We left the lovely Jones’ on Wednesday 21st January and went south to Houston. The weather was grey and drizzly which totally reflected our mood as we said goodbye to these lovely people. We had booked Frankie in to a Sprinter Specialist garage to have the glow plugs looked at – that warning light that had come on a few weeks ago! The garage was actually in Spring, just north of Houston. The kids had found a huge skate park online which just happened to be in Spring. Then we discovered that Valerie was from Spring. John got chatting to someone in Alpine that was from Spring. So with all roads leading to Spring that was where we were headed.
We stopped at Walmart to restock and just when Charlie was pining for Valerie and her crazy antics there was a knock on my window and a woman making crazy gestures at me. Well used by now to people approaching us to tell us they love the van, ask if we are from England, did we really bring that van all the way over here etc. etc. I was in no rush to open the window. So I waved her round to John’s side thinking he could deal with her. Where upon she announced she was Valerie’s’ mum!! It totally made our day and Charlie’s eyes were lit up the whole time we stood talking to her. Sylvia was lovely and we were so touched she had come to find us.
Thursday the van went in to have the repairs done. It was absolutely pouring with rain and we had no idea what to do for the whole day with no transport in an industrial estate on the edge of town. So we dropped the van and called a taxi. Our driver was called Big Baby Gravy – which he had written on the side of his van. The inside was decorated with Christmas decorations – he told us he keeps them up all year long because he “lurrrrrrvvvvves Christmas”.
We weren’t sure where to go to hang out for 9 hours but Big Baby Gravy decided we would be best off at Woodlands. A new (ish) town populated mainly by employees of the oil headquarters nearby. He acted as our personal guide driving us round the shops and cinemas, talking us through the restaurant options -bless him! So we hung out in the shopping mall for a while and then went to the cinema while the glow plugs got all repaired!! Phew. Another mechanical issue resolved!!
We had a down day on Friday then on Saturday we finally made it to the infamous skate park. It is the largest FREE skate park in North America and has been built in an area of town they are trying to rejuvenate. It was fantastic and the kids were delighted.
They’d been looking forward to it for months and luckily it didn’t disappoint. We spent hours there then late afternoon headed south of Houston to be near the space centre ready for the next day. The RV park was called Space Centre RV and claimed to be the closest to the attraction. Sadly it was also ‘closest’ to the highway we were ‘closest’ to the RV next to us.! So we squeezed in to our space and and had a shocking nights sleep listening to the traffic rattle by!
Sunday the sun came out again and we visited the Space Centre, which is the official visitor centre of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Centre — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s centre for human spaceflight activities — located in Houston, Texas. The main museum is full of artifacts and displays about space travel and the international space station. There is a huge Saturn 5 on display there which they built and never used. Also a space shuttle ON a jumbo jet parked outside – like the one we had seen in LA that had been transported in the same way, piggy back on the back of a plane. Lots of bits for the kids to climb in and over including lying on their backs ‘in’ a space shuttle as blast off is recreated. Notable was the Lunar module hanging from ceiling which looked like it had been sculpted out of quality street wrappers. I guess this was a possibility considering the walls of the space craft are apparently paper thin!! Slightly worrying thought.
You then get to take the trolley tour over to the working part of Johnson Space Centre. As with all tourist attractions they take a photo of you against a blue screen so they can create a hugely overpriced photograph of you on the moon which you can buy before you leave. Here they told us it was ‘security protocol’ – as if!! The tour was great and we got to see a real life mission control with live video footage of crew in the ISS, which was cool. They were apparently planning a space walk for later that week and we watched them working on their suits. Interesting were the badges on the wall of the all the missions that had been controlled from that room. Each mission control room also displays the 3 badges of the lost missions as a reminder. I didn’t realise but apparently the mission control team literally tell the astronauts what to do and when. So when to eat, exercise, sleep (having first tied down their head and limbs – much like with newborn babies and swaddling to stop them waking themselves up with the startle reflex) etc. In the ISS they get to see 16 sunsets and sunrises in a 24 hour period so I guess it gets disorientating.
There is a Mars mission planned 2035 supposedly. They expect the journey there to take between 6-9 months. As it only takes a week to get to the moon that seems a much more desirable destination to me!! Although having read that you can grow 3-4″ while in space due to the lack of gravity I’m wondering whether Charlie and I might see if we can get a couple of tickets!!
That night we drove down to Galveston Island hoping to have a couple of days relaxing in the sunshine. We drove past all the campsites in town near all the action and normal ‘seaside town’ madness and instead ended up in the State Park. Perfect. We spent Monday and Tuesday playing on the beach. Really lovely relaxing time and so happy to be back in the sunshine. We didn’t manage to get away with driving past the Crazy Golf without having to head there on our way out of town!
We had noticed a weird smell of ammonia coming from the van on Sunday and eventually tracked it down to the fridge. Deepest of joys it seemed like fridge was leaking and was not cooling anything. With the power of google John found an RV fridge repair man in Crosby just east of Houston, very near Spring where we’d just come from!! So we booked in to see him on Wednesday and in the meantime we kept our food in our tiny beer cooler in the back of the van!! Absolutely typical that having been in freezing conditions for weeks where you could easily preserve your food by leaving it outside we were now in glorious sunshine!!!
So Wednesday we drove up to Crosby to meet Steve. Turns out he is a local Sheriff who repairs RV fridges in his spare time. A huge gentle giant of a man he barely fit in the RV to take the fridge out of it!! So out came the fridge leaving a massive gap where it had been which I immediately started to use as an extra cupboard! Shame the vents went straight outside – although I suppose it was a form of ‘air conditioning’. We spent hours there with John and Steve scratching their heads over how to repair it (not so simple in that it is a European fridge / electrics etc).
We were parked in a car park in the middle of the little town next to Ruby’s Barber Shop, which looked busy. As Charlie had started to get dreadlocks (oh and he was still smarting a bit from being called a girl by the kindly old man who’d given him a lolly pop back in Fredericksburg) we decided enough was enough. So we marched them over there. What a place!! Rammed with Coca Cola memorabilia and Toy Story figures all displayed alongside Deer heads!! The ladies in there were crazy, warm and funny! The characters going in and out kept us well entertained. They would be the perfect subject for a reality TV show! As we left giving them our card they handed the boys can coolers that read “Tough enough to rock a Ruby Doo” – brilliant.
By then it was late and Steve said he needed to keep the fridge until Friday or Saturday so he kindly offered the use of the driveway of his parents old house just down the road for the night while we decided what we were going to do over the next few days. So we parked up there which was great as we could plug in. His parting shot was that we might hear the trains – funny guy that Steve!! The train line was 20m from the front door and the trains ran all night long and sounded their horns every time they approached the crossing just near the house. The van literally shook all night long!
We were totally confidant that Steve would sort out the fridge and so we had a couple of days to kill including Will’s 11th birthday on Friday, so we asked him what he wanted to do. Spring Skate park again was the resounding answer. So we headed back to the same RV park in Spring on Thursday. On our whole trip so far we have only ‘gone back’ to campsites for a second time – both times in Texas!! The first time took us back to Alpine where we met the lovely Jones’ and actually this time it led back to a couple of nice days too.
We had a great time on Will’s birthday. He chose breakfast at Denny’s followed by several hours at the Skate park. A bit of spending his birthday money at the Woodlands Mall then takeaway pizza and a DVD! Lovely day.
Saturday 31st January we went back to Crosby and Steve to see if the fridge would work!! The whole town of Crosby seemed to know about our troubles. Steve’s parents drove by to deliver a bag of sweets each to the kids. The priest came and knocked on our door and invited us to the service the next day if we were still in town and said we were in their prayers. And as we drove back into the parking lot the whole staff of Ruby’s Hair Saloon were waving us in!! Which was all very nice.
But best of all, Steve had managed to fix the fridge!! Getting it back in again and all the electrics wired back in again took a while. Luckily Fix It Felix was on hand to make sense of the European wiring etc. He and Steve worked on it together. But truly we were so relieved to know we were going to be back on the road with somewhere to store food (that wasn’t a shoe box size cool box) that we didn’t care about hanging around. Steve was so lovely to us. He gave the kids each one of his Sheriffs badges to add to their collections. Then most exciting of all showed them his bullet wound from when he’d been shot in the arm while on duty!! Too exciting.
It was late by the time we finally had the fridge back in so Steve once again offered the use of his parents driveway for us to stay overnight, which we gratefully accepted. He also didn’t want to charge us for the repairs, saying that he felt it his Christian duty to help us; we did NOT allow him to do that!! Once we had thanked him profusely but before we said goodbye, he asked if we would like to pray. So it was that on our final night in Texas, we stood in a circle holding hands with a Police Sheriff / RV Fridge Repair man, as trains rattled past us and prayed for our continued safe journey and that our fridge would continue to work – amen to that!!
On Sunday 1st February we left Crosby and drove out of Texas and finally into a new state!! We had arrived in Texas on Monday 29th December expecting to explore the wild west. We truly had the best and worst of times here. Terrible storms and glorious weather. Snow storms and Sunburn. Countless problems with Frankie! But endless people to resolve our issues. We found very few cowboys but have met some of the warmest and generous of people. In the words of the bumper sticker we added to our collection here “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could!” We will definitely be back!
Wickenswanderings 