I’m sure) apparently by employing an environmentally-friendly process. They also end up recycling anchors, props, winches, shafts – I guess whatever they can ‘save’ and re-sell.

The T/S State of Maine is/was a training ship built to educate and provide real-life experiences to people interested in a career in the Merchant Marine. Her last call to active duty was following Hurricane Katrina. This morning on my walk, she was being escorted into the Brownsville channel by two big tugs – bow and stern – and was headed to International Shipbreaking Ltd. This is the second ship I’ve seen head down that path in three days. This time, I scooted home to the RV, snatched the camera and scooped up Johnnie to drive me back to the jetty in the Jeep. When we saw her being towed, we both thought it was a sad scene knowing where she was headed to her final fate. I took some photos that I thought you might be interested in seeing:




For me, it felt like I was watching a funeral procession. It must be tough for those who actually move her to that final resting place. Mind you, they likely look at it differently – after all, the cycle of life resumes when the 500 or so people who work at International Shipbreaking Ltd. begin the long, arduous task of sorting and re-sorting everything and anything valuable. I want to believe every single part has value, don’t you? I never thought much about where old ships went. Now I know where many of them go. I see a few of them on their final voyage.

Once we’d taken the last pictures of her stern heading down the channel, I noticed the tugs had nudged her slightly and changed the direction – not the destination but the direction. And, in time, the spirit of the T/S State of Maine will be spread across northern Mexico and the southern US.


With that thought in mind, we changed our direction too and rounded the next corner in the Jeep heading back to the beach. We came immediately upon a kite-boarder readying himself for his morning ‘flight’ up the beaches of South Padre.






This sight lifted my spirits for the day. Hope it does the same for you.

Trust I’ll see you back here in a couple of weeks… m.

The Road to Texas - November 13-17/10

We left the house @ 0530 a week ago Saturday. We had prepared ourselves for a long day’s drive and crossed the border into the US at the 1000 Islands Bridge before daylight. The roads were dry and the weather bright and we passed by Syracuse and had Binghamton, NY in our sights by late morning.

Pennsylvania was next and it’s always an interesting drive – up those long hills, riding around and half-way up the Appalachians and then downward into the valleys and the small towns. We scooted past Scranton and Wilkes-Barre with ease and, when we passed the Interstate turn-off for Allentown and NYC, I knew it wouldn’t be long before we took the short slide through Maryland and West Virginia. Crossing that Mason-Dixon Line makes it a reality that “RV Southbound” is heading south for the winter. We’ve been up and down that interstate many, many times over the years – trips to FL for vacations and visits to VA to see Jimmy and Amanda when they lived there. For some reason, the time goes by faster when you know the route and what towns to expect next – familiar territory, I guess.

We move pretty quickly without the Jeep in tow. The 500 Cat diesel engine makes it an easy run when the speed limit is 70 mph and easy to manoeuvre amongst the traffic. The rear view camera is in colour and clearly shows us when someone follows too close or when the way is clear after passing another vehicle. I might add that leaving on a Saturday also gave us two full days without much heavy truck traffic and only church and shopping traffic around the towns and cities. This is not the first time our departure day has been a Saturday.

Also keep in mind we only have to stop for fuel every 700 miles. The Flying J’s and the Love’s are strategically positioned to accommodate long distances between fill-ups. We use the state Visitors Centres for short breaks. John says driving the bus is like driving in his living room so, as long as he’s feeling good (and alert), the navigator is good to go too! Between our 2010 KOA directory, the Camping World book of campgrounds and the listings in the Woodalls catalogue, I can always find somewhere to stay when he says, “I’ve just about had enough.” And we always stop around 4:00 before it gets dark – nothing nastier than coming upon road construction and those cement barriers narrowing to one lane in the dark.

By Monday, we had reached the end of US 81 in the hills of eastern Tennessee and were heading straight southwest through Chattanooga into Alabama. We then went south through Mississippi and, on reaching the end of Interstate 59, we joined up with the infamous I-10 near Slidell, Louisiana just a few miles north of New Orleans. The roads there remain bumpy and torn up with construction after Katrina so it’s not a pleasant ride through that whole stretch. And, without a doubt, there’s something very eerie about traveling 25+ miles on a highway on stilts over those bayous – you can’t help but wonder what’s living down there in those swamps – not something you want to find out either!

Our trip had been quite uneventful until that point. And somewhere just after that stretch west of New Orleans, we heard a huge bang in the rear of the bus on the passenger side as if something had busted and was forever broken. I want to describe it like something you would see in a Batman cartoon – you know when you see a bolt of lightning with the word "Bam” inside it. What we knew was the “bam” was real loud.

We stopped the bus at the first safe opportunity and John did a ‘once-around’ and, on the surface, we saw nothing different – nothing damaged. We decided to drive on to the Lafayette, LA KOA not far down the road. When we stopped there overnight, we checked closer and noted the back passenger tire (the tire we could see) seemed like it was losing air. The next morning, we headed to the next Loves Truck stop about 50 miles down the road and, how lucky we were to discover they specialized in tires. The guy looked at our back tire and said, “Looks like there’s a lot of weight on it. We’d better look at the inside tire.” To help keep your perspective, remember the tire stands 38" tall. Here’s a picture of it with the wheel still on:



Trust you’ll agree that you could easily put your fist and mine through the hole!




So here’s what ended up happening… we had two new tires installed on the front and relocated one of the front tires to the back. We had to abandon the other front tire. After all, where could we put it? We certainly had no place to carry a spare Michelin! Alas, three short hours later, we were on our way and through Houston just prior to the afternoon rush hour. With all its’ ‘Loops’ and toll roads, believe me, you don’t want to be in Houston during rush hour in a 42' coach. When they photograph highway infrastructure with over and under-passes everywhere, they often film in Houston. As you drive through the maze of highway systems, you can barely even see the Houston skyline. We were glad to reach the west side of the city so we could start heading south again through more rural communities.

We stopped that day about 4:00 pm in a town called Victoria at an RV park called “Gateway to the Gulf”. From there, it’s a four-hour run to South Padre Island (SPI) and we arrived safely Wednesday at the SPI KOA just after noon. We set up our RV site, went to the bar at the end of the Pier 19 for a quick bite and enjoyed the 80 degree + afternoon – I think we were in bed by 7:30 – pretty tired campers! Thursday, we got a lift and picked up the Jeep from the storage facility in Port Isabel. The Mexicans were in yesterday to wash and wax the bus and, after they left, I snapped on the window covers. And, as you can see, Johnnie has his kitchen set up:


All to say, after a full seven days (of which 4½ days were on the road), we have arrived and have arrived safely. Twenty-three hundred miles later and two new front tires, all is well.

A week from tomorrow (Monday), we head to the British Virgin Islands to see Jimmy and Amanda. We look forward to being with them and sharing some time together. I won’t be back here till after that trip. Hope to see you then. Y’all come back now, hear? m.