MIleage: 62, 356 Winnie-Stowell County Park Winnie, Texas

It is hard to leave this beautiful place. I know that we will come back to Padre Island! We slept so well here, windows open with a nice breeze and the sound of ocean waves, our lullaby! We avoided the main highway today and elected to take 35N or The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. The route followed the coastal bend. We passed through lots of little towns along the water and the road was quite good.

As we passed through Corpus Christie and we passed over the Intracoastal Waterway.

We passed this aircraft carrier.

We drove past lots of oil refineries and other oil industry related businesses.

Industry interspersed with farmland. This corn was about 6-8 inches high.

As it got close to lunchtime, Tim suggested that we look for a BBQ place. We stopped at Smokin’ R BBQ in West Columbia. This was the highlight of the day! The BBQ was delicious!!

We had to drive north to get onto 10E . The traffic and rough road conditions around Houston were fairly intense. Thankfully it was not yet rush hour. We chose a small county park in Winnie to spend the night. Winnie is the home of the Texas Rice Festival. I was meant to be taking pictures of our camping spot, but I got a phone call from David and completely forgot! Tim took the Jeep to the car-wash to get rid of the seawater, sand, and salt! I went to the small grocery store and collected supplies for the next couple of days. It was a quiet little place to spend the night.